Expats Slowly Roasting

2011-02-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

I've tacked this on to my old blog as a "service" to teachers who may be thinking about making Cairo their home. I hope it helps.

The Bad:

1. International schools in Cairo are businesses. Nothing more. They do not exist for any other purpose than to make money. You are an employee of that business first, and a teacher of children second. The business these schools are in is to graduate kids with A's. These kids need these A's in order to get into engineering or medical school, which is the only degree any of these kids, or more specifically their parents, want. (Sort of like how being a doctor or lawyer in the U.S. was so important to rich parents back in the day.) The customers you are serving as the employee of this business are the parents of the children you are teaching. The school may alter the grades to insure the child gets his A+ to get into engineering school. (Businesses need good word of mouth; you do not get that with unhappy customers.)

2. Many of your students know that the work they do in your class may not reflect their final grade, so will do no work. Or they have come from schools where the work they do did not reflect their final grade, so enter your room assuming they need to do no work.

3. American schools here in Cairo have a reputation as "easy." And in many ways, compared to the National and IGCSE systems, it is easier. Your kids, especially ones new to the American system, are probably kids that could not make it in other systems or schools or come into your school assuming it'll be a piece of cake.

4. The kids you will be teaching are the rich of Egypt. Many have no concept of personal responsibility, honesty, or hard work. Wealthy Egyptian society does not reward those types of behavior, especially for the children of the rich. This is especially true of the boys. (I'd give anything to teach in an all girl’s school. Anything.) The boys here grow up in a family atmosphere where anything they do is good and where all their needs are catered to, where they know that no matter what dad will have bought them the apartment they need in order to get married, the car they need to get around, and probably the job they need to earn a living. Their only job as adolescents is to get into engineering school. You’d think this would drive them to excel, but you’d be wrong.

5. Egypt is a very class conscious society. People below your class are there to serve you. Egyptian teachers are part of the servant class. Your kids will have probably come up through what is known here as “The National System.” The public schools in Cairo are a nightmare. Horrible places. So anyone with any money sends their kids to private schools. The national system is the private school version of a public Egyptian school. They teach the same curriculum, take the same exams, only in rooms with windows, fans, chalk boards and books. Parents usually send their kids to these schools from K through 10^th or 11^th grade as they are far cheaper than the IGCSE (British) and American schools. Many then dump them into the American schools if it looks like they will not be able to pass at their current school with a grade good enough to get them into university. The teachers at these national schools are not trained teachers. The vast majority of them are engineers who could not find work, mathematicians who could not find work, and doctors who could not find work. These people are being paid slave wages and are working in conditions not much better than the public schools. They have rooms packed with unruly children who have no respect for them, are being forced to teach subjects they do not know and are not trained to teach, and know all that matters is the exam at the end of the year. So what do they do? They beat the kids, yell at the kids, and only teach half of what the kid needs to learn for the final exam. The other half of what needs to be learned is taught in “tutoring sessions” at the teacher’s home, which cost extra. All this means is that when little Ahmed comes into your classroom the first day of school his only experience with many teachers are the ones who hit him, who are a lower class than him and who never really gave a damn about him or his grades. In other words you get students who are used to running amok, used to little to no actual learning going on in a classroom and are used to telling their teachers to go to hell and getting away with it.

6. Discipline is a nightmare. “Full of energy” is the nice way of describing these kids. Unruly and disrespectful is a bit more accurate. They’ll lie to your face, ignore your attempts at management and will argue with you for hours over anything that happens that may adversely affect them (arguing is a national pastime here).

7. Cutting corners is also a national pastime in Egypt and your kids will do the same. Plagiarism? Nothing wrong with it at all. Cheating? Perfectly acceptable under any circumstances.

7. Forget any kind of critical thinking learning or active learning. These kids have absolutely no concept of it. Thinking independently is not a valued trait in this country and the educational system does not reward it. Group work is unheard of, so the first time you try it you’ll be in for a nasty surprise. The first time you ask a student’s opinion on anything you’ll be answered with, “where do I find that answer in the book?” Anything that requires an independent thought will be met with stunned silence or a class wide freak-out. The educational system here is based around “The Final Exam.” Nothing else matters. Your students only have experience in rote memorization. Nothing else.

Now for the good stuff:

1. I love all my kids. Hard to believe after what I’ve said above, but it’s true. I teach about 100 kids a day and with maybe one or two exceptions I love them all. Sure they’re Unruly, but they’re also truly full of energy and life. I cannot tell you how out of control these kids are. But it’s not an evil out of control. It’s just kids who’ve never been taught to sit still. If you treat them with love and respect, they’ll give it back to you in spades. (Sure, they’ll still lie to your face, swearing their dad really was in the hospital so they could not do their homework, but they’ll do it with love.) Sometimes I end a class early and let the kids do whatever they want. Suddenly the whole class will burst into song and dance. Kids will start banging out a beat on the desk, the girls will begin to dance, the boys will sing along, it’s magical and I would not trade those moments for anything. I go home on many nights totally beat from spending my day trying to get my kids to care, but I’ll try to remember that these are kids who’ve been really given the short end of a real education, have rarely been disciplined for anything, and… they’re just kids.

2. As a teacher here, you can teach pretty much anyway you want. It really is pure teaching. No real standards. Very little oversight. I’ve experimented like crazy since being here. I’ve learned a lot about teaching. It’s great. You gotta be a very flexible teacher to survive teaching here; if you are you’ll go far. If you are not, you’ll quit and go home.

3. Discipline will be your biggest challenge, but as I mentioned above, the kids are not evil or scary. You will have no pregnant girls, no weapons, no school cliques, no girlfriend/boyfriend issues, no racial issues… The kids, at least at my school, bond very well.

4. Egypt is a great country! Egyptians are fun loving, friendly people. Your students will be the same. Again, the trick to making it as a teacher here is to gain the respect of your students. They will not learn for the sake of learning and they will not follow your directions because it’s what you are supposed to do in a classroom. They’ll only do it if they like and respect you.

5. Egypt is really a great country! Everything is dirt cheap here. With your wages you can live very very well here. You can have a nice flat, a housecleaner, a cook… You can eat out every night and travel every weekend if you choose. All of Europe is a $250 flight away. All of the Middle East, the same. Egypt has 5,000 years of history at your doorstep and some of the best diving and snorkeling in the world only hours away. Last July, at the end of the school year my wife and I stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Sharm el-Sheik for a week. With my work visa we got a $750 a night room for $95 a night. In a hundred years we’d never be able to afford anything like that back home. We’ve taken long weekend trips to resorts, beaches and dive spots just for fun. Again, back home we’d have to save for years for the same experience. It’s a great lifestyle.

6. The expat community is large in Cairo, but very friendly. There are a number of clubs just for expats that are great places to escape the grind of living here. (While Egypt is a great country, it’s also a real pain in the neck sometimes. It’s nice to “escape” the reality of the place occasionally.) There are hundreds of excellent restaurants that serve up any type of food you’d be interested in. Once to get involved with the expat crowd, you’ll have a blast. We rent yachts for parties on the Nile, sail the same river on Thursday night felucca parties, go camping in the desert, take deep sea fishing trips on the Red Sea and drink a lot of beer.

There majority of schools here are pretty bad. Truly schools that operate as only businesses. They’ll lie to you. They’ll screw you. They’ll treat your contract as only a theory, not binding. So you gotta be careful. My school was a nightmare. Every day my stomach would knot up as our bus got closer to campus. Every night I’d swear I was quitting. But after about four months I got into a groove. I began to understand my students and they began to understand me. It was never easy, but it became tolerable, even fun.

To survive teaching and living in Cairo you have to be chill, flexible and patient. You have to be the type that can roll with the insanity. If not you’ll be miserable. Don’t take a job here expecting a wonderful, enriching, teaching experience. It probably won’t be. Don’t take a job here thinking Cairo “can’t be that bad.” It is. Which is one of the things I love about it. It’s an insane, overcrowded, polluted, dirty, city. But I know that every day I’m going to see something I’ve never seen before. And for me that’s the reason I live overseas.

2008-11-15T16:05:00.002-07:00

For those of you who have stumbled upon this blog, I welcome you to an interesting read. Start at the beginning and read through two years of love, marriage, expat adventures, suicide bombings, pain, recovery and finally separation.

I am alone now and living in South America. If you are interested in following my new life please leave a comment with your email address and I'll send you the link to my blog. The comments do not get posted, so no one will see your address but me.

Enjoy.

2008-02-25T12:38:00.002-07:00

There may be a few friends out there who have not checked this blog in a while. As you may or may not know I've moved to South America. I started a new blog, but it was too public, with too many people from my new city reading it. So I all but took it down, as well as removing any links to the new blog that were on this blog.

I will be begining a new blog in the next few days, which will be an invite only type thing. If I know you and I have your email address you'll be getting the link. If for some reason I don't have your address, leave a comment telling me who you are and I'll try to get you the new secret blog address.

2008-01-03T21:36:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the complete lack of updates on our lives. Things just seem to be moving too fast for us, yet nothing much seems to be happening at the same time. But there’s good news for all of you dedicated readers- Uruguay! The move is coming soon. In some ways too soon, but not soon enough at the same time.

We’ll be heading South around the 25th of January. We’ll both be going down to Montevideo, but only one of us will be staying- me. Betsy will be coming back to the USA two weeks later. I’ll leave out the details, but Betsy wants to go to grad school at DU beginning in the fall. I need to work. So for the time being we’ll be sadly separated. Hopefully not for long.

South America. Wow. Except for a terrifying day trip to Tijuana when I was 12 I’ve never been south of the border. (All I remember about that trip was being warned not to drink the water. Which I took to mean not to drink or eat anything. Which I took to heart by refusing to eat or drink anything all day. The scary part of the trip for me was a secret trip to a shop to buy a switch blade knife. Man, for a 12 year old that was pretty dangerous stuff. It was only after buying several big and small blades did I realize that we’d be crossing the border with me in possession of illegal weapons. If we’d been stopped at the border I’m quite sure I would have peed myself and then confessed to not only owning a sharp object, but also ‘fessing up to breaking my sister’s Barbie, not feeding the dog and being the second shooter on the grassy knoll.) And despite all my years of travel I’ve never been south of the equator. So this should be a pretty cool experience.

I’m especially excited to leave behind this western winter for a southern summer. I’ve been told that for the first three months in Montevideo I’ll be living in a house the school has a lease on that they can’t get out of. So not only do I get to leave the frozen tundra of Colorado for the gentle summer of Uruguay, I get to do it in style by moving into a four bedroom home with a swimming pool. How sweet is that? Too bad it’s only for a few months, but I’m not going to complain. The pool will actually be great for me as walking in a pool is good physical therapy for my ankle. (Maybe I can talk the school into resigning the lease for therapeutic reasons.)

Speaking of my ankle- I saw my doctor a few weeks back and he’s declared me officially healed. This is not to say I’ll be running the 100 yard dash anytime soon, but I am free of the crutch, cane and cast. I’ve still got a pretty righteous limp and my ankle isn’t very flexible, but as time goes by and I walk more and more the limp will get better. It remains to be seen how much flexibility I’ll get back down there, but I’m pretty confident that it will get better.

We went to Wyoming for Christmas. We spent a few days in Casper with Betsy’s family, then up to Story to see my parents and sister, then back to Casper for a few more days. It was great to see family and friends again after my post-surgery self-imposed exile. But Wyoming was pretty miserable as far as the weather goes. Cold, cold, cold. And then there’s the good old Casper wind. Not fun. I’ve decided that winter and I are no longer a good match. After the bombing the nerve damage makes getting and keeping my hands warm pretty much a lost cause. My fingers get numb and stay numb. Fortunately my chosen profession does allow me some flexibility in climate options. I’m hoping Uruguay will be home for a good long while. Then I’ll head to someplace pleasant in Asia to work out my golden years in warmth. (Uruguay’s winters are supposed to be cold, I can live with that. I can not live with ten degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and thirty mile an hour winds blowing snow into every exposed area.) We did have a great time though and I loved being up in the mountains again. It’s always hard to leave, especially knowing it’s going to be a while before I see “home” again.

2007-11-15T14:52:00.000-07:00

As promised in the post below: here is the photo that was most popular at the show. (Click on it for a larger view.) It is a pretty great shot I must admit. Betsy said lots of people asked if it was photoshopped. Nope. I just turned and clicked, what you see is what I saw through the lens. (Please give credit where credit is due if you copy this picture.)

We were at Giza on a school field trip. It must be once a year that the pyramids are opened up for free to Cairo's schools. The place was crawling with kids, literally tens of thousands of them. I think, as these kids have seen the 'rids dozens of times on field trips, that we were far more interesting to see. Most of the kids were from regular state run schools, so were very poor and they probably don't see a lot of white faces around. I swear both Betsy and I had our picture taken, posing with a group, at least a couple of dozen times.

It was cute and fun the first few times, then it just got old. By the end we were rudely saying "no!" to the photo requests. Actually the last straw was when a boy tried to cop a feel while putting his arm around Betsy's shoulders. We should have known better- an Egyptian female would never have allowed a boy/man to touch her in any way. But despite the fact that we were seasoned and culturally aware expats, we allowed what would be pretty innocent in the USA. The kid probably could not believe his luck. A white girl letting him touch her! Of course he's going to go for some boob action. Betsy pushed him away and said something rude to him in Arabic and that was that. No more pictures.

I seem to recall being sort of gropped as well at some point. As a male in that region it can at times be hard to tell the difference between the signs of same sex affection and covert/overt homosexual overtures. I know 99.9% of the time it was affection, but a few times it seemed to be a bit more. (I always got a kick out of watching my stud boys give each other kisses and hugs in the morning. I'd think, "you guys would so get your asses kicked if you tried that in a school in America." Those types of things were always fascinating to me. The kids had a different term for erasures in Egypt. You should have seen my face the first time a female student asked me if I had a rubber.)

2007-11-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

Here's some shots of the photo exhibit

Above is my ankle before the last operation.
Here's what it looked like right afterwards. A bit straighter eh?

Betsy went to a pumpkin carving party before halloween. She won first prize.

2007-11-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

First off- this is funny:

http://www.jobkite.com/catsinacdstore.htm

Now on to our life…

The photo exhibit opening up in Casper was a great success. And the credit goes to Betsy who put it all together. (My only contribution was taking some of the pictures and helping her narrow down the final selections.) Our good friend Tony deserves some kudos as well, he was a great help to Betsy. We had about 35 pictures up when all was said and done. Everyone who came to the opening was blown away by the quality and style of the stuff that was up. According to Betsy the biggest hits were a picture I took of a door in an old madrasa in Islamic Cairo and another shot I took at the Giza pyramids of a mass of people in front of the sphinx. But everything up was raved about. It was also nice that the photos showed the good and positive side of “our Egypt.” We avoided any mention or reference to the bombing. The idea behind the show was to let people see the fun and beauty of Egypt.

You’ll notice I did not mention myself being at the opening. Because I wasn’t there. The night of the opening I was supposed to be preparing for wrist surgery the next day. It’s a long story, but I’ll try to make it short.

About two weeks before the opening I decided I should get my wrist fused. It’s the last procedure on the list of things I have needed to get done to my body. (After the leg surgery I’d decided against getting the wrist fused. It’s something that can wait. Not required, but would be nice. I was just sick and tired of seeing the inside of a hospital and constantly recovering from one thing or another. So the leg surgery was going to be it. The wrist could wait a few years. ) But as I thought about it I decided that the smart move would be to get the wrist fixed now while I have the time to recover and I know it will be paid for by Medicaid. So I got a hold of my doctor. The only date he could do it was the day after the opening. We could not wait any longer as it would take me about 3 months to fully recover, which would put me into my arrival in Uruguay. So the day after the opening was the date picked. Which means I could not go to the opening. A bummer. But I had to make the right move and surgery was the right move. On Monday, the day of the opening, I went into pre-op to get checked up on before surgery. I wheeled into the clinic and thought to myself that I just could not do it. I just could not go through another surgery and another 3 months of pain and misery. It was something that had been in the back of my head for a few days. Just thinking about how much it was going to hurt. Thinking about at least 6 weeks without being able to use my right hand at all. Thinking about rehab and therapy and … you know. The thought of them sticking me over and over again with a needle trying to find a working vein for the IV almost put me over the edge. The last straw was when I wheeled into the pre-op waiting room and saw at the end of the hallway a waiting room with a bed, blood pressure machine, medical equipment and so on. I just could not go through with it. I think I’ve got some sort of post traumatic syndrome that is not due to the bombing, but due to my 13 operations and extended hospital stays. I just can’t handle it. I’m not sure I can even go into the hospital for check-ups anymore.

Yeah. Wild eh?

So Betsy, with the help of Tony, did all the work for the opening, and deservedly received all the glory. She had Egyptian snacks, juices, tea, incense and music. She thinks about 100 people came. The staff at the café that hosted the show said it was the best photo exhibit they’d ever had. We had some great press on the show. Both local papers did stories and Betsy was interviewed for a radio program that played this last Sunday.

I hope South America has the same level of photo ops. That’s the thing about a place like Egypt. It’s pretty hard to not take good pictures. Everything is photogenic. The only bummer about the show is that we did not sell anywhere near enough pictures to cover the cost of putting it on. But a lot of people said they’d be back to buy. It’s good timing for us what with Christmas coming up. Hopefully some of the pictures will be under Xmas trees on the 25th. (As soon as I can figure out how to copyright the pictures I’ll put them up for all to see, and take orders from anyone who’d like to buy copies. [I know some of our pictures on the blog have been “borrowed,” which is fine, but it would be nice to get credit.] I don’t want to just put all of them up and let anyone copy them. In fact as I look back I probably should have put some sort of copyright type thing on quite a few of the really good pix that have gone up on the blog.) The show ends at the end of November, hopefully I’ll be able to go up then and see them all up and framed. Betsy took pictures of the show and it looked cool. I’ll post some of those pictures and others soon.

What else is up? Not much I guess. I’m beginning to walk a bit with one crutch. It’s been going slow. My leg hurts after a while. My right calf also gets really sore after not too long due to the fact that I’ve not been walking much for 3 months. I have been going to the gym quite a bit. Lifting light weights, but lifting. So my leg is coming along nicely.

Betsy is keeping pretty busy babysitting and picking up a friend’s boy from school every day. She also just got a very part-time job at a swank second hand clothing store. It’s the kind of place that only sells Prada and such. You know, high end clothing. She had her first day there on Sunday and hopes to work maybe one or two days a week. She was told that working there will get her networked to the Denver upper-class gals. Everyone who is anyone sells and shops there. That should make for some interesting stories. Betsy is also preparing to take her GMAT exam to get into grad school. She’s looking into going into the international MBA program at the University of Denver. Yikes. It’s like thirty grand a year. I certainly hope she does well on the exam and gets more than a few scholarships.

We’ll be spending Thanksgiving apart this year. Both our families are having mini family reunions. Hers up in Casper, mine here in Denver. I’d love to hang out with the Lamberson clan in Wyoming, but I’m looking forward to seeing my aunts, uncles and especially my nephews Liam and Noah. We’re all staying at a hotel in downtown Denver, which will be fun as we’ll all be together. I’m going to look at it like a little vacation for myself away from this apartment I’ve been in for so long.

I think that’s it for now. Look for some pictures soon.

2007-11-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've written anything. I promise an update very soon. Until then, enjoy this blast of Bollywood fun:

2007-11-01T21:00:00.000-06:00

Oh man, this is clever. Warning, it's R rated and you'll probably enjoy it most if you're a middle aged music nut.

2007-10-31T12:30:00.000-06:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

2007-10-26T14:14:00.000-06:00

I thought this was both accurate and ignorant at the same time:

2007-10-20T16:09:00.000-06:00

The hits just a keep on comin’

You know, you think things are going ok. Then you have a day like today…

This morning I decided to make iced tea. A fairly simple process, which normally doesn’t involve bodily harm and the ruining of weeks/months of work. This is true for everyone but me it seems.

I boiled some water and poured it into a glass pitcher. I’ve done it before. I was careful not to put too much water in the pitcher.

BAM!

The pitcher exploded. Dumping a good amount of boiling water into my lap. I now have delightful second degree burns on my right thigh. There’s some rockin’ good and painful blisters coming up.

Well, that sucked.

A little while later I decided it was time to clean up the mess. I looked at the counter and noticed the water spread a lot further than I thought. All the way to a pile of papers. Important papers. All my paperwork for the Uruguayan embassy to get my work visa. Soaked. Ruined. Passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate, police reports… all now waterlogged.

2007-10-19T15:58:00.000-06:00

You gotta be a music fan, and either a Van Halen lover or hater, to really appreciate this. Listen to the trainwreck when the synth track plays back too fast. Darn funny:

2007-09-29T15:09:00.000-06:00

This photo is the example of Indian home wiring refered to in the post below.

2007-09-29T15:03:00.000-06:00

Sometimes my emails to friends or family have enough good or fun info that I think it might be worth just posting, even though I consider it sort of cheating. (What?) Early in the week I sent an email to an old friend. As I reread it I thought it was a sort of fun email, with some good traveler tales of old. (These stories seem to be popping up more often lately, both on paper and in my mind.) So I saved it.

Below is an edited and expanded version. It’s a bit random as I was responding to my friend’s email. Dave, the guy I sent the email to, is someone I became good friends with while going to college in Laramie. (We had actually met before, as we were both from Casper and had mutual friends.) We bonded over a love of music. Unfortunately as we both got older we stopped calling and/or emailing each other often. But we always call each other when a favorite musician dies. So my email began with me giving Dave a bit of crap about only getting a hold of me when a member of… say… the Ramones dies. (Which is totally not true, and I’m just as bad about getting a hold of him.) I mentioned that Pete Townshend had not died yet, so why was he emailing me? (Again- this was all in jest, I’m not that big an assh*le.)

Anyway, to the modified email/post-

Speaking of Pete Townshend: I saw him playing a show in Austin on some cable TV concert series. He was backing up his girlfriend. Just Pete on acoustic guitar and his GF on piano. She did all the singing, with occasional Pete backup vox. It was friggin’ painful to watch and hear. I mean really bad. His GF writes and sings totally ordinary chick rock/folky stuff. Absolutely unmemorable music. At the end of the show they did a song they’d written together. Wow. I think it’s time for Pete to go back to editing books. He needs to give up those crazy fantasies about making it in the music biz and get a law degree or something. You know, a career he can fall back on if his life as a co-writer of vomit inducing sensitive ballads doesn’t pan out. Speaking of Pete: did you pick up the last Who CD? I never got through the whole disc. Sometimes it’s better to just fade away, but quickly.

So you’re going to India? How cool is that? Very cool. Very cool indeed. I’m not sure what kind of advice to give you. You know the drill- don’t drink the water, avoid eating anything covered in flies, practice squatting over small holes in the ground, and never-ever, under any circumstances, take a third class train. I have a feeling that you’ll be visiting India with a slightly higher daily budget than I did. But if not I can recommend a good hostel: communal rooms that sleep a cozy 30. Shared toilets that get cleaned once a month. Open air showers with both cold and cold water.

Seriously- not sure what kind of advice to pass on. Avoid shaking the hands of the street urchins. It’s a clever little trick they have. They’ll put out their hand and say, “hello mister!” out of habit, and ‘cause they’re so damned cute, you’ll shake their hand. Whereupon they’ll latch on with a grip of steel and won’t let go until you cough up a few rupees. The street food is pretty great in Delhi, but be wise. One thing I loved was buying wedges of coconut that kids sell to you while you’re waiting in traffic. Mango lassi is a good drink, and “fairly” safe. You gotta watch out for that ice though. It might be a good idea to have your doctor prescribe you a good anti-diarrhea/kill all stomach bugs type medicine. There’s something that works like a charm, but at the moment I can’t remember what it’s called. I’ll ask Betsy when she gets home. You can buy meds like that over the counter in India, at much lower costs, but if you get a sudden case of explosive diarrhea you might not be up for taking a walk. The only other piece of advice I’ll pass along is something told to me when I first visited India- Indians seem to love to riot. Love it. So if, god forbid, you are in any kind of car crash/accident, no matter if it’s a fender bender, a tap on a guy on a bike, or a full blown act of death and destruction- get the hell out of the vicinity pronto. Toss the taxi driver a wad of cash, calmly get out of the car, walk briskly away from the gathering crowd and hail another cab. If you, really god forbid, get into an accident that injures another person, do the above, but have the new taxi take you straight to the embassy.

I was in a little accident while in Madras. I was on the way to the consulate to read the week old newspapers they had in their library. My cab driver brushed up against a young man on a bike and he tipped over. The guy came running up to the car and began yelling at my driver, who began yelling back. In moments the car was surrounded by all kinds of people yelling at everyone else. While this is going on I’m yelling at the driver, “Just go man! Just go!” he completely ignored me. As more people began to gather and scream (by now they were probably arguing over whether partition was a good idea or not) I bugged out. I just threw some money in the front seat and got out of there. I was only about a block from the consulate. When I got to the front gate I looked back and, I swear, there must have been a hundred men there and punches were beginning to fly. It was a bit scary.

I was not crazy about New Delhi so can’t give you a lot of tourist advice. (I was only there for a few days.) The Red Fort is a must-see though. Very cool. I never made it down to Bombay so can’t tell you anything about that city. We do have friends in both cities, so if you’d like we’d be glad to put you into contact with them. It doesn’t sound like you’ll have a lot of extra time on your hands, but again, I’d be happy to get you in touch with them. (I’m an old skool colonialist. Just can’t get used to Mumbai and all those other changed city names. And it’s Burma for Christ sake, not Myanmar!)
________________________________________________________________________
_______END OF EMAIL_____________________________________________________

So that’s it as far as sharing the email goes. Those India tales, I could tell them all day. What a country. I hated that place by the time I left it. When I visited India I considered myself a pretty seasoned traveler. The trip to India by way of Thailand, Malaysia and Nepal, was my third or fourth trip to Asia. But that country ate me alive.

I left from Calcutta. The flight from Calcutta to Bangkok was almost empty except for a sprinkling of fellow backpackers. When the plane’s wheels left the ground we all cheered and burst into applause. I felt about a thousand pounds of weight being lifted from my shoulders. When we landed I was so happy to be back to Bangkok.

Actually when I look back on that trip I realize India was a pretty great place and the people were wonderfully warm, kind and generous. It is also totally insane, as are most of the people:) It’s a cultural thing I know, but wow. Insanity. It didn’t help that I did that trip on the thinnest of shoestring budgets. I stayed in the cheapest guest houses, ate almost no food, drank even less. And as it was summer and a drought free water was scarce. (This was before bottled water was widespread. Water came from pumps or taps and had to be purified and I’d not brought along any tablets or the trusty old Lugol’s Iodine. Because of the drought I lived on mango lassi’s. I hate mango to this day and you would too if you had to eat/drink the stuff a hundred times a day. [A lassi, by the way, is a yummy blend of yogurt, ice, and fruit.])

There were a lot of good times, good times indeed. In Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal, we (I was traveling with a German girl I’d met on the bus from Katmandu to Varanasi) spent our days hanging out at a little restaurant called Johnnie’s. We’d sit with Johnnie and watch the monkeys get electrocuted. We’d laugh and laugh…

What?

Ok… in India, like much of the third world, more than a bit of electricity is stolen. You need some power for your flat? You just run an electrical wire from your place to the nearest telephone pole, and then tap into the transformer or whatever.

So the streets of India looked a lot like the photo hopefully posted above. Most of these wires are not grounded, insulated or remotely “safe.” (I got electrocuted in a shower in Jaipur thanks to a homemade wiring system, but that’s another tale to tell, some other day.) Anyway, back to the monkeys. In the late afternoon is when they seemed to be at their most active, we’d be at our most bored and Johnnie would be at his most stoned. We’d sit in chairs in front of his place and watch the monkeys walk along the power lines from pole to pole. A pretty impressive balancing act actually. We’d wait with our breath held in anticipation: here comes a monkey along a power line, headed towards the pole with the transformer. The monkey has been working his butt off balancing on that thin wire, his cute little fingers and cute little tail wrapped around the cable, scrambling along at a good clip, stopping occasionally to rebalance, then finally he makes it across.

Whew. He reaches up to grab the transformer to… ZAP!

Fireworks explode from the transformer, down goes the monkey. Thump! Johnnie would roar in stoned laughter. We’d clap appreciatively. (I love monkeys, but learned to hate those “city monkeys.” Evil little guys. And smart, too smart. In Hyderabad I was actually stalked by a gang of macaques. As I walked along the street early one morning I looked up and saw a few of them following me from the rooftops on one side of the road. The next time I looked up there were more of them trailing me from the roofs on both sides of the street. Then I looked behind me and saw more of them on the ground. It was frightening. I felt like I was an unarmed cowboy in Indian country. Which in a way I was.) The restaurant was on a little neighborhood square. And there was a young guy who hung out on the square all day. The guy was obviously retarded and pretty crazy as well. This dude would stand below the transformer and clap like mad whenever a monkey would fry itself. Then he’d pick up the smoking carcass and run off with it to god knows where.

I could write India stories all day. But it’s time to post. I will add that the accident in Madras I wrote to my friend about did really happen. But I never did take a third class train ride. On my loooong train trip from Delhi to Madras I did look into the third class compartments. That was enough.

Trains in India… boy, there’s some tales to tell. Maybe tomorrow!

2007-09-26T17:40:00.000-06:00

I found this on an international teacher’s website- it was posted by an email friend of mine. I thought I’d share it as it’s pretty funny:

Here is the old joke about different governmental systems (democracy vs. socialism vs. communism etc) adapted for the Gulf. For those that may be coming to the Gulf thinking that these countries are all the same... it does show those subtle differences.

VS
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

DUBAI SYSTEM:
You have two cows. You create a website for them and advertise them in all magazines. You create a Cow City or Milk Town for them. You sell off their milk before the cows have even been milked to both legitimate and shady investors who hope to sell the non-existent milk for a 100% profit in two years time. You bring Tiger Woods to milk the cows first to attract attention.
====================================
QATAR SYSTEM:
You have two cows. They've been sitting there for decades and no one realizes that cows can produce milk. You see what Dubai is doing; you go crazy and start milking the heck out of the cows in the shortest time possible. Then you realize no one wanted the milk in the first place.
====================================
BAHRAIN SYSTEM:
You have two cows. Some high government official steals one, milks it, sells the milk and pockets the profit. The government tells you there is just one cow and not enough milk for the people. The people riot and scream death to the government and carry Iranian flags. The Parliament, after thinking for 11 months, decides to employ ten Bahrainis to milk the cow at the same time to cut back on unemployment.
====================================
KUWAIT SYSTEM:
They do not have cows. Milk is imported since no locals can or would milk a cow.
====================================
SAUDI SYSTEM:
Since milking the cow involves nipples the government decides to ban all cows in public. The only method to milk a cow is to have a cow on one side of the curtain and the guy milking the cow on the other.
====================================
OMAN SYSTEM:
You have two cows. After a huge public speech in which you declare cow milking as a landmark initiative and appointing a new government body in charge of cow milking. You first spend a year doing nothing, then you spend 1 year on planning to milk them properly and safely, another one year to get the proper ministry approvals to milk them. By the time you actually get around to milking the cows, the cows are dead

I’ll add to it…

EGYPTIAN SYSTEM:
You have two cows. The first one fails to produce any milk. This is blamed on Israeli secret agents attempting to deprive Egyptians of sustenance in order to weaken the people to the point that they’ll be unable to fight when Israel finally invades Egypt in order to annex the country. Of the second cow’s four teats, two are broken, one was lost, and the last one will produce milk when god wills it. (Even though no one has ever seen milk come from the working teat everyone knows this to be true because they were sent a text message on the subject by an uncle whose cousin’s mother’s brother has a friend who works at the ministry of agriculture.)

2007-09-24T11:20:00.000-06:00

Good news for me today. I had my leg x-rayed this morning and there is bone growth! So I can begin to put a bit of weight on my leg. I’m so relived. The doctor says I still have to be careful and can’t walk yet, but I can begin to use my crutches a bit more and can start using the swimming pool.

So things are going as planned. In about a month I should be able to really “walk.” That seems like a long ways off, but I’m hoping the days will go by quickly.

2007-09-21T13:36:00.000-06:00

WARNING! According to Betsy I should have put a warning before the toilet part of my post below. So I'm doing it now:

WARNING! The post below may cause mental images you'd just as soon not have. (Personally I don't think it's bad at all. I mean I could have put in a lot more details, but even I don't want you all to know me that well.)

Also, the link below goes to a funny little video called "Role Models." Some may find it a bit inappropiate. So don't watch if you're a sensitive, family values type, who may vote Republican. (Again, it's really not all that bad. And is a funny and sad statement on the role models of today's kids.)

http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/Role_Models/2005534/#ml=fk%3Drole%2520models%26fx%3D%26o%3D7

2007-09-20T12:40:00.000-06:00

I've been wasting the day digging around YouTube. Really my first time going through this site. It's a pretty amazing place. There is nothing you can't find. This is especially true for us music geeks. You want to see a live song from Cheap Trick's first tour? It's on YouTube. You want to see Elvis meet the mayor of Rpid City? It's on YouTube. You want to see the worst band in the world cover the worst song in the world? Here it is:

I also found this funny little South Park rip on the Mac vs. PC commercial:

And just in case you want to hear the "good" version of Never Say Die- here you go:

I swear. I was not looking for King Kobra videos. I have wide tastes in music, but I also have, I like to think, a few standards. I’ll not go into how I discovered those little musical nuggets.

Speaking of standards… I was sitting on the toilet this morning and admiring the huge roll of Charmin toilet paper we have. It got me to thinking about TP challenges in my travels around the world.

In Cairo a roll of something like Charmin or any other imported TP was way out of our budget. Every time we’d go to the market I’d look at those packages of silky smooth American TP the same way a poor kid would look at sweets in a candy shop. So close, so good, but beyond reach. The TP in Egypt, like most of the third world, was crap. (Pun intended.) I mean this stuff was as so thin that just looking at it would cause it to disintegrate, and it was as rough as sandpaper. Not to mention the cardboard center was usually as thick as the whole roll itself. A jumbo roll would last about a day if you were careful. And you know how the first sheet is sort of attached to the rest of the roll? Loosely attached, if you’re lucky, so it doesn’t unravel. Well the stuff we’d buy in Cairo and this was really top of the line local TP, seemed to always have that lead sheet super glued to the rest of the roll. So you’d use up half the roll just getting everything loose. We had a favorite brand of TP, can’t recall its name now, but it was better than most brands, unfortunately, like so many items in markets in Cairo, you never knew from week to week if the market would have it in stock. Sometimes our local store would be out of it for weeks at a time. (Now that I think about it, I think the brand was called Super Fine or something like that.) So we’d stock up whenever we found it. You always had to have massive amounts of TP on hand as, already mentioned, you’d go through about a roll a day anyway and the last thing you wanted was to run out while on the pot. Then you might have to use the local paper towels, which were even worse than the TP.

We did draw the line at paper towels. The local stuff was so bad it would make bigger messes than whatever it was you were cleaning up. The towel would literally disintegrate in your hands, leaving bits of paper all over the countertop, window or whatever it was you were cleaning. So we’d pay the outrageous extra cash for Bounty, and treat it like a rare wine. Only to be used of special occasions.

On my first trip overseas, to Nepal by way of the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh, I was warned about the rather loose TP quality standards I’d encounter on my travels. I recall bringing along a couple of rolls of the good stuff, then when I ran out just having to live with the sandpaper I could buy in the streets of Katmandu. (TANGENT WARNING- Actually the worst was when I got sick in Katmandu. I was with some friends and we went out to eat at a pizza place, which back in those days in Katmandu, was a real rarity and treat. It was called San Francisco Pizza. I ordered a “meat pizza.” I remember thinking when the pizza arrived that it did not look quite right. The meat didn’t look completely cooked and did not really look like any kind of meat one would expect to see on a pizza. But I was young and foolish and hungry, so I dug in. I got through about one slice when it hit me. I just managed to get out the door before barfing all that “meat” back up again. And I just barely managed to get back to my room before everything began exploding out my other end too. I spent the next week either on my back in bed, or squatting over the hole in the floor that was the toilet of this particular guest house. [What a place that was! My monk like cell cost me 25 cents a night. The room had a small rope bed, a little rickety night stand, a bare thirty watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling, a single window that looked out over a Hindu temple and a pregnant dog on the roof named Rudy who’d bark all night. I loved that room and that guest house. There was one communal shower and one communal toilet. The shower was in a corner of the hallway and had metal walls with holes rusted through them. The toilet was spider and bug infested with a squat type hole to aim at. A Difficult and scary place to use.] About half way through the week I ran out of toilet paper, so what I’d do between runs to the toilet was lay on my back and crumple and uncrumple notebook paper to get it soft enough to use the next time my stomach would cramp up.)

I did try to go native by using my left hand and water to clean myself, but I just found it too gross. Despite all my years of traveling, all the places I’ve visited and all the ways I’d manage to cope and go native, I’ve never been able to get comfy about wiping my butt with my hand. I’d sort of serve penance for this by never bringing along massive quantities of TP. I’d use up my one or two rolls brought from home, then use the local stuff. I’ve met many a traveler who would be on the road with half a backpack of toilet paper. This is fine and logical really. It weighs nothing and as you use it up you make room for all the goodies you are buying to take home.

In Cairo one of the few good things about our first apartment was the bathroom, and more specifically the toilet. It had, as most toilets in the Middle East and elsewhere, a little water jet that with the turn of a knob would squirt water on your bum, making the wiping process much more sanitary and quick. The first time I saw the knob in that bathroom, by the toilet, I had no idea what it was for. So as I stood over the toilet looking down I turned the knob and got a blast of water right in the face. I called Betsy in to take part in the fun. Only this time I stood away from the front. And this time the jet of water not only cleared the toilet and the bathroom, it shot half way down the hall. Man, we never got tired of shooting water down that hallway.

I could tell traveling toilet tales all day, but it’s time to move on I suppose.

On Tuesday I went with a friend to see the Colorado Rockies play the L.A. Dodgers. It was a great game. The Rockies had to win to keep their playoff hopes alive. The score was 8 to 7 at the bottom of the ninth inning. With a full count, two outs and one guy on base, the batter hit a home run! That was thrilling to see. Somewhere below, hopefully, if I can figure it out, is a little video of the game I took on my phone. I wish I’d had the phone out for that last hit, but a homerun was the last thing we’d expected.

Besides that, things are pretty normal around here at the moment, at least for me. Betsy has been suffering from a bit of an emotional roller coaster over the last week. A good friend of hers, Kerry, is dying of cancer. She was a friend of Betsy’s mom and was a huge help to us when we got out of the hospital here in Denver and has been a good friend to Betsy. Kerry was diagnosed with stomach cancer last spring. In May it looked like she’d be OK. Kerry was doing chemo and the tumors in her stomach had all but disappeared. Then tumors began to grow in other places and about a month ago the cancer had spread to her lymphatic system. Kerry went into the hospital about ten days ago due to some discomfort in her bladder and the doctors found tumors everywhere. Since then it’s been pretty much a waiting period. They’ve turned off all life support except for pain relief and everyone is just waiting for her to peacefully pass on. Hopefully it’ll be soon as no one wants her to suffer any longer.

This has really been tough on Betsy as this all comes at the anniversary of her mother’s death from cancer when Betsy was about ten. To her credit, Betsy’s been a great source of comfort for everyone in Kerry’s family. Especially Kerry’s sons. The younger of whom Betsy has been picking up from school since April. As Betsy knows what it’s like to lose a parent, she’s been able to give support and direction from a different perspective than others. The biggest compliment she got was a few days ago at the hospital. The family and friends of Kerry had pretty much taken over the ICU waiting room. But there were other people there waiting for news on their loved ones as well. One of these people came up to Betsy and asked her if she was a therapist of some kind there to support the family. Betsy said no, she was just a friend of the family, and this person told Betsy she thought Betsy was a therapist because of how well she was comforting and interacting with everyone. Betsy should be proud of this compliment. I know I am. She’s so good at giving to others in that way. Here’s hoping though that not too long from now Betsy will not have to ever sit in another hospital waiting room while someone she loves undergoes anything. After all this time and all the love and care and understanding she’s given she deserves that.

2007-09-12T13:14:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I turned 45. In a wheelchair. Last year I turned 44. In a wheelchair. Seems like time is standing still. Last year Betsy and I were up in Story at my parent’s house. It actually was a bit of a milestone as far as my recovery went. We’d been told my ankle was not healing and that I’d be in a chair for a good while. But while up in Story something made us think my leg was better. So when we got back we got an x-ray, and low and behold, my break had completely healed. The doctor was as surprised as we were.

This year I’m in Denver and won’t have such luck. I have to count down the days until Sept. 24, when I’ll get my x-ray that will decide the next four weeks. Right now, if all goes to plan, we’ll have bone growth and I’ll be able to start walking in a swimming pool. Then sometime around mid-October I should be able to start putting some weight on my leg.

This cannot come soon enough. Sitting all day, whether at home or outside- sucks. It’s so freaky going out. On Sunday we went to Target. No one ever looks down as they scamper about consuming. I’m constantly afraid of getting run over by some idiot paying more attention to their cell phone than to those around them. Sunday is not the best day to go shopping admittedly. Too many people. I can only take about a half hour of it, and then have to hide near the exit where I feel safer. It’s funny though. I guess I must have a touch of PTS. I was sitting by the exit watching all the people come and go and had a brief flash on the damage that could be done if someone waded into this crowd with a bomb strapped to their chest. I then began checking out all the people with darkish skin. Trying to differentiate between the Hispanics, East Indians and Middle Easterners. It probably didn’t help that as we drove to the store we were listening to a public radio program on an Iraq vet who was having troubles acclimating to being home after spending his days waiting to get killed in the land of sand.

I’ve been in contact with the guy who is teaching my classes in Montevideo. A really good guy. I know we’ll get along well once we arrive in Uruguay. I’ll be a bit bummed that he’ll not be teaching then. He’s an American teacher who took a year off with his wife to travel in S.A. I guess. (Don’t know his full story, but he has an excellent blog: http://adamleandra.blogspot.com/ if you dig back into the archives you’ll find some excellent info and pix of Montevideo.) I emailed him today to give him some crap about going to see Bryan Adams in Montevideo. But admitted I’d seen Bryan once and that Bryan played at the pyramids while we were living in Cairo. I then complained that no one good played Cairo while we were there. Bryan Adams, Kenny G. and The Scorpions. That was it. Adam responded that he’d have gone to see the Scorpions, which brought back a fond memory for me; here was my response to Adam:

“Back in the 80’s I lived here in Denver and worked at a record store called Wax Trax. Back then it was considered one of the best record stores in the world. As I worked at an important store I got invited to a lot of shows, went backstage to meet a lot of bands. A stadium tour came through called “Monsters of Rock.” The headliners were Van Halen, Metallica also played along with a bunch of other butt-rock bands. Before Van Halen were the Scorpions! A good friend of mine was the local rep for Polydor records that had a number of bands on the bill. So I got two tickets and two backstage passes. As I did not give a damn about most of the bands, my friend and I spent all our time drinking beer in the Polydor hospitality tent backstage.

Wax Trax put out a little newsletter every month and I decided to write an article about my experience. Needless to say I did not take my interviewing very seriously, even less so after about the thirtieth beer. So every time a Polydor band was brought into the tent to meet the lucky record store and radio people I’d try to interview the bands and asked the dumbest questions I could think of. The Scorpions came in and I cornered the lead singer and asked him, “so Klaus, what’s your favorite flavor of kool-aid?”

His response was, “yes, I love America very very much!”

Huh?

After following up with a question about Barbie vs. Ken and getting a similar answer I realized these guys know almost no English! It was hilarious. I sat down for a one on one interview with the fine fellows of Dokken and they got really pissed at me when all my questions were about crayons and Twinkies. “What the f*ck does this have to do with rock and roll!” Don Dokken yelled at me as he got up to leave. “This is totally rock and roll,” I kinda remember yelling back at him.

At some point we got kicked out of tent for being too drunk. But not before we stole about twelve final beers, which we stashed behind a dumpster. We snuck onstage to a special viewing area for Van Halen. My friend decided to climb the scaffolding to the top of the rig at an early point in the show, was caught, but managed to escape security in the dark. We spent the rest of Van Halen’s set trying to break into their limos, stealing security jackets and trying to sneak onstage.

Insanity.”

It was a lot of fun. Ahh, the old days.

2007-09-10T18:04:00.000-06:00

Just testing out the video part of blogger. This is a little video I took on my phone of a huge lightning storm we had a few weeks ago.

2007-09-02T10:17:00.001-06:00

I got out of the apartment yesterday! Nice to go somewhere besides the hospital. We went to see a band called Wilco. One of my favorite bands back in the day.

WARNING: only hipsters will probably get the next paragraph…

I’ve sort of lost interest in them lately as their last few CD’s have been pretty weird. But it was a great show. The band was hot as was the venue. Really hot, we were sweating like pigs. It seems someone forgot to pay the AC bill. They played at a barn called the Fillmore, which back in the day was called the Mammoth Gardens. It began life as an ice skating rink in the 50’s. Then was used on and off as a concert venue. (I guess The Who played there on their Tommy tour.) When I lived in Denver back in the 80’s I did a few shows there when I worked as a production manager. The most memorable being Jane’s Addiction and Primus. What a nightmare show. Totally sold out. No barricade. I spent half my time on stage pulling crushed kids out of the front of the stage. Had to send one girl off in an ambulance. Really a scary show. The lead singer of Jane’s got hit in the face with a shoe halfway through the show and stormed offstage. He had to be talked back on, with the threat of a riot if the band didn’t finish the show. For some weird reason people were throwing their shoes on stage throughout the show. After the concert there must have been fifty left or right shoes onstage. Baffling at the time. But really memorable. Also because I got to meet The Pixies that night. We were doing them the next night and they arrived in town a day early to see Jane’s. (They were going to open for Jane’s on the next leg of their tour. A friend of mine was working for the Pixies lighting crew and I was invited to go with them up to Seattle on the tour bus after the Denver gig. Had to say no as we were in the middle of an exhausting string of like six straight shows. I’ve always regretted missing that opportunity.)

Anyway, I am constantly amazed when I go to a show at the Fillmore. Back when it was the Mammoth it was a real sh*thole. It’s a beautiful venue now. As I am still in a wheelchair we got to take advantage of the handicapped seating areas. First we went to sweet spot right at the side of the stage. Man! What a great spot! Unfortunately it was not to be. That area was considered full. So they moved us to another seating area further back in the venue. Not a bad spot, but it was right next to a ramp that led from the floor to our level. People kept stopping at the top the ramp to watch the band, which would then totally block our view of the stage. Every time security (or Betsy) would move a couple along, someone would replace them. It was really pissing me off. I resigned myself to paying $50 to only see the bass player for an hour and a half. Then we got lucky. A new security girl took over that area and after Betsy explained to her what happens when the pinheads stand at the top of the ramp, this girl kept the area clear. She’d even come over to us to make sure we were cool and to check our sightline. Most excellent. And as I said, a great show. The band played mainly stuff from their most recent CD’s, so I didn’t recognize a lot of the songs. But it was still a lot of fun.

Below is a video from their early stuff… hope it works:

2007-08-30T19:29:00.000-06:00

Betsy's dad visited us last night. He was in town to show off his spiffy new leg at show and tell at the hospital where they did all the work on him. (He was at a different hospital than Betsy and I.) Anyway, he had some Dahab related pix that we did not have. So we borrowed a few. Above are pictures taken the night after the bomb went off. The second picture is actually what the corniche looks like most every night. The lane is lined with paper lanterns. It's quite magical. That was why I took us down there in the first place on that fated night.

The taxi is the one that took Betsy from the bomb site to the Dahab clinic. Hopefully she can sometime tell the story about the attempt to de-pants her, for her own good- really) before the taxi took off. Also is a shot of the restaurant Capone's the day after the bombing. We were all very near this spot when the bomb went off. The bomb was right next to the restaurant. I landed not far from the tree in the foreground.

Finally, a sad/funny shot. This is Betsy and I in the hospital in Cairo right after our first surgeries. Look closely, see anything missing?

Look close...

See it? Everything is missing. Everything post-op that is. No oxygen. No IV's. Nuthin'. Just a red nurses call button that may or may not have worked. Man, I do not miss that place. Although to their credit, the doctors and nurses did their very best with what they had.

2007-08-28T01:49:00.000-06:00

it's like 2am here right now. i can't sleep. instead i'm downloading all my cd's into the computer. the credit card bill is just a bit too high, so it seems like the time to digitize and sell off my massive cd collection. they're sure not doing me any good sitting up in my parent's attic. i've been pretty suprised at how much music i've not downloaded. tons of good stuff.

(sorry about the lack of caps- i'm writing quickly and on the fly, with only one hand to use hitting the caps button slows me down a bit.)

had a bit of a scare sunday. the side of my injured leg that was not recently operated on got rubbed a bit raw by the cast i was wearing. (forgive me if i've posted this part before.) it was decided i'd wear a removable cast similar to a long ski boot. well yesterday i took off the boot and bandage to get ready to shower. i noticed that the bandage covering the wound smelled a bit "funky." certain infections have certain smells and betsy and i, mostly betsy, have become pros at sniffing dressings and knowing what kind of infection i have as i've had a lot of them. the bandage smelled like a bacteria called psuedomonas. not a really nasty thing, but not something you want growing on your leg either if you know what i mean. i emailed my bone doc pronto and he asked that i come in to clinic monday.

the first doctor, a visiting fellow, looked at it and said it's just raw and needs careful wound care. the next doc that looked thought it may have messed up my skin graft and i may need another one, and in any case i'll need to have the wound worked on, maybe in the operating room. yikes! not what i wanted to hear. finally my main bone doc came in- he prodded, poked, squeezed, and decided everything was ok. i just need to keep the thing clean and aired out, so i should only wear my ski boot when absolutely neccesary. whew! so good news after a sleepless night.

i've been trying to post pix of amsterdam. it's all messed up. tomorrow for sure.

2007-08-26T06:13:00.000-06:00

from the desk of Betsy:

Mark your calendar for November 5th
Relive the sites, sounds, and tastes of our adventure in Egypt as we bring this blog to life at a photo exhibit during the month of November at the Metro Coffee Shop. The opening will be Monday November 5th, and then the photos will be up for the rest of the month.

Pretty sweet eh?

The idea of photo exhibit came up while I was still in the hospital last year and my best friend Tony was on care-giver shift. Over the course of the night I showed him some of our photo and the idea was born. Bam! We should do a photo exhibit. Tony, being the up and coming photographer that he is, had it all planned out. And now more than a year later we have finally taken the steps to make it happen. With Tony's help we secured the gig and now we are in the process of selecting the photos that are worthy of being hung on a wall. Artists, professional photographers, we are not! But it turns out that if you take thousands of pictures of some really great subject matter you are bound to have a few photos that can pull it off. And with 2 months to go we have plenty of time to make this a very cool event! I'm looking forward to the chance to share some of what we loved about Egypt with a community that well versed in the tragic chapter of our time in Egypt.

Speaking of photos...

I just learned how to post pictures on the blog, so hopefully I'll post more often. I have ton of random pictures to share including some from this summer.In June, we had a family get-together in Dayton, Wyo to celebrate birthdays, father's day and Cindy's return to trail races. It also marked Dad's newly found freedom in mobility on his motorcycle and mountain bike. That's my brother, Ben, ready to celebrate the occasion. For Dad, this has been a summer of milestones. Now Dad only wears his air-cast to play and just in the last week or so has been able to get his franken-foot into a shoe. The same weekend he got the shoe figured out, he grabbed his hiking poles hit the trails. Slowly but surely he's reclaiming the mountain. Yesterday, he entered the 10K Mountain Challenge, which is an annual run/hike/race that starts at Rotary Park at the foot of Casper Mtn. and ends at Bear Trap Meadow at the top. Cindy hiked with him and they came in at 2 & 1/2 hours. He's an inspiration to say the least. Like my friend Sarah Williams said, "Even after being blown up, old age hasn't caught up with him."Cindy cooling off after finishing the 50K (32 mile) trail race.
My brother-in-law, Matt, who joined the ortho club this spring when he fractured his pelvis and wrist at work, thus leaving Ben as the only adult male in the family that wasn't on a cane or crutches. We were a sad sight but by the time the runners all can in the didn't look much better so it worked out. Here is our camp ground with all the toys. The helmet hanging off the wheelchair says it all. And then there is always the Queen of the Camp, Ms. Mariah Sue! Will post more soon.

2007-08-23T11:53:00.000-06:00

The director of my school put me in touch with a teacher friend of his that suffered something similar to us as far as attacks go. Here is an edited version of the tale:

“Where to begin? At the end of the month it will be 5 years for us. At the time we were working in Indonesia in West Papua. It is a small school for mine employees’ children. On a Saturday shortly after school started all 10 of the teachers and our daughter went for a picnic. On the way back to town we were attacked by gunfire. After 45 minutes of gun fire 3 of our party were dead and the rest of us were at various degrees of wounded including my daughter. I was shot 3 times. One shot putting several holes in my colon, another shattering my femur and causing a loss of a great deal of muscle just above the knee and the third left me with shrapnel in my eye.

Yes it was a very long recovery, a year, but in fact I am alive and that was very uncertain for a number of hours afterwards. We were air lifted to Australia where I spent little over a month in the hospital. My wife and daughter were released after about a week.
After returning to the states I was on the doctor a day program for about 5 months. During that time I had 3 additional surgeries on my leg. I had 3 surgeries on my leg in Australia, one on my colon and one on my eye, which thank goodness seems to be okay.
A year later I had the rod removed from my leg because I could no longer tolerate the discomfort especially at night … So for 50 years [of] never seeing the inside of a hospital… I am asked to fill out surveys for hospitals because of my experience.

Our family still struggles with PTS and I am not sure it will ever go away. When I teach I have some discomfort in my leg when I get too tired.… All that aside its not ones physical condition that makes them a teacher of children but ones attitudes towards learning and helping youngins’ learn.”

Wow.

He and I have had very similar experiences. He said he went back to teaching a bit too early. Which makes me all the more thankful I’ve been given the chance for a bit longer recovery.

Speaking of- I continue to suffer in a wheelchair. I am so sick of sitting and trying to wheel around our apartment. Last night I went for a “walk.” Just to the corner of the block and back. I need to begin to get a bit of exercise. It was exhausting, but I made it. My goal is to go a few feet further every day.

I saw my bone doc on Monday. The stitches (32 of them) were removed from my leg. I now have a delightfully long scar on the other side of my left leg to go with the children frightening scars on the other side. It’s quite a sight. It was decided to put me in a boot instead of in another cast as the cast was rubbing my skin grafts raw. This is nice as I can at least take the thing off occasionally. Especially when I shower. Which is much easier now. I’ll have to stay off the leg for another month. Then assuming we have bone growth I’ll be able to begin putting weight on the leg. Probably beginning with walking in a swimming pool. The doc cut me way back on my pain-killers. A good thing as far as addiction goes. A bad thing as far as discomfort goes. My leg is constantly sore, but I’ll take that over having to get over opiate withdrawal again sometime down the line.

I was also contacted by the guy teaching my classes. Man, what a dream school! At least after ELS in Cairo.

“As far as what you’re stepping into...I call it teacher heaven. In my opinion, this school, from building to administration to students, is really everything a school should be. Discipline problems are nearly non-existent, class sizes are from 5-15, I have approximately 40 total. Learning disorders are negligible… these guys are all at or above grade level, usually in more than one language. Parent involvement and expectation is very high, and the kids have high expectations of themselves… Physically, this is the best room in the building, right by the office, first floor, big, central to everything, and I'm pretty fond of the way the students decorated it--we cut up National Geographic’s and covered the walls in wonderful worldly images...”

I could have cried after reading that. I also now know what to begin to prepare for the second semester. So I actually have something to do with all this spare time on wheels.

The teacher has a good blog too: http://adamleandra.blogspot.com/

Well, that’s it for now. Soon I’ll put up more photos (maybe today). And as soon as I can reinstall Photoshop and do some editing to hide student faces, I’ll pout up a picture of my future classroom that was sent to me.

2007-08-19T00:09:00.000-06:00

These little videos are from a show called "Robot Chicken." Friggin' genious! Hope you all have DSL. No matter what, this one below is worth the download wait.

2007-08-19T00:05:00.000-06:00

2007-08-18T23:51:00.001-06:00

The infamous "kung-fu elvis" outfit.
Betsy took this pix of me going down a staircase at Graceland. It was so cool. Nothing but myriads of mirrors and miles of shag carpeting.
"The jungle room."
For me this was the coolest thing I saw at Graceland. Elvis's first gold record.
_________________________________________________________________

In May we decided to visit Cairo. It seemed like we were ready to return to the scene of the crime as it were. On our way we had a stop over in Memphis, TN. I had to see Sun Studios and Graceland. We had a good day.

Above and below are some photos from that part of the trip. I'll post more of the trip photos later.

2007-08-18T23:38:00.000-06:00

A self-portrait after badly humming a few bars of "Heart Break Hotel." (If you've seen the movie This Is Spinal Tap, you'll know what I'm talking about.)
The King's last stand.
I thought this nicely summed up Graceland.
This deeee-luxe Elvis Bed even had an 8-track player! Sweet style!
The room of gold records at Graceland. Very cool.

2007-08-18T23:31:00.000-06:00

We thought this was great- seeing a pyramid in Memphis on our way to see the land of pyramids.
Inside Sun Studio.
Beale Street was a blast. We had some great BBQ and saw some cool juke joints.
More of Graceland in all its 70's tacky splendor.
The coolest suit in the world.

2007-08-18T23:19:00.000-06:00

Me in front of rock n' roll Mecca.

Betsy at the soda fountain, while we wait for the tour of Sun Studios.
THE STUDIO- there's an "x" on the floor where Elvis sang his first song. The tour guide said that when Bob Dylan came through on a tour he knelt down and kissed that spot.
A trolly ride around Memphis.

2007-08-13T13:53:00.001-06:00

This is great! A bit too close to the bone for us, but still... damn funny.

2007-07-10T12:54:00.000-06:00

ओके, हियर'एस थे डील।

wow, how's the above thing? I wrote and it changed to Hindi! Crazy. Anyway, this is just a quick note to let you all know we're still alive and kicking. I plan on posting a ton of photos in the next few days. Then, of course, there's the move to Uruguay. I still have not decided on whether to do a new blog or keep this one.

Any thoughts?

If we do a new blog I'll post the address, so you all can keep up. I'm leaning towards a new blog for a new start in life. Post your comments, let us know what you all think.

Photos from Memphis, Amsterdam, Cairo and Denver are coming soon. So check back. And don't give up on me. I'll be back to posting like a maniac soon!

2007-04-26T20:23:00.000-06:00

Well, it’s been a year.

A year since those jihady f*cks set off three bombs that killed 23 people, injured a hundred more and forever changed the lives of Betsy and I. I wish I could say “golly the year has just flown by,” but I’d be lying. While I pretty much lost about a fourth of that year and recall it only through a fog of pain and painkillers, it seems like the whole year has crawled by. Boredom, hurting, fear, tears… it’s all been there making us just want to get this thing over with. Whatever that “thing” is. The problem is that it will never be over with. Something I know I have to accept. (Can anyone recommend a good psychologist?) But something I pray for almost on a daily basis.

It’s so strange. Some days I wake up and feel normal. A good thing. Some days I wake up feeling like I was blown up. Either way the first thing I do in the morning is go into the bathroom and brush my teeth. And no matter what, the first thing I see every morning is the result of that bomb. Scars, scars, and more scars. Backed up by the fun of opening the toothpaste lid with one hand.

Sigh.

I could have been so much worse though. And for that both Betsy and I are truly thankful. On Tuesday night we had a toast, our only real celebration of this dark anniversary. We toasted to a year of surviving. A year of living. Which, considering the destructive power of that bomb, is something to celebrate.

I try not to “what if” myself over the bombing, but occasionally I cannot help it. What if I’d been six inches to the right when the bomb went off? Whatever blew off that big chunk of my upper arm would have gone through my spine. Instead of a limp and a bum arm I’d be paralyzed. What if my left leg had been a few inches in another direction? The foot could have been blown clear off. What if I’d been facing the bomb? Well… I’d probably be dead. All those holes I have in my backside would have been in my front side, resulting in much more damage. I doubt I’d have survived it.

The worst are my “what ifs” involving us all being in that spot when the bomb went off. Only these change to “if only.” If only we’d not stopped to look at that restaurant menu. If only we’d stopped to eat at the first place we saw. And the hardest for me: if only I’d just recommended we eat at the hotel’s restaurant, which was my plan to begin with. Instead of a year of pain and a lifetime of impairment, we’d have had a nice meal and a good story to tell.

But I cannot set back the clocks of time and I cannot change to path we decided to walk down the evening of April 24th, 2006. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, I suppose considering the fact that the four of us lived, we were in the right place at the wrong time.

So it goes.

Lots of good has come from this experience as well. We found out we have friends all over the world who care for us and care about us to a degree we never thought possible. Best of all our families are closer together and to us. I’ll never be able to express to my parents how much I love them for being by my side almost 24 hours a day during those early scary weeks. Despite the horror that caused it, Betsy’s relationship with her dad and step-mom has gone to a level of closeness Betsy could never have imagined. Although she feels guilty as hell for involving her parents in what happened, (“Of course it’s safe here! Egypt is perfectly secure, come on over!”), you can tell how much she loves having these incredible heartfelt conversations with her parents. Finally, and it’s been hard, the bombing has forced Betsy and me to go over our relationship: our love for each other, and our marriage. This has brought us closer than ever and shown us how much we truly love and care for each other. If there is any kind of golden lining to this horrible experience, the love and bonds its formed are it.

That’s all I have to say on this anniversary. I’d just as soon ignore it and I hope to hell that over time April 24th will just be another day for us.

Tomorrow I’ll post some photos. A year overview if you will.

2007-04-22T11:42:00.000-06:00

we call it "the claw." i wear it 24 hours a day. all it does is slowly open and close my hand to keep the newly released tendons from stiffening up again. it hurts. a lot.

2007-04-09T23:16:00.000-06:00

Success!

This will be breif as I off to bed in a bit but Tom's surgery went great today!! Great! Nothing but good news all around which is a very welcome break for us. They gave him a nerve block which is basically an epidural for his arm so he isn't able to feel anything. He actually is having more pain in his ankle (which they didn't even touch) than the hand that they operated on. The nerve block should last a 3-7 days and then starts the saga of pain management. But in the meantime he is lucid and relatively pain free. The doctor said that his hand was much better than expected and so he only had to work on the top knuckles. And the coolest part is this bionic hand that they have hooked up to him. It is set up to open and close his fingers into a fist. It.Is Sooo. Coool!! State of the art, so new that he is only the second patient in the hospital to use it. And it is going to make a world of difference in his recovery. So much that I don't think the surgery would have been worth it before they got this machine. The Rep for it taught me how to use it and let me set it up for Tom in recovery. I absolutely live for that kinda stuff so I was in power-trip heaven. And to top it all off Tom got to go to the Ortho floor which is like the "Cheers" of the hospital, every one knows our name since both Tom and I were on that floor and they were excited to see us again. Plus they are the best! So Tom is in great hands, he had a good day, he's comfortable and most importantly he is going to have a really good hand. I am so happy, I couldn't stop smiling all day. It is nice to have things go smoothly and I can't think of a person that deserves it more than Tom. He's a champ!

I try to get some pictures up this week so you guys can see the claw (and Tom of course).

2007-04-08T23:43:00.000-06:00

Surgery!

So tomorrow is the big day. Tom goes in for his hand surgery at 8:30. While the surgery (which consists of removing the scar tissue from the joints on his fingers) is not very complicated or long the recovery requires Tom to be in the hospital for a week. During this time his hand will be in a mobilizer which will slowly and continuously open and close his finger into a fist so that scar tissue will not build up. After all is said and done Tom will have a much improved right hand and this surgery will help his hand get to a state where it will be ready for yet another surgery that is needed to fix his wrist.

Frigging' bombs!

This will be Tom's 12th surgery in less than a year and naturally he is not looking forward to it. The week long stay in the hospital is completely overwhelming for him. After spending nearly 4 months in the hospital, 4 months of horrific pain and being bed-ridden, Tom is naturally freaked out about having to spend a day in the hospital let alone a week. I keep reminding him that he is not going back to that place again and he has been very proactive about getting ready for the week. He has bought and down loaded a bunch of audio books (David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell) and radio programs (This American Life) onto the ipod. We agreed that listening to stories is much more captivating/distracting than television and so on Sat. we went to the library and checked out some more audio books, "Into the Wild" by John Krakauer and "The Fellowship of the Rings" (thanks Marcy for the suggestion!) and he actually got an audio book about meditation for pain relief- I was impressed. In fact I'm really impressed and proud of how well he has handled it. If you are or know someone that has a fear of hospitals after spending time in one then you can appreciate how difficult it is for Tom to face this and he is doing a incredible job of it. As far as trauma goes, the bombing itself pales in comparrison to Tom hospital experience. I imagine that doing this would be the equivalent of be forced to walk along the Corniche in Dahab at the same time of night that the bomb went off and that is something that I would never be able to do. Period. So Tom is a total champ and hero in my eyes.

To make things weirder, tonight I realized that tomorrow also happens to be the Egyptian Holiday of Sham El Nassim. Sham El Nassim is a traditional Pharonic holiday that always falls on the day after Orthodox Easter. It is a celebration of Spring and marked by picnics outside, smelling the breezes (which is the translation of the name) and eating salted fish. Because it is linked to the Orthodox calendar it falls on a different date each year and last year it just so happened to fall on April 24th, the day that we were bombed. Frigging' bombs. An auspicious day to say the least. I have a feeling it will be in our favor this year. Besides we're not in Egypt to celebrate it this time. Take that you Jihadi Rats!

I'm off to bed but I will try to post an update about Tom as soon as possible. Thank you everyone for your thoughts, prays, love and light. Here's to a speedy recovery for Tom.

2007-03-31T17:50:00.001-06:00

Oh yeah. Soon I'm going to begin a new blog for our new life. I'll post the link as soon as I get it up.

2007-03-31T17:50:00.000-06:00

Well, it’s official!

Today I was offered the job at the school in Uruguay. We’ll be leaving sometime the end of July. Wow is that going to come up fast.

We will not be able to make it to Cairo unfortunately. I need to have some surgery done on my hand and the doctor is insisting we do it now rather than later. So on April 9th I’ll be in for surgery number 12. This time I get the added bonus of a week long stay. Yuck. after they loosen the tendons, dig out the scar tissue, and generally free up my fingers I’ll get hooked up to some machine that will slowly open and close my hand for a week straight. I guess it’s supposed to be really painful.

Oh boy.

Things are going so-so around here at the moment. it’s been a very busy few weeks, with visitors, Betsy’s dad’s operation, my g’ma being sick, me being sick… just been exhausting for Betsy as she has to be the caretaker for all of us.

That’s it for now.

2007-03-20T16:12:00.000-06:00

Its LINK time again. I’ve been collecting these for a while to share with you all, so enjoy. I actually did write a blog entry below the links as well, so keep going. And at the bottom are some more links to some new good Uruguayan blogs.

If you have extra children’s books, books in simple English or books of photos or whatever- consider donating them here- http://www.mashahamilton.com/158/

“No real issues, just stuff and nonsense,” this pretty much sums up this site which is loaded with strange odds and ends- http://arbroath.blogspot.com/

How big a nerd are you? Take this online questionnaire to find out- http://www.nerdtests.com/ft_nq.php

Draw a line, a circle, anything, and watch it turn into groovy spinning art. (Hypnotic)- http://www.zefrank.com/string_spin/spin_1.html

Funny ads and articles from old science magazines like Popular Science- http://blog.modernmechanix.com/

This is an excellent article on modern Cairo. (You need to join the NYT to read it.) - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/world/middleeast/01cairo.html?ex=1173931200&en=18760fd6bc844198&ei=5070

I always like these “list” things. Here are 500 alternative cd’s you all, at least those who think they’re hip, should own. (Lots of links to other top 500 lists as well.)- http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=122

The web address pretty much says it all- http://damncoolpics.blogspot.com/

This is a great collection of old soviet era propaganda posters- http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpx/sets/72057594117941491/

A good info site, for those of you in the USA, on how to stop junk mail from being sent to you- http://www.kxan.com/global/Story.asp?s=6135058
Also- http://www.smartmoney.com/dealoftheday/index.cfm?story=20070206

HISTORY TEACHER GEEK-OUT- http://www.mapsofwar.com/

Nuthin’ but photos of lightning- http://www.theliberalblogger.com/forum/f2/lightning-images-2555/

Pop culture heaven- http://fjetsam.com/

READ THIS! Protect yourself before it’s too late - http://www.whenhamstersattack.com/index.php

News from the liberal-leftwing-cabal- http://firedoglake.com/
Also- http://www.dailykos.com/

One has to hope this is parody. Really. Please let it be a joke- http://www.fixedearth.com/

When it’s working this is a web cam of the excavation of the controversial ramp leading from the Wailing Wall to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem- http://antiquities.org.il/home_eng.asp

Hundreds of funny cat pictures- http://www.acc.umu.se/~zqad/cats/index.html?flow=no&large=no

Star Wars dweeb heaven- http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Funny and silly people names- http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13762

More HISTORY TEACHER GEEK stuff. Although we all should know this- http://www.ilike2learn.com/ilike2learn/europe.html

“As Van Wyk’s experience illustrates, no place is totally safe — not even a church," or Why we should all be armed when visiting god’s crib - http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=1960

The Geiko Caveman’s website (I love those ads) - http://www.cavemanscrib.com/

Funny pix blog- http://freshpics.blogspot.com/

How good do you pronounce English words? - http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html

Good info on shopping smart, “shoppers bite back”- http://www.consumerist.com/

Almost as funny as Fark- http://www.weirddaily.com/

03/13/2007
Ok, what else is up? Today Betsy is spending the day with her dad here in Denver. He flew in this morning from Casper, courtesy of a rich Casper oil and gas family, to get his leg worked on. The doctors are going to remove the steel halo unit that’s been holding his leg together for exactly nine months. This is in preparation for surgery on the leg next week. Today after they remove the lizaroth (sp?) the doctors are going to tightly bind his ankle to get the swelling down. Next week Bruce will come down for the operation. The back of the badly broken bone at his ankle is not healing, so they’re going to do a bone transplant. I guess they’re going to cut a piece of live bone, with attached blood supply, from his shoulder blade and reattach it at his ankle in the hope that it’ll take hold and grow. Strong!

Let’s all hope and pray this works out for the best.

I got the worst of it as far as bomb damage goes. You know, I’m pretty much crippled for life. But Bruce has been wearing that damn steel ring thing on his leg for nine months! I cannot imagine how horrible it must be. Especially for a man whose life is running, skiing and general outdoorsy stuff. After the bone transplant he’s still looking at months and months of recovery, but there will be, if all goes well, light at the end of the tunnel and Bruce deserves some light more than anyone else I know. He has taken this horrible hand god dealt him and has made the best of it. I have nothing but profound respect for him and his attitude.

I have been doing some odd things lately. Odd for me at least. A few weeks back we went to see some sort of herbalist voodoo doctor who read my aura, tested my pee and told me to take a daily fistful of herbal pills and drops and surround myself with the colors red and orange. I’ve (pretty much) followed her instructions and do find I feel better, with more energy. Yesterday evening Betsy and I went to see an acupuncturist. I made an appointment to get treated tomorrow for the constant pain in my ankle. The guy said he’d also treat my stress levels and various other ailments. He gave Betsy and I free ear acupunctures while we were there. Something that was supposed to relax us, take away the stress and help us sleep better.

So I’m sitting there with five needles sticking out of my ear and wondering what the hell has happened to me. I guess it shows the level of desperation I’m at. I’m a non-believer in most of this stuff- a total western medicine; give me a pill kinda guy. But at this point I’m willing to try anything that’ll make me feel better and more pain free. I’m also going to go see some guy who does “PhysioMatrix Therapy” whatever that is. Somehow touch is all that’s needed to draw out the bad juju and put my body back into harmony or something like that. But hey, the guy is willing to work on me for free, so let’s give it a shot. (We have been careful not to take advantage of the genuine concern people have for us after they hear about what happened. We get lots of offers for free services and turn down most of them. But we do take some people up on their offers. The lady who tested my pee and such worked on both Betsy and I for free. The touch healing guy is doing the same. I was hoping for an acupuncture discount (those treatments are expensive!), but no offer… yet. That’s ok, these people have to make a living too.

03/17/2007
I took a break from writing and now find myself days behind. There was some good news following the removal of Bruce’s leg device. It looks like his ankle bones are much more healed up than the doctors thought. Great news! Bruce is going to go ahead with the live bone transplant anyway. The doctors feel it gives him the best chances for recovery with a stronger ankle.

Betsy is in Salt Lake City this weekend. She flew there Friday morning. While she was in school in SLC she worked at a shop called 10,000 Villages. All the employees of this place were volunteers, Betsy was an assistant manager. She loved her job, the store and the volunteers. They’re having their annual appreciation party this weekend, so Betsy decided to go to see all those cute old gals she used to work with. Betsy deserves a vacation as well, so I hope she has fun.

My acupuncture thing went well… I guess. It was a bit weird. The guy did this thing where he’d ask my body questions and it would respond via muscle resistance.

Uh-huh. Yup.

But it was interesting in a way and I managed to only smile, not laugh. The needle sticking part itself was more painful than I expected. I was always told you don’t feel those things. Wrong. Some hurt like hell; others went in smoothly and painlessly. By the end I had needles all over my body- the top of my head, my ears, my hands, shoulders, you name it. After poking the heck out of me I was told to just relax for about 40 minutes. That’s easy enough to say. Tough for me to do. It’s hard to lie on my back on a hardish table for too long. Things get uncomfortable, and it was hot, so I kept having to wipe sweat from my eyes with a needle covered hand, running the risk of poking my eye out and definitely making some of those needles hurt even more.

Despite all that, it was rather relaxing and enjoyable. Hard to say if it helped or not as far as pain reduction goes. My therapist thought the ankle had more range of movement than before, I dunno. The ankle did feel pretty good, but lit up again on the walk home. Before leaving I was given a gallon sized Ziploc bag full of weird and wet herbs. I’m supposed to mix these herbs with a half gallon of whiskey (really), some water, and soak my feet in the concoction. It’s supposed to help my damaged muscles, bones and nerves. As Betsy’s gone I’ve not been able to pick up the booze, but I’ll be sure to report back to you all soon on what happens.

3/20/07
I will post this today! I will.

Betsy returned from SLC relaxed and a bit homesick. Despite (or because of) all the Mormons, it really is a great little city. I made two trips to visit Betsy while she was in school and had a blast both times. We would probably seriously consider settling down there if we ever settle down.

Speaking of… Uruguay is still a go. No FORMAL offer, but everything is pointing in the correct direction. I emailed the director this weekend with a list of questions and he answered all of them as if I was coming. Not once did he say, “We’d better wait before I answer that,” or anything like that. I went shopping for a Spanish language teaching kit, but did not find what I wanted. We’re looking for the Rosetta Stone series as we’ve heard they’re very good. I also did not find a Uruguay guide book which was a bit frustrating. It looks like I’ll be ordering from Amazon soon. I did manage to pick up a few good U.S. history books though, so the trip wasn’t a complete bust.

And while on the subject, sorta, of travel: I think we’ll be visiting all you Cairo folks in May. We’re tentatively looking at arriving on the 2nd and leaving on the 12th, with a couple of day’s stopover in Amsterdam on the way home. I’ll email the Cairo crew as soon as we book the flights, which will be very soon.

Ok, that’s it. Gotta post this. But I did want to add some links to some more Uruguayan blogs. I won’t go into details, just check them out:

http://www.amavericko.com/

http://coastaluruguay.com/

http://www.uruguaydreaming.com/

http://www.uruguayliving.com/

Here’s some good photos of, I assume Montevideo- http://www.buscandocasa.com/

And some local news- http://www.uruguaydailynews.com/

2007-03-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

the UAS staff on the roof of our future apartment building
__________________________________________________________________________________

Well…

Time has been slipping by…

Waiting…

And waiting…

For a word about Uruguay.

It’s still not official, but I think I can now safely say that Betsy and I will be living in the city of Montevideo come august 1st.

Whew.

I talked to the director on the phone yesterday and all is good. He still can’t “promise” me the job as he has to get the ok from the school board, but he sees nothing that will keep that from happening.

So we got it. I think.

Uruguay.

Wow.

I’ve never really considered South America as a destination before. Just didn’t have the same magical ring in my ears as Egypt, Thailand, and India… but now I’m getting excited. It’ll be more outdoorsy adventure stuff than running around looking at ruins stuff, which is cool by me. I’ve always wanted to see Patagonia and the Andes and the Amazon. Now I will. Our apartment is across the street from the ocean. We can take a ferry to Buenos Aires. Summer is winter, winter is summer, and I’ll be teaching history at a true international school. What’s not to love?

We’re still not sure where Betsy fits into all this. But right now she’s angling for a job there with the NGO she worked for in Egypt.

Here’s some links:

The school I’ll be at- http://www.uas.edu.uy/

A good blog written by an expat- http://www.chuckstull.blogspot.com/

Another good English blog- http://fromuruguay.blogspot.com/index.html

This one is in Spanish, and hasn’t been updated in a while, but it has some good photos- http://belloyreborati.blogspot.com/

2007-02-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

Myco Wolinskyi - Lucky Number 9

Say what?

Mycobacteria Wolinskyi is the official name of the bacteria in Tom's arm. It turns out that it is incredibly rare and was only discovered in 1999. There have only been 8 known cases, six of which where in Texas, go figure. So Tom is the lucky number 9. We have been laughing at the name all weekend. "I'm sorry I can't come over tonight my Wolinskyitis is acting up again?" "Is that Wolinskyi on your arm again? Friggin' Wolinskyi!" As funny as it is though it could be better, like it's sister bacteria, Mycobacteria Goodii, or Mycobacteria Smegmatis (you'll have to look it up but it's funny, trust me), then there's Mycobacteria Madagascari or my personal favorite, Mycobacteria Jacuzzi, which is related to breast implant infections. How did we ever live without knowing about this stuff?

Anyways, it's good to know what it actually is now. And the doctors are working with some other hospitals to fine tune Tom's antibiotic treatment, which is welcoming news after the horrific time that Tom went through on the first plan of treatment. Like I had posted earlier, Tom was going to be on 4 different antibiotics: 3 pills and 1 I.V. Fortunately, Tom was able to get shots of antibiotics instead of an IV line so every Mon., Weds., and Fri. Tom gets a shot in the butt. Right cheek, left cheek, butt cheek. This will go on for a month unless plans change and so far they haven't been too bad. The pills were another story though. One is no problem and he's still on it. The second made him a bit nautious and light headed. And the third one completely wiped him out. It basically high-jacked his liver and wouldn't allow anything else to metabolize which became a major problem since Tom is on a rather high dose of sustained release pain killers. The drugs ran through his system so fast that he was lucky to get an hours worth of medicine from a 12 hours dose. He was well into withdrawal by the time that he realized that it was more than the antibiotic making him feel so bad. And to top it off it was mid-weekend so he couldn't ask the doctors what to do until Monday morning. The doctors had known that it might interact with his other medicines and actually waited to prescribe it until they consulted with the pharmacists but they had no way of knowing how much it would interact. After talking to Tom they immediately took him off that antibiotic and the other one that was making him nautious. They said that if he was nautious now he would still be nautious after six months of treatment so it's not worth it. And since they're not exactly sure how to treat it anyways there is a little bit of flexibility. So weekend of hell behind him, Tom is back to normal again and is very eager to get healthy. He is going to start weening off the painkillers and is even going to work on quiting smoking. Those are two hard addictions to confront and I'm really proud of him for making those choices. He still has chronic pain in his ankle but is going to look into acupunture, plus he read on the internet about some patients that actually had less pain once they came off the oxicotin. Wouldn't that be a pleasant surprise!

We still haven't heard about Uruguay but we are going to talk with Director again sometime this week. Right now we have no idea what is going on but we get the feeling that there is a kink somewhere in the line, we'll see soon enough though. And we'll be sure to post asap.

I got to see a lot of family this past week and it was very uplifting. My grandmother taught me how to knit, I got to spend a lot of time with my sister, brother-in-law and their three gorgeous kids, my aunt and cousins met up with us all for a fun night last weekend, Then my other aunt and "favorite" uncle (according to him) were in town for my uncle to get double knee replacement. They were the first people that came to be with us while we were in the hospital so it felt great to be able to be there for them in their time of need. Of course Tom was 86'ed from the hospital because of his Wolinskyitis but he understood. Between the long weekend and all the family last week was a blur and here it is Monday again. Having said that, I had better be off to bed. Ciao

Tom here...

i thought i'd add a bit to betsy's draft. i'm doing this writing one fingered and not in Word, so there'll be no caps and no spell check.

yup, those antibiotics were a horrific nightmare. last week was right up there in my top 10 "most horrible post-bomb experiences." what made it worse was that my regular doctors did not believe me when i told them i was going through withdrawal because of one of those pills. i was tearing through the painkillers. the doctors assumed i was either selling them, getting high or giving them to someone else. i can understand their suspicions, but it was still really insulting to have to sign a statement saying my painkiller use was "suspicious."

so to prove to them i am not a drug dealing junkie i spent all day monday on the internet finding examples of the interaction between the antibiotic and the painkillers. i found a ton of stuff, copy and pasted it all, underlined and put into italics all the sentences that said, "may cause extreme withdrawal symptoms," printed the stuff off and gave it to my doctors. i also gave them the phone numbers to two doctors at the hospital that i had talked to who immediately knew about these negative interactions. hopefully i'll get a bit more sympathy and a bit less of a grilling when i see my regular doctors this thursday. the guy that really gave me the third degree is a resident doctor (doc in training). he told me what i was going through could not have been withdrawal. this guy's specialty is going to be pain management. jerk. he'd better read everything i printed off.

anyway, things are back to normal. or as close to normal as our lives can be. betsy and i are both taking a bunch of herbal things that are supposed to be beneficial to our overall health and vitility. i got to admit since we began the regimine i have felt better, with much more energy. in fact yesterday i had so much energy i had betsy drop me off downtown. i strolled the 16th street mall, window shopped, had a coffee at the market on larimer square and then decided i'd just walk home. it's not that far.

wrong.

it is that far.

i was practically shuffling the last couple of blocks and my left ankle is really really mad at me. i woke up several times last night in absolute agony. body lesson learned.

that's it for now.

2007-02-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

The Waiting Game...

I know it's been awhile since we have posted and even longer since I (Betsy) have posted, but you haven't missed much. Honestly, we have spent the last few week waiting for news about Tom's arm and Uruguay. And actually we are still waiting to find out about Uruguay but I'll write more about that later in the post because we finally found out what is going on with Tom's arm.

Metal, screws, a lat muscle and a bit of rib; these are the things that Tom's arm are made of. And now enter Rhodococcus! A nasty little bacteria, that while it is not very aggressive it is a bitch to get rid of. Rhodococcus is a soil bacteria, which mostly likely came from the bombing in Cairo. It only affects people who are immunocompromised and for those of you who got to see Tom in ICU, the puzzle pieces fall into place. It sat somewhat dormant while Tom was on antibiotics which was practically his whole stay in the hospital plus a month and then emerged sometime in October. Rhodococcus is extremely rare and easy to misdiagnose because it can pass itself off as a more common bacteria at first glance. In fact, once the hospital grew a culture they had to send it to the University of Colorado, where they could do a protein analysis to identify what it was. And they still don't know the exact species so they have sent it to yet another lab back East to do further testing on it. To put it into picture, the common form of Rhodococcus, which this is not, has only presented itself in a little over a hundred human cases in the last 30 years. This stuff is rare but I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that other cases are coming out of Iraq. If there is going to be another case it will be from there.

After a CT scan of Tom's arm and two weeks of waiting to find out what it was, we received mixed news. The good news is that the CT scan was clean, his bones is not infected and there aren't any abscesses that they need to clean out, so no surgery. The tough news is that the bacteria isn't fully sensitive to any one drug (impart because it likely grew resistant to the antibiotics Tom was on in the hospital) so they are going to put him on 4 different antibiotics, 3 of which are pills and 1 which is an I.V. The I.V. will be 3 times a week for 1 month so on Weds he is going to get central line put in and then I will give him the antibiotics at home. Fortunately, the I.V. is just a month because right now they are planning on a 6 month treatment for the pills. Like I said, this thing is a bitch to get rid of. This news was pretty hard on Tom. Especially the I.V. part. After all his time in the hospital and the numerous times they put in lines, then took them out and what not, there is some deep anxiety that surfaces in Tom when he has to look forward to this stuff. Before we found out about the treatment Tom and I agreed that if it was going to be I.V. then he would have 2 days to feel sorry about it. So he was pretty much down and out this weekend and I can't blame him. He was a champ though and by 6 o'clock last night (48 hours to the minute) he rose from the funk and was in a good mood. We'll be sure to post more about it after we meet with the doctors on Weds.

As far as Uruguay, we had a phone interview with the principal two weeks ago. He told us that he has decided to hire us but has to get approval from the board before he can actually do so. We have been waiting to hear from him and have to keep reminding ourselves that a week goes by much faster for someone who is running a school than it does for two people who are waiting around for a response. Hopefully, we will hear from him this week. Of course there are many variables to it but overall I am excited about it. Uruguay is the first country that Tom has mentioned that I was actually open to. Way better then the job we got offered in Yemen. We had to decline because I have issues of feeling safe in a country filled with men in skirts with AK47's and daggers, the unofficial national dress. Not to mention half of them are stoned of their mind on Qat, the unofficial national narcotic. Incredibly, the principal whom we had interviewed with didn't see that as a valid enough reason and went on to say "Well, I'm not a psychologists but...Don't you think it would be go for you to get back on the horse so to speak and go back over there." I responded by telling him how just a trip to Cairo will be a major step for me. Which was completely lost on him. "Oh no, I'm not talking about visiting, I'm talking about living there. Again, I'm not a psychologists but don't you think if you went to Yemen and lived there that would feel good, like you conquered it. Wouldn't that feel good?" Funny do the ice-cold-death-rays I'm firing at you feel good? (For those of you who have seen ice-cold-hate-death-ray-Betsy in action you know exactly what I mean. Contempt oozes out of my pores, dart practically shoot from my eyes, my aura is black with flames around it and yet somehow this guy played it off as if he was completely oblivious to it all.) What I should have said was a simple and sweet "You're right, you aren't a psychologists." But of course you never think of those clever replies when you're in the moment.

So, Uruguay...yeah, much better than Yemen. The country sounds very chill and comfortable. Lonely Planet describes it in a word as tranquilo and that could be just what we need. I don't want to pour my heart out about it until we know for sure about the job but I can say this. Our friend Jesse has said of us, that nobody loved living overseas more than Betsy and Tom. And it's true, we really did love what we were doing and all that we had. As hard as it would be to leave family and friends again it would be really nice have that part of us back again.

2007-01-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

LINKS and NEWS

I’ve got a real backlog of links to fun, wacky or interesting websites. Some of these may have appeared before:

A friend of ours, with way too much time on his hands, started playing ping-pong, this website is the result:
http://www.cccppa.com/index.htm

Make your own blasphemous statement:
http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/

Speaking of blasphemy:
http://jesusandmo.net/

Got DSL and some time on your hands?
http://www.killsometime.com/games/games.asp

How many of these albums were in your collection?
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/worst-album-covers

This is kind of a cool idea- internet radio based on your musical preferences:
http://pandora.com/

Finally!
http://www.chessandpoker.com/rubiks-cube-solution.html

Captain obvious:
http://luckypuppy.bravehost.com/WARNINGLABLES.html

All the news that’s fit to print:
http://www.fark.com/

Maybe a bit too clever:
http://creativeads.blogspot.com/

A good Egyptian blogger. The top post is the same photos I posted below. Seems that email has made the rounds:
http://jimmys-corner.blogspot.com/

Another good Egyptian blog. A bit out of date though:
http://www.mindbleed.com/

When this couple cycled through Egypt they joined us on the hash. It’s a good blog about a hell of a trip:
http://www.roamarossa.com/

Yet another good Egyptian blog:
http://www.ordoesitexplode.com/me/

One final Egypt blog, this one by a female:
http://mumbojumbocairo.blogspot.com/

I’ve been reading this guy’s stuff for a long time. I wish he’d not stopped. (Search out the old stuff, really good reads.)
http://www.kevinsites.net/

I just found this; Kevin Sites continuing adventures I think.
http://hotzone.yahoo.com/

You all should be aware of this site, but if not, and assuming you have DSL, it’ll change your damn life:
http://www.youtube.com/

A good way to check out new music:
http://hype.non-standard.net/

Copy, paste and print this page before it goes away for good. You never know when this will come in handy:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:PV8UzqwhDvkJ:www.worldrps.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=256&pop=1&page=0+"how+to+beat+anyone+at+rock,+paper,+scissors"&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Finally, if your computer starts up slowly, this is an essential resource on what applications are starting up when you turn on your computer, thereby slowing it down. I go through this thing about once a month:
http://www.sysinfo.org/startupinfo.html

That’s all folks!

Let’s see… what else to report? Not much. We had a very uneventful weekend, only spiced up by the soap opera that is my right arm. Tomorrow I get all the new holes checked out and hopefully cleaned out. These things hurt!

A good friend of ours, a kid I hired to work at Sonic Rainbow many years ago, just moved to Denver this weekend. Betsy and I are both very happy to have him here. He’s a great guy, as kind and sweet as they come, and we’re pleased to have extended our circle of friends who come and visit our place from zero to one. We’re on our way to socializing nirvana. We’ve talked about the lack of hosting on our part. It’s just that neither of us is good at it. Me especially. I’m happy just chilling out. But I gotta admit I’m getting a bit bored.

We did go out on Friday night though! To see friends! Real friends. a guy who moved to Denver from Laramie right after I did (with my friend Mitch) all those years ago, sort of got lost from my small little circle of Denver pals. Well, Mitch’s sister, who lives here in Denver, ran into this guy, Joe, last week. We all agreed to meet up for food and drinks at a great place called My Brother’s Bar. (A Denver institution really) It was good fun to be sitting at the table with Mitch, his sister Janna and Joe. brought back lots of great memories from our lives here in Denver when Mitch, Joe, Janna and I would go to a bar called Chesby’s, which was a block away from the place we all lived in, on an almost nightly basis for beer and good conversation. (Those were the days.)

Finally, although I run the risk of jinxing myself… things are looking great as far as the school in Uruguay goes. I’ve had some really good email “conversations” with the director and he now wants to talk to Betsy and I on the phone. He’s even begun to check out insurance for me! (The bombing, I’m pretty sure, has all but guaranteed I’ll never qualify for affordable health insurance.) All very good signs. Betsy is on board as, as I say below somewhere, Uruguay is lacking in Islamic fundamentalist nut-jobs. She also thinks it’ll be a great place to live. And so do I. everybody keep your fingers crossed for us.

2007-01-20T16:03:00.001-07:00

this is a new picture upload service from blogger.com. not too sure how well it'll work.

above is a photo one of my old students sent me of some of the then 11th graders on a field trip to the cairo version of disneyland.

below are photos which are pretty self-explanatory. i'll try to put up some more of these funny ones later.

below the photos is a new post and below that, more pictures!

2007-01-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry we’ve been away for so long. You know how it goes… pre-Christmas, Christmas, post-Christmas, job applications, arm surgery… Before you know it you haven’t posted a darn thing for a month. I’ll try to make up for it by making this one extra long and dull.

*First off- read this- http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0117/p01s03-wome.html Scary, stuff in my opinion. This anti-Shia thing is not new that’s for sure. Since the split, Sunnis have called Shia’s infidels. But this is getting out of control. Thanks GWB. (Go here for a brief history lesson if you need it- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi%27a )

When I taught Islam to my Egyptian students we of course went over the split between the Sunni and Shia. At least half my kids told me, in front of the class, that Shia’s were not Muslims. They were non-believers. Weird. It would be like a Catholic kid standing up in class while you are teaching the Reformation and proclaiming all Protestants heretics. Sure, back then they were considered heretics, but not including places like Ireland things have simmered down a bit. Not so in the Middle East. Things are heating up, with governments taking sides and bringing their population along with them. Egypt is doing this by allowing that television channel to air and giving free reign to the press to spout anti-Shia bullsh*t instead of anti-Zionist bullsh*t. I guess at least it’s a change, but not for the better. What a mess

*Speaking of messes. I had surgery number eleven last Monday. For about a week I had an abscess under my right armpit. It was kinda big, like a half a ping-pong ball, and plenty nasty as it was draining goo stuff. I went in and had my arm doctor take a look. He decided we’d wait a week and if it did not get better he’d open it up. Well, last Monday I was in seeing my leg doctor (yeah, I got lots of doctors) and showed him the abscess. He called in both my arm doctor and my doctor from infectious disease. (Yeah, I got lots of doctors.) It was decided that it was probably just an infected hair follicle, but that it had better be opened up and looked at. I went in at noon to see my leg doctor, just a check-up, and by 1:30 I was under the knife in an operating room. It turned out to be just an infected hair follicle. Now I have this totally gross open wound under my arm. The doctor made about a one inch incision, dug out all the yucky bits, then just packed the hole with gauze; which is what Betsy has been doing to me daily ever since. I’m totally fascinated by the hole though. I mean you can sort of look into your body! Inside! The reason behind leaving the cut open is to allow for gunk drainage and to let the wound heal from the inside out. It is not the most comfortable place for a hole like that. Nor the cleanest as I’m not allowed to use deodorant.

*It never ends. Yesterday I notice a few new “bumps” along my scar line on my right arm. This means it is new spots where pus is coming to the surface through a hole inside my arm. At some point the things will rupture and I’ll be left with big, deep holes that will take months to heal. The whole thing just totally freaks me out. I’m becoming paranoid that I’ve got some sort of weird infection and that one of these days I’m going to wake up from surgery and find they amputated my arm. Yeah, that’s how freaked out this makes me. I’m going to have things checked out on Tuesday.

*Pre-Christmas: was a bit crazy. Only because of Denver blizzard number 1. It really put a kink in things. So we did not make it to the post-office, so we mailed out packages late and Xmas cards later. Betsy’s brother flew in a few days before Christmas, right after the worst of the blizzard and the next day we all drove up to Wyoming. As you can see in the photos below, it was a hairy drive. I was glad Ben, Betsy’s brother, was driving. Not that I don’t have complete faith in Betsy’s abilities, but Ben seems like a better driver, especially in ground blizzards. (Betsy was glad he was driving too.) We dropped Ben off in Casper and kept going to Story.

*Christmas: Betsy and I were together for Xmas and the day after, then Betsy went down to Casper to spend time with her family. Christmas was good fun, especially with the addition of my nephews Noah and Liam. Noah is about two, so this was the first Christmas where he kinda “got it.” and “got” he did. The kid was buried under an avalanche of gifts. It was fun to watch him go from one present to another, playing with each in turn. Much to my pride he spent a lot of time playing with a truck we’d gotten him for his birthday. I really loved my newest nephew Liam, who’s about six months old. He was such a mellow little dude. And I got to teach him how to make fart noises. Life is good.

Betsy cleaned up as far as cooking gadgets go. To the shock of my midsection, she’s made good use of everything, baking lots of cookies and such. My best gift was a stylish new cane given to me by Betsy. I’ve been using this totally Old Man Cane the hospital gave me. My new one is actually a walking stick and is uber-cool. I even had a guy come up to me at the hospital a few days ago and ask me where I got it. (We then compared canes and got into a “which cane is best” discussion. Never did I think my life would be like this- sitting around a hospital pharmacy waiting for my pills and talking about the merits of aluminum vs. wood canes.)

I went down to Casper a couple of days before new years. Had a nice time seeing Betsy’s family. The most interesting was a sort of step-brother of hers, a guy who the family took under their wings when he was in high school. He’s now a navy seal who specializes in counter-terrorism type stuff. I was not there, but he had some opinions on the bombs that so screwed up our lives. One thing I always found odd was the timing of the bombs. They went off around 7pm, which is way too early if you want to inflict maximum casualties. I may have written about this before, but things in Dahab don’t begin to really go until later in the evening, like after 9pm. If the bombs had gone off then, twice as many people, at least, would have died. So why’d the bombs go off so early? It’s the Seal’s opinion that whoever was in charge got spooked. He maybe thought someone was onto him/them. He also was pretty sure the bombs were made from old artillery shells of some kind. Fancy bombs made from things like C-4 are expensive and pretty rare. It spooks me a bit to think about those bombs. Someone sat in a room and put them together. Then placed them in the spots where they went off. Then set them off. Death and destruction all in the name of god. Man. I would love to be able to talk to one of the people responsible, to try to understand why they did what they did and to get them to see the consequences. I mean Betsy and me, you know, we loved Egypt and Egyptians. We understand and appreciate Islam. We did not deserve what happened to us. But then again, neither did anyone else who was injured or died that day, no matter what they knew or understood or didn’t understand. But from a purely selfish point of view- why us? We’re good people. And were good expats. Stupid.

New Years Eve was a typical one for us. We were in bed by 11pm. We went up to Betsy’s parents for dinner, then drove down the mountain to go to a party thrown by my old employer Sonic Rainbow. In retrospect not the funnest move. We did not know many at the party and left fairly quickly. As I told Betsy, “That is just not a part of my life anymore.” We found out the next day that everyone stayed up at Betsy’s parent’s house and had a great time. We thought everyone was leaving about the same time we left. Bummer.

*The Future: is still in doubt. I am interviewing at the end of the month here in Denver for a bunch of schools all under one umbrella. Most of these schools are based in former soviet republics. it’s a long shot as they prefer married teaching couples and will only hire individual teachers if they absolutely cannot fill a position with a couple. But the owner of the school is interested, so I’ll interview and see how it goes. I also got into contact with a principal at an American school in Uruguay. I have a bit of a connection to this guy as his wife is from Sheridan, Wyoming and they have a cabin very near my parent’s in Story. I interviewed with him last October when he was the director of a school in Beirut. I thought I got the job, but then it fell through. Anyway, he’s moved on and really likes Uruguay. He told me his school has some openings for next year and he’d consider me if I was interested. Of course I am! But Betsy and I need to talk about it a bit more before I give him a definitive “yes.” Betsy is still hesitant about the overseas life. But has said she’s far more open to South America than the Middle East. As she says, there’re no “jihady f*cks in Uruguay.” I’ve done a bit of digging on Uruguay and it sounds fantastic. It’s a small South American country, but a stable one with a solid middle class and little corruption. The capital is on the ocean, you can take a ferry across the bay to Argentina, and the climate is mild… what’s not to love? Please god please, give me this job, and convince my wife to ok it!

Well, that’s it for now. Can’t think of much else to write about. Here’s a bit more- my wife. Yes Betsy. I should fill you all in on her life too! She’s keeping very busy taking care of the people she loves. This begins with me of course. She is also going over to my grandmother’s every morning to check on her and get her day started. Betsy is also helping out a friend who is currently undergoing chemotherapy for stomach cancer. Betsy is picking up the son of this friend every afternoon at school and then helping out around the house the best she can. Finally Betsy is doing a bit of babysitting for a friend of my sisters. It all adds up to a good part-time job. Betsy, for the most part, enjoys all of this. Although sometimes the logistics can be a bit much and she gets tired of driving all over Denver. Also, and this is big, Betsy’s former employer in Cairo really wants her to return to her job there. She was offered a small raise and most importantly, was offered to have some of her tuition for graduate school paid for! Huge news!

So to end: things are going well. I’m on the mend, but still have some issues. Betsy is keeping busy and has become a real Betty Crocker. We’re still not sure what the future holds, but at least we’re moving along.

2007-01-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

Below are some, a lot actually, of new photos. I promise a real post very soon.

2007-01-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

after the first blizzard betsy thought it would be "fun" to go for a walk. not so, at least for me. damn scary would be more accurate. but it was nice to be outside.

below are some photos from the blizzard, our trip up to wyoming for xmas and xmas day.

2007-01-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

our place has a hot tub and pool. heated! i hope at some point to be able to actually use it.

2007-01-15T12:50:00.001-07:00

me posing next to the pool.

2007-01-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

post blizzard chairs waiting for those hardcore sun worshippers.

2007-01-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

the drive from denver to casper was a bit hairy, what with the ground blizzard and all.

2007-01-15T12:47:00.001-07:00

if you look closely you can see a guy next to the truck trying to dig out.

2007-01-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

the south family loot.

2007-01-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

panic assemblying minutes before noah came downstairs.

2007-01-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

"holy cow! this is all for me!"

2007-01-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

my nephew noah trying out his cool new red flyer bike.

2007-01-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

below are some funny pictures sent to us from one of our old students. they sure bring back some memories!

2007-01-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

the whole family, out for a saturday spin.

2007-01-15T12:37:00.000-07:00

the egyptian educational system at its best.

2007-01-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

as mentioned on the last photo, this is so wonderfully egyptian...

2007-01-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

and again.

2007-01-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

this school is close to where we used to live. i always meant to take a photo of this sign. not sure what they teach here, maybe proctology.

2007-01-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

indeed

2007-01-15T12:28:00.001-07:00

2007-01-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

this is such a typical sight on the roads.

2007-01-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

yummy

2007-01-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

which is worse?

2007-01-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

in the two years i was in cairo, in fact in the first two weeks in cairo, i saw more cars with a wheel that had come off, than i had in my whole life. this guy just decided to keep going.

2007-01-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

just another typical day on the roads of cairo.

2007-01-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

let's see a big grin girls!

2007-01-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

this is so delightfully egyptian, words fail me.

2006-12-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

Noon yesterday, as the snow really began to fall.

2006-12-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

Snow and Christmas lights. How pretty.

2006-12-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

Last night about 6pm.

2006-12-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

24 hours later, noon December 21st. And it's still snowing!

2006-12-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

as promised several posts below- christmas sugar cookies! PLEASE KEEP READING. THERE ARE THREE NEW POSTS BELOW THESE PHOTOS.

2006-12-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

i haven't put up any pictures of our flat. so here you go.

2006-12-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

finally, us outside our apartment after putting up some lights.

Memories

2006-12-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

So today I’m at the hospital waiting to see my anti-coagulation doctor. (This is a result of the pulmonary embolism I had in august. I’m on a blood thinner medication that has to be checked every two weeks.) And a few seats from me is a guy of Middle Eastern descent. He is picking his nose occasionally and carefully examining the results.

This causes an immediate flashback for me to a bus ride from hell I took in Syria years ago. First off I was supposed to be going from Damascus to Hama. As I boarded the bus I asked every person I saw, “hama? Is this the bus to hama?” everyone, including the driver nodded their heads that yes; this was the bus to Hama.

It wasn’t.

On the highway we went right past the exit to Hama and kept on going. So now I’m on a bus bound for where? Never a comfortable feeling. On top of that the bus had no air conditioning, despite a sign on the side of the bus that said ‘air conditioned,’ and its summer in the Middle East. It’s hot. Everyone is smoking. No one will crack a window. (Every time I opened mine even a crack it would be politely, but firmly, closed by someone. What’s that all about?)

So I’m dying of heat stroke on a bus to nowhere. To top everything off the guy in front of me, as soon as the bus leaves its parking spot, reclines his seat to the max, giving me about one inch of leg room. He then proceeds to pick his nose and closely inspect the contents. The guy does this, no lie, for eight hours straight. It was so gross. He never stopped. I mean you’d think after a certain amount of nose picking you’d pretty much tap all the goodness, you know what I mean? Not this guy. He seemed to have a bottomless supply of boogers to pick and inspect. I wanted to kill him and after eight hours I wanted to kill everyone else on the bus. We ended up in Aleppo, Syria. I was headed there after Hama so it wasn’t that big a deal, but I’ve always been bummed I did not get to see Hama.

That bus ride from hell memory brings back another one from a trip I’d made to India in the 80’s. I was taking a bus from Jaipur to New Delhi. As soon as we hit the highway a lid/hatch type thing on the top of the bus came flying off and then bounced down the highway, almost causing several wrecks as cars swerved to avoid the flying chunk of steel. The driver of the bus never even slowed down, which, as this was India, came as no surprise to me. The thing that sucked was that this new sunroof on the bus let in the sun. A perfect sun beam that shone through right to my seat, and only my seat. As we drove north to Delhi, that beam never left me.

Again, as in Syria, I was traveling in the summer. Summers in India are hot. Really hot. And I had a beam of sun hitting me for three straight hours. (TANGENT 1- How hot was it in India? One day in mid-afternoon I was on a road trying to buy a watermelon. They had great watermelons there. Small ones. Perfect for individual consumption. Anyway, as I’m waiting to buy my watermelon I notice that my feet are getting hot. I lift up my shoe and find the sole has begun to melt! My shoe sole was melting into the asphalt. That’s how hot it gets in India in the summer.
TANGENT 2- I was traveling through north India with a German girl I’d met on the bus from Katmandu, Nepal to Varanasi. [Another bus ride from hell, but a tale that will have to wait for another time.] we’d get up at the crack of dawn to see whatever sites there were to see, then make sure we were back in our room and under the ceiling fan, going at full blast, before the sun reached its zenith. We’d nap or read until the sun went down, then go back out again. It was the only way to see India in July and not die of heat stroke. TANGENT 3- this was traveling before things like bottled water were commonly available around the third world. India was also in the middle of a drought that year, so water was hard to come by anyway. Mangos are a summer fruit, so I ate a lot of mangos and drank gallons of mango lassi’s. [A lassi is sort of like a fruit shake. you take the fruit, yogurt and ice and blend.] Since then I’ve never been able to stand the taste or smell of mangos.) So where was I before all these tangents? Oh yeah, bus/sun/death. So I’m riding in a non-air conditioned bus in India in the summer, easily 110 degrees outside, with the sun hitting me and only me directly. All I could do was soak a wash cloth (never travel without a washcloth) in water and place it over my head. The water would evaporate in about two minutes, so I’d re-soak. I kept this up, with my head buried in my arms, almost in tears, for the next three hours. Horrible, horrible trip.

What the heck, let’s write about a few other bus rides that were less than fun. Riding buses almost anywhere in the third world is never fun, but it’s almost always an experience one will never forget.

On that same trip I’d gotten from Nepal to India via the bus. it was a ‘night bus’ which means in a perfect world you board the bus in the late afternoon or evening, sit in your reserved seat, fall into a peaceful sleep and wake up refreshed at your destination. Uh huh. Right. I did have a reserved seat on the bus leaving Katmandu. As did three other people. This problem was solved by having us all sit in that seat. So a two seat bus row now fit four people. As we left it began to rain and did not stop until we neared India, soaking all my gear in my pack that was on top of the bus. The rain wasn’t the problem, my seat mates were. I mean I’m a big guy. Maybe you can fit, comfortably, four little Nepalese dudes in two seats, but not a big American and three little Nepalese dudes. On top of that this was a ‘local bus’ not an express bus. Which meant that instead of leaving Katmandu and not stopping until we hit Varanasi in India, we stopped at every Podunk little village in Nepal, and also stopped for anyone standing on the side of the road. Every time someone got on, everyone would have to rearrange to make it work. (Oh yeah, we also loaded on and off more than a few goats and chickens.) Somewhere along the way I lost two of my seatmates. Only to have to share with two guys. A spacious dream really after all that, but the guy next to immediately fell asleep with his head nestled lovingly on my shoulder, and he snored. It was a long long ride to the border. I then had to change buses. I ended up sitting, on the ride from the border to Varanasi, next to an Austrian who had dysentery. The fun never ends.

Let me finish this post with what was almost a real fun trip on a bus. It would have been great except for the whole smuggling component.

So this tale goes back to my trip through the Middle East. You’ll recall I’d been put on the wrong bus in Damascus and ended up in Aleppo instead of Hama. After a few really great days in Aleppo I booked a seat on a bus to Turkey. (The name of the town escapes me at the moment.) I was told to meet the bus at a certain point in the city at 6am the next day. No problem. When the bus arrived that morning I boarded, only to find myself the only person on the bus, not including the driver and two helpers. “This is weird,” I thought to myself. I’d been traveling the third world for almost fifteen years by then and had never been on an empty bus before. I mean it’s just unheard of really. But I figured we would stop at a bus depot on the edge of town and the bus would fill up, hopefully with non-nose picking passengers. This did not happen. We just left the city limits and kept going. “This is really weird,” I thought to myself. Really weird and a bit scary. I was the only passenger on a bus in Syria. I’d never even seen, forget being on, an empty bus on any of my travels before.

About ten miles out of town we pulled over at a little gas station and guys began loading the luggage areas with large bags of something. It sort of looked like bags of fertilizer, but for all I knew it would have been kilos of high quality Lebanese hash. I was definitely a bit worried now. I asked, a bit sternly, “What is going on here?” I was told, “Do not worry my friend.” which made me all the more nervous. As we approached the border one of the helpers got up and pulled blinds over all the windows on the bus. Now I’m totally freaked out. We stop at the border and I’m told to get off the bus, take a seat at a bench nearby and wait until they call me onboard again. I do what I’m told. When I get off the bus several Syrian security goons get on. (You can spot these guys from a mile away and they’re ubiquitous in the middle east. they all are big beefy guys wearing cheap suits, sunglasses and have a pistol either tucked into their pants or in a holster under their arms.) So these guys get on the bus and are on there for about fifteen minutes. They got on the bus empty handed. They left the bus with pillow cases stuffed with large objects of some kind. Who knows what was used to bribe these guys, but they seemed in awfully good spirits when they got off. I was waved back on the bus and off we went. After I went through both Syrian and Turkish passport control we headed off into Turkey. About five minutes after crossing the border a truck and about five guys on motorcycles pulled onto the road and pulled up next to us. The bus then got off the highway and drove down a little dirt road for a few minutes. I am now totally freaked out. Certain I was about to either become a hostage of some kind or was about to get arrested in some sort of drug smuggling scam.

Then the most amazing thing happens.

As we slow to halt the two helpers on the bus begin opening up all these secret compartments on the bus, and out spill…

Boxes of Lipton tea.

I kid you not. Hundreds of boxes. Of tea.

The bus stops and the helpers begin throwing all these boxes of Lipton tea out the doors of the bus. The guys on the bikes and from the truck grab them, stuff the boxes into bags, gave the driver a huge wad of bills, jump back on their vehicles and speed off. All in all the whole process took about two minutes. “What the f*ck just happened?” I thought to myself. Did I really just take part in an illegal tea smuggling run? Who the hell smuggles tea? Lipton tea? And from Syria to Turkey? You’d think Lipton would be fairly easy to get there. To this day I have no idea what really was in those boxes. Was it tea, or something else? Anyway, we then pulled into the outskirts of town where the driver then sold off all those bags of what looked like fertilizer. We then drove a few more blocks and stopped again, only this time to be loaded up with Igloo ice chests and water coolers. (Those things were for sale on every street corner in Syria.) So the bus smuggles tea and fertilizer into Turkey, then smuggles ice chests back into Syria.

Odd.

Christmas and Kiss

2006-12-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

A music fanatic’s wet dream-
I spent all afternoon yesterday at Tower Records in Cherry Creek. The store, in fact the whole chain, is going out of business, so everything in the store was 50 to 70% off, with certain CD’s as low as $2.00. OH MY GOD! I went a bit crazy. Bought a lot of discs, although you really had to dig deep as the good stuff was mostly gone. But even better was the DVD section. I bought a huge stack of documentaries and movies to use when I teach. Great stuff that runs the gamut from di Vinci to Pearl Harbor to the war in Iraq. Now I just have to hope I end up teaching some sort of world history class next year, in a country with a compatible DVD system. I now have to download all those CD’s into the computer, then onto our iPod. Something I love to do. The best part is that I’ll turn around and sell most of these discs to a local used CD store and get at least part of my investment back. Nice.

Xmas gifts-
After Tower I went next door to a cooking/lifestyle type super store to buy Betsy’s Xmas gifts. That went really well… 1, 2, 3- bam, bam, bam. I found exactly what I wanted in about ten minutes. The only thing that slowed me down was lifting the boxes, a few were a bit large and are hard to lift and maneuver with one good arm and a cane. I also had to have Betsy help load the things into the car when she came to pick me up. Load with her eyes closed. Funny. I have no idea how I’m going to wrap the damn things. I have a suspicion that wrapping gifts one handed is not going to be easy or fun. Betsy also spent the afternoon shopping and we are well on our way to finishing up the gift buying part of Christmas. Betsy has been keeping ahead of the wrapping game, so we have lots of gifts under our little plastic Christmas tree.

Memories of Christmas past-
We are both looking forward to Christmas this year as it’ll be our first at home in two years. Our first Xmas in Cairo was almost non-existent. We did no lights, had no tree and only a few gifts to open thanks to my parents who were thinking ahead and got the box of gifts sent to us early via a friend at the U.S. embassy. Xmas eve of that year was spent hashing and that was the best part of Christmas. It was a fun little hash on a beautifully sunny day. We all wore Christmas hats, one hasher put on full Santa regalia, which was a real sight- Santa Claus running through the Sahara desert. After the hash as we were hanging out, drinking beer and enjoying the special companionship that only happens with a group of expatriates in a foreign country on a day usually associated with home and family, when it began to rain. It didn’t rain for long, but it was wet enough to give us an incredible rainbow, a perfect end to a fun day. On Christmas day we went to the British club for an Xmas dinner buffet. The dinner was out in the garden of the club, a great idea except that it was raining. It was the most rain Cairo got that year at one time. It just rained and rained. Betsy and I actually got to wear our rain jackets we’d brought all the way from home that day, for the first and last time that year. The rain sort of soaked the meal. The garden was covered with decorative canvas awnings, but the rain managed to find its way through all the rip and seams, soaking at least half the tables set up. Despite that and a meal that was served luke warm (chaffing dishes are a rarity in Egypt) we had a nice, if a bit lonely, Christmas.

Last year was a bit more festive for us as far as tradition goes. We bought lights, had stockings made (I think photos are on the blog if you look back) and even had a little plastic tree I stole from my classroom. We bought each other gifts (something we didn’t do the year before because we had no idea where to buy gifts and were never apart) and celebrated with friends. Xmas eve we went to Betsy’s boss’s villa for a traditional Mexican Christmas dinner, his wife is Hispanic, and Xmas day we had all our teacher friends over for beer, snacks and a gift exchange. It was a great holiday and one that I’ll always remember.

I wanna rock and roll all night-
On Wednesday I had my friend Mitch over to watch the highly anticipated Kiss live retrospective DVD. Two discs of classic Kiss goodness. I reserved the building’s theater for the evening so we got to see a life size Gene Simmons drool blood all over himself. We got some beers, some pizza and settled in for a night of rock and roll fun. It turned out to be more funny than fun.

For me as a young teenager Kiss was the most important thing in the world. I mean I was a serious fanatic from the records Kiss Alive through Rock and Roll Over. A period of roughly two years. I lived, ate and breathed for that band. I must have written KISS on just about every writable surface accessible to me at home and at school. (Also, at the height of my Kiss geekness, my friend and I used brooms to write the Kiss logo in snow on the side of a large hill overlooking part of town. it took us all day, and was so totally worth it. no wonder I had no girlfriends during that period of my life.)

Anyway, Mitch and I were really looking forward to seeing all these live concerts and TV appearances by the band during their ‘golden period’ of 1973 through 1977. Unfortunately, after a while we were laughing more than rocking out. Finally I was the one who had to speak what we were both thinking. “You know, Kiss was a really terrible band.” Oh well. We did get to relive some memories and it was fun to hang out together for the evening.

Cookies-
Betsy and I spent a part of last night decorating Christmassy festive sugar cookies. We had three colors- red, green and white, and some crushed candy canes. It was a nice time for the both of us. Despite living together we have a bad habit of not really spending time together, if you know what I mean. You know, just us with no television, books, magazines… as usual though I got a bit frustrated. Parts of life are just so much more complicated when you only have one good hand. Make that three good fingers. Decorating cookies goes on that list. But I made some cool ones, but when you look at the photo above please notice the nice looking ones were done by Betsy.

Blogs-
Occasionally I put these links back up or find new ones:

http://www.joemily.blogspot.com/
A blog by our friends who are a teaching couple I taught with in Egypt. They’re in Kazakhstan now and their posts are almost always good reading.

http://amptravellers3.blogspot.com/
http://arnilynne.blogs.friendster.com/travelling_trios_triumphs/
Another teaching couple I worked with in Cairo. The top link is their new site, which has not been updated in a long while. The bottom link is from last year and has some great photos and stories of life in Cairo.

http://www.the-daily-discharge.blogspot.com/
Betsy found this. A mystery blogger involved in the family planning business. An often funny and sarcastic blog.

http://kenlydell.typepad.com/islamic_evil/daily_news_and_analysis/index.html
Religious satire at its best. At least I think so…

Finally-
Keep reading because there is a Betsy post below!

Let the Christmas Fun Begin

2006-12-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

- A Betsy Post –

Tis’ the season for baking, gift hiding and the ever-draining task of figuring out presents for those that we love but may have nothing in common with.

Yes Christmas is here.

And after two sandy years abroad with little fan-fair over the holidays, it is fun to get caught up in the spirit and enjoy the cold weather. This last weekend we got a little tree and some lights and decorated the apartment. We put up our super cool Santa-and-a-Camel-Stockings and our lotus flower tree skirt that we had made last year in Cairo. The place looks very festive, a nice blend of Cairo and Christmas. And the tree is already starting to fill with presents for everyone.

I decided to bake a bunch of goodies for all the different hospital staff that helped us during mine and Tom’s stay. Like Tom posted earlier, I can do baked goods with the exception of pies. So far I have a batch of Ginger snaps, triple chocolate brownies, spicy candied walnuts baked up, I also have some sugar cookie dough that is waiting in the fridge, and about 5 other recipes that I want to try. Oh yeah and some yummy Reesse’s peanut butter cup knock-offs that is scrumptious mix of sugar, butter, a touch of peanut butter, butter, chocolate and more butter.  That’s some dangerous stuff to keep around the house so I better get it over to hospital soon.

Tomorrow we are going to tackle some more Christmas shopping and hopefully it will be successful. I can’t decide if it was easier finding gifts in Cairo or not. For some people (read: brothers and brothers-in-law) it is difficult to come up with a gift no matter where you live. As for the kids, Cairo gifts win hands down. Belly-dancing outfits, papyrus, cool room decorations for the nursery, etc. And if we were stumped then we would just hit Khan al-Khalili, for kitschy souvenirs like pyramids, crystal, fake artifacts and anything that screams “my Aunt and Uncle live in Egypt.” Now we have the challenge of weeding out all the mind-deadening, imagination-stifling, battery-operated, singing, blinking toys to try and find something that is cool and will make it past Christmas day. Fortunately, we got most of the kids figured out. And now that I think about it, they were probably getting sick of getting pyramids from us anyways.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is figuring out what to get each other. In this aspect we both have our own struggles. While I have the flexibility to leave Tom, get in the car and go shopping for him, I have no idea what to get him this year. And while Tom knows what to get me, he is kinda dependent on me for transportation which really limits his ability to be sneaky.  But the cleaver guy has something up his sleeve and I’m dying to know what it is. For a while there have been places in the apartment that are off-limits to me. But last night was the kicker. Tom went to “sleep” before me and while I was getting ready for bed in the bathroom I hear him get up out of bed and go into the kitchen area. He had two things going against his attempt to be sneaky. 1) Our apartment is nearly a studio, very open, so you hear everything that goes on. 2) It is very difficult for Tom to “walk softly” especially if he has been still for a long time. His bad leg gets stiff and the first few steps are always a bit heavy.

So, as I’m brushing my teeth I hear Tom get up out of bed and go out to see what he is doing. I walk around the corner to the kitchen and Tom is standing in the middle of the kitchen with the storage drawer under the oven open.

“Whaaat are you looking for?” I ask with the toothbrush still in my mouth.

“I’m looking for a pan.”

“What?!?!”

He plays it completely cool and claims that he was just looking for pan, “just because,” and then gets back into bed.  What? After teasing him and laughing a lot about the whole thing I get into bed. He then gets back out of bed, instructs me to stay put and goes back into the kitchen. I hear the oven drawer open again, lots of banging, the coat closet door open, then more banging in the kitchen and then the coat closet again, another good bang or two and he’s back. I can’t breathe I’m laughing so hard, which get both of us going.

I ask, “Is there any place I’m not supposed to look when I go out there in the morning?”

“No, but I need you to put the oven drawer back in place for me.”

Again I can’t breath I’m laughing so hard. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what he did. Aside from the oven drawer being in the middle of the floor nothing was out of place. Tom South: Pan seeker, gift hider.

An Update!

2006-12-02T17:56:00.000-07:00

THIS WAS WRITTEN THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING. I NEVER GOT IT POSTED, BUT THOUGHT I’D INDLUDE IT ANYWAY:

Betsy and I are heading up to Wyoming this afternoon for thanksgiving. As we’ll be away from the good old internet for a while I thought I’d take a minute to wish all of you a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

This especially applies to all our friends overseas. The holidays are a weird time for expats. Or at least they were to us. They’re sort of a mixture of excitement and homesickness. (Of course all you non-Americans could not give a hoot about Thanksgiving, kinda like Boxer Day for us yanks. what the hell is Boxer Day anyway?)

Our first thanksgiving in Cairo was sort of a letdown. We were invited over to one of the American embassy apartment buildings where we took part in one of those progressive parties. You know, cocktails in one flat, snacks in another, dinner in another. We were pretty excited to make a slug of new American friends, but soon discovered that unless you work at the embassy or are married into it, you are a bit of a non-person. Betsy and I are not the best at meeting new people, but those embassy people pretty much avoided us like the plague once they found out we weren’t “connected” in that way. So it was sort of a lonely thanksgiving despite being in a room full of people.

Last year’s celebration was much more fun. We spent it with our “Maadi family,” which essentially was the American teaching staff at my school. The turkey and fixing’s were ordered from a local expat run restaurant and as we were all friends it felt more like home. The food was great, the beer was cold and the cutthroat post-meal game of Scatagories was brutally fun.

We’re both excited to be spending Thanksgiving with Betsy’s family, but at the same time we both are missing the special companionship of friends who are stuck a long ways from home. We will be thinking of all of you.

NOW ON TO CURRENT EVENTS, AS IT WERE:

We had a nice time up in Wyoming. It was a great break from the same old same old of our life in Denver. We returned to Denver Sunday refreshed and happy, a mood that’s been missing around here for a while.

We left for Wyoming on Wednesday and drove just up to Cheyenne to spend the night with Betsy’s grandparents. Her grandpa is a ton of fun. One of those guys who immediately makes you feel at home and always has about a hundred stories to tell. Her grandmother has multiple sclerosis (sp?) and is not in great shape, although she looked much better this time than when we visited them in September.

We headed up to Casper on Thursday. It was decided by Betsy’s family to have the Thanksgiving feast on Friday instead of Thursday, which worked out pretty well I think. Everyone had to work Wednesday, so by having a day off we all approached the meal rested and ready to eat. Plus this gave Betsy and her sister, the prime food preparers, extra time to cook, while us boys napped, read and watched television. (Some things never change I suppose.) Betsy and I stayed at the home of a friend who was away for the holiday. So after a quick visit with her sister to coordinate to day’s cooking Betsy dropped me off at the house while she returned to her sis’s place to bake pies. I napped and made a great discovery: flat screen TV’s. They have amazing quality pictures. I mean really. I already miss the house we crashed at just for that Sony flat screen TV alone.

I returned to the sister’s Thursday evening house to find an upset wife. It turns out pies might not be her cooking forte. The first spiced pumpkin pie was overcooked. The second undercooked. (Friday morning she made a pumpkin cheesecake, with a bourbon pecan sauce. It should have been yummy; unfortunately it needed to be refrigerated for 24 hours. She didn’t have 24 hours, so it was sort of a pumpkin cheesecake tasting thing with an ice cream-like consistency. Betsy has decided to stick to cookies and cakes.)

I suppose I don’t really need to go into all the little details of our thanksgiving, so I’ll cut it short by saying the meal was great and the table full of friends and family. We both really had a nice time. We had dinner Saturday night up on the mountain at Betsy’s parent’s house and spent Sunday cleaning up after ourselves before heading back to Denver.

Things are back to normal around here since returning. I’m going to rehab still, but that will be less starting today. I found out on Monday that I’m only allowed 20 physical therapy visits. They figure by then just about anyone should be fixed I suppose. This is fine by me. All I’ve been doing is basic workout type things like walking on a treadmill and doing weight lifting, these things I can do at our gym here in the apartment building. (But will I?)

We went to Target yesterday to buy Xmas decorations for the flat. Got a nice little plastic tree, some outdoor lights to hang outside our window looking into the courtyard, and a set of big lights for the inside of the apartment. (I also bought some festive Santa oven mitts.) So far all we’ve managed to get up are the outside lights, the color of which Betsy hates, they’re a neon type blue, but we’ll get this place all Christmassy by Sunday.

Let’s see, what else is there to get caught up on?

Borat- If you haven’t seen it, drop everything and go. Now! The funniest movie I’ve seen in years. We have two teacher friends who are teaching a Kazakhstan. I’m pretty sure it’s not being screened there. So Joe and Emily- you’ll have to wait until Xmas. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it.

Zombies- I read, for the most part, nonfiction books. in the last month I’ve read Ghost Maps, a book about the cholera outbreak in London that lead to the discovery that cholera is transmitted through the water, not the air, as those Victorian thinkers thought was a given. I also read Fiasco, which is about our grand misadventure in Iraq. It was a good book, but didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. I then turned to debaucherous fun by reading The Dirt, which was about the rock band Motley Crue and Exile on Main St., which was about the recording of that great album by the Rolling Stones. But enough with the nonfiction. Sometimes a guy just has to dig into something a bit meatier. So of course I just finished The Zombie Wars, an oral history of the world war against the undead that takes place in the not so distant future. Good fun. And those zombies… I tell you. Bad asses. We’d all better be prepared, because when they begin to rise, in china, the world will be in a real messy fix.

Hand operation- coming soon to an operating theater near me. Sometime the end of January I’m going in to have my right hand operated on. The attempts to get the hand more flexible through therapy and casting have not worked. So as a last resort my doctor is going to cut into each of my fingers to remove scar tissue and any other gunk that’s interfering with hand flexibility. I’m not looking forward to operation number eleven. Not at all. I’ve I can look forward to a very painful post-op recovery, and will be spending about a week in the hospital undergoing intense occupational therapy. There can be no screwing around with this one. It’s my last chance for a fully functioning hand and I’ve got to work hard after the operation to keep the fingers flexible until the nerves can get down there and take over. The whole thing makes me really nervous. I’m a bit afraid that the operation might weaken my fingers. What’s the tradeoff? A weak fully-functioning hand or a strong partially functioning hand? I’ve got a few more questions for my doctor before scheduling the operation and making a commitment.

Wankers t’s- on the Cairo Hash they had an award called “The Wanker of the Week.” This award was given to a person who did something so stupid or silly or dangerous that they truly deserved the title of Wanker.

Here’s a sort of definition I found of wanker- While "to wank" means "to masturbate", the term "wanker" is seldom if ever used in British slang to denote "one who wanks". It is quite wrong to infer from somebody's being a wanker that they in fact wank (and vice versa), but of course, fair to assume they do in any case. Herein lies the genius of the insult: if you call someone a wanker, it's probably true, but only literally. I suppose it all originates from our repressed Victorian sexualities, from back when everybody thought they were the only ones to suffer the secret shame of being an actual wanker. Wanker, at least the way it seems to be used around the Brits, is a bit of an insult, meaning any number of things, but usually someone who’s a bit of a fool.

anyway, the week after the Dahab bombing Betsy and I, along with her parents and Peter (a fellow teacher who was in Dahab at the time, but did not get blown up, were voted as that weeks’ Wanker of the Week (WotW) for getting blown the hell up. (Therein lies the rather twisted humor of the Hash House Harriers.) WotW are awarded the special and coveted WotW t-shirt. We finally got ours in the mail last week. We, deservedly, received special customized and embroidered t-shirts. A photo of which you will find below.

I think that’s about it for now. I leave you with the Casper newspaper’s reporting of the sentences handed down to the S.O.B.’s that blew us up: http://www.trib.com/articles/2006/12/01/news/casper/630a4e4c596300be87257237000cbeee.txt

2006-12-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

this is not a great picture, but is from thanksgiving dinner and shows bruce and i getting ready to show off our war wounds to an enraptured public. WARNING: the two pictures below WILL offend certain uptight people. so view at your own risk.

2006-12-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

as mentioned above, here are our lovely "wanker of the week" t-shirts.

2006-12-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

the back of the shirt.

2006-11-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. Time just seems to slip by and our lives are not particularly blog-worthy at the moment. But there is some day to day news, which will come in the next few days I promise.

Below are some pictures a friend of ours took in Dahab a few weeks ago. Peter was also in Dahab when the bombs went off. In fact he was one of the first people to talk to me after the bombing, while I was still on the ground wondering if I was going to die. Peter came up to me and asked, “are you ok?” then saw it was me. “Holy shit… tom!?” I sent him off to our hotel to get my cell phone and begin calling people. (I asked him to call two people: one was a friend who is very high up the food chain at the American embassy, the other was our close friend Wesley, a guy who gets things done! I knew between the two we’d be taken care of and that the U.S. would know Americans were injured.)

2006-11-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

The second bomb, the one that caught us went off at the lower right side of this picture. Peter found out it was placed in a garbage can. In the lower center of the picture you can see scar marks from the bomb. I was standing where the menu is, between the two palm trees. Betsy and Bruce were more to the center of the walkway.

2006-11-12T19:59:00.001-07:00

Another view.

2006-11-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

This was a memorial put up by the Egyptian gov't. (I think.) Peter said it's pretty tacky. The small white thing at the bottom is in memorial to the little German boy who died. The first bomb went off right behind the memorial.

Questions and Answers

2006-10-22T13:10:00.000-06:00

Its question and answer time here on the blog. Lots of people have been kind enough to leave comments, so I’ll try to respond to them:

From Tater-
So Tom, have you made future plans? Know you have a lot of more healing to do first, but curious of what you & Betsy are gonna lean towards; stay in the States? Back to Egypt or some other overseas location? Did some of your friends pack you out of Egypt while you were recovering or are you going to do that yourself? All minor concerns compared to your recovery, but curious what you're thinking.Cheers

Tater, your first question is a tough one to answer and a touchy point around here. Betsy and I sort of talk around it, while talking about it at the same time. If it was up to me we’d be on the next flight to Cairo. I miss Egypt very much and miss the expat lifestyle as well. Alas my physical condition keeps me from Cairo at the moment. But by august I’ll be ready to go and am already thinking about teaching gigs over there. Betsy on the other hand is pretty much set on staying here in the states. She’s considering grad school and also does not want to be so far from her family for so long a time. We’ll see and only time will tell what happens.

We were fortunate enough to have friends pack up all our stuff for us and have it shipped back here to the USA. It cost us a small fortune, mainly due to the fact that we had a lot of artwork that had to be specially packed up. (Poorly packed up I might add. our pride and joy, this piece of glass with some Arabic on it arrived in about 500 pieces.)

From Veiled Sentiments (VS, being the comment champ has lots of questions, I love that about her)-

How is the feeling in your foot? Are the nerves working out new connections?

That depends on what part of my foot we are talking about. The foot itself is fine as far as nerve type things go. It’s seriously swollen as you can see in the photos below, but the nerves survived so I feel pain. Which I do on a daily basis. The area that has the abdominal muscle has no feeling whatsoever. It’s pretty weird to touch an area on your body and not feel a thing. I’ve got so many spots like that though that it’s become pretty normal. The weirdest thing is my right arm where they folded over the lat muscle. If you touch my arm in certain places I feel it on my back. That never fails to creep me out.

Neat that your grandma lives nearby and you have all this free time to spend with her... Do you have any other family nearby?

We’ve really enjoyed visiting my g’ma. She’s a pretty amazing old gal. I have an aunt and uncle who live here in Denver. We don’t see them all that often. They have their own lives to live. They’ve been pretty much the ones taking care of g’ma since she moved to Denver about three years ago. I think they’re pretty pleased we’re around and can take a bit of the load off their backs. We’ve gone grocery shopping for her, taken her to see the doctor, but most importantly have given her some companionship. If we don’t see her on any given day, I can promise you she’ll be calling just to say hello. I love it because I love seeing her and talking to her. (I was the first grandchild and my grandparents lived in the same town I grew up in. so growing up my grandma and grandpa were almost a daily part of my life.)

…for the other readers who may have been confused that you referred to Betsy by her maiden name... in the Middle East, women don't change their names at marriage. That is a Western Christian tradition.

True. Betsy kept her name when we got married and Muslim women do so as well. It has though created problems for us when bumping up against Egyptian bureaucracy. it is assumed a western women will take her husband’s name upon marriage, so we have to always bring a marriage certificate when we are dealing with Big Brother Egypt as a couple.

…will you two be picking out shrapnel bits [from your bodies] for the rest of your lives? Will all those dark spots eventually spit out something. Or is it embedded too deep to come out on its own?

Betsy’s been lucky enough to have bits of shrapnel surface. So far I have not. I’m looking forward to the day I get to pull that first chunk of shrapnel out. Betsy’s saved all her bits, and they’re really tiny, I want some mementos too!

Well that’s about it I guess. Most of the other comments were more general “hello” type things. Although Marcy- please get in touch with us. We’d love to see you on your next visit to Denver. My parents have our phone numbers.

2006-10-21T15:30:00.000-06:00

A WARNING!

Below are photos of my wounds in various stages of healing. If you are not comfortable viewing things like that, then skip down to a few new posts.

2006-10-21T15:23:00.000-06:00

My back with lots going on. On the lower left is a shrapnel wound, the stiches are from the removal of my lat muscle for my arm, the light strips are skin graft donor sights, a lot of the dark dots are pieces of shrapnel that are still in my body.

2006-10-21T15:20:00.000-06:00

Another view. Oh man, what happened to me!?

2006-10-21T15:19:00.000-06:00

My upper right arm. It was almost completely blown off in the explosion. In fact when I came to after the explosion I thought I'd lost the arm as all I could see was a bone poking out from my top part of my shoulder. The rest of the arm turned out to be just hanging by meat below and I could not see it. I Remember someone putting my arm on my chest and thinking "cool, that dude found my arm, maybe they can sew it back on or something, how nice of him to find the arm and return it to me." (They were finding body parts for days after the bombing, many in the Red Sea.) To get blood to my lower arm and to repair all the damage they cut out my lateral back muscle and just sort of folded it over the area where the bomb did all the damage. The explosion pretty much blew apart or pulverized all the bone from below my elbow to my upper arm. No real way to fix that. (Artificial elbows are not very reliable I guess.) So the doctors put in a steel bar. My arm is now fused at a 90 or so degree angle. The weird looking bump is actual back skin. It was left the way it is so the doctors could check the blood flow. They'd press on the bump and somehow the color it turned would tell them if things were good or not. I plan at some point to have the bump removed, it's an ugly part of an ugly area, but it's the one ugly thing that can be fixed.

2006-10-21T15:04:00.000-06:00

Here's a good view of one of my "shark bites"; shrapnel wounds. Some nurse in Germany called them shark bites because they look sort of like an animal took a big bite out of me. I've got about five of these large shrapnel wounds. As I was sort of on the side of the bomb I seem to have gotten the big bits, whereas Betsy got hundreds of small shrapnel wounds because she was more in front of the bomb.

2006-10-21T15:00:00.000-06:00

The dark strips on my upper leg are skin graft donor sites. As they had to do two skin grafts on both my leg and my right arm, I have a lot of donor sites. My right leg isn't quite as bad, but on that leg the donor area runs all the way up my side, sort of like a racing stripe. Over time these areas will lighten and hopefully look like the rest of my skin. Betsy's graft sites are almost perfect looking now. I think it's taken longer for mine to heal because my body has some much damage to deal with.

2006-10-21T14:53:00.000-06:00

This is a good look at how swollen my right leg is. Very clubfootish. I now have to shop for two different sized shoes. It's not a given that the swelling will ever completely go away. My doctor says since blood vessels were damaged pretty badle down there, blood can get to my leg and foot, but may always have trouble getting out. Oh boy. You also get a good view of the scar containing my abdominal muscle. This was put in so blood could get to my foot, saving my foot from amputation. They had to do two skin grafts on that spot as the first graft did not take. The second graft had a tough time of it to. It's scar city on this leg for sure.

2006-10-21T14:47:00.000-06:00

This is a tiny shrapnel entry wound that left this little scar...