Monthly Archives:
December 2015
It takes years for me to process some of our travel experiences. I try to write about them, sitting for hours at my computer, composing pages and pages of material that no one will ever see. These stories have no beginning or no end or I get stuck on the details, the story itself obscured by my close-up view of it or convoluted social dynamics that would be more appropriate for a book than for a blog. I ...
About week ago, we arrived in Cairo and we were there for 36 hours. During that time, we went grocery shopping, we cleaned our filthy vacation rental, and Lydian and I enrolled in classes at Cairo University with a teacher we’ve been working with online since our time in Tunisia last year. Then, we packed up and flew to Amman for a “side trip” to Israel and Jordan.
These two countries, ...
These two countries, ...
In 2010, I was terrified about our first overseas trip. My terror had infected my psyche on so many levels that by the time our plane leaned into the airport in Istanbul, Turkey and I caught my first glimpse of the pink rooftops in the city, my spirit had left my body and it was standing in the aisle screaming. Turkey was the first country I ever saw outside of the U.S. and I imagined our trip would go ...
We arrived in Istanbul during the tulip festival when the moon was full and the air was still chilly. John had elected to drive on that trip, for reasons that now seem silly. We’d watched YouTube videos of driving in Turkey and convinced ourselves that it wouldn’t be that bad. That was our virgin journey abroad, back in the days when we still believed the erroneous myth that “everyone in the world speaks ...
On the slow descent downward, I didn’t know that my parachute hadn’t opened all the way.
The man on the radio said, “Toggle right,” and I toggled right. He said, “Toggle left,” and I toggled left. I toggled a lot--right, left, right, left-- because from the ground, the radio man could see that my parachute wasn’t opening properly and he was trying to help me fix the problem.
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The man on the radio said, “Toggle right,” and I toggled right. He said, “Toggle left,” and I toggled left. I toggled a lot--right, left, right, left-- because from the ground, the radio man could see that my parachute wasn’t opening properly and he was trying to help me fix the problem.
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On our last day of classes for the week, Mona, our Arabic instructor asked us (in Arabic) what we planned to do with our weekend. Lydi and I stumbled (in Arabic) through a list of possible places to see in Cairo: Khan al Khalili, Saqqara, the Cairo Tower. But honestly neither of us have had time to think about sight-seeing at all. Our flight from Amman was delayed and upon returning to Cairo late on Sunday ...