Aaron Allen

My name is Aaron Ellen. I am a network engineer and I live in Northern Virginia.  I am originally from Michigan. I have been to Turkey before, only to Istanbul, but I have to tell you the difference between this trip and the trip I took before is night and day.

In the last trip I saw a lot of the same archeological sites, the same mosques, but this time I have just got to meet the people. I am not an extremely extroverted person but, just you know, meeting the families, they just drew my inner-self out of me very friendly, and I think America used to have a sense of community like this, but a lot of that has been lost unfortunately. Meeting the families here, and seeing how they embrace me, love me, without even knowing me was very powerful to me. I would like to take what I have learnt to go back and try to talk to people out to some of that back in our country.  The other thing too that I really learnt here was just how I know I understood some things about the Muslim faith but not the depth that I have done here. Just to see the level of devotion, the level of love that the Muslims have for each other and for other faiths and other people was very strong to me. That’s another thing I am going to take back and tell the people I know. I just wish more Americans could come on a trip like this. I know that not everyone can do it but you know they would learn so much, and make great friends, and take a little piece of Turkey back with them to their homes. Thank you.