On the evening of December 23rd, 2005, an historic event occurred. The Dutch allowed me to participate in their Sinterklause celebration. Now I’m sure it’s not often that they allow foreigners such an honor (because of such scandals as poor old Black Pete), but I’m completely irresistible to the Dutch (I’m a vonderful goot guy), and so I had the privilege of witnessing this momentous evening.
The night began with everyone bringing their presents into the room in suitcases so that their gifts wouldn’t be seen. Then the gifts were hurriedly stuffed under a blanket where they were guarded by Holly the cat (that’s the non-pregnant one). The snacks were brought out next. There were cookies that tasted like licorice, miniature ginger-snap-type things, other candies that I can’t pronounce, and a nice hot chocolate for each person.
Next came the gift distribution/opening. This worked by having one person (namely Ryan the Rookie) grab a present from under the blanket, then he/I had to do five jumping jacks, spin around six times, and then present the gift to whoever’s name was written on the present while singing the Sinterklause theme song. Just kidding. They’re not that weird. I’m pretty sure there is a Sinterklause theme song, though, part of which is supposed to be sang after each gift is opened. Now, after the first present was handed out, the person who received the gift had to read out the poem that is attached to the gift. This is the genius of Sinterklause: Each gift given must be accompanied by a humorous poem that pokes fun at the person receiving it. So, after the poem is read and everyone has a good laugh, the present is finally opened, at which point the latter portion of the Sinterklause theme song is supposed to be sang, “Dank u Sinterkla-sha”. Something like that anyways. Following that, the person who received the gift then goes and grabs the next gift under the blanket and presents it to whoever’s name is on it, and the ritual is repeated. This continues on for the next six or seven hours. Just kidding. I didn’t time it.
I’m trying to think of other crazy things we did that evening, but I’m afraid the Dutch aren’t as weird as ‘Austin Powers: Goldmember’ likes to make us think. With that said and done, I’m going to go celebrate North American Christmas, as it is the morning of the 25th at the moment. Have yourselves a Merry Christmas and all that jazz.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Pictures of Dahab!
Hello! I don't have time to write about my adventures in Dahab yet, but I have put some of my pictures up for you to check out in the meantime. Hope you like them! I think they actually show up in reverse order for some reason... so the ones at the end of the trip are at the beginning, etc. Boooo. Oh well.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Greetings From Dahab
Hello Everyone! I am writing this blog post from an internet cafe in Dahab. The waves of the Red Sea are crashing against the shore at my back. It's pretty windy today, so the sea is full of waves. Lots of people are out windsurfing. I woke up today and looked out the window of my $10 a night hotel room to see the Red Sea right beside me! I headed down to a restaurant on the shore and took a seat right on the edge of the boardwalk. As I sat there reading a book and sipping on mint tea, the waves crashed against the wall of the boardwalk so hard that my feet could feel the ground vibrate whenever they hit the wall. The odd time they would hit in such a way that the water would shoot up like a geyser and sprinkle a drop or two of saltwater upon me. After finishing my tea, a waiter brought out my breakfast: pancakes with fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream. It was good.
Following breakfast, Heidi, John and I went on a 4-wheeling safari out into an oasis in the Sinai mountains, and back along the coast of the Red Sea. It was loads of fun. Now I'm here nerding it up in an internet cafe for less than a dollar an hour.
Yesterday we drove out to a place called the Blue Canyon (I think), and snorkeled there. Actually, it was mostly them snorkeling, and me standing shoulder-deep in water trying to figure out how to breathe through only my mouth without panicking when I started floating. It wasn't a very successful endeavor for me, but I did see some cool looking fish and I had the opportunity to flail around helplessly in the Red Sea. I had just read the passage about Moses and his people crossing the Red Sea that very morning to psych me up for this moment. Anyways, I should get going. I'm beginning to crave a ridiculously good meal for $5. If you ever have the opportunity to come out to Dahab, you will NOT be disappointed. Especially during a non-touristy time of the year like right now. When I get home I will post some of my pictures from this trip. Until then, have a Merry Christmas!
Following breakfast, Heidi, John and I went on a 4-wheeling safari out into an oasis in the Sinai mountains, and back along the coast of the Red Sea. It was loads of fun. Now I'm here nerding it up in an internet cafe for less than a dollar an hour.
Yesterday we drove out to a place called the Blue Canyon (I think), and snorkeled there. Actually, it was mostly them snorkeling, and me standing shoulder-deep in water trying to figure out how to breathe through only my mouth without panicking when I started floating. It wasn't a very successful endeavor for me, but I did see some cool looking fish and I had the opportunity to flail around helplessly in the Red Sea. I had just read the passage about Moses and his people crossing the Red Sea that very morning to psych me up for this moment. Anyways, I should get going. I'm beginning to crave a ridiculously good meal for $5. If you ever have the opportunity to come out to Dahab, you will NOT be disappointed. Especially during a non-touristy time of the year like right now. When I get home I will post some of my pictures from this trip. Until then, have a Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
What I’m Up To
The pace of life is quickening these days. The following is a quick overview of what the rest of December has in store for me:
First of all, I had the youth pastor’s wife take a look at my injured shoulder (read Camel Racing to find out why it’s injured) and she thinks that it is probably just sprained. She’s a massage therapist, so she knows a thing or two about stuff like this. So, God willing, I should be able to make a quick recovery from it. I just realized how embarrassing this sounds. I sprained my shoulder while getting off of a camel. I sound like I’m eighty already! Oh how swiftly the years come upon me.
After this ministry week is over (Friday night is our last event of the week), we (the youth staff) are heading off on a staff retreat to Dahab, which is in the Sinai. Dahab is the Arabic word for ‘gold.’ Sounds like a luxurious trip to me. Planned activities include snorkeling in the Red Sea, 4-wheeling, and climbing Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise. Expect some interesting stories from this trip!
A day or two after I return from Dahab, I will be celebrating Sinterclause with my Dutch family here. Sinterclause is a Dutch tradition normally celebrated on December 5th where participants exchange gifts accompanied with humorous poems explaining the gifts. It’s pretty much the commercialized portion of Christmas celebrated at the beginning of the month so that more emphasis can be put on Christ’s birth on the 25th.
And For Christmas itself, I shall be spending it with the youth pastor and his family, as well as the other intern. I hear they’ve acquired a ham somehow, so we’ll be eating that for our Christmas dinner (pork products are very rare in Muslim countries because pork is not kosher in their religion).
Following Christmas, a few of my friends are arriving and I will be taking my two weeks holiday as we travel around the countryside seeking out adventure. So, forgive me if I don’t write fairly regularly in the coming weeks. I am merely seeking out inspiration for my future blog entries.
First of all, I had the youth pastor’s wife take a look at my injured shoulder (read Camel Racing to find out why it’s injured) and she thinks that it is probably just sprained. She’s a massage therapist, so she knows a thing or two about stuff like this. So, God willing, I should be able to make a quick recovery from it. I just realized how embarrassing this sounds. I sprained my shoulder while getting off of a camel. I sound like I’m eighty already! Oh how swiftly the years come upon me.
After this ministry week is over (Friday night is our last event of the week), we (the youth staff) are heading off on a staff retreat to Dahab, which is in the Sinai. Dahab is the Arabic word for ‘gold.’ Sounds like a luxurious trip to me. Planned activities include snorkeling in the Red Sea, 4-wheeling, and climbing Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise. Expect some interesting stories from this trip!
A day or two after I return from Dahab, I will be celebrating Sinterclause with my Dutch family here. Sinterclause is a Dutch tradition normally celebrated on December 5th where participants exchange gifts accompanied with humorous poems explaining the gifts. It’s pretty much the commercialized portion of Christmas celebrated at the beginning of the month so that more emphasis can be put on Christ’s birth on the 25th.
And For Christmas itself, I shall be spending it with the youth pastor and his family, as well as the other intern. I hear they’ve acquired a ham somehow, so we’ll be eating that for our Christmas dinner (pork products are very rare in Muslim countries because pork is not kosher in their religion).
Following Christmas, a few of my friends are arriving and I will be taking my two weeks holiday as we travel around the countryside seeking out adventure. So, forgive me if I don’t write fairly regularly in the coming weeks. I am merely seeking out inspiration for my future blog entries.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Camel Racing
Today was the day of our annual Christmas Pageant. Although it retold the story of Christ’s birth quite simply, this pageant was quite unlike any other I have been a part of. Why? Because we used live animals in our simple little pageant. Complete with sheep, camels, and a donkey! Since I was Wiseman #1, I had the privilege of riding a camel through what might be called the sanctuary of our church (maybe I’ve forgotten to tell you, our church services all take place outside, beneath a tent in an Anglican Church’s courtyard since our church doesn’t have a building of its own). It’s pretty crazy how life changes sometimes, isn’t it? About this time last year I was bundled up, trudging through -20°C weather in Canada. Now, here I am in Egypt riding camels while I’m dressed in a galabiaa (I don’t know how to spell it, but a galabiaa is a typical Middle Eastern form of clothing that is little more than a one-piece gown that reaches from your shoulders to your ankles).
Well, now that I have had the experience of riding a camel around, I would like to share a few tips with each of you, should you ever have the opportunity to ride one:
1. Go to the bathroom before riding a camel. Camels enjoy elongated periods of urination, often just before going on stage. As the camel relieves itself, the sound of it causes you to wish you were doing the same.
2. Pull your galabiaa up to your knees before attempting to mount the camel. Galabiaas are somewhat constricting and don’t allow you to spread your legs much wider than shoulder length.
3. Sit close behind the first hump of the camel so that you can wrap your legs around the hump and rest them on its neck. This also enables you to pull your galabiaa back down over your white legs.
4. Lean back when the camel begins to stand up. A camel stands up in stages. First its hind legs stand up about half-way, then its front half stands up completely, and finally, the back half erects itself completely. During this time, you must lean back, then forward, and then back again. Doing so keeps you from flying off of the camel as it stands up.
5. Watch your head when riding a camel in a confined area. Camels are much bigger when you’re riding them than they look in postcards! You’re sitting about six feet off the ground when riding a camel. Your head is therefore much higher… perhaps in the vicinity of where loudspeakers are hung.
6. When dismounting a camel while it is still standing, practice doing so before you try it in front of five hundred people. At one point in the pageant I had to jump off of the camel, onto the stage, all without it sitting down. Let’s just say in our first performance, my dismounting procedure was less than graceful (and now I’ve got an injured shoulder from the stunt as well). At least the audience had a good laugh (I sort of missed part of the stage when I tried to jump off of the camel onto the stage).
7. Another thing to remember when dismounting a camel is to be sure that your galabiaa doesn’t get caught on the saddle horn (I made that term up. I’m talking about the handle thingy that you hold onto while riding). Failure to do so could result in a most embarrassing incident. This tip was inspired while watching Wiseman #2 dismount from his camel. This also got a good laugh from the audience.
Well folks, there you have it! All you need to know to successfully ride a camel! I hope you enjoy your Christmas season, wherever you are in this world. Who knows what your next Christmas will have in store for you!
Well, now that I have had the experience of riding a camel around, I would like to share a few tips with each of you, should you ever have the opportunity to ride one:
1. Go to the bathroom before riding a camel. Camels enjoy elongated periods of urination, often just before going on stage. As the camel relieves itself, the sound of it causes you to wish you were doing the same.
2. Pull your galabiaa up to your knees before attempting to mount the camel. Galabiaas are somewhat constricting and don’t allow you to spread your legs much wider than shoulder length.
3. Sit close behind the first hump of the camel so that you can wrap your legs around the hump and rest them on its neck. This also enables you to pull your galabiaa back down over your white legs.
4. Lean back when the camel begins to stand up. A camel stands up in stages. First its hind legs stand up about half-way, then its front half stands up completely, and finally, the back half erects itself completely. During this time, you must lean back, then forward, and then back again. Doing so keeps you from flying off of the camel as it stands up.
5. Watch your head when riding a camel in a confined area. Camels are much bigger when you’re riding them than they look in postcards! You’re sitting about six feet off the ground when riding a camel. Your head is therefore much higher… perhaps in the vicinity of where loudspeakers are hung.
6. When dismounting a camel while it is still standing, practice doing so before you try it in front of five hundred people. At one point in the pageant I had to jump off of the camel, onto the stage, all without it sitting down. Let’s just say in our first performance, my dismounting procedure was less than graceful (and now I’ve got an injured shoulder from the stunt as well). At least the audience had a good laugh (I sort of missed part of the stage when I tried to jump off of the camel onto the stage).
7. Another thing to remember when dismounting a camel is to be sure that your galabiaa doesn’t get caught on the saddle horn (I made that term up. I’m talking about the handle thingy that you hold onto while riding). Failure to do so could result in a most embarrassing incident. This tip was inspired while watching Wiseman #2 dismount from his camel. This also got a good laugh from the audience.
Well folks, there you have it! All you need to know to successfully ride a camel! I hope you enjoy your Christmas season, wherever you are in this world. Who knows what your next Christmas will have in store for you!
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Off Topic: Awkward Moments
I think some of my friends know me as, “one who attracts awkward situations”. I don’t deny this. I often find, much like my dear friend, Matt Yeomans, that awkward situations are the spice of life. Nothing makes life interesting like a good awkward moment. Not only does it make you quite aware that you are alive and well (though wishing you were dead), it also gives you some excellent stories to tell at a later date. I for one, have many an awkward situation to keep the grandchildren entertained. First things first, though. If you’re hoping to read about my Adventures in Egypt, this is the wrong post for you. I am taking an intermission from my adventures and am instead taking some time to inform you, my faithful readers, how to enjoy awkward situations. I shall do this via a case study.
The case study goes as such: your friend is helping you fix your air conditioner and in doing so, electrocutes himself (I use the masculine tense, because what woman would attempt to fix an air conditioner for you? Now what is a female activist to do here? Argue that women can fix air conditioners? Or let it slide because women aren’t dumb enough to electrocute themselves?). Now, your friend is not dead from this calamity, nor is he unconscious. He is merely (not merrily) dancing around the room shouting at the top of his lungs. In other words, he is slightly out of sorts.
Now, put yourself in that room while your friend is dancing around screaming. Just what are you supposed to do in this situation? I hardly think asking, “Are you okay” is going to help the situation! Some people may join in the screaming and dancing, just because they subconsciously want to empathize with their friend. I remember when I was little and I hurt my friend and made him cry, I would often start crying as well. But I really don’t think this is the way to get through this awkward situation.
Here is my step by step recommendation. Step 1. Act like nothing happened. Step 2. Hold in your laughter. Step 3. Empathize by saying, “It’s okay, take a moment to recompose yourself. I don’t mind.” Step 4. Leave the room and excrete your laughter into a nearby pillow. Step 5. Re-enter the room holding a glass of water, offer it to your friend, and ask, “Is it fixed yet?” Step 6. Grab some Kleenex to stop the bleeding from your nose. Step 7. Realize that you are the victim in this whole fiasco.
There you have it, folks! You have turned this awkward situation into an event where nearby women will shower you with their pity, rather than your lame friend who can’t even fix an air conditioner. Note the importance of Step #1. Acting like nothing happened increases the awkwardness factor and thus, increases the enjoyment of the awkward situation. I used electrocution in this case study because I can recall multiple times where I have been in the presence of someone who has electrocuted themselves, and I can’t help but notice how awkward it is when that happens. Now, I hope each of you can benefit from these simple words of wisdom. Perhaps you can even contrive a situation where you can try out these seven simple steps. One example of this would be to drop an earring in the toaster, hand your friend a fork, and ask him to fish it out for you. If he thinks to unplug the toaster before his heroic rescue attempt, casually plug it back in without him noticing. Now that I think of it, this method could probably be useful for ending a relationship that you think is going nowhere. Just drop that engagement ring into the toaster and let the fiancée do the dirty work. If you’re lucky, there won’t even be a need to dump him, and you’ll be showered with pity by all his friends and family. I should write a book about this.
The case study goes as such: your friend is helping you fix your air conditioner and in doing so, electrocutes himself (I use the masculine tense, because what woman would attempt to fix an air conditioner for you? Now what is a female activist to do here? Argue that women can fix air conditioners? Or let it slide because women aren’t dumb enough to electrocute themselves?). Now, your friend is not dead from this calamity, nor is he unconscious. He is merely (not merrily) dancing around the room shouting at the top of his lungs. In other words, he is slightly out of sorts.
Now, put yourself in that room while your friend is dancing around screaming. Just what are you supposed to do in this situation? I hardly think asking, “Are you okay” is going to help the situation! Some people may join in the screaming and dancing, just because they subconsciously want to empathize with their friend. I remember when I was little and I hurt my friend and made him cry, I would often start crying as well. But I really don’t think this is the way to get through this awkward situation.
Here is my step by step recommendation. Step 1. Act like nothing happened. Step 2. Hold in your laughter. Step 3. Empathize by saying, “It’s okay, take a moment to recompose yourself. I don’t mind.” Step 4. Leave the room and excrete your laughter into a nearby pillow. Step 5. Re-enter the room holding a glass of water, offer it to your friend, and ask, “Is it fixed yet?” Step 6. Grab some Kleenex to stop the bleeding from your nose. Step 7. Realize that you are the victim in this whole fiasco.
There you have it, folks! You have turned this awkward situation into an event where nearby women will shower you with their pity, rather than your lame friend who can’t even fix an air conditioner. Note the importance of Step #1. Acting like nothing happened increases the awkwardness factor and thus, increases the enjoyment of the awkward situation. I used electrocution in this case study because I can recall multiple times where I have been in the presence of someone who has electrocuted themselves, and I can’t help but notice how awkward it is when that happens. Now, I hope each of you can benefit from these simple words of wisdom. Perhaps you can even contrive a situation where you can try out these seven simple steps. One example of this would be to drop an earring in the toaster, hand your friend a fork, and ask him to fish it out for you. If he thinks to unplug the toaster before his heroic rescue attempt, casually plug it back in without him noticing. Now that I think of it, this method could probably be useful for ending a relationship that you think is going nowhere. Just drop that engagement ring into the toaster and let the fiancée do the dirty work. If you’re lucky, there won’t even be a need to dump him, and you’ll be showered with pity by all his friends and family. I should write a book about this.
The Christmas Bazaar
This past weekend the annual Maadi Women’s Guild Christmas Bazaar took place. This is a big deal because women like to shop, and this Bazaar was organized by women. I don’t know the statistics, but tons of people were packed into this Cairo American College campus, and tons of merchants were there selling their wares. Our youth group was one of those merchants. We had what I like to refer to as “the main attraction” table. Our table had a steady lineup of people paying inflated amounts for our goods until we were sold out. What were we selling? North American candy, of course! When all was said and done, we made about $4000 USD PROFIT! This money is of course going towards our M-trip to the Ukraine in April, which I am still raising the funds for (people just never stop asking for money in this world! Apparently the student loan people are bugging my folks while I’m here, too). Well I say, from this day forth, I shall boycott money! Oh wait, I forgot, I’m boycotting boycotting. Hehe, MS Word thinks I made an error because I typed boycotting twice in a row. Stupid MS Word. Let this be a lesson to you: context is very important. For instance, today I walked into my office and noticed that Heidi’s chair was wet. Now, obviously I would assume that she had peed her pants, but as I looked at her handbag, saw the fluid dripping from it, and saw all of her stuff lying on her desk drying, I came to the conclusion that ‘No, she did not pee her pants. She peed in her handbag.” Gross. Anyways, the moral of the story is “keep your pee in the bathroom.” Well now, I’ve successfully brought potty humor into my blog two entries in a row. I must really be becoming a youth pastor! I wonder how long it’ll take for Heidi to get mad at me for writing all this. Start counting now and I’ll let you know.
Wow, talk about rabbit trails. Back to the Christmas Bazaar. No wait, first let me tell you about how insane the mind of a middle school student is. I will ask them a question, for example, “Why should we not steal?” One student will then shout out, “I once hit my head on a steel archway!” (I would think to myself, “So what? The archway I hit my head on was cement. Touché.” P.S. I’ve never figured out how to properly use the word, ‘Touché”). Anyways, after that kid mentions the steel archway, the next student will scream out in even more excitement, “I can do a back arch!” Then the next student will shout, “I have a back!” To which all of the other students will realize that, they too, have backs and thus they will excitedly compare backs until one of them starts talking about their great uncle Joe who has a crooked back. Then someone else will talk about their uncle who lives in a cabin. Then another student will tell about the time they once went to a cabin. Then I will repeat the question, “Why should we not steal?” Then the whole ordeal starts over with a completely new set of random rabbit trails. I generally leave my Friday School class wondering two things. One. Why did God invent kids. Two. Why did God call me to minister to them? Although I’m sure there’s a deep answer to this question, I think the most obvious is probably that God is punishing me for being a horrible junior high student to all of the youth leaders that I had. Some people say they like the smell of their own ‘brand’. Well nobody likes the taste of their own medicine. In other news, I think that saying is far too outdated and cliché.
Ok, back to the Christmas Bazaar. Hey it’s December now! Did I mention I’m in the Christmas pageant this year? I get to be Wiseman #1. Wiseman #1 gets to ride a camel! Oh yeah, I think I did say this already. Anyways, the pageant is this Sunday. At first I thought that was so normal, but then I remembered that we normally have church on Fridays, so that’s pretty weird. Hmmm. I like root beer.
Wow, talk about rabbit trails. Back to the Christmas Bazaar. No wait, first let me tell you about how insane the mind of a middle school student is. I will ask them a question, for example, “Why should we not steal?” One student will then shout out, “I once hit my head on a steel archway!” (I would think to myself, “So what? The archway I hit my head on was cement. Touché.” P.S. I’ve never figured out how to properly use the word, ‘Touché”). Anyways, after that kid mentions the steel archway, the next student will scream out in even more excitement, “I can do a back arch!” Then the next student will shout, “I have a back!” To which all of the other students will realize that, they too, have backs and thus they will excitedly compare backs until one of them starts talking about their great uncle Joe who has a crooked back. Then someone else will talk about their uncle who lives in a cabin. Then another student will tell about the time they once went to a cabin. Then I will repeat the question, “Why should we not steal?” Then the whole ordeal starts over with a completely new set of random rabbit trails. I generally leave my Friday School class wondering two things. One. Why did God invent kids. Two. Why did God call me to minister to them? Although I’m sure there’s a deep answer to this question, I think the most obvious is probably that God is punishing me for being a horrible junior high student to all of the youth leaders that I had. Some people say they like the smell of their own ‘brand’. Well nobody likes the taste of their own medicine. In other news, I think that saying is far too outdated and cliché.
Ok, back to the Christmas Bazaar. Hey it’s December now! Did I mention I’m in the Christmas pageant this year? I get to be Wiseman #1. Wiseman #1 gets to ride a camel! Oh yeah, I think I did say this already. Anyways, the pageant is this Sunday. At first I thought that was so normal, but then I remembered that we normally have church on Fridays, so that’s pretty weird. Hmmm. I like root beer.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The Pyramids of Giza
After nearly four months of living here in Cairo, I finally made it out to see the Pyramids of Giza
which are considered one of the wonders of the world. They were pretty cool. It was a very nice day to be out there. The temperature wasn’t too hot or cold… about 23 degrees Celsius, I think. The reason I finally got to see them was because John, the youth pastor, was taking his parents (visiting from the US) to see them. They were a fun couple to spend the day with. I got my picture taken on a camel in front of the pyramids, a disgustingly touristy thing, but something that had to be done. I guess it’s a lot like going to the bathroom. Nobody likes it that much, but sometimes the paperwork just has to be done. The wind messed up my hair, so the picture wasn’t great.
Now that I’ve defiled this post with potty humor, I will tell you a little about my experiences at the foot of the pyramids (note: climbing the pyramids is not allowed). First things first. Those pyramids are falling apart. They could use a facelift of something ‘cause they’re turning into overvalued sand dunes! I suppose after thousands of years manmade objects are bound to disintegrate, but really, these are the PYRAMIDS, they should be perfect! I wonder if they were this run down when Jesus saw them. That’s what I found the coolest about the pyramids - the fact that Jesus probably stood on nearby ground and saw them when He was walking the earth a couple thousand years ago.
Second interesting thing about the pyramids: there appear to be more buskers and salespeople than there are tourists! They’re all super friendly and outgoing… and pushy. They’ll tell you to take a picture of them, no charge. Then you do it. Then they’ll tell you
to get in the picture. No charge. Then you try to walk away and they want money from you. I wonder if they know what “no charge” actually means. There’s another funny thing about these guys, too. They all use the same jokes! It’s like they go to a class and learn lame one-liners to say to people that come from various locations around the world. If I told someone I was from Canada, they would almost always respond “Heeey! Canada Dry!!” If they didn’t say that, they’d say “Welcome to Alaska!” Sure, it’s slightly humorous the first time, I guess, but when EVERYone says it to you, it sort of loses its novelty. Oh well. I got back at them by taking pictures of them and not paying them. Suckers (hey, they said ‘no charge’)!
One other weird thing about the Pyramids of Giza is the fact that they’re not in the middle of nowhere like Aladdin (perhaps that’s not the best example) and other movies often make them appear. Here is a picture I took from inside Pizza Hut that allows you to see how close the city of Cairo actually is.
All in all it was a pretty neat experience. It’s kind of weird cause I’ve waited my whole life (well, since moving to Egypt, at least) to see these things, and when I got there and saw them I didn’t really know what to do. We drove up, I took a picture, and then I wondered what we were going to do for the rest of the day. Don’t worry, we filled the time by walking around the pyramids and other little things and I secretly kept my eyes peeled for dinosaur bones. I figured if I found bones out here, they probably wouldn’t be from dinosaurs, though. Apparently these large pyramidal structures are glorified tombs or something like that. I think I’ll be fine with “He was a good man” on my tombstone.
Now surely there’s more to say about being at the pyramids, but I’ve come to realize that if I tell all of you every detail about my adventures while I’m here, I’ll have nothing to tell you when I get back! So, maybe if you’re nice, some day I’ll tell you about the chimpanzee attack, the elephant parade, and the genie I met named, Akbar. Until then, write me letters and tell me how much you love me.
which are considered one of the wonders of the world. They were pretty cool. It was a very nice day to be out there. The temperature wasn’t too hot or cold… about 23 degrees Celsius, I think. The reason I finally got to see them was because John, the youth pastor, was taking his parents (visiting from the US) to see them. They were a fun couple to spend the day with. I got my picture taken on a camel in front of the pyramids, a disgustingly touristy thing, but something that had to be done. I guess it’s a lot like going to the bathroom. Nobody likes it that much, but sometimes the paperwork just has to be done. The wind messed up my hair, so the picture wasn’t great.Now that I’ve defiled this post with potty humor, I will tell you a little about my experiences at the foot of the pyramids (note: climbing the pyramids is not allowed). First things first. Those pyramids are falling apart. They could use a facelift of something ‘cause they’re turning into overvalued sand dunes! I suppose after thousands of years manmade objects are bound to disintegrate, but really, these are the PYRAMIDS, they should be perfect! I wonder if they were this run down when Jesus saw them. That’s what I found the coolest about the pyramids - the fact that Jesus probably stood on nearby ground and saw them when He was walking the earth a couple thousand years ago.
Second interesting thing about the pyramids: there appear to be more buskers and salespeople than there are tourists! They’re all super friendly and outgoing… and pushy. They’ll tell you to take a picture of them, no charge. Then you do it. Then they’ll tell you
to get in the picture. No charge. Then you try to walk away and they want money from you. I wonder if they know what “no charge” actually means. There’s another funny thing about these guys, too. They all use the same jokes! It’s like they go to a class and learn lame one-liners to say to people that come from various locations around the world. If I told someone I was from Canada, they would almost always respond “Heeey! Canada Dry!!” If they didn’t say that, they’d say “Welcome to Alaska!” Sure, it’s slightly humorous the first time, I guess, but when EVERYone says it to you, it sort of loses its novelty. Oh well. I got back at them by taking pictures of them and not paying them. Suckers (hey, they said ‘no charge’)!One other weird thing about the Pyramids of Giza is the fact that they’re not in the middle of nowhere like Aladdin (perhaps that’s not the best example) and other movies often make them appear. Here is a picture I took from inside Pizza Hut that allows you to see how close the city of Cairo actually is.
All in all it was a pretty neat experience. It’s kind of weird cause I’ve waited my whole life (well, since moving to Egypt, at least) to see these things, and when I got there and saw them I didn’t really know what to do. We drove up, I took a picture, and then I wondered what we were going to do for the rest of the day. Don’t worry, we filled the time by walking around the pyramids and other little things and I secretly kept my eyes peeled for dinosaur bones. I figured if I found bones out here, they probably wouldn’t be from dinosaurs, though. Apparently these large pyramidal structures are glorified tombs or something like that. I think I’ll be fine with “He was a good man” on my tombstone.
Now surely there’s more to say about being at the pyramids, but I’ve come to realize that if I tell all of you every detail about my adventures while I’m here, I’ll have nothing to tell you when I get back! So, maybe if you’re nice, some day I’ll tell you about the chimpanzee attack, the elephant parade, and the genie I met named, Akbar. Until then, write me letters and tell me how much you love me.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
The Talent Show!!
I wrote two posts last month about a dream I had a while ago. The reason I began writing about dreams in the first place was actually because of a dream I had multiple times in the month of November. The dreams I had were about our talent show that was to take place on November 25th. It was my job to emcee the event, so my dreams were of possible outcomes of the evening. Perhaps they would be better referred to as nightmares. See, each time I had these dreams about the talent show, they were dreams of the evening failing miserably, all because of my terrible job emceeing. Needless to say, I began feeling slightly anxious about the evening as it approached. It was going to be my first time emceeing anything, and it was going to be in front of, not only youth, but adults as well!
Well, seeing that we’re into the month of December now, November 25th has already come and gone. So, was it as disastrous as my dreams suggested? Were they prophetic utterances of what was to come? Did the world really end?? No. Not yet, at least. The show actually went quite well. My head cold took a backseat for the evening and allowed me to enjoy myself without feeling too out of it. Some of the talents for the evening consisted of crazy skits, a stand-up comedian, lip-syncing to ‘O Holy Nightmare,’ insane jump-roping, Bible Chubby Bunny, a number of musical acts, and a synchronized ball-eh performed by yours truly. Click here to see a short snippet of our ball-eh. As I introduced acts for the evening I demonstrated a few of my own talents for the audience to enjoy. Some of these talents consisted of: blowing up a surgical glove over my head with my nose (quite a feat when you have a cold), imitating cartoon voices (also not great with a cold), doing sound effects, juggling, and wiggling my ears (without moving my hair, might I add). I even played Amazing Grace on my cheeks. That’s a talent I’ve never showed anyone before! Oh, another talent I said I had was that I could eat a $1000 bill. I didn’t expect anyone to have one so I didn’t plan on having to demonstrate that talent. To my dismay, though, some witty members of the audience wrote up the costs for various items around the church and, later in the evening, presented me with a bill that totaled $1000. They were nice enough to provide me with some water to help chew up the full sheet of paper. Jerks. Anyways, the evening was enjoyable, we raised money for our trip to the Ukraine, and the show didn’t bomb like my dreams suggested. Good times.
The next day I was even sicker than before (sicker doesn’t really sound right, but hey, that’s what my spell check told me to do), but that was to be expected. I’m still fighting off that stupid cold today. It’s like reality TV. It just doesn’t know when to stop (Did I hear correctly that Big Brother is back again?? Pathetic! “Stay tuned for the next installment of ‘Things I Can Get my Dog to Eat’ and ‘My Big Gay Divorce!’”). Ok, that’s all for today. Stay tuned for My Trip to the Pyramids (soon to be a hit reality show, I’m sure)!!
Well, seeing that we’re into the month of December now, November 25th has already come and gone. So, was it as disastrous as my dreams suggested? Were they prophetic utterances of what was to come? Did the world really end?? No. Not yet, at least. The show actually went quite well. My head cold took a backseat for the evening and allowed me to enjoy myself without feeling too out of it. Some of the talents for the evening consisted of crazy skits, a stand-up comedian, lip-syncing to ‘O Holy Nightmare,’ insane jump-roping, Bible Chubby Bunny, a number of musical acts, and a synchronized ball-eh performed by yours truly. Click here to see a short snippet of our ball-eh. As I introduced acts for the evening I demonstrated a few of my own talents for the audience to enjoy. Some of these talents consisted of: blowing up a surgical glove over my head with my nose (quite a feat when you have a cold), imitating cartoon voices (also not great with a cold), doing sound effects, juggling, and wiggling my ears (without moving my hair, might I add). I even played Amazing Grace on my cheeks. That’s a talent I’ve never showed anyone before! Oh, another talent I said I had was that I could eat a $1000 bill. I didn’t expect anyone to have one so I didn’t plan on having to demonstrate that talent. To my dismay, though, some witty members of the audience wrote up the costs for various items around the church and, later in the evening, presented me with a bill that totaled $1000. They were nice enough to provide me with some water to help chew up the full sheet of paper. Jerks. Anyways, the evening was enjoyable, we raised money for our trip to the Ukraine, and the show didn’t bomb like my dreams suggested. Good times.
The next day I was even sicker than before (sicker doesn’t really sound right, but hey, that’s what my spell check told me to do), but that was to be expected. I’m still fighting off that stupid cold today. It’s like reality TV. It just doesn’t know when to stop (Did I hear correctly that Big Brother is back again?? Pathetic! “Stay tuned for the next installment of ‘Things I Can Get my Dog to Eat’ and ‘My Big Gay Divorce!’”). Ok, that’s all for today. Stay tuned for My Trip to the Pyramids (soon to be a hit reality show, I’m sure)!!
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Uncle Ryan – Part II
If you are a regular reader of my blog you have probably read my ‘Uncle Ryan’ entry from mid-September. If you haven’t, I’d suggest you read it RIGHT NOW, before continuing on with this post. It has been the most highly acclaimed entry I have written to date. I would guess that this is because, deep down, everyone agrees wholeheartedly with me on what I said. Well, whether you agreed with what I said or not, it is time for me to update you on baby related business in my life.
A few weeks after writing my ‘Uncle Ryan’ entry, I received an email from my sister Holly. Here’s an abridged excerpt of it for you: “blah blah blah, I’m pregnant.” Now at first I was thinking, “Wow, I wonder what our parents think about this…” but then I remembered, “She’s married. Getting pregnant is supposed to happen.” Soon I began working this out logically in my head and got to thinking about what terrible news this was for me: Unless I’m mistaken, in only a few months time I am going to be a REAL uncle, not just some dude nicknamed ‘Uncle’. The next part of the email confirmed those fears: “blah blah blah, you’re going to be an uncle!!!” Great. My logic wasn’t flawed after all.
After reading that email from Holly, I couldn’t help but notice how ironic it was that I had received that news just then. You see, that very day my host family took their cat (also named Holly) in to the vet to get ‘fixed’. I think the Dutch actually call it ‘sabotaged’. Whatever you call it, this little kitty can no longer make babies. I don’t know about you, but I found this pretty ironic.
A few weeks after writing my ‘Uncle Ryan’ entry, I received an email from my sister Holly. Here’s an abridged excerpt of it for you: “blah blah blah, I’m pregnant.” Now at first I was thinking, “Wow, I wonder what our parents think about this…” but then I remembered, “She’s married. Getting pregnant is supposed to happen.” Soon I began working this out logically in my head and got to thinking about what terrible news this was for me: Unless I’m mistaken, in only a few months time I am going to be a REAL uncle, not just some dude nicknamed ‘Uncle’. The next part of the email confirmed those fears: “blah blah blah, you’re going to be an uncle!!!” Great. My logic wasn’t flawed after all.
After reading that email from Holly, I couldn’t help but notice how ironic it was that I had received that news just then. You see, that very day my host family took their cat (also named Holly) in to the vet to get ‘fixed’. I think the Dutch actually call it ‘sabotaged’. Whatever you call it, this little kitty can no longer make babies. I don’t know about you, but I found this pretty ironic.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Dream - Part II
There are a great many visual details in the dream I mentioned two entries ago. Most of the imagery in this dream parallel the sights and sounds of the country of Egypt! Today I am going to go through some of the elements of the dream and explain how each detail parallels images or experiences I have encountered since arriving in Egypt.
If you recall the description of my dream, it began with me moving through an area covered in water with the remains of cement buildings protruding from the water. The picture of these rundown, collapsed cement buildings is one that can be seen literally all around the city of Cairo, which I think may be where the thought of these came from. The water can actually be seen as sand, with the water simply being a mirage on top of the sand. Thus, this first scene of my dream where I am moving through the flooded landscape of ruins actually mirrors the trip I took from the airport upon arriving here in Cairo. As we drove through the city on my first night, I was sort of in a dreamlike state on the way to our house. I stared out the windows at all these foreign sights and sounds of Cairo. Everything moved slowly past me (just as in the dream) because of the traffic. While we drove, I remember seeing all these rundown apartments, archaic-looking remains, and ancient structures and I wondered what the story was behind each of them.
In the dream I mention moving into a dark tunnel-like structure. This tunnel may symbolize the metropolitan area of Cairo. As we drove further into the city on my first night here, it felt like I was being closed in by tall brick and cement buildings, much like a tunnel. The streets were often dim, and most people drive without their headlights on at night, so the unusual partial darkness contributed to this tunnel feeling. Few stars are visible from inside the city of Cairo, and so when the moon isn’t out, it almost feels like there is a black roof over our heads when we stand outside. Just as the tunnel walls in my dream were made out of “brick, mortar, cement, wooded up windows, etc.” that is what many of the apartments I saw along the way were made up of.
Next in the dream, I came up to an old door and proceeded through it. On the other side of the door there appeared to be a secret settlement of life. I think this door loosely symbolized the entrance into Maadi. Maadi is the fairly Westernized portion of Cairo and can seem sort of out of place when you look at the surrounding city of Cairo. So, in an odd way, Maadi may be the ‘secret settlement of life’ in that dream.
So, the long and the short of the dream is this: I arrived in this foreign place that seemed faintly familiar, almost as though it was my home. Likewise, I arrived in Cairo, a place foreign to me, and yet when I reached Maadi, it felt strangely familiar to me. I arrived at my house here and tried to convince myself that: “this is my home.” After I had this dream, I think I finally realized that this is my home.
If you recall the description of my dream, it began with me moving through an area covered in water with the remains of cement buildings protruding from the water. The picture of these rundown, collapsed cement buildings is one that can be seen literally all around the city of Cairo, which I think may be where the thought of these came from. The water can actually be seen as sand, with the water simply being a mirage on top of the sand. Thus, this first scene of my dream where I am moving through the flooded landscape of ruins actually mirrors the trip I took from the airport upon arriving here in Cairo. As we drove through the city on my first night, I was sort of in a dreamlike state on the way to our house. I stared out the windows at all these foreign sights and sounds of Cairo. Everything moved slowly past me (just as in the dream) because of the traffic. While we drove, I remember seeing all these rundown apartments, archaic-looking remains, and ancient structures and I wondered what the story was behind each of them.
In the dream I mention moving into a dark tunnel-like structure. This tunnel may symbolize the metropolitan area of Cairo. As we drove further into the city on my first night here, it felt like I was being closed in by tall brick and cement buildings, much like a tunnel. The streets were often dim, and most people drive without their headlights on at night, so the unusual partial darkness contributed to this tunnel feeling. Few stars are visible from inside the city of Cairo, and so when the moon isn’t out, it almost feels like there is a black roof over our heads when we stand outside. Just as the tunnel walls in my dream were made out of “brick, mortar, cement, wooded up windows, etc.” that is what many of the apartments I saw along the way were made up of.
Next in the dream, I came up to an old door and proceeded through it. On the other side of the door there appeared to be a secret settlement of life. I think this door loosely symbolized the entrance into Maadi. Maadi is the fairly Westernized portion of Cairo and can seem sort of out of place when you look at the surrounding city of Cairo. So, in an odd way, Maadi may be the ‘secret settlement of life’ in that dream.
So, the long and the short of the dream is this: I arrived in this foreign place that seemed faintly familiar, almost as though it was my home. Likewise, I arrived in Cairo, a place foreign to me, and yet when I reached Maadi, it felt strangely familiar to me. I arrived at my house here and tried to convince myself that: “this is my home.” After I had this dream, I think I finally realized that this is my home.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Sick & Busy
Sorry for the lack of bloggage lately. I've been quite busy this week preparing for the talent show which is taking place tomorrow. I am also sick with a nasty cold, which really makes being busy annoying. Hopefully I'll have the second part of my dream post ready for Sunday. Bye now!
Monday, November 21, 2005
I Think It Rained Last Night
I haven’t written a blog for a while now. I blame this on two reasons. First, I have been fairly busy. Second, I’ve felt uninspired in my blog writing lately. When nothing out of the ordinary happens, I feel like I have nothing to write. I suppose I could write about my feelings, but that would mean I’d have to be in touch with them first. This rarely happens. My feelings generally coincide with the temperature of the object I am currently touching. If the object is burning hot, I usually respond with a throaty “ow!” Then I think to myself, “Wow! That feels hot.” Likewise, when I am holding a freezing cold object, I tend to vocalize a series of words similar to: “Sweet mother of pearl!” Following my outbreak, I suddenly become in touch with the stinging feeling in my hand, which is generally followed up with a lack of feeling altogether. Other feelings I am attuned to are feelings of softness (such as the fur on a puppy) or hardness (such as the surface of my pectoral muscles). Other than that, my feelings are pretty hazy. Maybe some day a nice young lady will come along and interpret them for me.
Speaking of interpreting, I’ve been having many interesting dreams these days. Last week I had a dream where I was driving/boating (my mode of transportation was fairly inconsistent throughout the dream) through a massive lake where the ruins of cement buildings were sticking out of the water. The scenery was little more than water and cement, diversified with bent fibers of rebar that protruded from both. I remember slowly moving past these mounds of rubble, wondering what history was covered by these waters. After driving through this landscape for a length of time, we (I wasn’t alone in the vehicle, though I don’t remember who accompanied me) found ourselves inside a massive tunnel-like structure that had walls made out of abandoned apartment buildings. By this I mean the walls were made of brick, mortar, cement, wooded up windows, etc. We exited our vehicle and found a passageway leading between a gap in the walls, up a cement stairway. Although we were in a tunnel abandoned of everything including electricity, somehow the area was lit enough to see many details (much like in a Hollywood movie where the characters can’t see each other, but we, the viewers, can clearly see them and their surroundings). We came upon a ragged looking wooden door with a rusty old brass doorknob. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in over a hundred years. Apparently the door was unlocked, because the next thing I knew we were standing on the other side of the doorway in the middle of an artificially lit hallway. It seems we had stumbled upon a secret settlement of human life. Although I don’t remember seeing people, I recalled seeing signs of human life. Rooms with dirty pots and pans. Tea kettles and dishes. I’m not sure how, but I knew with absolute confidence that these things had been used that very day. I looked down the hallway and saw a hanging light bulb swaying in the distance. Somehow it looked (or maybe felt) familiar to me. I couldn’t explain how or why, but it seemed almost as though this was my home. It was at this realization that I awoke to the sound of my alarm.
Although nothing really exciting happened in that dream, I awoke thinking to myself, “Man! What a cool dream! I wish I could sleep some more and see what else happens!” But regrettably, my conscious life had to take over and seize the realities of the day. As I thought about that dream over the past week, I haven’t bothered discovering an interpretation for it because it seemed so foreign and complex. But as I wrote out this account for you folks, a possible interpretation for the dream has come to light for me. I think I can identify many of the objects in this dream and explain how they relate to my life right now. In my next entry I will go through and explain the simple meaning of this seemingly complex dream of mine, and I will link each of the details in the dream to what I think they represent.
Speaking of interpreting, I’ve been having many interesting dreams these days. Last week I had a dream where I was driving/boating (my mode of transportation was fairly inconsistent throughout the dream) through a massive lake where the ruins of cement buildings were sticking out of the water. The scenery was little more than water and cement, diversified with bent fibers of rebar that protruded from both. I remember slowly moving past these mounds of rubble, wondering what history was covered by these waters. After driving through this landscape for a length of time, we (I wasn’t alone in the vehicle, though I don’t remember who accompanied me) found ourselves inside a massive tunnel-like structure that had walls made out of abandoned apartment buildings. By this I mean the walls were made of brick, mortar, cement, wooded up windows, etc. We exited our vehicle and found a passageway leading between a gap in the walls, up a cement stairway. Although we were in a tunnel abandoned of everything including electricity, somehow the area was lit enough to see many details (much like in a Hollywood movie where the characters can’t see each other, but we, the viewers, can clearly see them and their surroundings). We came upon a ragged looking wooden door with a rusty old brass doorknob. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in over a hundred years. Apparently the door was unlocked, because the next thing I knew we were standing on the other side of the doorway in the middle of an artificially lit hallway. It seems we had stumbled upon a secret settlement of human life. Although I don’t remember seeing people, I recalled seeing signs of human life. Rooms with dirty pots and pans. Tea kettles and dishes. I’m not sure how, but I knew with absolute confidence that these things had been used that very day. I looked down the hallway and saw a hanging light bulb swaying in the distance. Somehow it looked (or maybe felt) familiar to me. I couldn’t explain how or why, but it seemed almost as though this was my home. It was at this realization that I awoke to the sound of my alarm.
Although nothing really exciting happened in that dream, I awoke thinking to myself, “Man! What a cool dream! I wish I could sleep some more and see what else happens!” But regrettably, my conscious life had to take over and seize the realities of the day. As I thought about that dream over the past week, I haven’t bothered discovering an interpretation for it because it seemed so foreign and complex. But as I wrote out this account for you folks, a possible interpretation for the dream has come to light for me. I think I can identify many of the objects in this dream and explain how they relate to my life right now. In my next entry I will go through and explain the simple meaning of this seemingly complex dream of mine, and I will link each of the details in the dream to what I think they represent.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara - Day 3
This day began far too soon. I watched the stars fade out into a dark blue canvass of light. The Eastern horizon grew brighter by the minute. I finally felt tired enough to fall asleep. Just as I began nodding off, the people around me began stirring in their sleeping bags. To them it was already morning, and time to get up and appreciate the sunrise. I’ve never understood people like this. Sure, sunsets are beautiful, but I’m quite convinced that sunrises are hideous! Every time I’ve seen a sunrise I’ve had to prop my eyelids open with toothpicks while exhibiting one continuous yawn that never quite reaches its climax. The yawn continues to get more intense as the sun begins to peek over the horizon, blurring my eyes with water which the morning breeze then turns into a crusty salt film that burns my eyeballs. Meanwhile my bones ache as if they haven’t had rest in a month. It hurts to breathe. My body feels all gross and filthy. The sun rises. Whoopee. Were those few colors really worth all this pain and suffering? Couldn’t we just record a sunset and then watch it in rewind? Anyways, all this to say, that morning I pulled my sleeping bag over my head during the sunrise so I wouldn’t have to experience the menacing display of agony. After the sun was fully risen and everyone was back from their morning walks (bathroom breaks), I waddled (still inside my sleeping bag) over to the smoldering coals left over from our previous day’s fire and blew on them until a flame jumped out of one of the logs. As I sat there in my sleeping bag with my horrid bedhead, enjoying the little fire I created, everyone else giggled at how tired and pathetic I looked. I glared back at them, trying to understand how they could all be so ridiculously cheerful at such an unholy hour of the day. Mornings make me sick. Call me pregnant, if you like, but mornings are just not meant for me! I’ve never understood that age old saying that goes something like, “Good morning.” What does that mean, anyways?? To me, it’s an oxymoron, much like an interstate highway in Hawaii.
Eventually my morning sickness wore off and we packed everything back into the Jeeps. After pouring fluids into every orifice of the Jeep and turning the engine over for a good ten minutes, Ayman’s vehicle finally sputtered to life. We sat there wide eyed for those nerve-wracking ten minutes, wondering if we were going to be stranded in the middle of the white desert (without cell phone coverage, might I add). Ayman was quite excited when it finally started up. I believe his exact words were: “Fantastic weesout plastic!” Oh, I just remembered another funny quirk about Ayman. He always referred to me as “Mr. Leen” for some reason. From what I understand, Ayman once took a guy by the name of “Mr. Leen” out on one of these desert safaris and now refers to pretty much everyone was “Mr. Leen.” Most interesting!
The journey back to the Bahariya Oasis wasn’t overly exciting. We just backtracked the previous day’s journey. We did stop and visit a herd of camels along the way, though. Pictures of them are in my Desert Safari Photo Album. Ol’ Bessy had a thing for me, I think. She kept batting her big, long, eyelashes at me. I was so busy playing with the camels that I forgot to look for dinosaur bones out there. I bet that’s where the jackpot is. Shoot!
Later that day, after arriving back at the Ahmed Safari Camp, we headed out for a little tea time in the desert with a German family that lives out there. After sitting there for a long time listening to the adults talk about adult stuff, Rob, Justina and I went off into the desert to hunt for fossils. Although we didn’t find any dinosaur bones, I did see a desert fox (though nobody believes me because I couldn’t get my camera on in time), and we found a whole graveyard of small animal bones. After getting back to the desert picnic we said our farewells to the German family and drove back to the camp. I got to drive! This was my first time driving on Egyptian soil… or sand, I suppose. It was only a two minute drive, but hey, it felt nice to drive again.
Following a sketchy dinner of (yet again) chicken and rice, Rob and I played a game of ping pong. I was totally schooling him… until disaster struck. The ball rolled over to the side of the table where I ran to grab it. Because I was so excited about beating someone six years younger than me at ping pong, I spun around and flung my head back up after retrieving the ball. Normally, this is a fairly harmless act. But in this case, there was a solid cement archway between my head and where my head wanted to go. Thus, I smacked the left side of my head into it at a high speed, and knocked myself to the ground. Although I’m pretty sure I remained conscious the entire time, I was not altogether coherent as I sat there on the ground. My next decision proves that. I chose to forfeit the game so that I could go and lay down. Yeah, that’s right. I forfeited. Pathetic. The rest of the day is a bit of a blur to me. I think I just laid in bed and read/stared at a book until Rob came to bed. That was the tragic end to day three of my vacation.
Eventually my morning sickness wore off and we packed everything back into the Jeeps. After pouring fluids into every orifice of the Jeep and turning the engine over for a good ten minutes, Ayman’s vehicle finally sputtered to life. We sat there wide eyed for those nerve-wracking ten minutes, wondering if we were going to be stranded in the middle of the white desert (without cell phone coverage, might I add). Ayman was quite excited when it finally started up. I believe his exact words were: “Fantastic weesout plastic!” Oh, I just remembered another funny quirk about Ayman. He always referred to me as “Mr. Leen” for some reason. From what I understand, Ayman once took a guy by the name of “Mr. Leen” out on one of these desert safaris and now refers to pretty much everyone was “Mr. Leen.” Most interesting!
The journey back to the Bahariya Oasis wasn’t overly exciting. We just backtracked the previous day’s journey. We did stop and visit a herd of camels along the way, though. Pictures of them are in my Desert Safari Photo Album. Ol’ Bessy had a thing for me, I think. She kept batting her big, long, eyelashes at me. I was so busy playing with the camels that I forgot to look for dinosaur bones out there. I bet that’s where the jackpot is. Shoot!
Later that day, after arriving back at the Ahmed Safari Camp, we headed out for a little tea time in the desert with a German family that lives out there. After sitting there for a long time listening to the adults talk about adult stuff, Rob, Justina and I went off into the desert to hunt for fossils. Although we didn’t find any dinosaur bones, I did see a desert fox (though nobody believes me because I couldn’t get my camera on in time), and we found a whole graveyard of small animal bones. After getting back to the desert picnic we said our farewells to the German family and drove back to the camp. I got to drive! This was my first time driving on Egyptian soil… or sand, I suppose. It was only a two minute drive, but hey, it felt nice to drive again.
Following a sketchy dinner of (yet again) chicken and rice, Rob and I played a game of ping pong. I was totally schooling him… until disaster struck. The ball rolled over to the side of the table where I ran to grab it. Because I was so excited about beating someone six years younger than me at ping pong, I spun around and flung my head back up after retrieving the ball. Normally, this is a fairly harmless act. But in this case, there was a solid cement archway between my head and where my head wanted to go. Thus, I smacked the left side of my head into it at a high speed, and knocked myself to the ground. Although I’m pretty sure I remained conscious the entire time, I was not altogether coherent as I sat there on the ground. My next decision proves that. I chose to forfeit the game so that I could go and lay down. Yeah, that’s right. I forfeited. Pathetic. The rest of the day is a bit of a blur to me. I think I just laid in bed and read/stared at a book until Rob came to bed. That was the tragic end to day three of my vacation.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Heidiween Intermission
Since I haven't had time to finish writing out The Detailed Adventures of my Desert Vacation, I am going to post this blog I wrote a long time ago to keep you folks happy:
October 30th was Heidi’s birthday. I called it Heidiween cause I had to dress up for it. For our Heidiween festivities, we (the youth staff) drove off to some far off part of Cairo for Indian food. Now when I say Indian food, I don’t mean bannock and buffalo, I mean chicken and curry and nama bread. You know, real Indian food! The Indian restaurant we went to was in a very Hollywood/New York looking part of Cairo. I didn’t even know a part of Cairo like this existed, but hey, it seems it does. Now what do I mean by the Hollywood/New York look? Well, the street was very ritzy and upscale looking. There were shoe shops with hundreds of fancy shoes displayed ever so perfectly in their lit up windows. There were all kinds of swanky clothing shops. There was even a McDonald’s (which we stopped at to ask for directions)! Okay, maybe the McDick’s doesn’t really make it feel so special, but you have to remember that there’s a McDonald’s in Time’s Square and other famous locations as well! Anyways, eventually we found the Kandahar restaurant (I think that’s what it was called). In front of the restaurant there was a red carpet on the sidewalk leading to an elevator which was called down by a doorman. In the elevator were two men who took us up to the actual restaurant. Inside the restaurant was a section of small wicker tables that you eat from while sitting on the floor. The hostess took us past them over to a regular round table where we were seated. The table was decorated with copper looking plates, two sets of forks, two sets of knives, and napkins in the shape of a fan. For the duration of the evening, every time something was served, the women would always get served first. This was fairly noticeable because the two females weren’t sitting together, nor were they both easily accessible. The food was brought out fresh from their hotplates and hand ladled onto our dishes. At first I thought this was humorous because I watched them slowly serve Heidi, spoon by spoon, and there was nothing she could do but awkwardly sit there and watch them. But then it came time for me to endure the awkward serving ritual. At least by the time I was served everyone else had their own food to look at, rather than staring at all that was going onto my plate. For the duration of the meal, every time I went to reach for more rice or more chicken, a server would pop up out of nowhere and serve me. Nobody else at the table seemed to receive the quality of service that I was enjoying. I guess this is just another example of why redheads are cooler than everyone else. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, and had I brought my camera along, I would show you some nice pictures of the evening… but I didn’t. So too bad.
October 30th was Heidi’s birthday. I called it Heidiween cause I had to dress up for it. For our Heidiween festivities, we (the youth staff) drove off to some far off part of Cairo for Indian food. Now when I say Indian food, I don’t mean bannock and buffalo, I mean chicken and curry and nama bread. You know, real Indian food! The Indian restaurant we went to was in a very Hollywood/New York looking part of Cairo. I didn’t even know a part of Cairo like this existed, but hey, it seems it does. Now what do I mean by the Hollywood/New York look? Well, the street was very ritzy and upscale looking. There were shoe shops with hundreds of fancy shoes displayed ever so perfectly in their lit up windows. There were all kinds of swanky clothing shops. There was even a McDonald’s (which we stopped at to ask for directions)! Okay, maybe the McDick’s doesn’t really make it feel so special, but you have to remember that there’s a McDonald’s in Time’s Square and other famous locations as well! Anyways, eventually we found the Kandahar restaurant (I think that’s what it was called). In front of the restaurant there was a red carpet on the sidewalk leading to an elevator which was called down by a doorman. In the elevator were two men who took us up to the actual restaurant. Inside the restaurant was a section of small wicker tables that you eat from while sitting on the floor. The hostess took us past them over to a regular round table where we were seated. The table was decorated with copper looking plates, two sets of forks, two sets of knives, and napkins in the shape of a fan. For the duration of the evening, every time something was served, the women would always get served first. This was fairly noticeable because the two females weren’t sitting together, nor were they both easily accessible. The food was brought out fresh from their hotplates and hand ladled onto our dishes. At first I thought this was humorous because I watched them slowly serve Heidi, spoon by spoon, and there was nothing she could do but awkwardly sit there and watch them. But then it came time for me to endure the awkward serving ritual. At least by the time I was served everyone else had their own food to look at, rather than staring at all that was going onto my plate. For the duration of the meal, every time I went to reach for more rice or more chicken, a server would pop up out of nowhere and serve me. Nobody else at the table seemed to receive the quality of service that I was enjoying. I guess this is just another example of why redheads are cooler than everyone else. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, and had I brought my camera along, I would show you some nice pictures of the evening… but I didn’t. So too bad.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara - Day 2
I groggily dragged myself out of bed and made my way into the corner of the bathroom that had a showerhead protruding from the wall. There was no shower curtain. There wasn’t even a shower to step into; just a hole in the bathroom floor surrounded by tiles two inches high. The night before I had noticed two wires hanging down from the hot water boiler. After feeling the boiler and sensing that it wasn’t working, I stuck the two wires into an outlet in the wall. Sure enough, the power indicator lit up. So, in theory, I had hot water for my shower. Well, you may recall that Communism may have seemed good in theory, but things generally didn’t go so well in practice. Such was the case with my shower. I had a communist shower. First the water came out freezing. Then the water turned scalding hot. Then the water stopped altogether. 5-10 seconds later, ice cold water would come shooting towards me. All of this happened without me touching the taps. This process repeated for the duration of my shower. Needless to say, by the end of it I was feeling quite awake and very disappointed that the water temperatures weren’t working together for the good of all mankind… or more specifically, for me.
Around noontime the jeeps for our desert safari showed up, along with the jeeps for another group of tourists. Two of the jeeps were brand new, solid looking Hummer type vehicles. The other two were these old, nasty, run down looking vehicles. Naturally, the other group of tourists hopped into the hot rod jeeps and left us with poor old Dumpy and Lumpy. After ten minutes of engine churning our jeep reluctantly started up and we were on our way! To my disappointment we stuck to the road for the majority of our journey. Our drivers did, however, stop at a few of the attractions on the way to our desert campsite. The first one was a big volcano-looking thing that we climbed up and got a nice view of the surrounding volcano-type hills. It was pretty neat. After that we drove to a cafeteria in the middle of another desert oasis where we ate our lunch.
Next up was Crystal Mountain. Crystal Mountain is just a small rock hill that is made out of crystals. It’s not really as photogenic as it sounds. It’s more fun to dig through the rocks to try and find big fancy looking crystals to take home. That’s the crazy thing about these desert attractions. They’re all set up so that you go an pick your souvenirs off the ground for free! In Canada I’m sure that would be against the law or something! Whatever, I enjoyed my time looking for treasure. At every stop I always tried to find dinosaur bones so I could get rich and famous and be the man that everyone else wants to be when they grow up. The funny/disconcerting thing about our visit to Crystal Mountain was the fact that our jeep got stuck in the sand not even 2 feet off of the road. This Jeep was supposed to take us off-roading through the Western Desert, and here we got stuck less than a meter from the road. Wow. We were the laughing stock of all the tourists at Crystal Mountain. Everyone amused themselves as we rocked back and forth in the sand in an attempt to free ourselves from the unforgiving clutches of the Sahara. Eventually the driver got out of the vehicle and manually engaged the 4-wheel-drive mode. Phew, all this time it was only in 2 wheel drive. Anyways, eventually we got unstuck and made it to Crystal Mountain. Everyone in our vehicle got out feeling slightly sheepish, as if it were our fault that we got stuck.
Life went on, though. We made our way through the Black Desert, into the White Desert. Somewhere in the White Desert we stopped to pick Desert Roses. A Desert Rose is a black rock that is much heavier than it looks. I’m not sure what kind of rock it is, but some rock geek could probably tell me. Anyways, these rocks look kind of like a cross between petrified raspberries and black roses, or something like that. While looking for these Desert Roses, I secretly began an archeological excavation for dinosaur bones. Still no luck.
From there we went on to the Land of the Albino Smurfs. That’s what I called it, anyways. It was a place with a bunch of big white mushroom looking rocks. I figured if you waited until the sun went down, and the moon was full enough, you could probably see a city of albino Smurfs emerge from the crevices of these white mushroom rocks. Ayman, our jeep driver didn’t seem interested in sticking around to see the Smurfs, though, so we continued on our way (after I looked for hidden dinosaur bones, of course).
This is where the trip got really fun! By this time we were no longer driving on roads, but on the soft sand of the White Desert. At this point in our journey we zig zagged at breakneck speeds past thousands upon thousands of igloo-looking rocks, over sand dunes, and around protruding rocks in the ground. It was great. Ayman, our driver, was a little riskier in his driving and seemed to enjoy showing off a lot more than Mahmoud, the driver of the other jeep in our caravan. Because of this, I was thoroughly enjoying my life threatening sprint through the Sahara! I thought of how bored the people in the other vehicle must have been while we were having the time of our lives in this jeep! I later found out that they weren’t envious at all, and were in fact glad that they weren’t driving with such a reckless person. Pshhh, losers. They’re just too proud to admit their jealousy.
After racing around the thousands of petrified igloos, the sun finally began its descent behind the horizon. This meant that it was time for us to stop driving for the day and to set up camp. At this point, I realized how spoiled we were on this desert trip of ours because our drivers completely set up our campsite for us and began cooking our dinner, all without needing any help from us. I like how our guides start fires. They don’t waste time with boy scout junk like axes and kindling. Nope. They just pull a huge four foot log from the roof of the jeep and douse it with gasoline. I’ve heard that some actually mix camel poo with it to get the coals going. As far as I know this wasn’t the case here, but I wasn’t really watching that closely. While the fire blazed away, the men cooked us a gourmet dinner of fresh chicken and rice with vegetables in a tomotoey sauce. It was pretty good stuff!
The rest of the evening was spent huddled around the campfire, roasting marshmallows and singing songs. Actually, only a couple songs were sung, and they were sung to us by Ayman and Mahmoud. But they were hilarious songs! Ayman found out that the Dutch really like coffee so they sang a song about Nescafe. I recorded part of it on my digital camera, so maybe I can post it online eventually if I can find someone to host it for me. Ayman finished the song off with “Fantastic Without Plastic”. That was one of the few English phrases he seemed to know. Another phrase he used from time to time was “I’m Soooorry!” I remember hearing that one after we got stuck at Crystal Mountain… and pretty much every time we started his vehicle up (or at least attempted to).
Later on in the evening another Bedouin guide came and joined us by the fire. His name was also Mahmoud. Mohammed, Akhmed, and Mahmoud seem to be pretty common names here. Everyone else left the campfire to go for a walk in the desert (yes, it was pitch dark, hardly a sliver of a moon) so I stayed and hung out with Ayman and the Mahmouds in hopes that I could practice my Arabic. About 30 seconds after everyone left we ran out of common words to communicate with so I just sat there lounging by the fire while these three strangers talked amongst themselves. After everyone else went to bed, I started trying to teach Ayman and Mahmoud English, cause that seemed easier than me learning Arabic (at least from them). In response, they taught me that you can mix sand with wax to make a big flame in the fire. Pretty cool!
Eventually we all retired to our beds and gazed at the stars before nodding off to sleep. Well, I didn’t sleep, of course… but that pretty much goes without saying. I’m one of the pickiest sleepers in the world, I think. Anyways, that concludes Day 2. If you’re still reading, I’m impressed!
Around noontime the jeeps for our desert safari showed up, along with the jeeps for another group of tourists. Two of the jeeps were brand new, solid looking Hummer type vehicles. The other two were these old, nasty, run down looking vehicles. Naturally, the other group of tourists hopped into the hot rod jeeps and left us with poor old Dumpy and Lumpy. After ten minutes of engine churning our jeep reluctantly started up and we were on our way! To my disappointment we stuck to the road for the majority of our journey. Our drivers did, however, stop at a few of the attractions on the way to our desert campsite. The first one was a big volcano-looking thing that we climbed up and got a nice view of the surrounding volcano-type hills. It was pretty neat. After that we drove to a cafeteria in the middle of another desert oasis where we ate our lunch.
Next up was Crystal Mountain. Crystal Mountain is just a small rock hill that is made out of crystals. It’s not really as photogenic as it sounds. It’s more fun to dig through the rocks to try and find big fancy looking crystals to take home. That’s the crazy thing about these desert attractions. They’re all set up so that you go an pick your souvenirs off the ground for free! In Canada I’m sure that would be against the law or something! Whatever, I enjoyed my time looking for treasure. At every stop I always tried to find dinosaur bones so I could get rich and famous and be the man that everyone else wants to be when they grow up. The funny/disconcerting thing about our visit to Crystal Mountain was the fact that our jeep got stuck in the sand not even 2 feet off of the road. This Jeep was supposed to take us off-roading through the Western Desert, and here we got stuck less than a meter from the road. Wow. We were the laughing stock of all the tourists at Crystal Mountain. Everyone amused themselves as we rocked back and forth in the sand in an attempt to free ourselves from the unforgiving clutches of the Sahara. Eventually the driver got out of the vehicle and manually engaged the 4-wheel-drive mode. Phew, all this time it was only in 2 wheel drive. Anyways, eventually we got unstuck and made it to Crystal Mountain. Everyone in our vehicle got out feeling slightly sheepish, as if it were our fault that we got stuck.
Life went on, though. We made our way through the Black Desert, into the White Desert. Somewhere in the White Desert we stopped to pick Desert Roses. A Desert Rose is a black rock that is much heavier than it looks. I’m not sure what kind of rock it is, but some rock geek could probably tell me. Anyways, these rocks look kind of like a cross between petrified raspberries and black roses, or something like that. While looking for these Desert Roses, I secretly began an archeological excavation for dinosaur bones. Still no luck.
From there we went on to the Land of the Albino Smurfs. That’s what I called it, anyways. It was a place with a bunch of big white mushroom looking rocks. I figured if you waited until the sun went down, and the moon was full enough, you could probably see a city of albino Smurfs emerge from the crevices of these white mushroom rocks. Ayman, our jeep driver didn’t seem interested in sticking around to see the Smurfs, though, so we continued on our way (after I looked for hidden dinosaur bones, of course).
This is where the trip got really fun! By this time we were no longer driving on roads, but on the soft sand of the White Desert. At this point in our journey we zig zagged at breakneck speeds past thousands upon thousands of igloo-looking rocks, over sand dunes, and around protruding rocks in the ground. It was great. Ayman, our driver, was a little riskier in his driving and seemed to enjoy showing off a lot more than Mahmoud, the driver of the other jeep in our caravan. Because of this, I was thoroughly enjoying my life threatening sprint through the Sahara! I thought of how bored the people in the other vehicle must have been while we were having the time of our lives in this jeep! I later found out that they weren’t envious at all, and were in fact glad that they weren’t driving with such a reckless person. Pshhh, losers. They’re just too proud to admit their jealousy.
After racing around the thousands of petrified igloos, the sun finally began its descent behind the horizon. This meant that it was time for us to stop driving for the day and to set up camp. At this point, I realized how spoiled we were on this desert trip of ours because our drivers completely set up our campsite for us and began cooking our dinner, all without needing any help from us. I like how our guides start fires. They don’t waste time with boy scout junk like axes and kindling. Nope. They just pull a huge four foot log from the roof of the jeep and douse it with gasoline. I’ve heard that some actually mix camel poo with it to get the coals going. As far as I know this wasn’t the case here, but I wasn’t really watching that closely. While the fire blazed away, the men cooked us a gourmet dinner of fresh chicken and rice with vegetables in a tomotoey sauce. It was pretty good stuff!
The rest of the evening was spent huddled around the campfire, roasting marshmallows and singing songs. Actually, only a couple songs were sung, and they were sung to us by Ayman and Mahmoud. But they were hilarious songs! Ayman found out that the Dutch really like coffee so they sang a song about Nescafe. I recorded part of it on my digital camera, so maybe I can post it online eventually if I can find someone to host it for me. Ayman finished the song off with “Fantastic Without Plastic”. That was one of the few English phrases he seemed to know. Another phrase he used from time to time was “I’m Soooorry!” I remember hearing that one after we got stuck at Crystal Mountain… and pretty much every time we started his vehicle up (or at least attempted to).
Later on in the evening another Bedouin guide came and joined us by the fire. His name was also Mahmoud. Mohammed, Akhmed, and Mahmoud seem to be pretty common names here. Everyone else left the campfire to go for a walk in the desert (yes, it was pitch dark, hardly a sliver of a moon) so I stayed and hung out with Ayman and the Mahmouds in hopes that I could practice my Arabic. About 30 seconds after everyone left we ran out of common words to communicate with so I just sat there lounging by the fire while these three strangers talked amongst themselves. After everyone else went to bed, I started trying to teach Ayman and Mahmoud English, cause that seemed easier than me learning Arabic (at least from them). In response, they taught me that you can mix sand with wax to make a big flame in the fire. Pretty cool!
Eventually we all retired to our beds and gazed at the stars before nodding off to sleep. Well, I didn’t sleep, of course… but that pretty much goes without saying. I’m one of the pickiest sleepers in the world, I think. Anyways, that concludes Day 2. If you’re still reading, I’m impressed!
Monday, November 07, 2005
Happy Birthday, Dad!!
Although this has nothing to do with me being in Egypt, I would like to take this time to point out that today is my dad's birthday. This year he is turning: OLD. So, have a Merry Birthday and a Happy New Year, dad!
My Desert Safari
A Breif Summary:
During my brief hiatus from Cairo, I went on a number of interesting adventures. For those of you who are too busy to read my beautifully detailed stories below, allow me to give you a quick summary of what happened. We drove out to an oasis in the Sahara desert, stayed there for a night, took jeeps out to the middle of the White Desert where we camped for a night with our two Bedouin guides, returned to the oasis the following day, and returned to Cairo on the fourth day. The trip included such things as: a slight concussion due to a ping pong accident, a song about Nescafe sung by the Bedouin men, getting a 4x4 vehicle stuck in the desert, and Communist showers (not to be confused with communal showers). If any of these topics peak your interest, then read through The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara. Please note: These adventures may not be posted in their entirety for a few days because the concussion I am suffering causes me to get severe headaches from using the computer for elongated periods of time. Yes, it was ME that suffered the Great Ping Pong Injury of 2005. Laugh it up and pray I will swiftly recover from it (I am wearing sunglasses while writing this post because my head is so sensitive right now).
The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara - Day 1
I woke up at 8am and hopped into the shower. This would be the latest I would get to sleep in for the next three days. This was also the last decent shower I would enjoy for the rest of the week. After packing the car plum full of luggage we (my host family, and another Dutch family) set off towards the Western portion of the Sahara desert. Our destination for the day was a hotel/hostel type establishment known as the Ahmed Safari Camp. It is located in the Bahariya desert oasis which is about 350km Southwest of Cairo.
Many stops were made along the way to ensure that the adults had enough coffee in them. During one of these stops I took the time to take inventory of the burping talent we had present. I had each of the three innocent little Dutch girls burping for me, along with the odd burp from my host father as well. All in all we had an impressive array of burpers present on this trip. On a side note, Holly the cat is sitting on my lap right now, and she is dropping some nasty farts. Sick little kitty. Have I mentioned how much her personality parallels that of my sister Holly? Heh heh.
After what felt like a full day of driving (and asking a lot of locals where the Ahmed Safari Camp was), we finally pulled into the ‘camp’. Once we were settled in our rooms we headed off on a short hike towards a desert hill that Rob and I spied in the distance. Us younger people (eg, not the parents) arrived at the top of the rock hill in time to see the firey orange sun dissolve into the distant desert landscape. The scenery reminded me of the Lion King when Simba gets held up by Rafiki for all the animals of the jungle to see. I thought of doing the same thing with Justina, the youngest Dutch girl, but I don’t think she shared the same enthusiasm for the idea as me.
Later on that evening we ate some dinner, played some ping pong, and did some star gazing (we were trying to find the moon because Ramadan isn’t officially over until the new moon appears). One interesting thing I noticed was how much smaller the so called ‘Big Dipper’ is when viewed from here. It looked more like a baby spoon to me. Either way, it was nice to finally be in a place where I could look up and see the stars again.
Day 2 coming soon...
Click here for pictures!
During my brief hiatus from Cairo, I went on a number of interesting adventures. For those of you who are too busy to read my beautifully detailed stories below, allow me to give you a quick summary of what happened. We drove out to an oasis in the Sahara desert, stayed there for a night, took jeeps out to the middle of the White Desert where we camped for a night with our two Bedouin guides, returned to the oasis the following day, and returned to Cairo on the fourth day. The trip included such things as: a slight concussion due to a ping pong accident, a song about Nescafe sung by the Bedouin men, getting a 4x4 vehicle stuck in the desert, and Communist showers (not to be confused with communal showers). If any of these topics peak your interest, then read through The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara. Please note: These adventures may not be posted in their entirety for a few days because the concussion I am suffering causes me to get severe headaches from using the computer for elongated periods of time. Yes, it was ME that suffered the Great Ping Pong Injury of 2005. Laugh it up and pray I will swiftly recover from it (I am wearing sunglasses while writing this post because my head is so sensitive right now).
The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara - Day 1
I woke up at 8am and hopped into the shower. This would be the latest I would get to sleep in for the next three days. This was also the last decent shower I would enjoy for the rest of the week. After packing the car plum full of luggage we (my host family, and another Dutch family) set off towards the Western portion of the Sahara desert. Our destination for the day was a hotel/hostel type establishment known as the Ahmed Safari Camp. It is located in the Bahariya desert oasis which is about 350km Southwest of Cairo.
Many stops were made along the way to ensure that the adults had enough coffee in them. During one of these stops I took the time to take inventory of the burping talent we had present. I had each of the three innocent little Dutch girls burping for me, along with the odd burp from my host father as well. All in all we had an impressive array of burpers present on this trip. On a side note, Holly the cat is sitting on my lap right now, and she is dropping some nasty farts. Sick little kitty. Have I mentioned how much her personality parallels that of my sister Holly? Heh heh.
After what felt like a full day of driving (and asking a lot of locals where the Ahmed Safari Camp was), we finally pulled into the ‘camp’. Once we were settled in our rooms we headed off on a short hike towards a desert hill that Rob and I spied in the distance. Us younger people (eg, not the parents) arrived at the top of the rock hill in time to see the firey orange sun dissolve into the distant desert landscape. The scenery reminded me of the Lion King when Simba gets held up by Rafiki for all the animals of the jungle to see. I thought of doing the same thing with Justina, the youngest Dutch girl, but I don’t think she shared the same enthusiasm for the idea as me.
Later on that evening we ate some dinner, played some ping pong, and did some star gazing (we were trying to find the moon because Ramadan isn’t officially over until the new moon appears). One interesting thing I noticed was how much smaller the so called ‘Big Dipper’ is when viewed from here. It looked more like a baby spoon to me. Either way, it was nice to finally be in a place where I could look up and see the stars again.
Day 2 coming soon...
Click here for pictures!
Sunday, November 06, 2005
The Spirit of Religion (Written on Nov 1st)
This past weekend my bike got locked inside of the church compound. I had the next day off, so I just left the bike inside of the compound for the day and figured I’d grab it after work the following day. Well, as I retrieved my bike after work I noticed that both tires were completely flat. Upon further inspection I found out that the little tube-like devices that hold the air inside of the tire were actually stolen. This meant that simply pumping the tires up was out of question. At first I was pretty annoyed with this inconvenience (and actually, I guess I still am) because I had to walk my bike all the way home. This walk took about twenty minutes and also happened to fall around the time of the year’s last Iftar meal. To remind you, the Iftar is the evening meal that breaks the daily Ramadan fast. As I walked past a group of soldiers sitting outside a building, eating their iftar meal, they cheerily invited me to join them. I smiled and declined the invitation. Now, thinking back, it would’ve been a pretty cool experience if I’d joined them for the meal. Oh well. I’ve heard many stories of people getting sick after eating these street meals, which is why I declined. I continued on my way home, walking my bike alongside me. Soon I came upon some men who I often wave at as I zoom past them on my bike. They were also eating their iftar meal and invited me to join them. Again, I declined and continued on my way. As I came up to one of the busier midans (traffic circles), a man handed me a small bag of dates to curb my hunger until I got home to my meal. I couldn’t help but notice how kind and pleasant everyone was acting towards me as I slowly made my tedious trek home. Despite my slightly unpleasant bike situation, I was having a fairly enjoyable time appreciating all the kindness surrounding me. Eventually I made my way over the walk-over that crosses the metro tracks. These walk-overs consist of ramps that lead up to a bridge above the metro tracks, much like pedestrian bridges in Canada. As I was walking down the ramp on the other side of the tracks, a young man was struggling to push his fully loaded beverage cart up the ramp. Before I knew it, a woman (who was a complete stranger to both of us) walked up and started helping him push the cart up the ramp. After waving and saying hello to a few more people, I finally arrived at home. By this time I was glad that God provided such an opportunity for me. It gave me a chance to slow down and to appreciate those around me. I saw that, despite our religious differences, many people here in Egypt are still full of kindness and goodness. Perhaps it’s just the holiday spirit that has everyone feeling cheerful and benevolent, much like Christmas day in North America, but whatever it is, I appreciate it. I think today I will leave you with a a phrase that is uttered quite often these days, “Kul is-sana w’entu tayyibeen”. It means something to the effect of, “All year may you be well.”
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Three Posts to Keep You Company
As Ramadan comes to a close, so do all the businesses in Cairo. This means that tons of happy people head out town and party. I am one of those happy people because I am heading out to the western desert with my host family for my first vacation in Egypt!! On Wednesday morning, bright and early, we shall set off to the desert and spend two nights sleeping under the stars with snakes and scorpions and other deadly animals fighting over who gets to eat us in our sleep. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and throw them online when I get home this weekend. Until then, here’s something for you to think about:
An Arab sheikh tells his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who will inherit his fortune. The one whose camel is slower will win. The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, ask a wise man for advise. After hearing the advice they jump on the camels and race as fast as they can to the city. What does the wise man say?
An Arab sheikh tells his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who will inherit his fortune. The one whose camel is slower will win. The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, ask a wise man for advise. After hearing the advice they jump on the camels and race as fast as they can to the city. What does the wise man say?
Everybody's Odd!
I’ve noticed an interesting observation about the religiosity of the dominant faith here in Egypt. Many of the hardcore followers of the faith have large bruise-like marks on their foreheads “from praying” so fervently. Seeing these marks kind of reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:
Mat 6:5 "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.
Mat 6:6 But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.
Mat 6:7 "When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long.
Mat 6:8 Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.
It’s sad how faith often becomes so worldly and shallow.
After reading some of my blogs about the quirks of Egypt, you may be inclined to think that Egypt is a bit of a weird country. Well, let me tell you, no country is without its oddities. Take Rome, for instance. “The city of Rome has banned goldfish bowls, which animal rights activists say are cruel, and has made regular dog-walks mandatory in the Italian capital, the town’s council said on Tuesday.” “The northern city of Turin passed a law in April to fine pet owners up to $598 ( 500 euros) if they do not walk their dogs at least three times a day.” These are direct quotes from MSNBC!
Mat 6:5 "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.
Mat 6:6 But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.
Mat 6:7 "When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long.
Mat 6:8 Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.
It’s sad how faith often becomes so worldly and shallow.
After reading some of my blogs about the quirks of Egypt, you may be inclined to think that Egypt is a bit of a weird country. Well, let me tell you, no country is without its oddities. Take Rome, for instance. “The city of Rome has banned goldfish bowls, which animal rights activists say are cruel, and has made regular dog-walks mandatory in the Italian capital, the town’s council said on Tuesday.” “The northern city of Turin passed a law in April to fine pet owners up to $598 ( 500 euros) if they do not walk their dogs at least three times a day.” These are direct quotes from MSNBC!
Redheads have all the fun
I can’t remember if I’ve already mentioned that the worship services of my church, Maadi Community Church, are actually held inside the compound of another church, St. John’s Anglican Church. If I’ve already mentioned that, consider this review. If not, then now you’ve learned something new. Lovely! Moving on. It has recently come to my attention that St. John’s is in the process of creating some stain glass windows to pimp out their church building. How is it that I know this information, and more importantly, why should any of you care about it?? Well! Last week I was unloading some equipment from a car when the pastor/father/whatever of the Anglican church pulled up in a taxi, accompanied by a woman. They waved to me and then excitedly began chatting with each other while regularly looking at me with big smiles. It was fairly obvious that they were talking about me for some reason or another. This somewhat weirded me out so when I got out of sight of them, I checked my fly. It was up. Then I felt for things hanging out of my nose. Nothing. Eventually I got over it and figured the pastor dude was probably just telling her how ridiculous I look with a bike helmet on. It’s true, I do look ridiculous with it on. Hoards of Egyptians remind me of that fact every time I bike home each day. So I went on with my work and thought nothing more of the occurrence. Later that day, or perhaps the next, I saw the pastor outside of our church, nailing something. The fact that he was nailing something is completely irrelevant, but I figured it would add some nice flow to this story and that this little side commentary would provide enough humor for you to continue reading to the punch line. Okay, back to the story now. When he saw me, the pastor stopped what he was doing and explained what he and the woman in the taxi were talking about earlier. He said that the woman in the taxi is an artist and she wants me to model for her. She thinks that I look perfect for the part of Moses! I laughed at what he said and continued on my way. I figured it was just a joke or something. The next day I saw the Anglican pastor and jokingly said, “So, when do I start?” It was then that he told me many of the details of the job, and I realized that this actually wasn’t a joke. This woman would pay me 50 Egyptian Pounds an hour (not a lot, but pretty decent pay for Egypt, I suppose) to model for her. As if that wasn’t sweet enough, he went on to say that she wasn’t just painting a picture of me, she is creating the new stain glass windows for the church! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Anglicans are cool.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Inefficiencies
You know what’s interesting about Egypt? The abundance of inefficiency everywhere! You could walk into the local Carrefour store (a WalMart type establishment) any time of the day and find every single check-out till (all 15 or 20 of them) fully manned and ready to serve you… even if you’re the only person in the store! Many shops I go to during the day have more workers than customers, yet at the same time, most of these workers are so lazy or specialized in their skills or areas of knowledge that you still can’t get the help you need. The work ethic here in Egypt is quite different from that of the Western world. I walked into a paint shop one time, and it was completely dark inside. When I walked in I saw a guy who had been sleeping with his feet up on the counter. He slowly got up, turned on the lights, woke up his co-worker, and waited for me to do what I came for. After finding out they didn’t have what I wanted, they turned the light back off and resumed their napping positions. Many shops are very similar to this. The workers will either be snoozing in a chair or sitting outside smoking sheesha while catching some sunshine. Despite the fact that most establishments have more workers than they need, about 1 in 10 people in Egypt are unemployed, according to the CIA World Factbook. Many Egyptians seem to see Canada (and other Western countries) as the land of opportunity for them. This weekend after church I met with an Egyptian man so I could tell him all about Calgary, where he is hoping to move in one or two or however many years it takes for him to get his immigration stuff sorted out. The thought of moving there is so far away, but he is already chasing the dream of it by finding out everything there is to know about living in Calgary. I must say, it’s quite the interesting situation to have a man twice my age with a PhD in medicine drinking in my every word, and even taking notes on what I’m saying. I guess the longer I live here the more I realize how different everything is from back home.
Monday, October 24, 2005
'Quick' Quirks
We are still in the midst of Ramadan right now. This means that members of the dominant faith continue to fast during daylight hours, not only from food, but also from water… even their own spit! Shortly before 5pm, just as the daily fast is about to break, the roads become mayhem. It’s almost as if ‘patience’ is no longer a part of Egyptian vocabulary (or the Arabic equivalent of ‘patience’… which I don’t know). Suddenly the roads are race tracks where every driver has their own circuit to complete in the shortest amount of time. One ‘lane’ roads become three lane roads. ‘One way’ streets are no longer just one way. Now, I put ‘lane’ and ‘one way’ in quotations because lanes are merely suggestions, as are one way streets. By 5:30pm, though, the streets are barren. It’s the quietest time of day, aside from mornings! This is merely the eye of the hurricane, though, because when these Egyptians finish breaking their fast, the chaos continues. Now everyone is full of food and have entered a blissful state of unawareness. Last week I was riding my bike home around this time and a little boy ran out directly in front of my bike while chasing a ball. He didn’t even look where he was going. I had absolutely no time to stop, so I hit him at a fairly high speed, knocking him to the ground. He got up right away and was promptly reprimanded by bystanders/family who motioned for me to continue on my way. My bike rattled and squeaked more than usual the rest of the way home. It seems the poor kid bent not only the front fender of my bike, but also my brakes as well.
Today I went to wash the dishes (yes, a rarity, but also a nice gesture every year or two). But as I turned the water on (or turned the taps on, rather), nothing happened! This was somewhat alarming, seeing that I am living in a desert. I thought it had finally happened. The Nile had dried up! Our water supply was gone for good. It was bound to happen eventually. People stand around all day watering their gardens and trees. People stand around watering the pavement in front of their houses to keep the dust down. People even stand around watering the sand to keep it from blowing around too much. Nobody seems to care at all about their amount of water usage. I imagined myself having to ration the remaining water out of the toilet bowl in order to make it through the week. I remembered the kitty had some water in her dish, still. I figured I’d drink that up before I dove into the toilet water. Well, before I got desperate enough to drink the cat water, my host family came home. They mentioned that this happens from time to time, and can actually take a couple days before the water comes back on! We decided to order pizza rather than waste our little bit of water in the fridge (which I had forgotten to include in my water inventory) on cooking. Just as we ordered from trusty ol’ Dominoes, the water came back on. Actually, it came on a number of hours ago now, and I still haven’t used any of it. Who needs water anyways? It’s just another crutch that we depend on to get us through each day, much like coffee. From this moment on, I’m going to boycott water! No, wait, I’m really thirsty. I’ll start my boycott after I have a nice cold cup of water. And maybe after tomorrows nice warm shower. And perhaps after breakfast, cause I always need some water to wash down my toast. Wait a second! FOOD appears to be another crutch I rely on to get me through the day. I shall boycott it as well! Boo food. Boo water! But… I like food. I also enjoy the odd cup or two of water. Ok, boycotting is dumb. I think instead of boycotting food and water, I am going to boycott boycotting. Who’s with me?!
Today I went to wash the dishes (yes, a rarity, but also a nice gesture every year or two). But as I turned the water on (or turned the taps on, rather), nothing happened! This was somewhat alarming, seeing that I am living in a desert. I thought it had finally happened. The Nile had dried up! Our water supply was gone for good. It was bound to happen eventually. People stand around all day watering their gardens and trees. People stand around watering the pavement in front of their houses to keep the dust down. People even stand around watering the sand to keep it from blowing around too much. Nobody seems to care at all about their amount of water usage. I imagined myself having to ration the remaining water out of the toilet bowl in order to make it through the week. I remembered the kitty had some water in her dish, still. I figured I’d drink that up before I dove into the toilet water. Well, before I got desperate enough to drink the cat water, my host family came home. They mentioned that this happens from time to time, and can actually take a couple days before the water comes back on! We decided to order pizza rather than waste our little bit of water in the fridge (which I had forgotten to include in my water inventory) on cooking. Just as we ordered from trusty ol’ Dominoes, the water came back on. Actually, it came on a number of hours ago now, and I still haven’t used any of it. Who needs water anyways? It’s just another crutch that we depend on to get us through each day, much like coffee. From this moment on, I’m going to boycott water! No, wait, I’m really thirsty. I’ll start my boycott after I have a nice cold cup of water. And maybe after tomorrows nice warm shower. And perhaps after breakfast, cause I always need some water to wash down my toast. Wait a second! FOOD appears to be another crutch I rely on to get me through the day. I shall boycott it as well! Boo food. Boo water! But… I like food. I also enjoy the odd cup or two of water. Ok, boycotting is dumb. I think instead of boycotting food and water, I am going to boycott boycotting. Who’s with me?!
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Add a little 'spice' to your sermons
There comes a time in every pastor's ministry when they happen to 'spice' up their sermons, either intentionally or unintentionally. Click here to view a short little video clip of a certain 'Blake' fellow who unintentionally spiced up his talk a number of years ago. A couple weeks ago, I showed this video to the pastors at our church so we could all share a good Christian laugh together. A little more than a week passed by when one of the pastors (Dave) mentioned the video to a student I was talking to, just before the weekend church service started. So, I explained what happened in the video to this student, we had a good laugh, and then went and sat down in our seats for the service. That weekend the other pastor (Larry) was delivering the sermon. Part way through his sermon, poor Larry attempted to ask everyone to take out their schedules to have a look at them, but by complete accident, he said, "Please take out your sexual..." and then he stopped and proceeded somewhat like old Blake did in the aforementioned video. At that point I not only realized what a hilarious conincidence all this was, but I also saw how stupid little things like that can make the sermon a whole lot more memorable... if they're tied in properly.
Well, yesterday it was my turn to speak at our middle school church service thingy. Rather than deliver a boring sermon that was just talking and talking, I decided to try out a few intentional 'spices' that would hopefully make the talk more memorable. Now, I didn't bring out any naughty words like those pastors in the last paragraph did. No, that would probalby scar these poor kids. Instead, I worked a few demonstrations into my talk. The first demonstration was washing the feet of one of the students. I was talking about love and how it is more than just a word... it's an act. Wait, that's not right. I put it in better words than that. haha. It's an action. It involves DOING, not just SAYING. There we go. So, I demonstrated serving others by washing the dirty feet of one of the students up on stage. It was pretty gross, I'm not gonna lie. But I think it was also pretty memorable for the students cause it was so wierd and different.
Well, that was the least interesting illustration I did last night. For the next demonstration, I was making the point that love involves tolerating people. To make this point, I had a volunteer come up on stage and get as much saliva in their mouth as they could. Then I told them to spit in my face. The first person that volunteered was a sweet little girl. She couldn't bring herself to do it, so I had to find someone else. It's surprisingly hard to find someone to spit in your face these days. Eventually one of the boys came up and did it. Suddenly washing someone's dirty feet seemed a lot less nasty than it felt a few minutes earlier. I guess there's just something about the feeling of spit dripping down your forehead that makes the thought of dirty feet a lot more appealing. Anyways, the point of that was to give the students a visual representation of what happens to many of us each and every day. People spit in our faces with their unholy words and actions. Love is tolerating those people. Something like that, anyways.
And for my final demonstration, I invited each of the students that wanted to take a 'step of faith' to come up on stage for one last thing. Props to Mean Girls for this idea. I had the students face the back wall, and then fall backwards off the stage, without looking. Don't worry, we had a group of leaders catching them. heh heh. It was a neat little demonstration, though. Remember that girl that didn't want to spit in my face? She was the first person to come up for this, and she volunteered even before she knew what she was going to have to do. She was at the edge of the stage, ready to fall backwards, but just before she did, she turned to me and said, "I can't do it!" We all encouraged her to have faith (ok, that sounds kinda cheesy, but hey, it seemed cool at the time), and eventually she did it. While everyone else was taking their 'step of faith,' she came up to me and excitedly asked, "Can I do it again?!" That was neat. I thought to myself, "Sure! Devote your life to full time ministry and you'll be taking that 'step of faith' every single day for the rest of your life!!"
Well, yesterday it was my turn to speak at our middle school church service thingy. Rather than deliver a boring sermon that was just talking and talking, I decided to try out a few intentional 'spices' that would hopefully make the talk more memorable. Now, I didn't bring out any naughty words like those pastors in the last paragraph did. No, that would probalby scar these poor kids. Instead, I worked a few demonstrations into my talk. The first demonstration was washing the feet of one of the students. I was talking about love and how it is more than just a word... it's an act. Wait, that's not right. I put it in better words than that. haha. It's an action. It involves DOING, not just SAYING. There we go. So, I demonstrated serving others by washing the dirty feet of one of the students up on stage. It was pretty gross, I'm not gonna lie. But I think it was also pretty memorable for the students cause it was so wierd and different.
Well, that was the least interesting illustration I did last night. For the next demonstration, I was making the point that love involves tolerating people. To make this point, I had a volunteer come up on stage and get as much saliva in their mouth as they could. Then I told them to spit in my face. The first person that volunteered was a sweet little girl. She couldn't bring herself to do it, so I had to find someone else. It's surprisingly hard to find someone to spit in your face these days. Eventually one of the boys came up and did it. Suddenly washing someone's dirty feet seemed a lot less nasty than it felt a few minutes earlier. I guess there's just something about the feeling of spit dripping down your forehead that makes the thought of dirty feet a lot more appealing. Anyways, the point of that was to give the students a visual representation of what happens to many of us each and every day. People spit in our faces with their unholy words and actions. Love is tolerating those people. Something like that, anyways.
And for my final demonstration, I invited each of the students that wanted to take a 'step of faith' to come up on stage for one last thing. Props to Mean Girls for this idea. I had the students face the back wall, and then fall backwards off the stage, without looking. Don't worry, we had a group of leaders catching them. heh heh. It was a neat little demonstration, though. Remember that girl that didn't want to spit in my face? She was the first person to come up for this, and she volunteered even before she knew what she was going to have to do. She was at the edge of the stage, ready to fall backwards, but just before she did, she turned to me and said, "I can't do it!" We all encouraged her to have faith (ok, that sounds kinda cheesy, but hey, it seemed cool at the time), and eventually she did it. While everyone else was taking their 'step of faith,' she came up to me and excitedly asked, "Can I do it again?!" That was neat. I thought to myself, "Sure! Devote your life to full time ministry and you'll be taking that 'step of faith' every single day for the rest of your life!!"
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Sporadic Weather Changes
Do not fret, ladies and gentlemen. Just because I had a moment of seriousness does not mean that I cease to live a joy-filled life while I am here. Sure, some days may feel dark and depressing, but I always have someone alongside me who understands. Yeah it sounds a bit cliché, but I have Christ with me each day. He lived a human life here on earth so he could share in these feelings that we all have from time to time. Christ knows what it is like to feel the way we do, and He is there to share the burden alongside us. I thank each of you who have been praying for me. It makes a world of difference knowing that people are interceding on my behalf. Now, with that said and done, let's have some fun!
I was writing a few emails today, and while I wrote them I noticed the weather forecast on my browser. I have a nifty little plugin on my internet browser that displays the current and forecasted weather conditions for the next couple of days. Don't call me a nerd! It's cool and you should have one as well. In fact, here's a link where you can get a weather plugin for your browser (You need the cool and non-nerdy FireFox browser for this plugin to work)! Anyways, back to my story... I've been noticing that it's been cooling off quite a bit lately (I think I'm going to take a blanket to bed with me this evening) and I decided to see what the temperature was like these days. There are always three suns displayed in the forecast. One to show that today is sunny, one to show that tomorrow will be sunny, and one to show that the day after that will be sunny. It's always the same. But today I hovered the mouse over top of these icons for a few seconds so I could read what the predicted/current temperature was. It was at this point that I realized how bored meteorologists in Egypt must be. Today it was sunny and 26. I moved over to the next icon and it read precisely: "Abundant Sunshine and Nice". I moved over to the next one which read, "Pleasant with sunshine." See, it's ALWAYS sunny here, so it seems the weathermen have to get a little more creative in order to spice up their weather descriptions. By comparison, meteorologists in Calgary have a thrilling life, changing the weather description every ten minutes or so. I bet the rookie meteorologists all start off working in Cairo, and then when they get really good at making the various sunny days sound interesting, they move up to some location that actually has weather patterns. Some day, if they work hard enough and become some hotshot weather dude, they will move to Calgary and become Darr Maqbool. For those of you who don’t know who Darr Maqbool is, he was voted the most beloved Calgarian by FastForward Magazine. It doesn’t matter. He’s just some cool weather guy in Calgary. Now, what is the point of all this weather mumbo jumbo? Nothing! Aside from the fact that I get to brag about how nice and sunny it is here while you guys are all preparing for the winter freeze! Woohoo! Yesterday I was telling a few friends back home that it was 23 degrees while I was talking to them, and that I was feeling cold. Weird, eh? What's weirder is that I can never come up with examples of how to properly use the word 'eh' in a sentence whenever someone asks how we Canadians use it. Aaaand, before I close this evening, I would just like to point out that I still haven't worn anything warmer than a short sleeve t-shirt since arriving here from Canada. In the probable words of Albert Einstein, "Na na na boo boo! I'm better than yoooouuu!" And now I bid my humblest tidings to all. Good day!
I was writing a few emails today, and while I wrote them I noticed the weather forecast on my browser. I have a nifty little plugin on my internet browser that displays the current and forecasted weather conditions for the next couple of days. Don't call me a nerd! It's cool and you should have one as well. In fact, here's a link where you can get a weather plugin for your browser (You need the cool and non-nerdy FireFox browser for this plugin to work)! Anyways, back to my story... I've been noticing that it's been cooling off quite a bit lately (I think I'm going to take a blanket to bed with me this evening) and I decided to see what the temperature was like these days. There are always three suns displayed in the forecast. One to show that today is sunny, one to show that tomorrow will be sunny, and one to show that the day after that will be sunny. It's always the same. But today I hovered the mouse over top of these icons for a few seconds so I could read what the predicted/current temperature was. It was at this point that I realized how bored meteorologists in Egypt must be. Today it was sunny and 26. I moved over to the next icon and it read precisely: "Abundant Sunshine and Nice". I moved over to the next one which read, "Pleasant with sunshine." See, it's ALWAYS sunny here, so it seems the weathermen have to get a little more creative in order to spice up their weather descriptions. By comparison, meteorologists in Calgary have a thrilling life, changing the weather description every ten minutes or so. I bet the rookie meteorologists all start off working in Cairo, and then when they get really good at making the various sunny days sound interesting, they move up to some location that actually has weather patterns. Some day, if they work hard enough and become some hotshot weather dude, they will move to Calgary and become Darr Maqbool. For those of you who don’t know who Darr Maqbool is, he was voted the most beloved Calgarian by FastForward Magazine. It doesn’t matter. He’s just some cool weather guy in Calgary. Now, what is the point of all this weather mumbo jumbo? Nothing! Aside from the fact that I get to brag about how nice and sunny it is here while you guys are all preparing for the winter freeze! Woohoo! Yesterday I was telling a few friends back home that it was 23 degrees while I was talking to them, and that I was feeling cold. Weird, eh? What's weirder is that I can never come up with examples of how to properly use the word 'eh' in a sentence whenever someone asks how we Canadians use it. Aaaand, before I close this evening, I would just like to point out that I still haven't worn anything warmer than a short sleeve t-shirt since arriving here from Canada. In the probable words of Albert Einstein, "Na na na boo boo! I'm better than yoooouuu!" And now I bid my humblest tidings to all. Good day!
Monday, October 17, 2005
A Serious Post
Have you ever felt that each passing day flies by faster than the last? Do you ever look back and wonder where all the days have gone? Perhaps you wonder to yourself, “How can I keep from getting lost in this mad rush of time?” Well folks, allow me to give you a recipe that is sure to slow down your perception of time:
1. Move away from all those who are dear to you
2. Move away from all that is familiar to you
Today is my day off, and on my days off I often realize how slow time is passing by for me while I’m in Egypt. It’s not that my days off go slow. They don’t seem to last long enough! And it’s not really my weekdays that go slow either. They seem to pass by quick enough. A week doesn’t seem to take very long to end, either. So wherein lies the problem here? It appears as though it is life itself that has slowed down for me. I look back to August 8th, when I left Canada, and it feels like an eternity ago! I feel like I’ve been away from everyone for so long and that any day now I should be heading back home to reunite myself with my previous life. But then I look at the calendar and realize that I haven’t even been here for 10 weeks!
Now I’m sure that one of these days I will look back and wonder where all the months of this past year have gone and think to myself, “It feels like only yesterday that I arrived in Cairo and was building that ridiculous food fight contraption,” but that is because I will have become familiarized with this new life of mine and will have developed deep and meaningful friendships that I won’t want to leave behind. But until that time comes, life crawls along as if it were in the wake of a snail. This does not mean that I find life at this moment miserable and unenjoyable, but merely long and uncertain. In these days of a slowed perspective, I am often left with mixed feelings about this ministry I seek to devote my life to. Some days I will wake and be energized and driven to accomplish the deeds of the day. Other days I feel I hardly wake at all. I simply drudge through the day not wanting to do even the simplest tasks. On days like these I am overwhelmed when I look at all that needs to be done in youth ministry. I sit there tired and helpless, wishing I were getting myself into a simpler profession. On such days I feel butterflies battling it out inside my stomach and I never quite know why. It is days like these that make time crawl by. It is days like these that make home seem farther away. And it seems like these are the days that have been coming in abundance during my stay. This is probably just because they take longer to get though than a driven and energetic day. Either way, if I want to succeed in this ministry, I must learn to conquer such days.
I wonder if my perspective has been set too much on surviving rather than on thriving. Perhaps I want to do just enough to get through each day without failing, rather than to get through each day screaming not only success, but legendary triumph as well! We all want to be people whom legends are written about, but how many of us have the passion to make a legend happen? I have been given the honor of coming to Egypt as an ambassador of Christ. I should go through each day boldly doing the work of the Lord because He has entrusted me to come here to do it for Him. This work should not be my own, but His, and the success of it should not rest on me, but upon Him! Maybe I have these drudging tiresome days because I forget to see the big picture and attempt to do things all on my own strength. But this seems so elementary! A lesson I have learned many times before! Well, let me tell you a little secret: no matter how smart you are and how great your memory is, sometimes you still forget. Look at the Israelites! God stepped in and miraculously helped them a number of times, and yet they always managed to forget about God and to build themselves idols to worship instead. At times I get angry at how stupid the Israelites seem to me, but that’s because I can see the bigger picture. If I step back from my life and take a look at things, I am no better than them.
So tell me, how do you fully rely on God each and every day? How do you get enough passion and zeal from Him to successfully make it through the unending days of time, not only as a survivor, but as a winner? I would like to hear your thoughts on this! I have enabled comments on my blog so that each of you may leave your thoughts and opinions. Alternatively, you can always send me an email with your thoughts as well.
1. Move away from all those who are dear to you
2. Move away from all that is familiar to you
Today is my day off, and on my days off I often realize how slow time is passing by for me while I’m in Egypt. It’s not that my days off go slow. They don’t seem to last long enough! And it’s not really my weekdays that go slow either. They seem to pass by quick enough. A week doesn’t seem to take very long to end, either. So wherein lies the problem here? It appears as though it is life itself that has slowed down for me. I look back to August 8th, when I left Canada, and it feels like an eternity ago! I feel like I’ve been away from everyone for so long and that any day now I should be heading back home to reunite myself with my previous life. But then I look at the calendar and realize that I haven’t even been here for 10 weeks!
Now I’m sure that one of these days I will look back and wonder where all the months of this past year have gone and think to myself, “It feels like only yesterday that I arrived in Cairo and was building that ridiculous food fight contraption,” but that is because I will have become familiarized with this new life of mine and will have developed deep and meaningful friendships that I won’t want to leave behind. But until that time comes, life crawls along as if it were in the wake of a snail. This does not mean that I find life at this moment miserable and unenjoyable, but merely long and uncertain. In these days of a slowed perspective, I am often left with mixed feelings about this ministry I seek to devote my life to. Some days I will wake and be energized and driven to accomplish the deeds of the day. Other days I feel I hardly wake at all. I simply drudge through the day not wanting to do even the simplest tasks. On days like these I am overwhelmed when I look at all that needs to be done in youth ministry. I sit there tired and helpless, wishing I were getting myself into a simpler profession. On such days I feel butterflies battling it out inside my stomach and I never quite know why. It is days like these that make time crawl by. It is days like these that make home seem farther away. And it seems like these are the days that have been coming in abundance during my stay. This is probably just because they take longer to get though than a driven and energetic day. Either way, if I want to succeed in this ministry, I must learn to conquer such days.
I wonder if my perspective has been set too much on surviving rather than on thriving. Perhaps I want to do just enough to get through each day without failing, rather than to get through each day screaming not only success, but legendary triumph as well! We all want to be people whom legends are written about, but how many of us have the passion to make a legend happen? I have been given the honor of coming to Egypt as an ambassador of Christ. I should go through each day boldly doing the work of the Lord because He has entrusted me to come here to do it for Him. This work should not be my own, but His, and the success of it should not rest on me, but upon Him! Maybe I have these drudging tiresome days because I forget to see the big picture and attempt to do things all on my own strength. But this seems so elementary! A lesson I have learned many times before! Well, let me tell you a little secret: no matter how smart you are and how great your memory is, sometimes you still forget. Look at the Israelites! God stepped in and miraculously helped them a number of times, and yet they always managed to forget about God and to build themselves idols to worship instead. At times I get angry at how stupid the Israelites seem to me, but that’s because I can see the bigger picture. If I step back from my life and take a look at things, I am no better than them.
So tell me, how do you fully rely on God each and every day? How do you get enough passion and zeal from Him to successfully make it through the unending days of time, not only as a survivor, but as a winner? I would like to hear your thoughts on this! I have enabled comments on my blog so that each of you may leave your thoughts and opinions. Alternatively, you can always send me an email with your thoughts as well.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Bad News *Updated*
Today my computer will not recognize the hard drive. This does not bode well. Word to the wise: back up your computer regularly. It does not feel good to realize that I may have lost years of work in a day. Pictures, school work, writing, webpages, secret projects... possibly all gone for good. I will keep you posted. The bright side of things is that this is only about a computer and not my life or anything crazy like that. Darn, I hate it when I see things in perspective. Makes my stupid problems seem so meaningless. Well then, I say to you, "Eat, drink, and be merry. That way you will experience happiness along with all the work God has given you." -Ecclesiastes something or other. My favorite book on meaninglessness. I like to read it every now and then to see life differently. Ever notice how contemplative you get when you're desperate? Maybe it's just me.
In other news, last night I went to a potluck with a bunch of catholic people. During the evening conversation, while sipping a beer, one of the men matter of factly stated that he is a priest. I think a part of my mindset only imagines priests as those dudes who wear black suits with a straight collar and no sense of humor or life apart from church. A fairly loaded preconception, I suppose. At any rate, now I know it's not true. One thing I found odd about the evening was that nobody prayed before their meal. Apparently blessing the food is just an evangelical thing? I don't know. Anyways, the reason I was there was so that I could find out about the prison ministries that take place in Cairo. One of my gracious supporters has asked me to visit a penpal of hers who resides in a prison here. I'm not sure what his crime was, but he has since become a Christian, and thus, I would very much like to go visit him and hear his story. Hopefully I will be able to do this on a semi-regular basis and be able to take students along with me for the experience as well. Anyways, I need to get back to my laptop so I can try to fix it. We're supposed to be showing a video on it tonight at youth, but I somehow doubt that's going to happen. We shall see.
*Update* My laptop is now in stable condition and data has been recovered from it. Once I get time to reformat it, ol' Lappy should be back to its happy old self.
In other news, last night I went to a potluck with a bunch of catholic people. During the evening conversation, while sipping a beer, one of the men matter of factly stated that he is a priest. I think a part of my mindset only imagines priests as those dudes who wear black suits with a straight collar and no sense of humor or life apart from church. A fairly loaded preconception, I suppose. At any rate, now I know it's not true. One thing I found odd about the evening was that nobody prayed before their meal. Apparently blessing the food is just an evangelical thing? I don't know. Anyways, the reason I was there was so that I could find out about the prison ministries that take place in Cairo. One of my gracious supporters has asked me to visit a penpal of hers who resides in a prison here. I'm not sure what his crime was, but he has since become a Christian, and thus, I would very much like to go visit him and hear his story. Hopefully I will be able to do this on a semi-regular basis and be able to take students along with me for the experience as well. Anyways, I need to get back to my laptop so I can try to fix it. We're supposed to be showing a video on it tonight at youth, but I somehow doubt that's going to happen. We shall see.
*Update* My laptop is now in stable condition and data has been recovered from it. Once I get time to reformat it, ol' Lappy should be back to its happy old self.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Random Ramblings
This weekend at church I met a guy originally from Edmonton. Now, with me being from Calgary, the normal salutation from me in this event would be to kick him in the shins and then knee him in the head when he bends over (naturally, of course). But since this guy moved AWAY from Edmonton, I decided to give him an opportunity to earn my respect. He shook my hand, said how nice it was to meet me, a fellow Albertan (man, way to guilt me into being nice to him), and promptly mentioned that hockey had resumed in Canada. Now, by hockey I mean ICE hockey. When you mention 'hockey' here, people automatically think of that sport where people run around the grass in skirts with an upside-down cane and chase a ball. That's not the sport he was talking about. So yes, apparently ICE hockey has resumed on the continent of North America. You're probably thinking to yourself, "Yes, I know! I live in North America! Now why is this schmuck telling me all this junk?" I am bringing up hockey today because I was recently remembering how excited and united the city of Calgary became when the Flames not only made the playoffs (perhaps the first time this millennium? I don't know), but made it to the Stanley Cup game against... that other team, I forget. Really, nobody cares who won that Stanley Cup game. The Calgary Flames were the real winners because they sludged their way through cowpies and mud, past the skeptical critics and embarrassed fans, and they played their way into the Stanley Cup Finals. This action brought about the excitement of an entire city. Everyone drove around with flames flags on their cars, houses were decorated (and even painted, in some cases), and jerseys were everywhere you looked! Calgarians were suddenly crazy about the sport of hockey. If you went to the Red Mile after a game, people took over the streets and marched nowhere in particular, high fiving each other, shouting out cheers, and singing. It was an atmosphere like no other. Of course, I had never been to any country who was really into soccer. Until now. Football games here in Cairo are a big thing. I was driving through a more traditional part of Cairo last week (well, I wasn’t driving, I was a passenger… I haven’t be blessed with that opportunity yet), and while we were driving along, a major football game was on TV. Every shop in this part of town seemed to have a TV propped up somewhere in it. Surrounding the shops were crowds of people who stood or sat and smoked sheesha while enjoying the game. When the keeper made a good save, you could tell because the streets erupted with cheering. We didn’t have the game on in our car, but we could pretty much follow what was happening with it just by watching the crowds of people in the streets.
I mentioned sheesha a few sentences ago and I’m not sure if I’ve told you anything about it yet. Sheesha is the tobacco product of choice for Egyptians and is commonly smoked… everywhere. Sheesha is smoked using a bong-type apparatus which sends the smoke past boiled water (or something like that, I haven’t inspected any of these things yet) before it comes out of the tube that you suck on. Sheesha is usually ‘flavored’ with all sorts of scents… such as apple. Because of this, Sheesha smokers don’t give off the annoyingly nasty smell like that of a cigarette smoker (sorry to any smokers who read my blog, but hey, it’s gross and you can’t deny it). But yeah, that’s about all I know about sheesha. I think it’s illegal for me to take any out of the country, so don’t bother asking for any. One of the rules of my internship is that I can not smoke sheesha, so no, I have not tried it. Another interesting rule of internship is that I have to wear a helmet when I ride my bike, or else I face a $5 US fine. This would not be so bad if I were living in North America, for instance, but because I’m in Egypt it is a very weird thing. Nobody here wears helmets! People look at me weird enough because I’m white with big red hair, but when I have that ugly helmet on, people point and laugh and act as though I’m a clown! I don’t think this rule is for my safety. I think it is to enforce another rule: No dating during internship. As long as I wear this ridiculous helmet, I’m never going to get a girlfriend!
I mentioned sheesha a few sentences ago and I’m not sure if I’ve told you anything about it yet. Sheesha is the tobacco product of choice for Egyptians and is commonly smoked… everywhere. Sheesha is smoked using a bong-type apparatus which sends the smoke past boiled water (or something like that, I haven’t inspected any of these things yet) before it comes out of the tube that you suck on. Sheesha is usually ‘flavored’ with all sorts of scents… such as apple. Because of this, Sheesha smokers don’t give off the annoyingly nasty smell like that of a cigarette smoker (sorry to any smokers who read my blog, but hey, it’s gross and you can’t deny it). But yeah, that’s about all I know about sheesha. I think it’s illegal for me to take any out of the country, so don’t bother asking for any. One of the rules of my internship is that I can not smoke sheesha, so no, I have not tried it. Another interesting rule of internship is that I have to wear a helmet when I ride my bike, or else I face a $5 US fine. This would not be so bad if I were living in North America, for instance, but because I’m in Egypt it is a very weird thing. Nobody here wears helmets! People look at me weird enough because I’m white with big red hair, but when I have that ugly helmet on, people point and laugh and act as though I’m a clown! I don’t think this rule is for my safety. I think it is to enforce another rule: No dating during internship. As long as I wear this ridiculous helmet, I’m never going to get a girlfriend!
Monday, October 10, 2005
More Local Tidbits
Back home in Canada, fall evenings are usually fresh and crisp and are a great time to go out for a walk to enjoy nature. Evenings in Cairo (at least where I live) are not so pretty and, well… breathable. The reason for this is not only that the air cools down and causes the pollution to fall to ground level (sure, that’s nasty, but that’s not the only cause), but also because of farmers who burn their rice fields. It is actually illegal to burn rice fields in and around Cairo, which is why the farmers wait until it is dark to do it. Then the wind carries the smoke over to our lovely little neighborhood where we get lung cancer and die. All for the sake of rice. So I say to you, boycott rice or I’ll pay the price! Keep rice far away and I’ll live another day! But wait! Burning rice fields aren’t the only cause for the heavy air in our neighborhood. Nighttime is when the streets come alive and everyone goes out to eat and be merry (not just during Ramadan). Eating usually requires the use of charcoal to cook the food. Now when I say charcoal, I don’t mean those nice little briquettes we have in North America that smell of lollipops and honey when they burn (or so it seems when you compare it to the stuff Egyptians use). No no, this is Egyptian charcoal, which means more heat and way more stench. I’m almost beginning to like it, though. When I went over to St. Mark’s Cathedral the air was so ‘fresh’ and normal and boring. When I got back to my neighborhood it was nice and charcoaly. Sometimes familiarity is good, no matter how gross it is. I think that one of the reasons Cairo is so polluted is because most of the vehicles burn oil… or who knows what! When a minibus passes me (rather than hits me), it leaves behind it a trail of black opaque smoke. Think of Mary Poppins when they’re going on their little roof escapade. The smoke coming from those chimneys is thick and black, just like the crud spewing from the minibus exhaust pipes. Once I tried walking up it like Mary Poppins did, but apparently the smoke here isn’t quite as supportive. Enough about pollution, though! It’s really not that bad during the day… unless you want to see farther than 500m ;)
Another thing I keep meaning to mention, but always forget about, is what happens five times a day here. One of the five pillars of faith for the dominant religion is to pray five times a day. Because of this, every mosque (there are tons of them) is equipped with loudspeakers that play a call to prayer at five specific times each day (the time changes with the sun, I believe). These calls to prayer are sung by a male and broadcasted throughout all parts of the city. At night, if you are surrounded by mosques (or are high up in a building), these calls to prayer can often take on an almost ghostly character. This is because all of the calls to prayer do not start at the exact same time, or they do not sing the exact same words, and thus an eerie echoing of Arabic singing whirls through the windy night air and mixes into what resembles a wailing sound. So with this I say to you, Happy Thanksgiving! It’s weird living in a country and being around people who don’t even realize it’s Thanksgiving in Canada. The only reason I know is because somebody told me in an email! Craziness, I tell ya! Pure Craziness.
Another thing I keep meaning to mention, but always forget about, is what happens five times a day here. One of the five pillars of faith for the dominant religion is to pray five times a day. Because of this, every mosque (there are tons of them) is equipped with loudspeakers that play a call to prayer at five specific times each day (the time changes with the sun, I believe). These calls to prayer are sung by a male and broadcasted throughout all parts of the city. At night, if you are surrounded by mosques (or are high up in a building), these calls to prayer can often take on an almost ghostly character. This is because all of the calls to prayer do not start at the exact same time, or they do not sing the exact same words, and thus an eerie echoing of Arabic singing whirls through the windy night air and mixes into what resembles a wailing sound. So with this I say to you, Happy Thanksgiving! It’s weird living in a country and being around people who don’t even realize it’s Thanksgiving in Canada. The only reason I know is because somebody told me in an email! Craziness, I tell ya! Pure Craziness.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Wednesday Night - Part II
As we made our way to St. Mark's from the Metro station, we walked along narrow streets that were lined with parked cars and people. Pretty much everyone on these streets were headed towards the church. St Mark's Cathedral consists of a fairly large campus that is surrounded by large walls. After walking around half of the outer walls, we finally found the entrance to the church campus. The entrance had two gates, one that was wide, and one that was narrow. We found this pretty funny and decided to take the narrow entrance because "the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy, and there are many who travel it. But the gate to life is narrow and the way that leads to it is hard, and there are few people who find it" (Matt 7:13-14). Once inside the walls of the campus, we found ourselves walking through a sea of people. After wading into the waves of people we saw the great walls of the Cathedral lit up to our right. Many people were just hanging out in the courtyard, sitting on the steps or on the grass, seeming to have no intentions of entering the actual church. They appeared to be there for nothing more than the community of those around them. We continued on past them and entered the church.
As we entered the church, a woman who was sitting on a bench just inside the church jumped up and greeted us. She then proceeded to lead us to the middle isle where another man met us and walked us towards the front of the church. Once we got close to the front, we were introduced to an English speaking Egyptian man who took us to the front pews. Everyone was staring at us as we were seated. The pews we sat in were equipped with headphones so that the message could be translated into English for us. Directly in front of us stood the choir, made up of young adult men and women. To their left was a massive chair/throne for Pope Shenouda to sit in after he made his entrance. On the far right hand side of the stage was where all the Abunas sat during the service. Abunas are the Coptic equivalent of priests or pastors. Just before the service began, a blind man was led up to our pew and sat beside us. The atmosphere prior to the beginning of the service wasn't the least bit pensive. There were many technicians running around setting up their cameras and microphones and such. At any given point during the service there were between 15 and 20 broadcast quality video cameras recording portions of the service. These camera men (and the men chasing after them carrying the cables) were never the least bit discreet in their work.
The service began when Pope Shenouda entered from a door on the right. As he entered, everyone stood and clapped and cheered with enthusiasm. This wasn’t like a cheer after the end of a good worship song. No, it was more like the cheer people do when their favorite sports team scores a goal. All the video cameras swarmed around him during his entrance and followed him up to his seat on the stage. After he was seated the choir sang a number of songs for a good half hour. These songs were more of a performance than a leading of the congregation in worship. After each song was completed, the congregation would clap an average of about three or four times per person and then promptly quit. I don’t think anyone actually counts how many times they clap after each song, but it is for a noticeably short period of time. After the choir finished their performance, they went and stood in front of the pope and got their picture taken with him and a few of the abunas.
The next portion of the service was a question and answer period where Pope Shenouda answers questions that people have written on pieces of paper, or have emailed to him. It was at this point that the blind man sitting beside us picked up a microphone and started translating everything into English. We put on our headphones, and there he was, chatting away. I had a terrible pair of headphones during the Q&A session so all I heard was what sounded like someone Kazooing into a microphone. I put on another pair of headphones for the sermon at which point I realized that the translator was, in fact, speaking English, not Kazoolish. The sermon was about grace. It was long and repetitive. Watching how people engaged with the sermon was fairly interesting. One man was sitting at the front, facing us. He promptly fell asleep during the sermon. During the sermon, one of the Abunas walked in from the left side of the church and went to take his seat on stage. To get to his seat he had to walk by the man who was sleeping. As he approached the man, the sleeper jumped up from his seat, bowed down and kissed the hands of the Abuna. The oh so very tired man seemed very excited to see this abuna, so much so, that he promptly fell asleep after he completed this religious ritual of his. The end of the service came quite abruptly. Right after the pope finished speaking, everyone stood up, and a number of people started jumping over pews in an attempt to get to the front of the church near the pope. It was sudden and complete mayhem. Technicians were madly trying to wrap up all their chords and put away their equipment, all the while people were rushing around frantically trying to get who knows what from God’s chosen representatives. It was an interesting atmosphere. I hope to return during the daytime some day so that I can take pictures of the massive church, and hopefully, St. Athanasius’ shrine.
As we entered the church, a woman who was sitting on a bench just inside the church jumped up and greeted us. She then proceeded to lead us to the middle isle where another man met us and walked us towards the front of the church. Once we got close to the front, we were introduced to an English speaking Egyptian man who took us to the front pews. Everyone was staring at us as we were seated. The pews we sat in were equipped with headphones so that the message could be translated into English for us. Directly in front of us stood the choir, made up of young adult men and women. To their left was a massive chair/throne for Pope Shenouda to sit in after he made his entrance. On the far right hand side of the stage was where all the Abunas sat during the service. Abunas are the Coptic equivalent of priests or pastors. Just before the service began, a blind man was led up to our pew and sat beside us. The atmosphere prior to the beginning of the service wasn't the least bit pensive. There were many technicians running around setting up their cameras and microphones and such. At any given point during the service there were between 15 and 20 broadcast quality video cameras recording portions of the service. These camera men (and the men chasing after them carrying the cables) were never the least bit discreet in their work.
The service began when Pope Shenouda entered from a door on the right. As he entered, everyone stood and clapped and cheered with enthusiasm. This wasn’t like a cheer after the end of a good worship song. No, it was more like the cheer people do when their favorite sports team scores a goal. All the video cameras swarmed around him during his entrance and followed him up to his seat on the stage. After he was seated the choir sang a number of songs for a good half hour. These songs were more of a performance than a leading of the congregation in worship. After each song was completed, the congregation would clap an average of about three or four times per person and then promptly quit. I don’t think anyone actually counts how many times they clap after each song, but it is for a noticeably short period of time. After the choir finished their performance, they went and stood in front of the pope and got their picture taken with him and a few of the abunas.
The next portion of the service was a question and answer period where Pope Shenouda answers questions that people have written on pieces of paper, or have emailed to him. It was at this point that the blind man sitting beside us picked up a microphone and started translating everything into English. We put on our headphones, and there he was, chatting away. I had a terrible pair of headphones during the Q&A session so all I heard was what sounded like someone Kazooing into a microphone. I put on another pair of headphones for the sermon at which point I realized that the translator was, in fact, speaking English, not Kazoolish. The sermon was about grace. It was long and repetitive. Watching how people engaged with the sermon was fairly interesting. One man was sitting at the front, facing us. He promptly fell asleep during the sermon. During the sermon, one of the Abunas walked in from the left side of the church and went to take his seat on stage. To get to his seat he had to walk by the man who was sleeping. As he approached the man, the sleeper jumped up from his seat, bowed down and kissed the hands of the Abuna. The oh so very tired man seemed very excited to see this abuna, so much so, that he promptly fell asleep after he completed this religious ritual of his. The end of the service came quite abruptly. Right after the pope finished speaking, everyone stood up, and a number of people started jumping over pews in an attempt to get to the front of the church near the pope. It was sudden and complete mayhem. Technicians were madly trying to wrap up all their chords and put away their equipment, all the while people were rushing around frantically trying to get who knows what from God’s chosen representatives. It was an interesting atmosphere. I hope to return during the daytime some day so that I can take pictures of the massive church, and hopefully, St. Athanasius’ shrine.
Friday, October 07, 2005
My Wednesday Evening Off - Part I
This Wednesday Evening, our regular youth activity was cancelled due to the October 6th Holiday (I think that's the actual name of the holiday). So, with an evening free from slavery, er... youth, Rob (my little brudder... that's Dutch accent for 'brother') and I finally made our way to the Wednesday evening service at St. Mark's Cathedral. St. Mark's Cathedral is the head of the Coptic Church where the pope (Pope Shenouda) resides.
To get to St. Mark's, Rob and I had to take the metro. Usually this is a fairly simple and uneventful process... but we're in the middle of Ramadan here, so nothing is as it should be. Our adventure began as we entered the metro station and saw that there was nobody at the ticket booth to sell us our tickets. The reason for this is that we were trying to get onto the metro shortly after 5pm, which is when daily Ramadan fast ends and everyone goes to eat a big feast. The metro is set up so that you purchase a ticket, then put that ticket into a little turnstyle type thing. It turns and lets you onto the metro station platform and then returns your ticket. After riding the metro, you leave the station the same way (by putting your ticket into the turnstyle), only this time it doesn't return your ticket. Well, as I said, nobody was there to sell us our tickets so we weren't quite sure what to do. We didn't want to sit there and wait for the ticket salesman to return because we didn't want to be late to the church service. So what did we do, you ask? Well, the natural thing, of course! We left the money on the ticket salesman's counter and hopped over the turnstyles. Shortly after hopping onto the metro we realized what a terrible idea this was. Sure, there was nobody at this station to sell tickets and to police the turnstyles, but after riding the metro for 45 minutes there would no doubt be people at the other station we were headed to. Well, I sat there slightly nervously, slightly worried that I would get imprisioned if I was caught without a ticket. After 45 minutes of sitting there we arrived at the station we needed to disembark at. We got off the metro, took a look around, and realized how unbelievably lucky we were. This station happened to be under renovations, which meant that the turnstyles were not in use. There was simply a guy sitting beside a garbage bin, who cared little about whether or not people had tickets. I discreetly picked up a ticket on the way out and showed it to the man. He waved us through and we were good to go!
The trip home was also pretty hilarious. Well, I thought it was really funny and entertaining... Rob, however didn't see the humor in it. We bought our tickets, just like normal, and walked onto the metro platform (the one under renovations). To get onto the platform we just had to hold up our ticket for the guy by the garbage can to see. Rob, for some reason, thought that showing this guy his ticket was all he needed his ticket for, so he threw it into the bin of discarded metro tickets. Immediately after doing this, Rob realized that he still needed his ticket to get out of the station that we were headed to. So I had a good laugh while Rob stood there kicking himself. In my pocket I found the extra ticket that I picked up off the ground when we first arrived at this station, so I handed it to Rob to keep him from committing suicide. In the end, the ticket I gave him didn't work and he had to hop over the turnstyle anyways, but nobody arrested us. After getting home I found out that the fine for not having a ticket is only like 15 pounds... 3 or 4 Canadian dollars. Pshhh, and here I thought I was going to have to give up my firstborn child if I got caught without a ticket! Stay tuned for Part II of this post where I tell you about our expierience at the Coptic church service...
To get to St. Mark's, Rob and I had to take the metro. Usually this is a fairly simple and uneventful process... but we're in the middle of Ramadan here, so nothing is as it should be. Our adventure began as we entered the metro station and saw that there was nobody at the ticket booth to sell us our tickets. The reason for this is that we were trying to get onto the metro shortly after 5pm, which is when daily Ramadan fast ends and everyone goes to eat a big feast. The metro is set up so that you purchase a ticket, then put that ticket into a little turnstyle type thing. It turns and lets you onto the metro station platform and then returns your ticket. After riding the metro, you leave the station the same way (by putting your ticket into the turnstyle), only this time it doesn't return your ticket. Well, as I said, nobody was there to sell us our tickets so we weren't quite sure what to do. We didn't want to sit there and wait for the ticket salesman to return because we didn't want to be late to the church service. So what did we do, you ask? Well, the natural thing, of course! We left the money on the ticket salesman's counter and hopped over the turnstyles. Shortly after hopping onto the metro we realized what a terrible idea this was. Sure, there was nobody at this station to sell tickets and to police the turnstyles, but after riding the metro for 45 minutes there would no doubt be people at the other station we were headed to. Well, I sat there slightly nervously, slightly worried that I would get imprisioned if I was caught without a ticket. After 45 minutes of sitting there we arrived at the station we needed to disembark at. We got off the metro, took a look around, and realized how unbelievably lucky we were. This station happened to be under renovations, which meant that the turnstyles were not in use. There was simply a guy sitting beside a garbage bin, who cared little about whether or not people had tickets. I discreetly picked up a ticket on the way out and showed it to the man. He waved us through and we were good to go!
The trip home was also pretty hilarious. Well, I thought it was really funny and entertaining... Rob, however didn't see the humor in it. We bought our tickets, just like normal, and walked onto the metro platform (the one under renovations). To get onto the platform we just had to hold up our ticket for the guy by the garbage can to see. Rob, for some reason, thought that showing this guy his ticket was all he needed his ticket for, so he threw it into the bin of discarded metro tickets. Immediately after doing this, Rob realized that he still needed his ticket to get out of the station that we were headed to. So I had a good laugh while Rob stood there kicking himself. In my pocket I found the extra ticket that I picked up off the ground when we first arrived at this station, so I handed it to Rob to keep him from committing suicide. In the end, the ticket I gave him didn't work and he had to hop over the turnstyle anyways, but nobody arrested us. After getting home I found out that the fine for not having a ticket is only like 15 pounds... 3 or 4 Canadian dollars. Pshhh, and here I thought I was going to have to give up my firstborn child if I got caught without a ticket! Stay tuned for Part II of this post where I tell you about our expierience at the Coptic church service...
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