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Hello again, I suppose you all think that I'm dead because I haven't posted for a few days. Do not worry. This is not the case. I am alive and well. In fact, so well that yesterday I spent the afternoon playing in a volleyball tournament! I was on team 'Interns' which consisted of pastor John (who was once an intern), Kelly (former associate youth pastor who was visiting), Heidi (current intern), two other non-interns (they're cool and we needed more players), and me (also a current intern). This tournament took place on the campus of Cairo American College... or whatever it's called. I only hear it referred to as CAC. CAC is where many of the students in our youth group attend, which is why we made an appearance as team 'Interns'. The tournament consisted of something like 200 people, most of them atheletic. Our team did not fall into the atheletic category. We were more the comic relief category. We almost one a game, though! 23-25, that was our best game. Oh, and the one where the other team never showed... I guess we won that one. And what a noble win that was! Here are some pictures to prove that we played volleyball yesterday:


We did not win this game.


Nor did we win this game.

As for the rest of this week, I didn't do much exciting stuff. We did order in Chinese one evening! Naturally, they don't have ginger beef here, but everything else was super good and spicy. Needless to say, I was back on the Imodium the next day. That reminds me of something funny about the people in our church. They'll come up to you in church and ask "How are you?" and if you respond "Fine" they'll go on to say "No really, how ARE you?" and nod their head towards your stomach. It seems everyone here wants to know how your bowel movements are doing. If they hear that things are less than perfect, they'll be sure to give you some encouraging words and simple advice on hardening things up. What a friendly church family.

Oooh, I remember one other thing that kept me busy in the past couple days. I had my first Arabic lesson. I'm convinced that Arabic is a hard language to learn. We spent the entire first hour learning only TWO of the 26 letters in the Arabic alphabet. "Meem" and "Beh" are what those letters sound like in English. I also learned a few phrases, but I don't remember them. 'Sabbah el khier' means 'good morning' or something like that. The other person responds with 'Sabbah el nore'.

I have a busy week ahead of me. Tomorrow we are heading up to Alexandria to make some preparations for our fall retreat taking place up there next month. Our youth events kick off this week on Wed and Fri. Thursday I will be moving in with my host family. Everyone says they're a great family, so I'm looking forward to finally meeting them. Now, I need to go do some paper work. All that talk of Imodium seems to have excited me.