(CNN) -  My trip back to my native Bulgaria this summer took on a special meaning because of an event that changed the course of history and my life! Twenty years since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, I was taking special notice of how things had changed. I noticed a new generation gap, separating those like me, who grew up with communism, from those who have no memory of it.

I came face to face with that reality on the plane back home to the United States. 

I was chatting with a 20-something Bulgarian college student on her way to a student work program in the U.S, when I had a flashback to 1991, and my own trip to America when I was that age.  I almost didn't make it. Not because I was late for my flight. But because, to use a famous Cold War scholar's phrase, "history" had not quite "ended" in 1991.

Just a month before my flight, communists opposed to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, deposed him. All of sudden, it seemed, my dream CNN job could have been shut down behind the "Iron Curtain."

Fears grew in Bulgaria, that a return of communism in Russia would bring the Cold War back to tiny Bulgaria. A week later, it was over. The communist revival attempt failed, I was free to board my trans-Atlantic flight!

I glanced over at the young woman sitting beside me. Such a relief that history is no longer in our way. But even though we're both enjoying the benefits of change, there's one big difference. I experienced that history first hand; she's only heard about it from her mom. And that's a generation gap I gladly embrace.

BEIJING, China - I hauled myself out of bed at 6 a.m. Sunday to set out for something I'd never done before–run a race in the Beijing marathon.

Jaime FlorCruz, far right, joins Zhang Lianqi, center, and another runner at the finish line.

I’ve been prepping for this day, on and off, for three months since I signed up to run 9.6K as part of the 2009 Beijing International Marathon, the full length of which is a little more than 42 kilometers.

My 58-year-old body seemed fit enough to run the distance, but I woke up with pinching pain on my left knee. For one brief moment, I thought that was a good reason to back out.

I decided to go and run. I had my muesli and banana, took a painkiller and proceeded to Tiananmen Square. Nearly 30,000 people, professionals and amateurs, had gathered there for the 29-year-old annual event. Foreigners paid $100 to register; Chinese paid 150 yuan ($22). Everyone gets a packet, including a runner's bag and bib, an official T-shirt and a certificate of participation.

At the starting line, some came in groups — high school and college students, factory workers, corporate employees, and members of runners’ club from various parts of China. Others came alone or with running buddies. Many joined to challenge themselves. Others, like the nine Chinese nuns from Henan province, run to support charity. Several runners wore distinctive T-shirts emblazoned with company logos ("Bimbo" Bread stands out) and uplifting message (the Obama slogan “Yes We Can” was eye-catching, if a bit tired).

I can too, I thought, as I jogged past Chairman Mao’s portrait soon after the start. Forty minutes and four kilometers later, however, my energy and enthusiasm started to flag. I puffed and winced, as I watched rabbit-like runners overtake me and deflated stragglers fall off behind me. Can I go on for five more Ks?

Just as I was losing confidence, I noticed an elderly man in red shirt, red shorts and blue sneakers, running just ahead of me. I sidled up and politely asked his age. "I’m 76,” he says, smiling.

Zhang Lianqi, it turns out, is a running aficionado. "I've been joining long-distance runs in Beijing since 1956," he recalls, keeping a slow but steady pace. “Once, I finished 37th.” He retired from his transistor-factory job 16 years ago but still jogs two to three kilometers three times a week.

That explains Zhang’s good form. "I've gained a bit of weight but I can still run," he quips. Along the way, he served as my mentor and inspiration. “Let’s not run in the middle of the street,” he suggests, so we avoid runners who are too fast or too slow. He took out two squares of chocolate from a yellow plastic bag and handed me one. “Don’t swallow, just let it melt in your mouth.” Soon, we passed 6K!

Impetuously, I picked up speed, inspired by periodic cheers ("Persistence means victory!") from onlookers and volunteers who’d lined the streets. “Pace yourself,” Zhang warned me. “Don’t run too fast.” Badly dehydrated, I fetched a bottle of water from a volunteer. “Don’t drink too much,” he says. “Just sip.” His most telling unsolicited advice involved attire. “Next time wear running shorts,” he admonished me. “Sweatpants drag you down.” Like a tour guide, he narrated a bit of history of Diaoyutai, as we ran past China's state guest house. He probably just wished to distract me. By the time he finished his spiel, we were only 600 meters away from our goal.

Literally shoulder to shoulder, we crossed the 9.6K finish line. As we posed for souvenir pictures and exchanged phone numbers, I felt especially exhilarated to have found in Mr. Zhang a running companion, a mentor and another Beijing friend. I am glad he pushed me to the finish line.

It’s a rare story that captures a journalist’s imagination the way this one has.

I first heard of El Mirador from Jeff Morgan, the founder of the Global Heritage Fund.

We were talking about his organization when he mentioned this ancient Mayan city they were working to save. Buried deep in the jungles of Northern Guatemala are the stone relics of an empire. His voice cracked with enthusiasm as he described the amazing discoveries being unearthed almost daily.

The archeologists excavating there say they have evidence now showing Mirador, this remote site almost no one has ever heard of, is home to the largest pyramid in the world by volume, the first freeway system in the world and a newly unearthed piece artwork, the size of a football field, that could rewrite the historical timeline of the Mayan civilization.

As a journalist, I did what I’ve been trained to do and asked calmly, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

He did, so my follow-up question was easy: “How can we get there?”

We arrived by helicopter from Guatemala City along with Morgan and the director of the Mirador Basin Project, Richard Hansen. When you’re in the jungle for the first time, a couple thoughts cross your mind. First, you wonder what else is out there, lurking behind the brush and branches, sizing you up.

And the second thing you think about is where you put your water. The heat is intense. It was 34 C the whole time we were there – day and night – and moisture from the jungle canopy adds a steamy, sticky film to your skin that traps the heat.

Our shoot lasted several days, short by documentary filming standards, but we packed in as much work as possible. Working 14-hour days, we hiked for miles, scaled pyramids, squeezed through tiny corridors to get inside the temples.

But in addition to all the wonderful historical discoveries, there is another, more pressing reason we went to film this story. Mirador is facing threats on several fronts.

Looters are constantly breaking into the sites and stealing priceless artifacts. Loggers and cattle ranchers are cutting down the surrounding rainforest at an alarming speed. And narco-traffickers, flying cocaine-filled planes, are landing in the remote areas then setting them ablaze, sparking devastating wildfires.

For Jeff Morgan, Richard Hansen, and several organizations like PACUNAM and APANAC, the purpose of saving and preserving this incredible site is so that the people who live in the surrounding villages will benefit.

These groups hope that by creating a sustainable tourist destination, it will attract tourists from around the world, and bring badly needed fund to the poorest area of the country.

Looking back, it felt like a whirlwind going from plane, to helicopter, to isolated jungle and then back again. But I came away from the experience with the sense that there are still wonders left in this world to be discovered, and good people fighting with everything they have, to save them.

It’s a story I’ll never forget. And one that I hope, for the archeologists and people of Guatemala, has a happy ending.

It's been four years since I was last in Aceh covering the aftermath of the tsunami and I was braced for the worst on this trip.

A tsunami drill is carried out in Banda Aceh, with droning alarms and people fleeing an imaginary wave.

I had cynically assumed that there would still be huge swathes of wasteland towards the edge of the city.

But those "fields of shards," as one expat memorably described them to me in the dark days after the tsunami, are now gone. In fact, you have to look quite hard to find any trace of the catastrophe that consumed this corner of Indonesia the day after Christmas 2004.

Houses and shops have sprung up where once there was nothing but rubble, bodies and misery. But what is even more encouraging is that the people here are now much, much better prepared for another tidal wave.

This morning we watched as a full scale tsunami drill was carried out, complete with droning alarms and people covered in fake blood fleeing an imaginary wave.

It was well organized and seemed to show that if Aceh was hit again, there would be a chance for some people to escape.

For some, it brought back chilling memories of that terrible morning on December 26, 2004.

Yudi Rinaldi said the drill brought back images of the day he ran for his life as the tsunami surged towards him.

Yudi Rinaldi, 36, and his four-year-old son Ryan, were among those taking part in the Ulee Lee area of Banda Aceh. He told me the drill was traumatic for him - bringing back vivid images of the day he ran for his life as a monstrous black wave of rubble surged towards him.

Then, there were no tsunami shelters for people like Yudi to run towards.

Now, there are several of these specially-constructed buildings around the city, with room for hundreds of residents. There is a system of buoys out at sea linked to satellites, which should give plenty of warning of an impending tsunami.

I only hope the system will never have to be used for real.

(CNN) – CNN Cairo went to the beach Monday. It was not, alas, a day of rest. We assembled at 2 a.m. at the headquarters of the Egyptian Army's "Morale Guidance" Bureau, from where we were bussed, an hour later, to the northern coast to cover the 2009 Brightstar Exercises.

This year 17,000 troops from Egypt, the United States, Jordan, Pakistan, Germany, Italy, and Kuwait - to name a few - are taking part.

These military exercises have been conducted every two years since 1981.

There is a certain predictability about these affairs. The officers, whatever the country, are all upbeat, talking about cooperation, partnership and mutual respect.

But in the end, these are war games: A rehearsal for something to which other, far less lofty terms come to mind. The officers we interviewed - Americans and Egyptians - speak in glowing adjectives, but dodge questions about what or whom the exercises are preparing for.

I covered Brightstar 10 years ago. Back then it was also all about partnership and cooperation. But in the combat operations room of the USS John F. Kennedy, I had a premonition of what was to come. On a map of clear plastic, written in magic marker over Baghdad were the words: "Target: Saddam."

Ten years later Saddam is gone; U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, while targets have been hit in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan.

Voices have been raised in the U.S. – though more loudly and insistently in Israel - calling for military action against Iran, which is accused by some of pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Back in 1999 it was fairly clear that sooner or later the U.S. and its allies would, somehow or other, bring down Saddam Hussein. After September 11, 2001, regardless of Iraq's non-involvement in those attacks, Saddam's days were running out.

I don't think, at this moment, an attack against Iran (by Israel, by the U.S., or both) is as inevitable as Saddam Hussein's demise. But the possibility is there.

As the sun rose over the desert, I watched three C17 "Globemasters," which had flown straight from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, drop hundreds of paratroopers - mostly Americans along with a few Egyptians and Pakistanis. Later, a pair of American Cobra gunships provided air support as three huge U.S. Navy hovercraft disgorged a dozen armored humvees on a beautiful Mediterranean beach, already "secured" by U.S., Egyptian, Pakistani and Jordanian troops.

It was an impressive display of force and hardware, as well as cooperation and partnership. However it's easy to see from the weapons on display who is the senior "partner."

Sitting in the press bus on my way back to Cairo typing this with my thumbs on a blackberry, I wonder if, as the American and Egyptian officers told us, the Brightstar exercises aren't designed for a specific threat then what is the point?

HONG KONG, China — “Sun Outage” is a phrase that means something to someone working in the Satellite and Television Industries.

When you are sitting at home watching television, there is a good chance that the CNN on your screen has traveled around the world via satellites. These satellites are geo-stationary, which means they hover over the same piece of Earth all the time, in fact they are rotating at the same speed as the Earth to achieve this.

A ‘sun outage’ is similar to a solar eclipse – when the moon blocks out the daytime sun – except this time that pesky sun gets behind our satellite.

The satellites we use are effectively giant reflectors of radio waves that carry our television signals. The radio waves get sent from one part of the world and reflected back to another part of the world, often ending up in another continent. Typically space is a quiet place. However, the sun is a very noisy thing, emitting all sorts of radio wavelengths at high amplitude.

Thus, when the sun gets behind our satellite - albeit only for a few minutes a year (and we just finished our last sun outage period on Thursday) – it swamps all the radio waves with its solar noise. So we, along with others, lose our signal in that noise.

It is a bit like trying to have a conversation with your friend in front of a set of rock concert speakers - deafening and impossible to hear anything. Anyway, if your picture goes on the blink and you hear the phrase ‘sun outage’ then sit tight, make a cup of tea and do not adjust your set.

Normal service will resume when our lovely sun meanders on.

MALAELA, Samoa – Arriving before sunrise in Samoa, I was surprised to see a small band playing traditional Samoan folk songs to welcome the weary travelers – this was less than 24 hours after an earthquake and tsunami struck the islands.

Tourists are a big part of the economy here, and it was the tourist areas on the South coast that were the hardest hit. One family that owns a popular resort near Lalomanu, lost 14 family members when the wave struck. Traveling up and down the Southern coast, so many stories are the same. Stories of death, and amazing stories of survival.

On the coastal town of Malaela, eight people lost their lives, including two small children. All but two of the houses there were flattened. The village men were digging through the debris. It was as if the contents of the entire town – clothes, furniture, photos, cars – had been tossed and strewn across the muddy ground. The smell from the rotting fish was pungent in the tropical heat.

When the earthquake hit, the women, children and elders ran up a hill to a banana plantation, and there they remained when I visited. Almost 200 people living under tents, with nothing but the clothes they were wearing on the day the earthquake struck. But the Samoan family system was already at work. Donations of food, shelter, clothing, and medical supplies were already pouring in.

One of the village elders told me they were happy to be away from the ocean. She said they had nothing to go back to, so why not stay up in the hills? Villagers also expressed their strong faith in God, and the great comfort their church brings.

Funerals are happening all over town. It seems that everyone here has a funeral to attend – sometimes a dozen funerals.

The shock of the tsunami has made an indelible mark on the Samoan survivors. But so, too, has the indefatigable spirit of the island made an impression on me.

PADANG, Indonesia - The last 48 hours have been bewildering. A series of natural disasters across the Asia Pacific has left us scrambling to cover diverse disasters.

CNN's cameraman Mark Phillips, producer Andy Saputra and survivor John Lee chat in a hospital.

First Tropical Storm Ketsana left Manila 80 percent underwater. So we did our best to get there as soon as possible. But almost no sooner had we arrived than an earthquake and tsunami hit the remote Pacific islands of Samoa and American Samoa.

Frantic calls to various travel agents followed. “How do we get there? Via Seoul?? 35 hours???! You’ve got to be kidding.”

As we were making plans, Ketsana smashed into Vietnam. As other CNN crews were dispatched from Indonesia to Vietnam, suddenly news of another huge earthquake in Sumatra.

It meant we had a logistical nightmare to get to all of our equipment across the other side of the region in double quick time.

A flight through Singapore, Jakarta (endless delayed flights) and finally Padang got us to the heart of the latest crisis.

As our plane glided in over the city I could see the ribbons of light along the roads, but in between, there was dark emptiness. The entire city was blacked-out. Only a few buildings had backup generators. It made live television broadcasts very, very tricky. We had our own portable generator but could bring gasoline on a plane, and now the queue for fuel was two to three hours at the local gas station.

We managed to get a few live shots in the bag before finally our batteries died. Then like the residents of Padang, we too were feeling our way through the night. We found a half-built hotel, which had been slightly damaged. The owner was reluctant to let us stay inside because of the risk of aftershocks, ¬so we instead caught a couple of hours sleep in his bus in the parking lot.

Daylight enabled us to get a much better view of the damage. It’s bizarrely random, as it always seems to be in earthquakes. Some buildings are standing intact, others folded in on themselves.

There is one incident that will stick in my mind forever. It was the incredible story of John Lee. The 55-year-old Singaporean coal trader had been in Padang on business when suddenly his meeting was plunged into darkness, as the quake ”exploded” around him, and before he could react, the building collapsed.

CNN cameraman Mark Phillips spotted some Indonesian rescuers trying to free him, but it seemed like a hopeless effort. They were using a hammer and chisel to try and tunnel through tons of concrete, but Mark spent hours talking to John through the rubble and trying to reassure him that he’d be alright. Watch Phillips talk with Lee, as he's trapped beneath rubble.

Mark left the scene to find out if there was more that could be done but then heard later that John had been freed from his prison of mangled wreckage. On a whim, at one in the morning, we decided to go up to the hospital to see if John was OK. And as we walked into the lobby, there he was, on a stretcher, conscious, awake and smiling.

Finally Mark got to see the man he’d presumed would surely die, and John put a face to the voice who’d given him hope when his situation seemed utterly hopeless.

Amid all this destruction, tragedy and chaos a story of survival and courage that made the last 48 hours seem thoroughly worthwhile.

Christopher Savoie's case is playing out dramatically over the airwaves and in the blogosphere - an American man with sole legal custody of his young children, jailed in Japan for trying to bring his abducted children back to the U.S.

But if you're Japanese, you've never heard of Savoie, because the story hasn't been on a newscast or in the newspapers.

Based in Tokyo, among our first calls was to the local press in Fukuoka. The newspaper told us "This isn't news." When we asked if they would cover it because of the growing international interest, the paper flatly said, "No."

That response is a window into the Japanese mindset of the privacy of the home, and helps explain the cultural and legal clash in which Savoie is trapped.

Invading into the domicile is considered taboo, where issues like domestic violence and child abuse still culturally remain private matters.

Japanese family law follows suit, hesitant to order families to recognize joint custody. It prefers to obey the cultural norm of the woman having primary custody, which often means the father never has any contact with the children. That would be unthinkable in a U.S. court, which sees joint custody as a matter of course in divorce.

The Americans I've interviewed in this story say they're flabbergasted by Japan's archaic and rigid laws. But in this culture, there's no discussion about it. They don't even consider it news.

HONG KONG, China – Details of Sarah Palin's trip to Hong Kong - in what is being billed as her first speech outside North America - have been kept under wraps.

When I interviewed a spokeswoman for the event she will speak at, the 16th CLSA Investors' Forum, she said she didn't know when Palin would land in Hong Kong or when she would leave, and the former Republican vice presidential candidate's keynote address would be closed to the media.

Contacts put me in touch with people attending the speech, and I asked if I could interview them afterward about what Palin said: They both declined, though one was open to it if it was off the record.

CLSA head of communications Simone Wheeler told me: "She (Palin) has chosen to come here to speak to our clients on the condition that it would be closed to media so she could therefore have a candid conversation with investors as opposed to using this as a PR trip to promote herself globally."

She had earlier said: “She is coming to present to our investors, not to seek publicity. I think she really understands the value of presenting to a room of 1,000 global fund managers who really can influence the markets. We are really glad that she sees the value of that and that she’s not using this as a publicity-seeking exercise.”

I wondered, “Why the secrecy?” What do you think?