I'll post links to travel sites and to places where people are immersing cross-culturally; some links will also be to blogs that seem very special to me.

Jon Radojkovic - The new site of a close friend Jon, who is very engaged with barns and their social history, as well as with post and beam structures of all kinds. He is also very knowledgeable about and committed to sustainable agriculture. There are gorgeous barn photos and links to many of Jon's articles on agricultural issues. After two trips to northern Thailand, where he got immersed in looking for traditional post-and-beam structures, he's now planning to lead a tour there (in February 2010, based in Chiang Mai) for people who want to learn more about post-and-beam.  Go check it out!

wandel.person.dk/thai.html - An amazing site, with a Thai typewriter; when you look at other parts of the site, you'll find typewriters in other scripts as well. 

Iraqistan - This extraordinary blog is by a woman named Elana who writes with such presentness about her experiences in the US military, her wounds, her husband's damaged body, the system, how she and others are responding, that it's humbling.

Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree - This is the bulletin board that has become a lifeline for travellers.  Just go to the index and find the region and country you are interested in, then immerse in all the threads.

languagedigger.blogspot.com -  I just had (July 2009) an e-mail inquiry from Elizabeth, whose blog this is, asking whether we have photos of Kyrgyzstan. Sadly, the answer was no.  But she had signed her letter with her blogspot address too, and so I went to poke around and see.  Elizabeth is a Russian to English translator who is currently based in Moscow, but I think she's American. The blog is well-written, lively, and very fun and interesting, especially for anyone interested in language (not just Russian... there's a lot else) and food.  I now have it on my bookmarks bar, and intend to drop by frequently.  

Recce - An online travel writing magazine, a monthly.  Don George, a wonderful travel writer and thoughtful appreciative guy, a founder of the Book Passage Travel Writing and Photography conference (every August in Marin County), is the constant, but there are also contributions from others.  There's a photo show each issue, in the "Fresh from the Field" section.  

Om Laila - Roula Said's Om Laila system, which grew out of her years teaching bellydance and performing as a singer, qanoon player, and dancer, is anchored in Arab traditions but speaks to us all.  I have been taking Roula's classes for some years, and always come home nearly giddy with pleasure, as well as stronger and more supple. 

I'll post your comments that come in to the email at immersethrough@gmail.com. Let me know if you'd like your email address or website posted so that others can reach you; we'll assume you do NOT unless you tell us otherwise.

JULY 10, 2009: A great article about the first immerse through tour is out today, in the Wall Street Journal.  It's by Robyn Eckhardt, with photos by her partner David Hagerman.  It gives a wonderful sense of the tour and of the growth in confidence in people from the first day to the last, when they were shopping and cooking unabashedly!

 Uighur noodles: A guy named Luke who seems to be fantastically persistent, has recently figured out how to make the Uighur flung noodles. Major immersion!!!!  Even better, he's made videos to explain the technique.  It's all at http://ratingpending.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-make-hand-pulled-noodles_23.html

comments: A good friend, Kaz, wrote a note after she visited the site soon after it went up.  It was lovely to see her get it, grab the idea of immersion and run with it:  i like the idea of your website being an idea about immersion, the whole act, in its many incarnations, of being taken in, brought through, soaked up by. drenched. how literally this happens in places and with food, which we take into our bodies and are then altered by, augmented by. kept alive, too.