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Published: November 19th 2010
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I spent two more days at Alexandria staying at the Schutz American School. I met two of the teachers, Penny and Josh, on couchsurfing. Their apartment style housing withing a larger school complex was such a wonderful refuge from the chaos, and their kindness and beer was much appreciated.
While in Alexandria I was approached by a young man, Tarook. I think he wanted someone to practice his English with, and we agreed to meet up the following night. During our conversation along the Corniche I was struck by what profoundly different visions of our future we had. When I look at the rest of my life I see limitless possibilities for travel, open access to the best schools in the world, opportunity to make a decent living doing interesting work, and relationships that can be whatever I make of them. More accurately, the only limit is myself and my ability to consistently make good decisions. His view of the future was very different. He was extremely intelligence, spoke and wrote English very well and obviously wanted to pursue a life of meaning. It was obvious though that he saw only obstacles: Egyptians have a very difficult time leaving the
country for work or travel, access to good jobs is very rare, and even if you can graduate from college many people are stuck in civil servant jobs making a minimal wage, relationships are dictated by what is sustainable for society as opposed to what is best for the individual. It was unsettling to see the discontent and frustration written on his face.
I ended up spending a week in Luxor. I found a great place to stay, the Venus Hotel. It had my four requirements: sheets on the bed that looked like they had been washed at least once, a fan, a shower with non brown water, and a toilet I could be sick on without hating my life. The rooftop bar, ridiculously nice staff, and $7 a night price was a nice added bonus.
One night while on the rooftop terrace nursing a Stella and overlooking the city I was approached by a 14 year old girl, Sohila from Cairo. She told me that I was the first person she had ever seen drink a beer. Mind=Blown. Afterwards we decided to play cards with her and her brother. She was extremely talkative and until she told
me how much she loved Edward from Twilight I thought she was pretty cool. Her brother who was 11 reminded me exactly of Joey, though since he didn't speak English I don't know what he was saying. He kept putting me in headlocks and poking me, though on several occasions i managed to slap the shit out of him...so that was good. When they left on monday they brought me a souvenir head of Ramses and Sohila burst into tears.
I became the unofficial ladies/technology man for all the men who work at the bazaar next to the Venus hotel. It started a few days after arriving when somebody came up to me and asked me to help write a text message, before I knew it I was helping somebody get a google account and set up skype and getting approached by other men who want help with texting. Apparently, from what i can gather, they try to meet women who are vacationing, then have mini-affairs with them....though i don't think they go very well because the men usually say something like "why you no answer! i call and write all day, why you no write me back!" I
tried to explain that in the west women don't respond well to aggressiveness or desperation, and sounding whiny won't get you anywhere, but I think the lesson was lost. I have spent a lot of time chuckling to myself at the thought of me helping others with technology and women. HA! Perhaps I have finally found a place where I am cool.
While there I saw most of the temples and sights. I actually liked the Valley of the Queens more than the valley of the Kings because there weren't nearly as many tourists and since many of the tombs were found relatively recently, the images on the walls were much better preserved. Apparently there is quite a bit of incest amongst the ancient royals. My favorite was a tomb to a woman who was Ramses wife/daughter/neice----I'll let you figure out how that is possible. The two best temples were Karnack, which was a monsterous 2 sq km compound of temples and ruins and the Ramesseum. The Ramesseum was awesome mainly because it was empty of tourists. When you walk in you get approached by local men whom I assume live in the village nearby. For a little Baksheesh
or tips they will show you all the cool spots and guide you through the "unauthorized" areas. There is something extremely invigorating about spending an afternoon climbing on an ancient abandoned ruin with an old fellah as your guide, especially if you are the only one there. The temples elicit a feeling of imagination and possibility unlike anything I have felt in a long time. They also make you feel like a speck of dust in the wind, and I can't help but think that the creators of these monuments assumed that they would last forever as monuments to their own power and the gods, but here we are a blink of an eye later and they have all collapsed and are being trudged on by middle aged German women and the cliched camera weilding Asian. Makes it hard to imagine doing anything of permanence with life.
The best day though was the Eid al Adha, but that deserves its own post.
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Brian
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Equations
I really enjoyed the entire paragraph about meeting Sohila. Especially the "Mind=Blown" equation. I'll save you the trouble of looking in two places, but the next post is also very fun. Don't you love how the rest of the world wants to marry into ours? And a suggestion: See if you can't make it a bit easier to follow these. As you edit them, they jump around in their order, and it gets confusing as to which ones came first. Stay safe, buddy.