Photos from Cairo, Luxor, and Sinai Egypt and Granada, Spain
Friday, November 16, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Keeping Watch
When I went to Egypt, I gave my mom a geography lesson. Here's where Egypt is. No, I'm not close to Israel even though it's only half an inch away on the map. If I tell you I'm in Cairo, and something happens in Luxor, that means I Wasn't There.
But I can't blame her for worrying. Or my grandma for wearing out hte church floor praying for my safety. Or my Dad for freaking out at home because I took a taxi by myself in the middle of the day.
I think they are all overreacting a bit but I do understand and sympathize. For the most part, I let them off the hook. Now that I'm the one with friends far away, I'm guilty as well.
I Facebook stalk Marium in Karachi just in case. Jess' Word On Wales blog is bookmarked. I keep track of my friends to make myself feel better. I can't help them if for some reason they were to need me.
Perusing the headlines on Sunday, I saw that a man had been shot by the police in an incident of soccer violence in Italy. I took a deep breath, I thought my friend Marshall was in the area.
Odds are, if an American college student had been shot in Italy, I'd have heard about it already. But then again maybe not.
Marshall wasn't the headline. I talked to him today and remembered he was in Prague all weekend, nowhere close. My condolences to the family of the young Italian. May he rest in peace.
The real shock of the day came at 1 am after coming home from a night out. I don't know how I happened on the Facebook group "In Memory of Brian Volkerding" but I didn't want to see the page. Titles like that mean only one thing.
The only information provided was that Brian had died unexpectedly on October 27th at Ohio State University. His obituary was equally uninformative. Not that cause of death is relevant to the fact of death.
I hadn't talked to Brian in a couple years but I did know him. We played on an intramural coed soccer team for a year in high school. I remember him as quiet and funny, very nice.
I have no deep value judgments to make on these events. Simply the fact that people I know shouldn't be dying.
My magazine writing textbook had a chapter on leads and endings. For endings dealing with death it had this to say:
"Nothing more needs to be said. Nothing more should be said. End of a life; end of an article."
End of a blog.
But I can't blame her for worrying. Or my grandma for wearing out hte church floor praying for my safety. Or my Dad for freaking out at home because I took a taxi by myself in the middle of the day.
I think they are all overreacting a bit but I do understand and sympathize. For the most part, I let them off the hook. Now that I'm the one with friends far away, I'm guilty as well.
I Facebook stalk Marium in Karachi just in case. Jess' Word On Wales blog is bookmarked. I keep track of my friends to make myself feel better. I can't help them if for some reason they were to need me.
Perusing the headlines on Sunday, I saw that a man had been shot by the police in an incident of soccer violence in Italy. I took a deep breath, I thought my friend Marshall was in the area.
Odds are, if an American college student had been shot in Italy, I'd have heard about it already. But then again maybe not.
Marshall wasn't the headline. I talked to him today and remembered he was in Prague all weekend, nowhere close. My condolences to the family of the young Italian. May he rest in peace.
The real shock of the day came at 1 am after coming home from a night out. I don't know how I happened on the Facebook group "In Memory of Brian Volkerding" but I didn't want to see the page. Titles like that mean only one thing.
The only information provided was that Brian had died unexpectedly on October 27th at Ohio State University. His obituary was equally uninformative. Not that cause of death is relevant to the fact of death.
I hadn't talked to Brian in a couple years but I did know him. We played on an intramural coed soccer team for a year in high school. I remember him as quiet and funny, very nice.
I have no deep value judgments to make on these events. Simply the fact that people I know shouldn't be dying.
My magazine writing textbook had a chapter on leads and endings. For endings dealing with death it had this to say:
"Nothing more needs to be said. Nothing more should be said. End of a life; end of an article."
End of a blog.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sangria Nights: Sleepless in Spain and Elsewhere
College is about three things: homework, fun, and sleep. But you can only choose two.
Traveling has made me an insomniac. Not simply because of jet lag, time changes, overnight flights and six hour layovers. I run myself ragged while abroad (and at home) because I just don’t want to miss anything.
I’m not sure that I ever saw the Cairenes sleep. Or even go to bed. They were always still out, at restaurants and ahwas, coffee houses, all over the city. Even children would be out until 2 or 3 in the morning playing soccer in the streets because it was so much cooler than during the day. My friend Gouda put it best – “nothing even starts until midnight.”
Spain represented for me a week-long true vacation. While Cairo was fun and exotic, I had gone there to work and study, not be a tourist, and there were responsibilities that I had to attend to. Spain had none of those.
I flew into Madrid, and met my friend Nick, who had been studying in Pamplona. My flight was two hours late leaving Amsterdam, which meant there was no way we’d be able to catch the bus tickets Nick had already purchased. Of course.
The plan was to take a week and see Andalusia, the southern region of Spain, visiting Seville, Granada, and Valencia, in that order, then jump back to Madrid for a night to catch our flights home the next morning. We only had a day or two in each city, so compromises needed to be made; sleep went first.
After arriving in Seville at 10:30 at night, we found our hostel, checked in, took showers, and promptly went out. We went to be around two, and got up at eight for a full day of sightseeing, walking around the whole city until dinnertime, about 8:30. Then we went back out.
The logic here is simple and deadly: we have to leave in the morning, and it’s a five-hour bus ride, so why sleep now? Sleep on the bus.
Brilliant.
In fairness to my traveling companion, I would like to make clear that we did significant amounts of sightseeing, and our exploits were in no way confined to the nightlife of Andalusia. We had a delicate balance. It was probably good we only kept it up for a week.
The quote at the top of this post is true in more arenas of life than school. It’s the rationalization I give to myself when I go see a 14th century Spanish palace over sleeping in. It’s also my justification for when I ate churros con chocolate and relaxed in the park instead of going to a museum.
Generally, my go-to sacrifice is sleep, the theory being I can sleep all I want when I’m dead. However what I have learned from this summer and fall is that not seeing one more famous painting will ultimately pale in comparison to the night smoking shisha and drinking Turkish coffee with my friends. People too, can be missed just as fiercely as places, and I have come to rely and value the relationships I have forged much more that I appreciated visiting the Sphinx.
The solution: sleep on the bus while planning the next adventure.
Traveling has made me an insomniac. Not simply because of jet lag, time changes, overnight flights and six hour layovers. I run myself ragged while abroad (and at home) because I just don’t want to miss anything.
I’m not sure that I ever saw the Cairenes sleep. Or even go to bed. They were always still out, at restaurants and ahwas, coffee houses, all over the city. Even children would be out until 2 or 3 in the morning playing soccer in the streets because it was so much cooler than during the day. My friend Gouda put it best – “nothing even starts until midnight.”
Spain represented for me a week-long true vacation. While Cairo was fun and exotic, I had gone there to work and study, not be a tourist, and there were responsibilities that I had to attend to. Spain had none of those.
I flew into Madrid, and met my friend Nick, who had been studying in Pamplona. My flight was two hours late leaving Amsterdam, which meant there was no way we’d be able to catch the bus tickets Nick had already purchased. Of course.
The plan was to take a week and see Andalusia, the southern region of Spain, visiting Seville, Granada, and Valencia, in that order, then jump back to Madrid for a night to catch our flights home the next morning. We only had a day or two in each city, so compromises needed to be made; sleep went first.
After arriving in Seville at 10:30 at night, we found our hostel, checked in, took showers, and promptly went out. We went to be around two, and got up at eight for a full day of sightseeing, walking around the whole city until dinnertime, about 8:30. Then we went back out.
The logic here is simple and deadly: we have to leave in the morning, and it’s a five-hour bus ride, so why sleep now? Sleep on the bus.
Brilliant.
In fairness to my traveling companion, I would like to make clear that we did significant amounts of sightseeing, and our exploits were in no way confined to the nightlife of Andalusia. We had a delicate balance. It was probably good we only kept it up for a week.
The quote at the top of this post is true in more arenas of life than school. It’s the rationalization I give to myself when I go see a 14th century Spanish palace over sleeping in. It’s also my justification for when I ate churros con chocolate and relaxed in the park instead of going to a museum.
Generally, my go-to sacrifice is sleep, the theory being I can sleep all I want when I’m dead. However what I have learned from this summer and fall is that not seeing one more famous painting will ultimately pale in comparison to the night smoking shisha and drinking Turkish coffee with my friends. People too, can be missed just as fiercely as places, and I have come to rely and value the relationships I have forged much more that I appreciated visiting the Sphinx.
The solution: sleep on the bus while planning the next adventure.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Bokra, In-sha-allah
In the grand tradition of the Egyptians, where everything is "tomorrow, god-willing" my complete blog post will be up tomorrow. I felt it appropriate to channel the procrastinating spirit of foreign lands because that legitimizes my own slacking, and it ties in (loosely) with my blog subject.
Two things prevented my lack of a well-developed essay for today: I haven't been particularly inspired this week, and more immediately, I was caught up with a friend. He and I were chatting about culture and foreign travel (again a relevant tangent) and I made a value judgment to focus for the afternoon to focus on the person rather than the computer.
Check back tomorrow, there will be a more comprehensively written commentary on life and wandering.
Two things prevented my lack of a well-developed essay for today: I haven't been particularly inspired this week, and more immediately, I was caught up with a friend. He and I were chatting about culture and foreign travel (again a relevant tangent) and I made a value judgment to focus for the afternoon to focus on the person rather than the computer.
Check back tomorrow, there will be a more comprehensively written commentary on life and wandering.
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