What I am thankful to God for: I'm thankful that I'm not rotting away in a Kyrgyz prison.

That's sort of a running joke for Thanksgiving ever since I returned home from Kyrgyzstan.

For those of you who haven't heard the story, I was arrested for illegal drug trafficking in Bishkek at the end of my summer in Kyrgyzstan.  I had no illegal drug, of course, much less was I trafficking anything.

Basically, this crooked cop was trying to shake me down for money.  Evidently, Americans are easy mark for this sort of scam.

Between each question concerning drugs, like "Where are you hiding the drug?", he would ask, "How much money do you have?" He was doing this while we were encircled by half a dozen other cops.

At one point, I decided to push pass the smallest guys and walk away. Amazingly, none of them tried to stop me.

But when I got to the curve where all the taxis were lined up, none of the drivers, with the exception of one, were willing to open their cab door. They had been watching the whole episode transpire and, with the exception of that one driver, nobody wanted to be involved.

When we were driving off, I asked the driver why he was willing to pick me up.

He said, "I saw what happened. God is with you."

I was thinking the same but I was doubtful that anyone would have recognized it as such much less an Uzbek Muslim man.  (Later on in our conversation, I found out that he's Uzbek.)