How residents of the old Cabbagetown cotton mill survivedBy BEN SMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/15/08 P.J. Bullock said it took 10 seconds; Kevin Goolsby said it was 15. But there was no disagreement over what had happened: The old cotton mill had been struck by a tornado.Goolsby was at home in Building H of the renovated, former Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills loft complex in Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighborhood when the building was hit. When the room started shaking and his started popping, Goolsby said he knew exactly what was happening.

“I’m from Mississippi and I’ve been through two of these before,” Goolsby said. “That’s what happens in a tornado.”Goolsby said he immediately ran to the bathroom for cover.Bullock was a dinner guest in a top floor loft on the Boulevard side of Building E next door.“We heard a huge breeze blow through,” Bullock said. “My friend got up to close the window but couldn’t.”In a matter of seconds Bullock, his host Lauren Weiss and two other friends would be running be for their lives.“Do you see the windows?” said Bullock as he pointed to the top of the building. “They’re huge. They started cracking and the room started shaking.”Seconds later, Bullock said a wall ripped away, exposing the unit to the open air and the roaring wind. The roof opened up and then crashed on the building’s top floor, prompting a chain reaction collapse of the unit next door and part of Weiss’s and all of the floors below it.“It fell all the way to the basement, “Bullock said.Bullock said he fled down the hallway and dove into an open room while his friends hovered under fallen plywood. When Bullock realized his friends weren’t with him, he ran back to find them.“It was very chaotic,” Bullock said. “When I went back to get everybody, there was no wall, there was no roof, and all I could see was just the city of Atlanta skyline.”Bullock and Weiss said they had to climb over bricks and glass to escape down a stairwell. Weiss wasn’t wearing shoes.“I got cuts on my feet,” Weiss said.They all made it out safely — except, apparently, for “Jackson,” Bullock’s 3-month-old mixed breed German Shepherd puppy. The dog was still missing Saturday afternoon.As firefighters sifted the rubble. Bullock stood silently staring up at the roof. His girlfriend, Mary Pierce Zirkle, who wasn’t there when the twister struck, stood beside him, her eyes glazed with tears.“It was one of those things where you don’t know if you’re going to make it out or not,” Bullock. When asked how he was feeling,” Bullock replied, “I don’t know. … I don’t have a scratch on me.”

Puppy feared dead turns up safe under couch at Cotton Mill LoftsBy CHRISTIAN BOONE, BEN SMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/17/08 P.J. Bullock barely survived Friday night’s tornado. He feared his dog, Jackson, wasn’t so lucky.Sunday afternoon, he and a friend returned to the Cotton Mill Lofts in Cabbagetown to look one last time for his 3-month-old mixed breed German shepherd. He was able to persuade a firefighter to check the apartment where the puppy wasn’t seen.

Mary Pierce Zirkle / Handout

Jackson

“They found him underneath a couch,” said Bullock, who was having dinner in a top-floor loft on the Boulevard side of Building E when the tornado struckThe dog apparently had scampered underneath the furniture just as one of the apartment’s walls was collapsing. That’s where he was discovered Sunday, safely ensconced amid the rubble.“Jackson was OK … completely healthy,” said Bullock, who likewise escaped the storm “without a scratch.”“We heard a huge breeze blow through,” he recalled. “My friend got up to close the window but couldn’t.”Seconds later, a wall ripped away, exposing the unit to the open air and the roaring wind, he said. The roof opened up and then crashed on the building’s top floor, prompting a chain reaction collapse of the unit next door and part of the apartment where Bullock was a guest.“It fell all the way to the basement,” he said.Bullock said he fled down the hallway and dove into an open room while his friends hovered under fallen plywood. When he realized his friends weren’t with him, he ran back to find them.“It was very chaotic,” Bullock said. “When I went back to get everybody, there was no wall, there was no roof, and all I could see was just the city of Atlanta skyline.”

I was met and given a history of the school and the model was explained to me.  The school takes kids from all over the world and brings them to Israel.  Most of the kids are orphans or they are taken from a bad family situation such as drug abuse and alcholism.   The kids are at the school from ages 6 to 18 and then they go to serve in the Israeli army, just like every other Israeli at the age of 18.  Many of the kids, who do not have parents, return to the village on weekends and breaks from the army because the members of the school treat them as family and the village is meant to be their home. When they return home they have a place to sleep and three meals a day at the cafeteria.  The school encourages the individuals to keep in touch with their heritage and it is only the bad things from their past that they are encouraged to forget.  The village puts on celebrations for the various kids’, such as kids from Russia or Ethiopia, respective holidays in order to help them stay in touch with their heritage.  Once the kids have served their time in the army and move on with their lives, Yemin Orde even signs on the mortage to their first house until they are able to build their own credit.

 They never turn a kid away and they have various projects, bringing in large groups of 50 kids from different countries and they are always encouraged to, and their are many success stories of kids returning to their respective countries and holding influential positions in society such as mayor or police chief.  When the young adults get married, the village even hosts the wedding on site.

 After I was given a thourough background of the school, I was given a tour of all of their impressive facilities including computer labs and science buildings.  Last year the students from Ethiopia came in fourth place in a robot building competition in Atlanta, GA.

After my tour, we returned to the cafeteria where a table was set for the two of us and about eight different plates of food were brought out.  Of course, I finished as much as I possibly could without looking as though I came from a starved childhood.  Then they brought me back to the train station.  I am grateful to have had this oppotunity and I want to thank my friends for putting it together for me.

After passport check I had to walk across the border and then go through the Israeli border.  I have never experienced security as intense as I was screened crossing the Israeli border.  From the airport in Miami, I had some pretty tough screening (describing Moses’ relationship to Aaron because Aaron is my middle name), but this was even more intense.  I had to give them every detail of my month and a half travels in Jordan and Egypt…almost day by day.  Why I was picked out probably had something to do with my beard and the fact that I was the only white person with a backpack going through security at that time.  We all know that I love to talk about my travels so it wasn’t that bad.  A few times they had to make me skip some stuff because I was throwing in details such as, “I wanted to stay at the youth hostel in Aswan for 3 pounds a night, but they were booked so I ended up staying at Marwa hotel, which was right across the street, for only seven pounds, and given that its like $1.50, its a steal.  That night I hired a sailboat to watch the sunset, which was awesome, do you want to see pictures?”  By the end of the 45 minutes of questioning, the two girls who were questioning me had changed from interrogating me to just asking curious questions ”so is it easy to get to the pyramids from Cairo….did you feel safe?”  I ended by giving them the ‘ol “zachmorris.com” shout out, “for more detail and great pictures, be sure to visit…”.   One of the girls walked me to the front of the passport line so I didn’t have to wait behind the tour group who was now in front of me.  The lady at the passport check started with, “why did she bring you to the front of line?  Why was she questioning you?  What did she ask you?”…I was thinking to myself, what happened to the “Welcome home!” that I was greeted with when I arrived in the Tel Aviv airport…Telling this girl that I was Jewish did not help my situation, but smiling and cracking a few jokes had me on my way in no time.

 So, now I’m back in Israel, where the undeserved reason for a sense of security is the 18 year old girls and boys with M16’s everywhere you turn.  The girls have their M16’s strapped around their shoulders as though it were an extra makeup handbag, and the mojority of the guys, who look as though they would never dream of picking up a handweight that equaled that of an M16, wear their guns as though it were a semi-automatic extension of their member. (Below picture taken from Google images)

 After crossing the border, I took a taxi to Eilat, and then a bus to Tel Aviv.  About 12 hours after leaving Dahab, I finally arrived at a hostel in Tel Aviv. 

The above picture is the wreck that I returned to Dahab to explore.  After two days of waiting for the weather to calm down on the Red Sea, we met at 11pm and took a mini bus to Sharm (a nearby dive town that is much more touristy than Dahab).  We boarded the boat, had a briefing, and I made my way to the top deck to get some sleep.  At about 4 in the morning the boat left the marnina.   I woke to the boat rocking back and forth and hearing someone downstairs securing the tanks which sounded like they were all going to fall off the boat one way or another every time we went over a wave.  At 7am we all woke up and went downstairs for breakfast.  After some trouble getting the boat tied to the moorings, we just hopped in a little motor boat and went over to another dive boat who had a rope tied with which would could use to descend onto the wreck.
           
I look like I just woke up in the above picture because I did. So, we boated over to our drop in spot, put our regulators in our mouths and rolled off the side of the boat. On the first dive we circled around the boat, checking out the big gun on the front of the boat the propellers and where the bomb hit the boat. On the second dive we entered and explored the boat. Some of the cool things we saw were the motorcycles, cars, and bathrooms that were all still in tact.  I had a camera but in so many words, well, it sucked, so I stole some pictures from google images.
        

Diving this wreck was probably one of the coolest things I have ever done….and I have done some pretty cool shit.  After our second dive we took a few hour surface interval as we made our way to a third dive which was a drift dive at Ras Mohammed reef.

After a few days in Cairo, I took a 7 hour bus ride to St. Katherines Monestary. There, I stayed at a Bedouin camp with a few stone huts with thin mattresses on the floor….I would have slept great if it wasn’t for my roomate who snored like a T-Rex with a sinus infection. My first day I visited the Monestary which was anti-climatic to say the least. St. Katherines Monestary was erected in the place that is believed to be where the burning bush occured.

My plan was to go up Mt. Sinai in time for the sunrise, just because thats what people do. But after talking to some people about how the weather was, I started to rethink my options. Apparently, on a regular night, it gets to about negative 15 Celcius at the top. Every morning, there are about 1000 people at the top for the sunrise. Most of these people have no business walking up these stairs, in this temperature, and apparently there are always old people either collapsing, getting frostbitten, or just clogging up the traffic. By the picture I uploaded, you can see that you cant just step around people, especially in the dark when the stairs are frozen.
So….I was going to try and avoid going up in the morning, but after talking to a driver who said he would take me to Dahab at 9am for about 70 pounds cheaper than the last dude said, I was running out of options. I talked to a few more people who wanted to go to Dahab in this car, but after the Egyptian driver threw the camp cat in the fire, everyone turned against him and decided to find another driver. We all found another driver for 50 pounds a piece, which is a great price, and I got to go up the mountain at about 6am instead of leaving the camp at about 2am. Even at 6am I wore a thermal layer, 2 synthetic warm layers, two hooded sweatshirts, a hat, and an egyptian scarf around my face. On my legs I just put my pajamas under my jeans….In the three and a half hours it took me to get up and down I never had the thought of shedding one layer, and I was moving the whole time. I could only imagine how it would have been in a traffic jam at 4am at 7000 feet.

Now, I am back in Dahab and in a few minutes I am going to the dive shop to see if the Thistlegorm trip is leaving tonight. Thistlegorm is one of the most famous wreck dives in the world and one of the only wreck dives that you can do on an advanced dive license. The weather has been a little rough and the last few trips have been canceled, but I have no problem with waiting it out, saying as once I get back into Israel my expenses go up about ten times what they are in Egypt. I love Dahab.

Make sure to check my last post, “Luxor” because I posted it as the same time as this one.

¨I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquillity, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven…I admire the authority of being on one´s knees in front of the event.¨ - Harold Brodkey ¨Manipulations¨, a passage quoted in John Krakaur´s ¨Into Thin Air¨.

Althuogh the past few days have not been nearly as exciting as this single mentioned story, I will do my best to recap them in this much more delayed fashion than I have previously done.

I left Aswan for Luxor at about six in the morning by train.  Luxor is much more de-centralized than Aswan and coincidentally makes for a much more local feel as opposed to the touristy feel of Aswan, with everything being based around the train station.  After checking into my hotel for 15 Egyptian pounds a night (about 3USD) I made my way to start walking down to the Luxor Temple.  I have to say, I am a sucker for a sailbaot because I was once again talked into a felluca ride instead.  I think being able to bargain them down to 10 Egyptian pounds (2USD) an hour may of had something to do with my decision.  This felluca captain also asked if I would like to go to his house for lunch which I happily agreed to.  I assume that the felluca captains all just resort to taking their customers to their house for lunch when they we don’t have a set itenerary.  When they ask what I want to do in the hours to come my usual response is, “I’m not sure….just sail around for a bit and check out some these islands”…..maybe they just take the opportunity to get a good meal on the job.  So, his wife cooked us lunch and his daughter ate with us.  After we ate he told his daughter to do her homework because she had just arrived home from school….she complained a bit and then came up with the excuse that her pen didn’t work well.  In response to this, he gave her money to go buy a new pen and a snack from the store to entice her to start her homework.  She took the money and rolled her eyes before giving her dad a kiss on the cheek and prancing off to buy her pen and snack.

Later that night, an Egyptian kid, about 20, starting talking to me and invited me to his place for tea (not uncommon), his mom’s place.  About ten minutes after his mom brought out tea for us she brought out a two pieces of pottery.  I imeddiately realized what I thought was going on, so I picked up one of the pieces and did my usual, “hmmm, interesting”. Right then, Zam Zam (the dude) said, “Take it! It is a gift from my mother!”  I continued to refuse to take the pottery and even offered money, but he wouldn’t budge.  I tried to explain that I am only traveling with a backpack and something like this is very difficult to travel with; he didn’t understand my English.  I had the nerve to ask if I could switch it for the smaller piece.  Now, the Egyptian culture is very welcoming to guests, as I have learned in my experiences, but it could be that his mother was just so excited about her annoying son finally making a friend that she felt she must grace my presence with a gift.
Later that night I met some kids when I was grabbing a snack.  A few Americans and a Kiwi (NZ) who were all teaching in Cairo.  One of the American girls had gone to elementary school with one of my friends who I had actually just met for lunch in Jacksonville on my way to south Florida; small world.  They were heading back to Cairo that night, so we talked for a while, exchanged some travel stories, and then they made their way to the train station.

 The next day I hung out with an Aussie dude that I met when I was grabbing breakfast.  We had a similar agenda for the day so we rented bikes and set out for the Temple of Karnak.

There are some cooler photos than this one, but the upload didn’t go through for some reason when I was uploading pictures in Cairo.  Shortly after we left the temple, my tire went flat and about ten minutes later his front wheel fell off, I have no idea how this happened but the whole thing was so rusted that there was no way we could fix it.  So, we walked all the way back…and ended up buying a few beers and getting a felluca for the sunset.  We passed my roomate along the way, a Japanese fellow, who also joined us for the felluca ride.

The next morning I met a guide in the lobby of my hotel. We took the ferry over to the West Bank of the Nile where we picked up two donkeys to ride over the mountain to the Valley of the Kings.

When we arrived at a certain site with a number of tombs, we stopped, and I walked down to buy my ticket and visit a few of the tombs. One of the tombs cost more for some reason and I couldn’t help my curiosity so I bought the ticket despite the guy’s stubborness in giving me a cheaper ticket (80 Pounds, just under 20 USD). The tomb was more expensive because it held the actually unwrapped mummy of King Tut (Tut for short). When I got down there, the guard asked me for a sip of my water (they always do this, its really weird), to which I naturally responded, “La” (no). Then, because I decided that I really wanted to get a photo of this corpse, saying as I paid 80 pounds to see it, I went back and told the guy he could have the rest of my water if I could take a picture of good ‘ol King Tut. He looked at me as if to say “are you crazy…you think your water is worth a picture as valuable as King Tut?” Then he preceeded to ask me where I was from and I told him I was from Canada in order to deflect the Americans reputation from becoming stingy, water hogging photographers. I ended up sneaking a picture anyway.

That night while I was waiting for my train, a Japanese lady started talking to me. She caught me off guard with her response to where I was from. When I said America, she motioned toward my backpack and said “obviously, I could tell that”. I restrained myself from pointing out that she was obviously in a forty person japanese tour group, because all of their roller suitcases looked as though they would fix me a cup of coffee if I were to press the right button.

Once I realized my train was delayed for two hours, I made my way to the train station cafe with the thought of grabbing some beers. Most restaurants in egypt do not serve beer (most Muslims dont drink), so I made an arrangement with the guy to go to a nearby market and bring me back some beers for about two dollars a piece to drink in his care. During the next two hours I had eyes baring down on me as I produced one beer after another from my backpack and sent emails on my blackberry while I waited for my ten hour train back to Cairo.

I know that I have met a lot of people who were very friendly and helpful during my travels in Egypt, but on my 15 hour train ride to Aswan I had one of the most annoying men in the world sitting near me.  This man, although I’m sure had good intentions, woke me three times during my very comfortable slumber, by sitting on the arm of my aisle seat, tapping me until I woke up, and talking to me, in Arabic, in a normal voice.  I have no idea what this man wanted from me, but he was smiling the whole time he talked to me while I politely said, “I don’t understand you….I have no earthly idea what you are saying to me…why are you still talking to me….Please, for the love of God, let me sleep!” Now, in my younger days, I have been known to throw bedside table objects at people for waking me up, and having no recollection of doing so afterwards (sorry Mom), but because I was in a foreign country and everything I tried to be civilized about my actions.  Eventually, about the third time he woke me up, I just started to laugh deliriously with him, and said, with a big smile on my face, “Listen man, I am sure you have some great things to talk about, and I want to hear about them all, really, I do, but right now I am trying to sleep. So, if you could just not wake me up again for, say, a good three or four solid hours, I will wake up and we can talk. You can tell me everything you want to in Arabic and I’ll tell you a good story or two in English.  How does that sound?”  Imeddiately upon finishing my speach, someone a few seats back said something to the man in Arabic.  It was possibly a loose translation because the man shook my hand and went back to his seat, as well as shaking my hand when his stop came, which was a few hours before mine.  Luckily, I avoided the gibbrish pow wow that I had promised and of which I was seriously dreading the arrival.

 Upon arriving in Aswan I quickly made my way to a hotel which was in my guide book.  For $1.50 a night the bed is actually pretty comfortable.  I used my newly acquired skill of not waiting in lines to change my train ticket, giving me an extra day in both Aswan and Luxor.  I figured if I am going to get all the way to southern Egypt, I may ass well see everything rather than be in a rush.  And I booked my trip to Abu Simbel the next morning, at 3:30 am. 

 Later that night I found one of the only places in Egypt that sold beer and, after about two beers (light weight), I was ready to call it an early night since I had to wake up so early the next morning.  On my way home some Egyptian kid, 23, started talking to me, asking me where I was from and all that good stuff.  He quickly invited me to his friend’s Egyptian wedding, and as you all know I never turn down invitations to awkward, out-of-place, cultural experiences.  The guy taught me how to say “congratulations” in Arabic, so I followed him around shaking the hands of the family members and telling them “Alf mebrook” before taking my seat.  I only stayed for about twenty minutes before I told the kid I had to go, but he insisted to go with me and grab a beer.  Now, most Muslims dont drink as it is part of the religion and, when I asked him about this, his answer was simple, “I’m a bad Muslim”.  He was also a little punk and only stayed at his friends wedding for twenty minutes, but maybe thats how they are set up, I dont know. 

 I made it to sleep by about 12:30 and about three hours later my alarm went off.  My mini-bus was packed with about 40 people, 39 of whom were Asian.  Abu Simbel is an ancient Egyptian Temple whose entrance is carved out of rock and comes close to the detail found in some of the sites in Petra, Jordan. 

When I returned from Abu Simbel it was about 1pm.  I decided to hire a felluca (sail boat) to cruise to a couple of different islands and see some Nubian villages.
The first island we went to we were greeted by guards who said they had to lead me around the island and they wouldn’t let my captain walk with us (i call him my captain because, even though he told me his name a hundred times, I cant remember it…really, he’s just a dude with a boat).  The guards both had oozies strapped around their arms. (Quick note: ever since the bombing in luxor in 1997, Egypt has been trying to recoup their image as being tourist friendly.  So, if you go to a really touristy place and say you are American, most likely, they will appoint an armed guard to you….not sure what the armed guard is instructed to do if a bomb blows up, but I guess they think it looks better in the eyes of the world)  They lead me to a place where a lady served me tea and then proceeded to bring out a number of different things one by one, as if I were a professional tourist-product-buyer, which I politely looked at, “hmmm, interesting….no thank you”.  Obviously these oozied guards had a little commisioned agenda of their own that I did not want to fuel.  I may have just put some money directly into their hands if they agreed to let me take a photo with both of the oozies in my hands, but they were stubborn.  I took my time on the walk back despite their impatience of waiting for me to do something that made them no money…Snapped some good photos…

The little brat with her finger on her face ran up to me after I took this photo and asked for 2 Euro…which is like 20 egyptian pounds, and just to put that into perspective for you, this morning I had two fallafels and a soda for 4.50 Egyptian pounds, and I am paying 7 pounds for a nights accomodation.  So, I gave her a pound and said to share it with her brothers but she took off at a full sprint while they all yelled at her and then came to me for more money, which didn’t happen.

One common trend I have found about Egyptian tastes in music is that they all have that damn theme song from the movie “Titanic” on their phone.  Not sure if they all have an obsession with Celine Dion or it just comes as a stock tune on their cell phones, but they sure as hell all have it, and they like to play it using the speakers on their cell phone. Now, when I worked at Chick-fil-a, 14, the instrumental version of this song played in Galleria Mall on repeat, so, sort of like Pavlov’s dog, I start to crave a chargrilled club combo with a half sweet tea, half lemonade, supersized.  That is all on this topic.

 Yesterday, I made my way to the Nile for a full day on the Felluca with my trusted two man crew.  This time I had bargained them down to 15 Egyptian pounds an hour (3$ USD), down from 20 the day ($4 USD) which was a big drop in his initial asking price of 75 E. pounds an hour.  In 11 hours I got a lot of good reading done.  Richard Branson’s book about how he started Virgin Airlines and all the other companies he started as well as all of his crazy adventures such as trying to fly a hot air balloon around the world.  We took a few hour trip to their Nubian Island where my captain’s mother cooked me lunch and I met his mother, sister, grandmother, and 2 sons.

When we left his village, we head back to Aswan and caught an awesome sunset on the way.

The captains were listening to the soccer game on the radio and, upon approaching Aswan, the radio barked and there came an uproar from the town.  Egypt had scored a goal in the last remaining seconds of the game, in the African Cup,  and the town of Aswan had turned into a full blown festival by the time we made it to the mainland.  There were multiple parades, motorcycles screaming up and down the roads honking their horns and drums were banging everywhere.  People were standing on moving cars, waving flags, shooting off fireworks and making torches out of aerosol cans (mostly kids doing the last one).  It was the craziest soccer celebration I have ever seen.  I shot a few photos and captured a few videos on my digital camera and then made my way to my room to listen to the rest of the cellebration from my bed.

 That is all for now.  My next move is to Cairo tomorrow.  Make sure to check out all the pictures that I didn’t put on this post.  And make sure to scroll down to my last two entries which were also done today, “Honest work from a dishonest man”, and “Waiting in line”.

 Going back real quick.  The picture I uploaded of the kids drinking beer (and a half glass of liquor) out of a snorkel, turned into a funnel, is an initiation to the dive master certification.  Both of these guys had been in Dahab for four months and had just recently finished their Dive Master Cert. after 100 dives.  The snorkel test consists of your instructor pouring an unknown amount of alcohol into the funnel and the student finishing it all. In this case, each student was required to drink 3 beers and a half glass of mixed liquor ( i think vodka and rum). They have a finger in their mask so that they may breath through their nose.  As everyone was watching the gut wrenching superbowl game, I was on a ten hour bus ride to Cairo.  A ride that very well could have taken 6, but there were multiple stops along the way, in the middle of nowhere, for 30 minutes a piece, solely for the purpose of people smoking cigarettes and going to the bathroom.  We finally arrived, at about 7am ,and I got a hotel room, about 6 US$, to put my stuff in and start my day….on somewhere around 3 or 4 hours of very disturbed sleep. To paint a quick picture of Cairo for you; Cairo is a dirty city with plenty of traffic.  Two lane roads usually accommodates  3 lanes of cars and 2 lanes of motorcycles.  Going anywhere touristy leads to being bombarded with scammers, such as people trying to sell you tickets to something or people that want to give you a tour or show you where the entrance is and then ask you for money.  ”La shukran” (no thank you)  is the polite response for these hagglers, but looking them straight in the eye and saying “LA……la” (NO…no) will sometimes result in a different response…however, neither are consistently effective.  People crossing the street look like suicide attempts and I have seen a mini bus nudge a woman who was holding her child’s hand to cross the street.  Not to mention, a taxi I have been in has come within inches of T-boning or being t-boned while trying to cross an intersection on multiple occasions. However, I have not gotten into an accident yet, so Manila, Philippines still holds the record for my taxi getting into 4 wrecks on the way home from a bar. 

That being said, there is a lot to do here and I have one day left, and maybe one more on my way back.  So, after putting my bag in the room, I set out to find a place to get my camera fixed.  After looking for a while for the street with all the camera stores I stopped to ask a few people to point me in the right direction.  On of the people I asked was extremely helpful. “What is it that you are looking for exactly?” He asked me.  I explained to him that I needed a camera repair shop and he said “come on, lets see what we can find”.  Mahmoud ElEtrby was dressed in a suit and tie with a briefcase.  He was about my age and he worked for GlaxoSmithKline as a medical representative and he was on the job working his territory before attending afternoon classes at the university.  Mahmoud asked a few stores (translating for me) if they could repair an Olympus camera before we finally found one.  He worked out all the details for me about when I can pick up my camera and how much it will cost, and then he walked me to a road on which I could easily take a taxi, with a straight shot to the Egyptian Museum.  When we got to the street, he gave me his card and said “if there is anything you need while in Cairo give me a call, even if you just have some questions about what to see.”

The Egyptian Museum was amazing, although I couldn’t stop thinking that the little cards on every item there were full of crap.  They would say things like “This stone sculpture could have, probably, been possibly used to do something that maybe….blah blah” …you get the idea. After the museum I stopped at a shawarma place on the side of the street for a cheap (about $1.50) meal.  While I was eating, I started talking to a kid, 19, from Nigeria who came to Egypt in search for a soccer career.  He is up at 5 every morning, does physical training followed by a match. He wants to come to America and convinced me to come watch his highlight reel.  He said if I can get him a deal in America I could be his manager….I told him he has a better shot at a college scholarship, but I would look into both.  

Later that night, when I got back to my hotel, I called Paul Booth, someone who I had been talking with, by email, about possibly staying at his place.  Paul is the husband of a friend of a friend of my sisters, but we haven’t figured out exactly how we are connected because the Rachel I thought my sister was referring to went to a different school than the one that actually connects us.  Paul served in the Peace Corps in Africa for four year and is now teaching at an American school in Cairo.  He has been extremely accommodating and I could not have asked for a better contact in Cairo.  So, I made my way to Paul’s place where he set me up with a place to sleep, a couple of different guidebooks, plenty of information about Cairo, good conversation, and he even let me borrow his digital camera while mine was in the shop.

Yesterday, I woke up and made my way to the place near the museum where I met my friend from Nigeria, Agboola, because he wanted to go to Giza with me.  Giza is the typical tourist hot spot for seeing pyramids, although there are plenty of others around Egypt.And it is the home of the famous Sphinx, which is much more impressive in a photograph than in person.  My guide book refers to the quote of an English playwright, who said that “the Sphinx is like meeting a TV personality in the flesh- always smaller than had been imagined”.  I tried to take some up close photos so no one reading this has to be disappointed. We made our way to the town of Giza (about 30 minutes by taxi) for about 20 cents a piece and we bargained a taxi down to $2 to take us to the pyramids. At the gate, I worked our way into a tour group that was entering through a side gate by a guard holding a handful of tickets.  The tickets would have costed about $25 a piece.  Throughout the day we exchanged knowledge, mostly him explaining the Islamic religion to me and me teaching him basic economic concepts, starting with globalization, spawned by his curiosity in why I was so amused by a picture I took (below). 

I’m going to skip ahead a few hours (imagine that) to my way home, last night after I picked up my camera at the store.  Paul had given me a map of Maadi (the area he lives in) and an address, so I just had the cab driver drop me off at the restaurant at which I met Paul the night before, before walking to his place.  After second guessing myself about my sense of direction, and my place on the map, I stopped to ask a guard at some bank if he knew where we were on the map.  About 5 minutes later there were about 6 bank employees looking at my map, none of whom spoke English.  Eventually the bank manager came outside to help; he spoke English.  After asking where I was from, he quickly invited me in to join him for a cup of tea.  We spoke for about twenty minutes, I asked him some questions about his banks strategy and the level of competition in the market and he asked me questions about my travels and what I did at the bank at which I worked before my travels.  (Freddie, if you are reading this, I’m doing some international competition research for when the time comes   He had lived in New York, for a few months, doing training at the Bank of New York.  I can’t remember his name, but I do remember that it meant honesty in Arabic.  When we finished our tea he asked if I would like one of his employees to assist me to Paul’s apartment.  When I turned down his offer for a personal guide around the block, he took out a piece of paper and translated the address I had showed him, into Arabic, in case I were still unable to find my way I could ask someone on the street. 

With all that being said, I will end this post in saying that I have still yet to try camel meat but I refused to leave the country without adding camel to my list of exotic cuisine.  It will be right up there with some of the top ones, such as kangaroo and zebra (which the sale of is now outlawed in restaurants in Kenya- Source- Paul).,/p>Today I am going to get lost in Old/Islamic Cairo and make my way to the Sufi dancing presentation tonight.