Thank you all for the warm welcome, kind comments and for the suggestions from Tojo and Aesop.

Tojo ... I did take a few minutes and check out the site you referenced. Looks like a lot of information there to digest. The first few things I did read seemed to be written from a bit of a negative point of view. Think the author was attempting to be very cautionary and probably for good reason. Will return at a future date to explore a little more.

Aesop ... Little by little is about all I'm able to do right now and perhaps that's a good thing :-) for a variety of different reasons. Not the least of which is that I'm still trying to sort out some of my different thoughts and emotions in this particular realm. Sometimes I've felt very drawn in this direction and almost a bit obssessive about it, in a strange/weird way. Other times, it feels pretty comfortable and fun. Yet, often it also feels like foriegn territory.

It's apparent to me that my ignored or sometimes suppressed feelings touches some areas of my life that I've just not addressed and taken the time to explore or to understand all that well.

At any rate, it's been interesting.

Thanks again to each of you for taking the time to extend a nice welcome and/or share a few thoughts with this traveler, who found herself stopping here to look around and perhaps experience a little of the local culture.

If there was a guidebook for this foriegn land ... wonder what would it be called? :-)

-Victoria

PS: I've experienced a couple of "connection failures" where I'm suddenly not signed in to the forum section and need to sign back in before continueing. So far, it's not a big deal. Just wondering if this is somewhat normal?