The other side...

I am sitting here at my desk looking out the window to the desert, (it is a beautiful cool sunny day outside), enjoying the view and trying my best to remember what has filled the hours of my last week. Apparently this has become a once a week blog :-), well at least I am doing that much! I have some photos on my camera that I need to download as well. I was waiting until I got around to taking some more, but I have a feeling that I should go ahead and post some :-). So hopefully I can do that in the next few days.
What inspired this post was a statement made yesterday by a man I was interviewing about an NGO he started with a group of friends. He said something along the lines of when public speaking or speaking in front of a group there is a pressure to present your personal experiences in such a way that the audience will relate, or in an orderly process, but the truth of it is, the process is usually not orderly whether you are developing an NGO, or living day to day. So while the previous posts have been filled with stories of adventures and experiences, I feel the need to add a disclaimer that not all of my life here is portrayed in these posts. It is difficult to remember the tough moments once they have passed, or the fleeting thoughts of homesickness or lack of patience with cultural differences and miscommunications. So while this blog may make the grass here appear greener, this may not always be the case. The last few years I have been trying to learn that happiness/contentness is a state of mind you choose, not something you happen to fall into, and it is by God's grace we can choose this. And I am happy here :-).
Spring break begins this weekend. I will be working the first part of the week, but I think I will run away to the Red Sea for a few days to see if I can squeeze a dive or two in and relax on the sunny beach (my apologies to all of you who are still up to your eyeballs in snow ;-).
Since this post has been more my thoughts, than experiences I will leave you with this short story...the other day, after returning to Maadi (the area of town I live in) from a meeting downtown I stopped by RadioShak to pick up a powerstrip for my computer. After an interesting Arabic lesson with the salesman in which I learned the difference between mooza (banana) and moozah (pretty girl) (much to the anger and dismay of Sam), I was walking home and passed two boys 11-12 years old on the street. As they walked by me they grabbed ahold of the jacket in my hand and pulled it. I held onto it, but it made me so mad that I turned to run after them, yelling AYB ALEEK (where is your shame) at the top of my lungs, for those of you who have heard me yell, yes I am sure the entire 10 block radius heard me. People stopped to watch as I am sure it was a funny show to see a foreign girl running after two young boys. A man down the street stopped the boys, but at this point I had given up running in dress shoes and returned towards home. Another man stopped in his car to apologize to me for what the boys had done. I laughed at this experience as I retold it to Sam later, but he was horrified that this had happened in such a nice neighborhood. With a puzzled look on his face he asked, "how do all these things happen to you?". I guess I should have put a warning label on myself, "prone to unusual trying experiences and adventures". LOL! Please no worries...I am safe(not that I ever really felt in danger)! I made it home without any other adventures for the day.
I guess that is all for today! Thanks to you who are my faithful readers. I hope this blog is a glimpse of life outside the US.