Is it too late for a foreword?

Clicking over the photo will bring you to my flikr.com photocollection


Hey, everybody. I don't mean to mislead anyone. I am not in Egypt or England or anywhere else except in the heart depository, San Francisco. I have been back for more than 2 months, I think, and it's time to start updating this blog. I've had a lot of time to think about the things that I discovered about myself and the moments abroad that caused the catalysis in my life.

It's hard to write beyond the actual events that happened to me over there without it getting laborious, extremely personal, and probably dangerous for the government. (That is, the government of my soul, of which I am president for life, parole officer, and animal waste manager.) But I will endeavor to make a soulful account of the happenings in my life. I want to make it more interesting than a simple slideshow of the things that I saw, ate, and confronted with the five senses God gave me.

The vacation, I feel after all, is but a mirror of the journeys that we make on our own and in our souls. The stories are identical—tales of loneliness, happiness, sharing, caution, a taste for danger—what we do with our lives on the outside is merely our expression of our innermost desires and quests.

The experiences are parallel, for what happens to us out there and in the physical have an impact on our psyche, our souls, and the banks of our tales and wisdom processed and still to be mulled.

The person that actually goes on the journey on the outside is differentiated from the pilgrim who is moving through the less visceral aspects of life only on the level of censorship that we ourselves institute using the our physical bodies as barriers and masks to obscure full expression. Sometimes however, we censure even within, and no acreage ever gets covered substantially.

That said, it's time to start writing about what REALLY happened; to give meaning to a series of events that stretch not only from August 10th to September 11th (which are the dates of my departure and arrival on this particular vacation) but to life in general, using photos from the vacation as a seed that germinates and flowers with memories and insights into my life.

Coptic Cairo

Cairo is broken up into several parts, just like any city, really. Like here, in San Francisco, there is the Tenderloin, where I and a couple of crack addicts lihispanicsve. There's North Beach, which is the Italian quarter, and there are other ghettos like the Russian/Chinese ghetto (Richmond, not to be confused with Chinatown), there's the college student ghetto, there's the white yuppie ghetto, and then there's the Mission, where the latinos stay and tolerate the encroachment of their territory.

Back to Egypt. Coptic Cairo was one of the first places I visited. After having arrived at my Hostel, the Lialy at 4 in the morning and woke up at 9, raring to go, I got my ISIC card. This saved me tons of money since it gives students (and teachers) discounts--up to 50% in the sites like pyramids.

I walked a lot that morning, choosing to take in polluted, congested, and cloudless Cairo by foot. I walked about 5 large blocks until I gave up, had really no idea where I was going, and jumped into a cab. The cab drivers in Egypt are a crazy sort. You can't really tell in the following video, because I probably got into the most sober driver in all of Egypt, but they are phanatical about using their tooters!

There was one time when I was in miserable Dahab at around 4 in the morning looking for a hostel that I could afford, when our cab was on this long stretch of empty highway (which pretty much sums up Dahab) and the guy could not stop honking his horn. No joke. Not a soul in sight, not a car crossing our path, not a sheep or goat to make the constant petting of his tooter justified. And! here's the kicker. Nobody uses headlights there. Ask anyone. Sure, maybe when there's a truck or bus bigger than theirs, they will put on their headlights. But once they have passed each other, they go back off. Don't ask me. I was just a stranger there who could not speak Arabic enough to say ”Watch the F*%$ out!”



So after getting my ID card, I crossed a little foot bridge that went over the Nile and after having lunch on one of those floating restaurants that you see below, I walked over to Coptic Cairo. Not before, however, getting mildly lost (a novelty for me still, at that time) and wandering into the poorer quarters of Egypt with dusty streets, mangy dogs, people conducting domestic business in the open air. I think I saw a goat wandering around, too.



I didn't take any photos, sorry, but I don't really like calling attention to myself by calling attention to people as if they were some sort of attraction. Suffice it to say, though, that they were kids just as any kids should be—playing in the streets and running around in flip flops, some barefoot, wearing their white kaftans (is that what they're called?).

I didn't need to break out my camera, however, to be singled out and gawked at. But still, I would just the same avoid stopping to look at people and take pictures of them going about their business as if to say that in my world, I did the same thing but not in such squalid conditions.

Finally, I got to Coptic Cairo at about noon, which is wonderful on your first day in a country that is so dry that even though it’s 101°F, you’re not sweating as much as you logically should. You do learn to walk a little slower and appreciate a whisper of wind against the back of your neck.

But the area was nice with some shady trees by the roadside. It was really just a couple of streets with historic churches, mosques, and Jewish temples lined up one after another. Some of them, at least the Church of St George, boasts being the oldest Church in Egypt.









I didn't get as educated as I should have. There were guided tours of other churches, which I declined, but I was just content to look around and marvel at the architecture and the interior. The photos you see above are of St George. Notice the relief of the Saint slaying the dragon. In one part of the church, there were artifacts that showcased the methods of torture employed by the Christians during the inquisition or their campaigns into Africa. Quite gruesome.

Above is the interior, which is quite beautiful, with terribly high ceilings and great stained glass windows that were amazing against the rich dark wood of the church. There was no tour of this place, and apparently, it’s a church rarely used, since it’s so old.