The Time Has Come!

Hello again. No, I am not here to blog about my time in the Ukraine. I still haven't had time for that. I'm just quickly letting you know where I will be for the next three days.... tomorrow morning I am heading to the Siwa Oasis where I will be going SANDBOARDING!!!! That's right, folks, snowboarding on sand. It should be great. Or interesting, at least... I'll let you know how it goes. But yeah, you probably won't hear anything from me until Monday or Tuesday. So have a great weekend and I'll try not to kill myself.

And We're Baaaack!

Hello everyone! I'm back from Ukraine. We spent a tiring twelve days there and had an amazing time. I'll tell you about some of the things we experienced in a few days. All of my pictures from the trip are still on a team member's laptop, so I'll share some of those with you when I get them. Anyways, just wanted to let you know I'm back in Egypt and I'm still alive. Have a nice day!

Ukraine Ho!

Well folks, the time has come for me to leave the land of Egypt... at least momentarily. Tomorrow I, and a team of ten other high school students and leaders, are making our way to Kiev, Ukraine. We will be there until April 25th. During that time, I will be writing for the Adventures in Ukraine blog rather than my Adventures in Egypt blog. So, for the next two weeks, check out http://www.theukraineteam.blogspot.com to find out what I'm up to! Talk to you later!

The Mercer List

For lack of better things to blog about, today I will tell you a little about about The Mercer List. The Mercer List is a list that rates the Quality of Living of major cities around the world. The 2006 version of it has just been released. Last August I moved from my hometown of Calgary, which is number 25 on the list, to Cairo which has fallen to the 131^st position “due to the political turmoil and terrorist attacks in the city and surrounding area.” I suppose quality of living might be a wee bit lower here in Cairo, but quality of life seems to be much higher! There’s so much to see and do and everything is much cheaper. If it weren’t for all the pollution, this would be a great city to live in! The list of top 50 cities can be downloaded here. Well. That's all for now.

Uncle Ryan Update

I was checking out my pregnant sister's blog recently and I was shocked to see pictures of her looking pregnant! All these months I was thinking it was some elaborate joke. I mean, sending me a sonogram? I thought that was very clever. Perhaps that's just an oddly shaped pillow under her shirt or something? I don't know. See for yourself and let me know what you think:


People are often telling me that I should write a book. I often shrug off the suggestion and say to myself, "What could I possibly write about?" Well, it seems I have finally been inspired to write a book. Here is the cover of it for you:

Unfortunately I'm too busy to work on the rest of the book, so I think I'll just release the book with the current cover and then I'll fill the rest of it with a bunch of empty pages. I think I remember seeing a book like that before. It was entitled "Everything men know about women" or something to that effect.

One last bit of news before I sign off. About a month ago I was looking in the mirror while brushing my teeth, and I noticed a flash of white in my goatee. At first I thought it was just the lighting, but upon closer inspection I found that it was no illusion. I had a gray hair. I couldn't believe it! I'm only.... twenty two years old (I had to get Heidi to help me with the math to figure out my age)! I shouldn't have gray hairs already!! I plucked the gray hair from my goatee and then tried to figure out what could have caused such an atrocity. I recalled a time when my family went to West Edmonton Mall (biggest mall in North America, I think... it used to be, at least) with my uncle and his family. My uncle went on the rollercoaster there and was apparently so freaked out from it that he woke up the following day with some gray hairs. I thought long and hard, and I couldn't think of any recent heartpounding experiences that affected me like that. As I was thinking about what the cause of this gray hair could be, I was also trying to find something that could serve as a black background so I could take a picture of the hair to show you. Interestingly enough, the black background was the answer to what caused the gray hair in the first place (I'm convinced it is, at least). Without further ado, I present to you the cause of grayness:

Look how long and nasty that thing is! It probaby grew twice as fast as the rest of my facial hair! Gross! Anyways, enough about babies for now. I'm quickly losing my appetite and it's lunch time!

What's new?

In less than a week I will be heading off on my very first short-term global outreach project. Some people call these trips by a much shorter name, but apparently the word used in that shorter name is sensitive to use in this country. Whaaatever. On April 14th, 2006 our team is travelling to Kiev, Ukraine where we will participate in various ministries until the 25th of April. There has been a lot of prep work that has gone into this trip, but I think it's going to be a wonderful time for everyone. We have a great team assembled and ready to go. You can read more about each person on the team by visiting www.therightangleway.org.

On a completely unrelated subject, judging from the comments on my giraffe post, next year's AUC Student Council president has been announced to the public. So, I would like to take this time to formally announce to you who won the election. Actually, I will allow Sharon Langer (this year's student council president) to make the announcement:

"So after a long haul here at good old AUC/NUC, the ballots are finally in and a decision has been made. The people have spoken and Ryan Monson, you will be my successor as the new president of ministry students here at our wonderful school. Congratulations Monson! The vote was tight but you came out victorious."

So there you have it, folks. It seems the ol giraffe gimmick was the final push I needed to get those last few votes. I would like to thank everyone who showed their support by sending in their "Vote for Monson" pictures. Looks like God isn't going to let me stay inside of my comfort zone any time soon. I'm excited to see what craziness is in store for me this Fall.

Finally, one last item to address. People are still asking me when I'm returning to Canada. I thought I already told everyone this, but hey, I'll tell you again. My flight back to Canada is booked for July 28th so I will be home in time for my mom's birthday. I kind of missed out on her birthday last year because of my going away campout, so this year I'm making sure I'm home for it. I am finishing up my internship at Maadi Community Church at the end of June, and in July I intend to travel around Israel, Jordan, and possible one or two other Middle Eastern countries. Then it is back to Canada for me!

Now, I hope that's enough of an update for you because I'm gonna go eat some lunch.

Vote for Monson!

Me and My Horsey

This is the horse I rode.

This is me and my horse. I forget its name.

 

Cowboy Monson

I have a confession to make. Although I come from “Cow-Town” Calgary, and have lived near the world famous “Spruce Meadows” (a massive equestrian facility) for a good portion of my life, I have never actually ridden a horse before. Well, not until today, that is. Today I set off an adventure that was so cool that I even woke up at 6:45 am to go on it. Despite the fact that early mornings are against my principles, I battled the bitter cold, primitive hours of the day and journeyed to the Giza Pyramids. Once there, I was given a horse of my very own to ride through the Sahara Desert. Our plan for the morning was to ride our horses from the Giza Pyramids, through the sand dunes, over to the Sakkara Pyramids, and then back again. The journey took us about three hours to complete and was quite an exhilarating/painful adventure.

Now that I have successfully completed this excursion without braking any bones, I consider myself an expert horseman. Let me tell you a few of the basics about riding horses in Egypt. First of all, horses don’t have a gas petal. Your whip or the heels of your feet act as the gas petal. Second, horses have three main speeds. Walking, trotting, and galloping, among other things. Walking is easy, galloping is fun, and trotting is just plain annoying. With walking, all you have to do is sit there and look ruggedly handsome. When you trot, though, you have to do a funny little stand up, sit down routine over and over by applying pressure in the stirrups and slightly lifting your butt from the saddle. It gets really painful when you’re out of rhythm of the trotting of the horse. This leaves you with a Ridiculously Excruciating Discomfort (RED for short) in your posterior. I call it the RED butt syndrome. Worse than that, though, is all the rubbing that goes on between your inner thighs and the saddle. I’m pretty sure I’ve worn most of the hair off of the inside of my legs now. But whenever I threw my horse into a gallop (fast running, for those of you who don’t know cowboy jargon) all of the pain seemed to subside momentarily. As I shot through the sand dunes with the wind blowing against my face, bouncing in rhythm with my horse, I felt that all the pain leading up to this moment was worthwhile. Even waking up at 6:45 am. But every time I stopped galloping, my horse would want to trot for a while before slowing to a walk. This meant a severe return to the RED Butt Syndrome.

I could write more about the joys of steering horses, proper procedures for sitting on a horse while it urinates, and how to make it switch speeds, but my muscles are quickly becoming stiff and sore, so I’m going to go take a nice hot shower instead of continuing this commentary.