asia

This is a beautiful book that is at once funny, sad, informative and always honest. This book is truly a "journey into Bhutan" for both writer and reader. Zeppa's recounts her early experiences in Bhutan and the proccess of adapting to a vastly different foreign culture in a way that is both humourous and rings true. Her love story with Bhutan's landscape and its people is obvious, and her language carries the reader every step of the way. Zeppa's subsequent realization of her idealized perspective and understanding of the country's true complexity is a theme to which any overseas adventurer can relate. The book ends a bit abruptly, but overall a moving and wonderful read.

I purchased this book without knowing what it was going to be about, and it turned out to be one of the best books I've read. Since I know nothing about Bhutan, I found the author's descriptions fascinating and imaginative. Without knowing anything about the culture or the area, I found that I could picture both the landscape and the people of Bhutan. It is more of a personal story about a young woman's travel into an unfamiliar area and the challenges she faces along the way, in terms of her own cultural background, values, and beliefs, than a story about the Bhutan itself.

A friend of mine was in the Peace Corp and until about a year ago lived on a remote island in Micronesia. While I wrote to her often, it was hard for me to really understand what it would be like to live in a culture so different from one's own. Her correspondence revealed changing attitudes about the culture she was now a part of, her own cultural background, and the way she viewed herself. While reading this book, I felt I could better understand the feelings and attitudes my friend wrote to me about from Micronesia. I think this book would be very helpful for anyone with friends or family living or working in similar situations. I would think it would also interest people who are living overseas submersed in another culture.

As someone who has never lived or spent a great deal of time outside the United States, I felt that I could identify with the author. I appreciated her honesty and ability to convey her feelings and emotions, as well as effectively describe a place totally unfamiliar to me. I would suggest it to anyone!

Perhaps I am influenced by a period of childhood spent in the Himalayas, but this book took me out of a life that is filled with stress and the feeling of never having done enough. Jamie Zeppa showed such love and appreciation for a culture so different to her own, and had the courage to go alone into this new world, where she had the sensitivity to understand rather than to criticize. she brought this world to me, and having been an immigrant myself I know how hard a new culture is. More people in this country should read it and understand about a different culture and the delight it can inspire.