Ok, so I am back from the conference, which was absolutely wonderful! I made some really good contacts/friends. However, sooo much happened that I will have to take a few posts to cover it all, so you have got to be patient with me. For the moment we are going to cover general impressions and my reactions to a lot of things that happened that are a bit more personal than the conference.
First of all, Katie... who at first I wasn't that excited that she was going to come, but when she got there and we hung out, I was really glad that she was there, and now we are closer friends then what we have ever been.
Things have been resolved with Kani, confronted him, we are buds again---which feels really really really good. We can chat again about Kurdish stuff and I am back to helping him on some projects.
Made friends with Kerim Yildiz, founder of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, based out of London...we're tight. And he is going to teach me how to swear in Turkish--and maybe Kurdish if I am lucky, but definitely Turkish because he says that it is a good thing to know when I am being insulted.
I did get sick while at the conference, but I think that it was a combination of stress running wild. But now that a lot of things are resolved and have some good friendships back (and my physical sexuality validated as well---I can talk the talk, but I have been told by reliable sources that I "fucking sexy" with my hair down and I should wear it that way all the time. So I might.
I know this is probably what you don't want to hear about the conference, because it is trival but this is my blog and you are going to get general impressions first.
Later, I will go panel by panel and discuss what happened, because it was very interesting and there was some discontention between viewpoints of Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds--and yes I know that someone out there will be mad with my qualification of Iraqi and Turk, but you are just gonna have to deal.

More to come soon, stay posted.