{"id":1116,"date":"2016-04-14T22:03:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T19:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=1116"},"modified":"2017-11-14T22:07:37","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:07:37","slug":"yemen-through-the-eyes-of-an-american-boy-40-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/yemen-through-the-eyes-of-an-american-boy-40-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"YEMEN Through the Eyes of an American Boy, 40 Years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reflections by Stephen Coats based on the memoirs of Nancy Coats<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was 40 years ago that something happened that would affect every aspect of my life, something that would shape who I am today.\u00a0 I was only 4 years old when my parents took my older brother, my older sister and me onto an airplane for the first time ever out into a wide world that taught me to love the exotic, enjoy wonderful foods, travel, people, languages, cultures and respect those of other faiths.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s who I am today and it started when my parents got a call from my uncle; he was an educator and had just gotten a new job a principal somewhere overseas.\u00a0 My Mom and Dad were teaching at the time in Three Lynx Oregon and both passionate about education. My uncle, my mom\u2019s sister\u2019s husband, wanted to know if they were interested in teaching jobs in Sana\u2019a, Yemen. Mom and Dad\u2019s first question was \u201cWhere in the world is that?\u201d They had no idea where that was being from small town Oregon. Yemen? Nobody in Oregon knew where that was.\u00a0 My mom thought it sounded like and adventure, we were a close-knit family and so with an opportunity to travel around the world with your sister and her family, and get paid to do it, what a deal.\u00a0 The very next day they had an interview with the director of the school and he wanted a decision within 21 hours. My dad never makes decisions that fast but talked to my mom all the way home from the interview while driving in the car and by the time they arrived at the house they were resolved and ready to go.<\/p>\n

My mom had gone to a women\u2019s retreat a month earlier and heard the speaker talking about \u201cdreaming dreams!\u201d and not being afraid to do so, so she began to wonder if this was a dream!\u00a0 It was a whirlwind summer in 1976.\u00a0 My brother told people at church, \u201cWe have a family secret, but we can\u2019t tell you for six weeks!\u201d Us kids all thought it was exciting to be moving! We had to scramble to get passports, insurance and visas. There were lots of shopping, packing, shots, dentist appointments, garage sales, shipping, farewells and potlucks. We were planning to be gone for two years, which meant clothes, books to take, cosmetics, anything we thought we couldn\u2019t get in Yemen.<\/p>\n

By August we were off to Yemen, flying for the first time, taking advantage of stops in Copenhagen, Athens, Damascus and Jeddah on the way finally arriving in Sana\u2019a Aug. 20, 1976.\u00a0 We had no idea what laid in store for us, we just knew we were together as a family and the adventure was before us.<\/p>\n

TO BE CONTINUED\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reflections by Stephen Coats based on the memoirs of Nancy Coats It was 40 years ago that something happened that would affect every aspect of my life, something that would shape who I am today.\u00a0 I was only 4 years old when my parents took my older brother, my older sister and me onto an […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1119,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions\/1119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}