Dec. 25, Dahab, Egypt

Hello. It's a sunny day in Dahab, Egypt, a small backpacker resort on the Red Sea Coast of the Sinai Peninsula. This is where I chose to spend my winter holiday. Dahab is known for affordability (about $6 per night at a backpacker hotel). I'm enjoying the sunshine. The snorkeling is fantastic, and there are a lot of interesting travelers - from all over Europe, Australia and Canada. Strangely, Americans are conspicuously absent, so everyone makes a fuss when I say I'm from America, and they refer to me thereafter as "Jon the American." I've been on two outings since my arrival last Thursday night. One day I went on a desert trek out to hike in some Canyons (very reminiscent of places I visited in Utah with my dad), and visit an oasis where Beduins have a little settlement. Bedouins are the descendents of desert nomads who do not really belong to any nation. They are given their own parcels of land where they are allowed to live in their traditional ways, kind of like American Indian reservations. We had lunch served to us by Beduoins. It was some kind of mildly seasons meatballs, potatoes, cucumber-tomato salad, and rice. It was pretty good. The other outing was to a different Beduoin settlement called "Ras Abu Galum," this one up the coastline beyond road access. You have to take camels to get there. The camel ride was fun. The way up was much better than the way back because a boy fixed my saddle for me so that I could ride comfortably. On the way back they were in a hurry so I just had to jump on a camel and go. Very bumpy, very rough. I actually got down and walked for the last half mile. Both of these trips were in the company of a French lady I met who lives and teaches in Alexandria. She didn't speak much English, and I speak no French, but we were both traveling alone and so we sort of looked out for each other. The snorkeling at Ras Abu Galum was really great. I saw fish of every color of the rainbow, and some amazing ones like "lion fish" that have a "mane" of white and black patterned skinny fins that come out of it. I wish I had taken some money to Ras Abu Galum because there were children there selling trinkets, and they just didn't understand that I had no money. They wanted to sell me something in the worst way - even the smallest price for the littlest little bead bangle... and finally one exasperated little boy just gave me a bracelette and said "Present - no money - no money." I felt funny accepting a present from this little kid with no shoes, living in a shack. The French lady went back to Alexandria the day before yesterday. I'm meeting other people every day. I met a girl from Saitama-ken (Japan) and talked to her for a while in Japanese. Also met a fellow named Robbin from Edmunton Canada, Swiss carpenter named Manwell, and a Dutch journalist lady named Jovanna. Everyone, of course, is just passing through, but it's kind of fun.

I have had number of conversations with Egyptians here. Many of them speak good English. English is required in their schools. Usually if you talk for more than 10 minutes, they will bring up the topic of Islam and ask me if I have read the Quran. You also see a lot of men with black and blue bumps on their foreheads from hitting their heads on the ground when they pray. They all assume that nobody from the west takes any religion seriously. Of course all they see here is tourists interested in having fun. I can't get them to even consider that there is more than one way to look at spiritual truth. I have no interest in getting into debates about which holy book is the truth. How tiresome. These conversations do tend to take the wind out of my sails with regards to learning Arabic. But I made a connection with a guy here in Dahab whose father was Egyptian and mother was English. He's fluent in both languages and gives lessons at a very reasonable rate, so I'm meeting with him for some practice. I find the language interesting, still.

I'm not sure how I'm going to spend the rest of my Christmas day. There is a place here advertising Christmas Turkey Dinner As Good As Mother Make. I might go for pizza instead. I'm hoping that my friends from Kuwait will come through in the next day or two. They're heading from here to Luxor where there are many ancient tombs and monuments, and I'll probably join them for a few days. Meanwhile, I'm managing to pass the time away on leisurely breakfasts, afternoon walks and catching up on some reading. There are a bunch of very tame, gentle cats living in the hotel where I'm staying. There's a space under the door to my room, and they just squirm through there, come right in and make themselves at home on my bed. They're good company. I might venture into one of the bars for drink or a game of pool. I'm not very good at shooting pool, but people are so laid back here I don't think it matters much.

I'm not always in the mood to be a reporter, so the blog entries, as you see, are less frequent. But I am getting along okay. It will soon be 2008 and I will already be through the first quarter of my contract period in Kuwait. That's a good thing! : )

my exciting life in an exotic faraway land

I’ve been walking to school for about a month now. The temperature cooled enough for walking, and in the past week it is actually chilly on some mornings. On the way, I walk on litter-strewn sidewalk, through litter-strewn sandy areas, and often right out on the litter-strewn streets. Cars park on the sidewalks and the people scurry in the streets trying not to get hit. I go past about a half dozen garbage bins where I get to see the mangy cats hanging around. There is garbage everywhere, so the cats have plenty of places to search for food scraps. While I walk, I pass concrete buildings, a shisha (smoke) bar, a lot of barber shops, tailors, and dry-cleaners. A sandy soccer field. At night it will be full of guys playing. Little “bakala” convenience stores. Some actual trees - mostly stocky palm trees with a lot of dead fronds hanging down, and many dead tree trunks with no green on them at all. Car mechanic shops that take over the sidewalk and half the street, so you have really have to walk to the middle of the street to get past them. All the taxi drivers beep their horns at you to see if you want a ride. By the time I get to school my shoes get white with dust. The building is designed like an open-air complex that you might find in Florida. I climb stairs to the third floor but here they call it the second floor because the ground floor does not count. The first thing I do is open the windows or turn on the air conditioning depending on the temperature outside. There are eight periods in our school day. I have a lot of planning periods, but for some reason it’s hard for me to get everything done in those in-between times. I’m not very efficient with my time, which makes teaching a very hard job.

Thursday we took a field trip to the Kuwait National Museum. We had about 24 kids and five staff packed into a mini-bus. The first section was set up like a wax museum where visitors could look at scenes from Kuwait before the discovery of oil. It wasn’t bad. The kids, of course, ignored the guide’s explanations, just raced through it, and complained how bored they were. Then we went to a planetarium. I enjoyed the planetarium the most. I love looking at stars. The third section was an archeological display of artifacts collected from Falaika Island, now largely uninhabited, but in ancient times a population center. I didn’t really get to look around there very much because another teacher and I had to deal with a kid who was picking fights and misbehaving. After the museum visit, we went to McDonalds for lunch. There’s a massive McDonald’s on the Gulf Road, right on the beach. This was the best part of the field trip for the kids. Next to McDonalds’s, some entepreneur has set up an inflatable mountain park where kids can pay some money and go bounce around. They loved that.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the teaching assistants. She put me on the spot by asking me about how I like Kuwait. I stuttered something about every day being different. I asked her about her hijab. That’s the name of the head cover that women wear. It’s not the same as the black veil that conservative Muslim women wear - that’s called abaya or burga. With the hijab, you can see the woman’s face, you just can’t see her hair. Once a woman puts on a hijab, she can never appear in public again without it. They’re big on permanent decisions in Islam… another example is that if you become a Muslim and then change your mind, you will be executed. Fun religion, huh? Anyhow, I asked her about how long she’d had her hijab. She said she put it on after she had her first baby. She’s from a very liberal family and she’s the only one wearing a hijab. She said it was a very personal decision, and she had been wanting to do it for a long time. I commented that it must be convenient not having to worry about what your hair looks like. She said that actually it is more of a challenge to look nice because your face or your figure show up more. I guess it makes sense.

McDonalds is immensely popular here. They import workers from the Philipines to work behind the counter. I tried to tip one of them but she refused. It must be against the rules. I thought I was past my stomach bug, and I was hungry. I ordered a “Big and Tasty” meal. That was a mistake. But McDonald’s was the highlight of the field trip for all the kids.

I’ve gotten a couple emails from people back home telling me to be careful what I say. I went into an international teacher’s bulletin board to see if there was in “inside scoop” about the teacher who is in jail for letting her kids call a teddy bear “Mohammed.” Apparently she is a wonderful teacher, very dedicated. Somebody is claiming that a school secretary got mad at her for some petty thing and pressed charges which led to this whole thing. That makes perfect sense. The Islamic world is a mine field. I’m not the most prudent person in the world, and I just hope and pray that I don’t step on anybody’s toes while I’m here. One thing is for sure, there is no appeal to common sense. You just have to play by the rules. My friend teases me that when the guy gets going during Friday sermon and is screaming and yelling at everyone, he’s really speaking directly to ME, and he‘s saying, “You chose to come to this country, so shut up and deal with it!”

Well I do have two trips planned - one to the Sinai for Christmas, and the other to the Malabar Coast of India for National Independence Day vacation in February (they take off a whole week!). Both trips will be solo.

Meanwhile, if I don’t get around to posting very many entries on my blog here, it may be that I have the stuck-in-Kuwait blues, but I will respond to any personal emails.

Maasalama!