Egypt table of contents

August 31, 2008

Just click on the title below to go to the post you would like to read. Some of them have links within them to their corresponding photos on my photoblog, and some of them also have links to other websites for more info.

1. Arriving in Egypt
2. First morning in Cairo--going to Alex
3. A spiritual excavation
4. The Nile River
5. Death Cab for Cutie
6. Al-Azhar Park
7. The Pyramids!!!
8. Garbage City
9. "I no bush you buy!"
10. Red Sea Rising

Arriving in Egypt

A few days before I left Marseille, I made a confession to KO over dinner: despite my having had traveled the world over and living in two Muslim countries, I was nervous about arriving in Cairo by myself. Add all the terrible stories about Egyptian taxi drivers to my notorious ability to land myself in sticky situations time and again...it seemed like a recipe for disaster when traveling through Cairo by myself in a taxi to arrive at KO's apartment.

She laughed and assured me that I would be fine. She'd ordered a meet-n-greet service to pick me up right at the gate in the airport, get me through passport control, and drive me straight to her place. They'd proven themselves reliable many times over, and she trusted them to treat me with respect.

"You'll be fine." It never crossed our minds to worry about HER.

Two days later, she flew from Marseille to Rome to Cairo. That same day, I was stuck on a TGV train that was supposed to take three hours to return to Paris and instead took six. My normal "trouble finds me" self was not surprised. I figured it was a precursor of what was to come the next day, when I would fly from Paris to Cairo.

I woke up the next morning to my cell phone shrilling me out of my first good night's sleep in weeks...it wasn't even 7am. When I saw who was calling and at what time, I thought something might be wrong.

"bettercountry--it's the Chef. (My leader from the summer.) Have you heard from KO?"
"No, why?" Fearful butterflies in the stomach.
"She didn't show up in Cairo. No one has heard from her."

He proceeded to ask me questions as my mind shot through how many hours had passed since she was supposed to have arrived, all the possibilities of what could have happened, and that I was supposed to be boarding a plane in a few short hours to go BE with her. I was sure that she had fallen aslep during her layover in Rome and missed her connecting flight...we'd both been so utterly exhausted beyond being coherent, and she had not slept at all during her last two nights in Marseille.

Two hours later, the Chef called me back to let me know she'd shown up at the American Embassy in Cairo and she was safe. It was all he knew, so it was all he told me. I would have to wait until that night when I arrived myself to hear the whole story. Needless to say, my fears about arriving in Cairo by myself were not eased. I knew my nerves would not calm down until I could see KO and hug her neck, knowing that we were both fully safe and together again.

Just as she had assured me, the meet-n-greet was there at the gate, holding a sign with my name completely misspelled. It made me smile. Mohammed spoke English and was very polite, guiding me straight over to the passport control area. I eyed the long lines and thought, "Great...another hour tacked on until I see KO." Mohammed asked for my passport, showed it to some police, and breezed us past all the lines to a window that had no line extending from it. I paid my money, they put in the visa sticker and we walked on through. I'd hardly had time to blink.

Mohammed still leading the way, we went over to baggage claim. I pointed out my suitcase and he reached down and picked it up for me, pulling it along so I just had to follow him like a shadow as he walked over to a money exchange. He had quietly placed me into a taxi van before I had any time to feel nervous or excited about being in Egypt. Within less than a half an hour, I was hugging KO's weary little neck.

We plopped down on the couches and she proceeded to tell me about her ordeal. She'd arranged for the meet-n-greet to pick me up...something no one had done for her. Her bosses assumed that she knew her way around Cairo and she'd be fine to get herself home. She assumed that someone had always picked her up before and surely, since she was arriving at 2:30am, no one would expect a single woman to get herself home alone at that hour in Cairo. Two bad assumptions equaled a bad night for KO.

With no meet-n-greet to whisk her to the front of the line at passport control, she had to wait the hour that it took for the herds to move through it. When she'd finally gotten her visa and her luggage, it was past 3:30am...and no one was there to pick her up. She sat in the airport and waited an hour while annoying taxi men were ickyflirty with her. After an hour, she decided to get some Egyptian money from the ATM, pick the least flirty taxi driver, and make her way towards a friend's house.

While standing at the ATM, some guy ran by, grabbed her card from her hand and ran off. She was so exhausted--remember, she's on her third night straight of no sleep--that she didn't react quick enough to stop him. She looked down at the 20 pounds ($5) in her hands and hoped it'd be enough to get her a taxi to a friend's house.

She pondered through which friend's house to go to. She'd never been to the apartment she and I would be staying at for our two weeks there, and she didn't even have the address for it written down. Several of her friends had moved in the year she had been gone and she didn't know how to get to their new places. The only friend she could remember how to get to was Foxy. Foxy's it was.

When she arrived to Foxy's, the driver threw a fit that KO had only given him 20 pounds, even though that's the price she'd told him before she'd gotten into the taxi. He kept screaming at her for her to give him 30, and she--KO, who never shows a negative emotion ever--declared that she didn't have 30, she'd been robbed. She didn't have any more money. She walked away to him screaming at her.

Poor KO. She banged on Foxy's door with all her might, to no avail, there was no answer. It was 6am, she hadn't slept in three days, she knew people had to be worried about her, and she had no money to get anywhere else. She had no money or phone to call anyone. And all she wanted to do was curl up on the floor and sleep. Instead, she went outside, sat on the curb and began to sob.

Some taxi drivers eyed her for awhile, this poor little red-haired, white skinned, blue eyed foreign woman in Cairo, sobbing on a curb at 6am. I think even the creepiest of taxi drivers couldn't have been ickyflirty to her at that moment. They asked her what was wrong and she told them her whole story.

"You should go to the American embassy. They'll help you."
"I DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY!!!" She exclaimed, frustrated that she had no way to get to the place they had suggested that could help her. She must have been truly pitiful at that moment, because they offered to take her for free.

And so KO ended up at the American embassy, where they sent an email out for her to let people know where she was and to please come pick her up.

Well...while I could imagine that happening to me, I'd never imagined KO going through it. She's so sweet and pleasant natured that it really didn't phase her at all. After a good bit of sleep, she was able to laugh at the whole thing. I sat on the couch, looking at her, thinking about the next 10 days to come in Egypt.

Would it all be as exciting as simply arriving had been? Hopefully not as traumatic, causing people in four different countries to go into a panic. Turns out, it did involve some more Mohammeds, some more scary taxi drivers as well as some nice ones, more getting lost, but also some of the most memorable moments of my life, with one of my dearest friends. Stayed tuned...

First morning in Cairo--going to Alex

September 1, 2008

Waking up my first morning in Egypt was a little rough. I had arrived exhausted beyond comprehension--the summer had quite taken it out of me, and one of my main purposes for this vacation was to rest. KO and I had stayed up late while she recounted her story, and so I didn't get to bed until after midnight. And I slept on the couch in the living room.

Where the air-conditioning didn't work.
And the fan didn't appear to work either.

I woke up with the call to prayer hot, tired, and remembering life in the UAE. But...I was in Egypt! I was going to enjoy every minute! So I wandered into the kitchen to make coffee, and afterwards redeemed those morning hours by journaling and reading a little bit.

KO and I left the house bright and early, because I had a train to catch! I hadn't even seen any of Cairo yet, what with arriving at nearly 11pm, but I had planned on getting out of town for my first few days to just rest a little bit up at the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria. At first, I regetted that decision somewhat, mainly because I wanted to spend more time with KO...but once I got to Alex, I was so glad I'd planned it that way.

KO and I took a taxi to the metro. (Yes, even Cairo has a metro. The signs have a big, English 'M' like the signs here in Paris, and then the word 'metro' is written in Arabic underneath. Ha.) It wasn't underground, like most metros I've ridden, but above ground...like a train. Hmmm. When we got to the platform, she walked us all the way to a very far end, instead of waiting in the middle. All the while, we're gathering more stares as we walk along. I figured it was because we stood out as foreigners.

The metro arrives and we climb on, and I understand why everyone is staring. There's a women only car--that was at the opposite end of the platform from where we'd gotten on. We'd been walking further and further away from it, and then climbed into a men's car. Oops.

After an awkward metro ride, we arrived at the train station. My ticket was completely in Arabic, so there was no way I could make sense of the different sets of numbers. The only two I understood were the date and time...but the difference between the platform number, train number, car number, and seat number--forget about it. Problem was, KO'd been speaking Moroccan Arabic for the last year, which is really different than Egyptian Arabic, and she couldn't make much sense of the words either. She was great at asking for help, though, and we finally found a nice business man who spoke English, and he made sure I got onto the right train, in the right car, and that I knew which seat was mine. KO handed me a cell phone, hugged me, and showed me where she'd meet me back there at the train station in a few days.

I was taking off on my own in Egypt! Wowzah!

There isn't much to tell from my three days in Alex. I reconnected with old friends, which was wonderful. I slept--ALOT. I'm talking naps every afternoon and 10-11 hours each night. We went to the Corniche (the road along the beach) one night to watch the sunset and ate an Egyptian dish called 'kosheri' in the park. (It was made of pasta, some tomato sauce, fried onions and I think a little bit of rice. It was good.) We got up one morning and sat at Starbucks out on the Corniche again. Nothing too touristy, just lots of catching up with my friends and resting. It was perfect.

Click HERE for pictures of the sunset over Alexandria.

They put me back on the train, where I stared out the window for three hours, just taking in the plush, green delta. It gave me some time to begin to fully process the summer and all that had happened. Little did I know at that point, that the next two weeks would be such a whirlwind that I wouldn't even have time to blog about my time in Egypt (much less the summer) until I'd been back in Paris for a week!

Stay tuned for more: a boat ride on the Nile, pyramids, Coptic cave churches, taxi ride adventures, etc...

a spiritual excavation

August 26, 2008

Two weeks ago, I went to Alexandria, Egypt for a few days. Alexandria was once home to the world's most famous library and to a lighthouse that was one of the seven wonders of the world. It was the home of Cleopatra. It was so great a city that Alexander the Great named it, and no other city in his kingdom, after himself. But none of this can be seen in the current Alexandria. All of that history has disappeared...or been covered up.

Many believe it is still there, deep in the ground, hemmed in by layers of concrete foundations that are the base of twenty-story apartment buildings that are now the home to millions of people. Scuba divers who are willing can see a statue head of Cleopatra way off the coast. Those of us with imagination can walk along the Corniche, looking out at the Mediterranean Sea and dream up what that city had once been like. We can never fully know. But I feel like I got a taste that made me hungry to know more.

One of the major lessons I learned this summer is much like Alexandria.

There is a richness, a depth to God's Word and to knowing Him that I fathom will never be fully discovered by one person in their lifetime. We can dig and search and excavate, unearthing some many marvelous wonders. But the full glory remains hidden. We only get a taste that makes us hungry to know more.

Before this summer, I was overwhelmed by prayer. We are told to pray for the peace of J-town, pray for our enemies, pray for our leaders, ask for wisdom, ask for our needs, confess our sins, praise Him, commit our way to Him...so many things to do in prayer! There are so many things to do in prayer that I often become overwhelmed into immobility and therefore find myself not praying at all. And that is just prayer. When I begin to consider the myriad of lessons I can learn from His word, again I am overwhelmed. Go beyond that to attempt to KNOW Him...I understand why so often I just sit still, doing nothing. Because I know not where to start in order to do something.

And so this summer, because I was so overwhelmed into a state of doing nothing...God picked me up out of my frozen state of immobility and placed me an environment of learning. I learned about prayer. I learned about the Word. I learned about Him. I learned that there is a plethora of lessons in His word that I have never even begun to consider: suffering, persecution, His protection, mercy, and favor, His patience, that running the race to win means discipline, what the Spirit-filled life looks like, the importance of the Trinity, the cross, and the return of Christ.

Alexandria was the centerpiece of the world's glory for a short moment in time. Walking among its lost history reminded me there is an abundance of digging to be done to know the Lord, whose history will never be lost. His glory will never be hidden. This summer, I tasted and saw that the Lord is good. Not just in Alex, not just in Marseille, but in my heart.

the nile river

September 1, 2008

Have you ever thought about the Nile? If so...what do you picture when you think of it? Do you picture it from Biblical times or in modern days? Dirty or clean? What color is the water? What do the banks look like? Are there boats on it? If so, what kind?

I'm not sure if I pictured the Nile before I saw it. What took me by surprise was that it, for the most part, looked exactly as I thought it should look like. I didn't have a reaction of, "I've pictured this in my mind and it looks just like I've pictured it." It was more like, "From what I've read in the Bible, this is what it should look like--just a little more modern. Wow."

KO and I rode along the Corniche (a road that usually goes along beaches, and in Cairo, goes along the Nile), on our way to meet up with friends. It was really my first real view of Cairo. But because we were riding alongside the Nile, I looked at it instead of the city. I was surprised to see the most modern buildings in Cairo, as well as skyscrapers were built right alongside the river. That I was not expecting.

But the lush green reeds along its banks...just as it should be.
The neighborhoods on both sides of it filled with green trees and foliage, despite Cairo being on the edge of the desert...just as it should be.
Quiet old boats with large sails drifting down the water at sunset...just as it should be.

We met up with our friends and all 12 of us boarded a boat called a felucca--a traditional Egyptian wooden sailboat. We had arrived right at dusk, and got to watch the sunset behind the buildings that line the Nile as we drifted along quietly on the water. For two hours, we just sailed along, barely noticing that we were moving, all of us having different conversations in small little pairs.

KO, who'd ridden a felucca many times during her life in Cairo, was sitting with me at one point. I looked out at the reeds that seemed to wave across the water to me. I imagined Moses' little basket stuck there, and him crying for someone to come get him out. KO and I leaned over and looked down at the water that was hitting the boat. "Can you imagine THIS turned completely to blood? (Exodus 7:14-21) Or filled with frogs? (Exodus 8)" I asked her. My imagination was swirling. It was my first time to be in a place from Scripture where God had done such miracles.

It was a wonderful, quiet night. So relaxing. So wonderful. If I lived in Cairo, I think riding in a felucca would be one of my happy places.

Interesting that the most peaceful two hours of my entire time in Egypt should be directly followed by the most terrifying hour. Maybe it was just a reflection of the Nile: green life-giving river that flows alongside the dry death-sands of the desert.

Click HERE for photos.

Death Cab for Cutie

September 2, 2008

Most people know me to be a pretty bold person. They are therefore surprised when they encounter my quirky fears.

I am afraid of birds, most especially pigeons.
I am afraid of walking across bridges where I can see through the slats to the water underneath.
I am terrified of crickets.
I am afraid of/untrusting of any kind of tram/trolley/lift that is held up by wires that could become disconnected quite easily.
I have a healthy respect of heights (also known as fear of heights).
I am scared of being in a car crash.

I think that's most of my fears...listed right there for you. I try not to allow them to limit me from enjoying life to the fullest. I will walk across the Pont des Arts in Paris (a wooden bridge)--albeit rather quickly. I will go up high towers, although I have to confess that I have not gone to the very top of the Eiffel Tower and have ZERO desire to. Really--can the view be that different from the second platform? I don't care to find out. The view was nice enough for me.

Anyway...back to Egypt. One of my fears that some of you may know (Lanola) and some of you may not (H & L) is that I can get very anxious when riding in a car, fearing that whoever is driving is going too fast and won't be able to brake soon enough to avoid hitting the person in front of us...or that the person BEHIND us will hit us into the person in front of us. There are two easy explanations for this fear: I was in a car accident in college where the guy behind me hit me, at 55mph, into the car in front of me, and well...let's just blame all of Portuguese drivers during my two years there for escalating my fear to where it stands now.

Let's just be clear before I start my little story: People outside of America do not drive like Americans.

After the felucca ride, KO, A&A, and I climbed into a taxi to get back to A&A's apartment. I was sandwhiched in the middle of the back seat, much to my comfort. The front seat is too close for my visual comfort, and next to either window in the back seat doesn't allow for any padding should we be hit from the side. I know...I need help.

I'm realizing now that I should have blogged this story that night because it's all kind of foggy in my memory. I remember this crazy taxi cab driver going much faster than his Egyptian 200 year old car could handle, weaving in and out of traffic and therefore scaring me to death. I remember that none of the wheels felt like they were fully attached...and our concerns were confirmed when other cars kept pulling up beside us (if they could keep up with the insane speed and weaving) to point out that there were problems with the wheels. I remember it being bad enough that the other girls were concerned for our safety...and they ride in Egyptian taxis all the time.

But mostly I remember wanting to title my blog post, should I live to write it, "Death Cab for Cutie," and keeping the girls in stitches because of it. I lived to write it...and now I have nothing to say. Egyptian taxi rides are adventerous, if nothing else.

Al-Azhar Park

September 3, 2008

It is a massive understatement to say that I had an eventful summer. It dawned on me only today that one of the reasons that I didn't journal everything while it was happening was that I didn't have time to mentally process all that was happening. So I wrote a list of things to journal about once I had time to think it all through. While in Egypt, I began thinking about the things on that list, and now that I'm back in Paris, I've been attempting to catch up on the journal.

Today I wrote seven pages about spiritual warfare...and think I could still write more if I sat still long enough to allow my thoughts to go there. And now that I have a few minutes to write another Egypt post, it is interesting that it's time to write about Al-Azhar Park, when my mind is filled with thoughts about the spiritual warfare that comes with Islam.

Al-Azhar is a gorgeous green park perched up on a hill in the middle of Cairo--so that you can see the brown city all around in every direction. I can't wait to post the pictures on the photoblog for you to see the things my eyes took in that evening.

The overwhelming MASS that is Cairo, Egypt.
The contrast of lush green against desert brown.
The millions of minarets.
The many Muslims we saw...modern couples, fundamentalist couples. One man in white with his four wives in black. A wedding. Children flying kites. Nearly all of them amazed by us, the foreigners, walking through their park.

As the sun lowered and I was snapping some phenomenal photos of the sunset with minarets, the most eerie sound began to bellow. At first it was just one voice, "Alllllllllllllaaaaah akbar!" And then one minaret after another picked up the noise and began to broadcast their sound. I had thought it was an eerie sound in the UAE when I could hear the 5 mosques around my house announce the call to prayer simultaneously, but not in unison.

I'd never heard anything like the sound at Al-Azhar, though. I couldn't began to number how many mosques there are in Cairo, but it seemed we could hear every single one...none of them syncranized with any of the others.

A cacophony of demonic noise screaming out into the night to come be deceived.

I switched my camera to video to record the sound, so I could post it here. As I scanned the park, I was amazed. NO ONE WAS PRAYING. Not a single person kneeled to the ground. I was so used to seeing people pray in the street in the UAE, and had even seen it up in Alexandria, I expected to see it there in the park. I especially expected to see the fundamentalists kneeling. Nope. No one.

A covered woman approached us and asked if she could take our picture with her son. She sort of snapped me out of my surprise at the Islam that surrounded me and brought me back around to the Islam that I must always keep in front of me, lest I grow hardened: I must look at the person, at the MUSLIM, and not at Islam...the great deception of the enemy.

After we said goodbye to her, we went to make our exit out of the park...only to be stopped several more times for more photographs. We ended up talking with one family for over an hour. (Can you imagine their amazement that four Americans were in Cairo, and spoke various levels of Arabic? I love watching people's faces whenever they realize that KO--a red headed, blue eyed woman--speaks Arabic quite well.) Since my Arabic consists of just words that I can only put into two-year-old-fashioned phrases, but my understanding is much higher, I listened alot. And had my picture taken more in one hour than probably my whole life combined.

After a summer of wading through some of the fiercest spiritual warfare of my life, and an hour after listening to an audible reminder that the enemy is real and has a hold on North Africa--even if they don't kneel to it in public--I was kissing the faces of women I'd just met but already loved deeply. Lord help me, for how I do love Muslims. If it hadn't been seared into my heart already throughout the summer, my evening in Al-Azhar Park was just further evidence.
Click HERE, HERE, and HERE for more photos.

The Pyramids!!!

September 9, 2008

KO hired a driver for us to take us to the pyramids, through Garbage City, and to the Coptic cave churches. We knew it would be a full day, but man oh man was I excited about it! There just seems to be something about the pyramids (and the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal) that makes you feel like a REAL world traveler. I was ready to see the only remaining ancient world wonder.

I did go to the pyramids, however, with low expectations. I figured that they probably would look just like what they look like in the photos: a bunch of big rocks piled into the shape of a pyramid. And guess what? That's what they look like. I thought that they probably wouldn't be all that awe-inspiring to me, but a simple must-see. And, if they WERE awe-inspiring, with my low expectations, I had nowhere to go but up when I did see them.

Our driver gave us a fascinating history of various buildings and places in Cairo as we drove through on our way to the pyramids. I listened to alot of it, but didn't absorb very much. I think I was just enthralled with the city. We stopped on the way there at a bridge over the Nile, so we could see the spot where Moses was found in his basket as a baby.

We arrived to the pyramids, where our driver dropped us off at a look-out spot far away from the actual pyramids. It was there that the jumping madness took place. And the four of us discussed how funny camels are. And we pretended to walk like an Egyptian... Mr. Driver then took us back down to the pyramids, where he dropped us off and told us he'd wait for us at the Pizza Hut. At the Pizza Hut? Believe or not, I knew what he was talking about--I'd seen pictures of the Pizza Hut that is across from the pyramids. Globalization is a little crazy sometimes! The picture is taken from inside the Pizza Hut, looking out at the pyramids.
Walking around the actual pyramids and taking them in...It was fun. I'm glad I went. It's definitely something to do/see in one's lifetime, if you're gonna be a true sojourner. The rocks are big. The rocks are old. I didn't know that there are over 100 pyramids in Egypt. I didn't know how cool the Sphinx looks up close. I couldn't get good photos for all the tourists.

That's really about all I have to tell about the pyramids. Impressive, huh? :)
Click HERE for more photos.

Garbage City

September 9, 2008

After we left the pyramids, we drove through the City of the Dead. It is basically a cemetery. The thing that makes it different, however, is that people LIVE there, hired to guard the tombs. It was interesting. You can read about it (with pictures) HERE.

From there, we drove on to Garbage City. Yes, it smelled terrible, even with the windows rolled up in the car. It did not smell as bad as the Musuem of the Sewers here in Paris. Garbage City is the main garbage disposal system of Cairo. The men who live there go out on donkey carts throughout the city, collect the trash, and bring it back to this neighborhood where they live. The women and children sort it in a very organized system, and then recyle nearly ALL of it. The biodegradable stuff is given to feed the donkeys and pigs of Garbage City, and the other things (plastic, glass, paper, etc) is used to make things they can sell to make their living.

Because it is a life that is considered unclean, 90% of the people who live in Garbage City are not Muslim, but Coptic Christian. It was incredibly humbling to see these Egyptian brothers and sisters JOYFULLY making their life among the rubbish. I just couldn't believe it when I saw the joy on their faces. It seems that they understand enduring hardship for the sake of God's glory in a way that I don't know I will ever grasp.

I watched the following two videos on youtube and were blown away. They're well worth the time to watch!

It is amazing to see what God can do through just one man to change an entire community! As we drove on to the cave churches to see where these precious people worship, I was blown away. There are no words, really, to describe the impact they had on me. I'm still working on it in my mind of why it was so mind-boggling to me to see this. 20,000 Egyptians gathering together to worship our Lord in a church ampitheatre that is carved out of the rock in a cave? There is just something phenomenal about it to me...when I go to church here in France with maybe 20 other people, or I walk into a gloriously built cathedral that is empty.

I breathed in deep the air that reeked of garbage and waffed strongly of sinners saved by grace. The verse from Revelation, "Amen, come Lord Jesus," was carved into the ceiling. I agreed whole-heartedly...I can't wait to worship with those Family members!

Click HERE and HERE for more photos.

"I no bush you buy!"

Some of you long-time readers of this blog may remember how much I loved the sensory overload of going to the Grand Bazaar while living in Istanbul. So when KO was trying to prep me for how humongous the Khan is, and I asked her, "Is it sensory overload?" and she nodded her head with eyes wide, I was excited. There is something about shopping in the non-Western world that thrills my heart.

The taxi driver, to be mean, decided to drop us off at the Egyptian entrance to the Khan and not the tourist entrance...despite that we were obviously tourists. KO just marched right in one of the side streets determined to find where we needed to go. The streets were narrow and FILLED with people. There was some organization to it...a kitchenware section, a clothing section, a fireworks section (where I probably lost some hearing out of my left ear), but no apparent tourist section.

You know, key chains. Belly dancer outfits. Hookahs. Tacky t-shirts. Little neon-colored plastic replicas of the pyramids. The good stuff. Where was it?

KO grabbed my hand like a good mother hen and led me through the crowds while I took pictures of all the people. The only other time in my life when I felt SO COMPLETELY out of place was last summer, in Morocco, when the Superhero made me, Sue-Wee and Svia go into the man's souq, despite that we are not men. KO and I stood out so bad, it was almost laughable. People just stared at us completely confused as to why we were there. She weaved us back out to the street, where we walked for about a mile and then finally found the tourist entrance.

Do you remember that opening scene from Aladdin, where a souq vendor tries to sell the viewer some things, and then offers to tell the story of the magic lamp that he would like you to buy? Okay, imagine HUNDREDS of vendors just like him, and then you have the touristy section of the Khan. As we walk by stores with gazillions of hookahs, alabaster candle holders, belly-dancing outfits, drums, frames, pottery, spices, whatever, everyone called out to us.

"What are you looking for?"
KO responded, "Nothing."
"I have nothing! What size you want?"

"How can I take your money?"

"Chakira! Chakira!" It took me a few times to figure that one out...then I saw the guys who yelled that were waving belly dancer outfits at us. Okay...

What we heard most, though, was, "I no bush you buy! I no bush you buy!" And as the men would say this, they would try to convince us to enter THEIR store vs. someone else's. KO turned to me and asked, "Why do they keep bringing up Bush, and what does he have to do with buying a hookah?"

Then I remembered...Arabic doesn't have the letter "P" in it. All foreign words with a "P" are just changed to "B". So 'Pepsi' is "Bebsi." They were saying, "I won't PUSH you to buy anything, just come look!" I had to bite my lip to keep from giggling everytime I heard, "I no bush you buy!"

We made friends with a shop owner who was named, (big surprise), Mohammed. He hooked us up with a bunch of alabaster. I asked him if he knew anywhere in the Khan that we could purchase clocks with arabic numbers on them...something I had decided I wanted to be my souvenir from Egypt, despite the fact that they didn't seem to exist for sale in the Khan.

Except that everything is always for sale in the Khan. Mohammed said, "You want a clock with Arabic numbers?! No problem." He took off and came back about 10 minutes later. "Follow me."

We followed Mohammed into another section of the Khan, to someone else's shop, where we were told to wait. Wait we did. Twenty minutes later, Mohammed came back with three clocks with Egyptian numbers. KO and I looked at each other...Apparently Mohammed had gone and taken these off of someone's private wall. We were told to pick the kind we liked. Once we made a decision, he disappeared again.

Another ten minutes gone by, and Mohammed returns with another clock like the original one we'd picked. Now we had two. He then named a price. I wasn't sure how bartering is supposed to go when (a) the person who owns the item being sold is not there to participate and (b) the item being sold has just been removed from someone's home/office/shop wall.

All in all, we got our clocks, and I think...whoever they'd belonged to before got enough money from the crazy American tourist who'd wanted their clock for them to (a) buy a replacement clock and (b) buy their wife a new dress so she won't be angry over the missing clock from the kitchen.

Mohammed told me if I ever needed to buy anything else, to come looking for him again at the Khan. I teased him and said, "Do I just walk in and ask where do I find Mohammed?" At first, he didn't catch my joke and responded, "No...we are all named Mohammed, you will never find me...Oh. You can just come to my shop," he said with a smile.

KO got her hookah, I got my clock, and we both got some alabaster. And the men were true to their word...no one bushed us to buy.

Click HERE to see photos.

Red Sea Rising

While we were still in Marseille, KO and I discussed whether we would go to Mount Sinai during our time in Egypt. She's hiked it before, as have many of my friends have, and said she would be willing to do it again if I really wanted to go. The problem was...this vacation was meant to be a time of rest, and Mount Sinai would not be restful but just the opposite. An eight hour drive through the desert (and we'd have to hire a driver to make that trek for us), then hiking up a mountain in the middle of the night so that we could watch the sunrise from the summit, and then another eight hour drive back to Cairo. Add to that the fact that I only brought flip flops with me to Egypt and I was still sporting the broken toe...we decided that maybe Mount Sinai would have to wait until the next time I go to Egypt.

So when her friends told us that they were going to a resort at the Red Sea for a few days, and would we like to join in, we jumped on that invitation. Let me tell you--two days at a resort on the Red Sea is THE way to do vacation!

It was only a two hour drive from Cairo through the desert out to the resort. The desert looks much different than the rust-colored sand dunes of the UAE desert. It's much more rocky and just, well...sand colored. As we made the drive, my mind turned back to Exodus. I tried to imagine what it would look like to see a million Hebrews trekking through that rocky sand. Over those mountains. I began to wonder how in the world they knew which direction to go, and then I remembered the pillar of cloud and fire leading them. I wondered how long it took. What was going through their minds at that point. Did they know they were headed for the Red Sea? Did they know they were going to have to cross it miraclously?

My thoughts were interrupted as we arrived at the resort. Oh my goodness. Oh.my.goodness!!! It was so wonderful. The biggest most comfortable beds ever! All sorts of things to do just within the resort without even going outside to the pool or to the beach. Huge buffets of all kind of foods. A cafe where you could order whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. And then the pool. Oh the pool. Let me just show you a picture.

We spent most of the afternoon by the poolside. (KO has a funny little fear of natural bodies of water, so she preferred the pool to the Sea. Don't worry, we spent plenty of time by the Sea later.) We swam. We napped under the umbrellas. We played spades. We read. We ordered cheeseburgers, fries and cokes from the poolboys. I don't know when I've ever been so lost in relaxation as I was by that poolside.

That night, we went out to the beach and watched the moon rise over the Red Sea. KO and I had some good discussions that evening. As we stared out at those waters, imagining what it would look like for God to part them and for the Hebrews to cross over on dry ground...we also pondered our own steps of faith that were soon approaching us. She was making her own exodus from Egypt and returning to the US after having been gone two years. I had just left Marseille, and was returning to Paris, with decisions and possible changes ahead. Could I put my faith in the guy in charge who is making decisions for my future steps the same way the Hebrews had to trust Moses' guidance? What's on the other side? Will the trouble that's been chasing me continue chasing me still? How long did it take them to cross to the other side? What in the world did they think and feel as they crossed through, seeing the water bunched up just beside them? And when they saw the water crash down on the Egyptians...what did they think about the fact that God was fighting FOR them?

It was one of the lessons I'd learned this summer: God is FOR me, not against me.

I rose early the next morning to watch the sun rise up over the Red Sea. I sat on those shores and pondered that the same God who fought for His children there thousands of years ago still fights for even one child today. He fights for me. He works miracles in my own life. He who causes the sun and the moon to rise every single day is just as faithful in my daily comings and goings. He is constant and He is good.

KO bottled up some of the sand and water from the beach because she said that two of the best times she's ever had with the Lord were at the Red Sea. For me, it's taken the three weeks since then for me to finish praying through the thoughts the Lord began in my head that morning there. I didn't get to bottle up any physical memory to take home with me. Instead, He has risen up from my time at the Red Sea a peace and contentment that He is still as faithful now as He was all those years ago to march me to safety in His promised plan for my life.

And so I left Egypt...ready to conquer whatever God has next for me back in France.

Click HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE for Red Sea photos.