Insert Witty Title Here

I was originally supposed to be in Egypt for 6 weeks. That was in July. It isn't August, so the schedule has slipped a little. Well, the schedule has slipped a lot...and then it slipped some more. When I first arrived to Egypt everyone asked me about Bush and Iraq...then a few weeks went by and all anybody wanted to ask me about was Obama...and then a few more weeks went by and I got to celebrate Obama's victory (there wasn't a person at work that didn't congratulate me the next day)...and then it was Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and then New Years...and Ramadan was thrown in there too. That is a lot of stuff to happen in what was supposed to be a short assignment.

The neighborhood has gotten a little rowdy in the last week, but I don't expect it to escalate to where it will be an issue in Alex. The major cities in the middle east have been having some protests, but Alex has managed to avoid everything so far. When your neighbors are Israel, the Gaza Strip, Libya, and Sudan you have to expect things to get bumpy once in a while. Reading about all the issues in the local English language newspaper definitely gives me a different "perspective" on how people see the issues of the day. I think this is where Fox News got its idea of "Fair and Balanced" from.

Since I have been here I have managed to take a few trips. In Thailand I was on shift and had a 7 days on, 3.5 days off work schedule, so I was able to get out of Pattaya quite a bit. I am one of the chiefs here in Alex and am working a regular 8-5, so the bigger trips are much harder to get time to do. Time off is not an option while on assignment, so I have been limited to trips that I can do in a weekend. Fortunately, there are a few sights that are weekend-able from Alex.

I haven't been good at keeping up with this blog, but I have been decent at posting pictures from any trips I take (as long as I take pictures of course). The main trips have been to Cairo a few times (pics), Sharm El Sheikh (beach resort on the Sinai), the pyramids in Giza and Saqqara (pics), and an oasis in Siwa (pics).

I think for this "back to posting" post I will just put up some pictures with some comments. There are quite a few pictures, so I hope you all have much better internet connections than I have here.

Hopefully you recognize these as the pyramids of Giza. A guidebook I saw had a quote from a local Egyptian about them which I think sums them up perfectly. "Very big. Very old." I was lucky enough to go during Ramadan, so it wasn't the tourist hell hole that some will describe. Because of the relative non-busy time we went we managed to get one of the few tickets to actually go inside the Great Pyramid. I channeled my inner Indiana Jones and climbed up the big tunnel and into the main chamber. I realized I was out of shape when all I wanted to see in the main chamber was someone selling water.

For those of you that haven't seen me in a while (i.e. everybody) this is me. I was even rocking my Spartans shirt to support the only Big Ten school in the state that made it to a bowl game. SNAP!

This is an Egyptian police officer on a camel. It is funny until you see the cop cars here. The camel would definitely outrun the best police car in the country. Side note, I didn't know how to drive a stick shift when I came to Egypt. All the rental cars in Egypt are stick shifts. Sticking to my overall motto of "I'll figure it out" I drove a stick in traffic for the first time in Cairo and Giza. I didn't even die. Sink or swim baby, sink or swim.

This is me with the Sphinx and one of the pyramids. The Sphinx is the Tom Cruise of global icons. You hear so much about it but in person all you can think about is how small it is. On the plus side, I don't think the Sphinx has lost its mind and joined a cult, so it has that going for it.

About 20 kilometers south of Giza is Saqqara (wiki). Saqqara is the home of the first pyramid. Unfortunately there are no maps in Egypt (that we could find at least). There are also no maps online of Egypt. There are also no directions online to find how to get from Giza to Saqqara. The week before I made the trip I saw a segment on CNN International on how tunnel diggers in Gaza were using Google Earth to tunnel under the border with Egypt and under houses so they could smuggle supplies into Gaza. I figured that if some teenagers could be so accurate with Google Earth to tunnel to a specific house, I could use it to figure out how to get to Saqqara. I greatly underestimated the skill of those tunnelers. It took us around 3 hours to find it...and it is a big ass pyramid that you can see from Giza. We knew we were a little lost when there were more donkeys on the road then cars...then we knew we were extremely lost when we were the only car on a flippin donkey super highway. The picture above is from the trip back from Saqqara on the road we should have taken. Date trees as far as you could see.

The two pictures above are from Khan el-Khalili, a big market in Cairo that winds though some back alleys. Lots of people, lots of pushy merchants, and very Egyptian. There is a big mosque in the background of the first pic.

Cairo and the Nile at night from the roof of our hotel.

Paul, me, and Tomi in Siwa. Paul is British, so I make fun of him for saying bollocks and other ridiculous British things. Tomi is from Nigeria, so we make fun of credit card scams. I am from America, so they make fun of me for Bush. Luckily they won't be able to use that one for much longer. From the mass of palm trees in the background you can tell this is the oasis. The people that discovered this place must have been very very happy...and very very thirsty.

This sums up Egypt quite well. We skipped this "Nice Tour".

Me and Tomi in the middle of the desert.

Egypt has lots of sand. Who knew?

Finally, a picture of me taking all of these pictures. I bought a DSLR before I went to Thailand and it is the 'bees knees' as an unnamed friend would say.

That is all for now. I promised Aunt Mary Ann that I would post, and I have fulfilled my commitment. My mom actually suggested asking if anybody had any questions about life here in Egypt (or Thailand or the Philippines for that matter) and I will be happy to answer any (well..some) questions if you ask in the comments. Of course, this is assuming anybody besides my mom actually looks at this thing.