Sawyer

Today is a hard day for me to be living in the Middle East.

On August 16, my second nephew, Sawyer Reynolds Broome, was born in Tennessee. When his older brother Parker was born, I missed out on much of his infancy. Now, I'm on the other side of the world, and I will be missing out on much of Sawyer's as well. Today, Sawyer came home from the hospital and I met him for the first time via Skype. I did not think that I would have enough room in my heart to love another little boy, because Parker is the light of my life. But the second I saw his precious little face, I knew that in that instant, my life had changed. Now, two little boys take up the whole of my heart.

I love them both more than I ever thought possible.I would give anything to be able to hold that little person in my arms and tell him that I love him more than anything else in the world, that I miss him even though I have never met him. How lucky am I to have two such perfect nephews? My precious boys, I love you so much. You make me want to be successful and accomplish all that I can. You make me want to be the best person I can so that I can be a better aunt to you both.

This is an oh-so-flattering picture of me sobbing as I met my nephew for the first time. Oh Skype, thank you for existing so moments like these can happen.

Yin and Yang

Life, as I realize more and more everyday, is about balance. It is a constant ebb and flow, a give and take, about giving one thing up in the hopes that you will gain something even greater.

Right now, I'm learning to balance the things I want out of life. to change the image of myself I've created without leaving behind the passion I had for the image I used to have. It's something I've been learning to do ever since I left Alabama: there, I was a snobby, elitist princess in a prestigious Old Row sorority who filled nearly every night of the week with binge drinking, indiscriminant flirting, grinding on some random fraternity boy with too much of daddy's money at his disposal to the sounds of middle-aged rockers singing in a giant concrete garage of a fraternity house while wearing a dress that cost far too much money to have beer haphazardly spilled across it and shoes that would, by the end of the night, be covered in some unknown gooey black substance which seems to only reside on Bourbon Street and in fraternity band rooms. It was all incredibly excessive and unnecessary. But you know what? It was a shitload of fun. And even when I knew I had had enough of it, it was so hard to give up the carefree University of Alabama Greek life in which I was so comfortable, despite knowing that it was absolutely, 100% not for me, not who I was anymore. I felt like I was stagnating- even though there was a new boy every night, a new dress, a new hangover remedy, a new horror story of a date gone horribly wrong or a drunken encounter with a hobo, essentially I was just repeating the same day over and over, and it was no longer fun or exciting, it was exhausting. And expensive. And finally, by my sophomore year, it all just seemed completely stupid. So I gave it up, and took a giant leap of faith and moved to the Middle East.

In so many ways, it was the best thing I ever did for myself. I landed right in the middle of a giant city, with a new culture and a new language and a thousand sights and sounds to stimulate me out of my Natty Light haze of the previous two years. But even the greatest feat of balance has a few instabilities, a few unexpected this and thats which swing the scale back out of equilibrium and dangerously toward the mistakes of the past. Somehow, in a conservative Muslim country, after five months in Egypt, I found myself back in the same pattern I had fled halfway across the globe to escape, only this time the fraternity house was an upscale Cairo club, the open bar became hundreds of pounds worth of Stellas, and none of the many boys I filled my days and nights with spoke with a Southern drawl. And as happy as I was with my location geographically, I was not happy with where I was personally. I had gotten one piece of the puzzle right, but there were other scales that needed to be tipped, other sacrifices to be made in the pursuit of happiness.

Just as I gave up the football-imbued glory of Tuscaloosa for the grimey, smoggy cacophony of Cairo, I need to give up the thrill of the chase of a momentary conquest for the stability and enduring comfort of monogamy. This is a transition which both excites me to no end, but also makes me break out into a cold sweat. Monogamy takes work. It takes work when you are sleeping in the same bed with your partner every night. It takes even more work when you live 5,000 miles apart. Panic sequence initiated. Wandering eyes, booze-soaked inhibitions, instinct to run before anything can go wrong? Fully operational.

But this is where another balancing act comes into play.

I want adventure. I thrive on it- which probably explains why I moved to a new continent and began a new life in a place known for its unpredictability and dubious safety. But being adventurous is lonely. At the end of the day, I'm a woman. I'm a twenty-something woman whose heart is positively screaming for domesticity, whose bioilogical clock has been electrified into overdrive, whose body aches to have someone -not just any someone, the same someone, day in and day out- hold it as sleep laps around the periphery of my mind each night. I had always thought adventure and monogamy were mutually exclusive; to have one I would have to forsake the other. To satisfy my wanderlust, I would have to be alone with no deep-rooted love digging into the earth somewhere, tying me down and chaining me to another person, to a home, to a job, to a place I knew I could not belong because I don't belong anywhere...I don't belong to one place or house or country, I belong to the journey and the thrill of going somewhere...everywhere. Balancing my need to go with my need to be deeply loved and appreciated was something I aspired to ultimately, but never thought feasible.

The funny thing about life is that when you stop looking for something, it usually shows up on your doorstep. The great equalizing force of my balancing act showed up in my dorm room on the arm of my roommate when I was barely 18. I will gladly give up the unfulfilling pipedream that has been the Tuscaloosa/Cairo dating scene, the procession of men who fail to move my soul, to share my dreams, to chase that elusive I'm finally here feeling of my journey with me for the one who doesn't want to end my adventures, but rather to join me on them- to be a teammate, a partner, a co-pilot in my obsessive wandering. And somehow, in him, I have found the weight that counterbalances my journey to be loved with my love of the journey.

And balance is restored to the universe.

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

It's one of those cliche quips that gets tossed around on people's Facebook profiles all the time- and yes, I'm speaking from experience. It's been on my favorite quotes since my freshman year of college. And every now and then, I sit down by myself, no distractions, and ask myself that question. I don't get up again until I've answered honestly. What do I want to do in life so badly that I get teary-eyed-excited just thinking about it? What do I want to do, but am too afraid to try? Why am I afraid? When you think about it, those are all scary questions, and, I've found, they get scarier as you get older. When you're 18, the answers tend to be simple: settle down, get a job, get married, have kids. But the longer I've been in college, on my own, learning, and growing, my answers have changed radically. Now I'm in my twenties and my answers get me excited, but they're also terrifying.

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

I would finish my last two years at AUC, graduate with my degree in Middle East Studies and a minor in Rhetoric with an emphasis on nonfiction writing; join the Peace Corps, where I would serve others while being dirty, growing dreadlocks, earning my Masters in Peace and Conflict Resolution, and gathering tons of experiences to write about; I would really pursue travel writing as a career with no fallback plan, and eventually get my own show on the Travel Channel where I would travel around the Middle East and Africa and shed real light on the beautiful cultures there that are all too often misunderstood.

Sounds like a tall order, right? But WHY can't it happen? What makes me believe that I want more out of life than I actually deserve? Unforunately, I haven't figured out the answer to that last question yet. Because until I decide that I won't -that I CAN'T- fail, none of my dreams are going to come true. So I'm spending these last couple weeks in America at home in Huntsville and doing some soul searching; some "working on myself", if you will. Because other people believing in me isn't enough anymore. It's time I became my own biggest fan.

What about you, readers? What would YOU do if you knew you could not fail?

Just a Boy, Just an Ordinary Boy

That Boy. You know the one. We all have one. For me, That Boy is my high school sweetheart. I cheated on my first real boyfriend with That Boy and we have been on again-off again-will we-won't we-we're perfect for each other-we're totally wrong together ever since then: six years of a complicated, nearly indecipherable web spanning between Old Friends and Current Lovers. He's That Boy who I swore I would marry one day. He taught me, for better or worse, things about myself and about life that felt so good and hurt so badly I thought I would burst. He taught me how to lust, how to really love someone, how to be hurt and betrayed and how to sob into my knees for two weeks straight. He taught me how to move on and to forgive but never forget.

Winter 2005: Norfolk, VA

Every summer, That Boy and I somehow ignite again. I keep coming back to that spot in my life where we made sense, and we try the relationship on again, one year older, adults, different now. Things are always different. Last summer, after our relationship simmering into ash for so long, years of indifference and "what if"s spontaneously combusted and suddenly I realized we were in a healthy adult relationship.

Spring 2006: Norfolk, VA

In the summer, no matter how we've changed or grown apart in the previous year, we're somehow reduced to our high school selves: naive, impatient teenagers who were little else but crazy about each other. Last summer we made the difficult decision to not attempt to continue our relationship when I moved to Egypt, and parted ways.

Spring 2007: Virginia Beach, VA


Now here I am, back in my high school town, just back from a trip to DC with That Boy to see my friends from Egypt. But something has changed. Unlike every other summer, this summer I couldn't go back to who I was in high school. I couldn't make myself be that girl that he loved anymore. I don't know that girl anymore. I hardly remember her. I hardly remember anything before the sand and the noise and the endless deserts and blazing heat. I don't remember the girl who loved That Boy, either. She seems like a stranger to me. Because, for the first time in my life, looking at him, I don't feel lust or passion or an intense need to be near him and hold his hand and to love him and be loved by him. I only feel a smoldering, comfortable affection: he is an old friend who I used to be in love with- nothing more, nothing less.

Senior Prom 2007: Fort Monroe, VA


I don't understand him or his goals, and he doesn't understand me or my life or why I have made the decisions I have. With nothing in common but our shared history and a deep, newly-platonic love for one another, it is finally clear: it will never be just he and I. The future for the two of us is something we never could have anticipated, but it finally feels right. That Boy is like a relic from a past that doesn't seem like my own in its distance from my present.

Summer 2009: Atlanta, GA
As always, That Boy taught me something new this summer without even realizing it. He's shown me that sometimes letting go feels good, and falling out of love with someone isn't necessarily a bad thing- sometimes it's healthy and necessary. You can't move on until you know for sure that That One Person really isn't the one for you. I finally know....this boy isn't going to be The Boy. That Boy is finally just that...just a boy.

Summer 2010: Washington, DC

Ma Salaama, Masr

Tonight I leave CAI at 4:15am to fly back to Atlanta via Amsterdam.
I'll be in the States until July 28, and I get back to Cairo on July 30 [ughhh].

In the meantime, I'll be bouncing around all over the States.
I'll be between our two houses in Atlanta and Huntsville, and on June 18 my mom and I are flying to Las Vegas to celebrate my 21st birthday with 4 days [in the desert; cuz yall know how much I love it, haha] of alcohol, fun, and sun [mumkin gambling and a few hookers too? Just kidding, I think.].
Then I'll be heading to Virginia Beach the last week of June, and up to DC for an AUC reunion with Katie, Becky, Megan, Will, and Jake. After that, I'll go back to Virginia Beach for a few more days of fun with my best friends from high school/the high school sweetheart.
Finally, at some point in July Dooler and I will be meeting up and going down to New Orleans to see Frankie and Peter and hang out on Bourbon Street [legally!].

It's gonna be a great vacation, and I'm so excited to see my family and friends in America.

I'll be updating every now and then, but probably not as much as I do while I'm in Egypt. Of course, I'll catalog all the culture shock that comes with going back to such a liberal place from Egypt. But other than that, you can expect a lot of silence.

I'll see y'all in July, readers! Have a great summer!

!...أخيرا

I just turned in my last paper for Advanced Scientific Thinking. This means...

Spring Semester 2010

=

Dunzo!

So I guess this is growing up

I looked at her face flickering on my computer screen and laughed as I said,
"Are you crazy? There's no one I would rather go with than you."
And as the words escaped my lips, I realized that I actually meant them.

Maturity

Ok, I officially feel like a grownup.

Today, I negotiated and signed a lease in Arabic for my first grown-up apartment in Cairo. That's right- after a year of no booze and no boys allowed, I am finally moving into a real apartment!

I found a great place in Dokki: a groundfloor 2 bedroom/1 bath flat with a private entrance and a private backyard. It has brand new furniture, a brand new oven and washer, AC, and satellite TV. It also has a full dining room set, is pet friendly, and the master bedroom is huuuuge. It's also a two-minute walk from a Metro station which will take me to the AUC bus stop in Tahrir, or a fifteen-minute walk from the Dokki bus stop.

I feel so grown up, and so in awe that my parents trusted me to find and negotiate on an apartment halfway across the world. I am so blessed that they are so supportive of me, to the point of rushing around last-minute making sure the funds were in order for the downpayment from half a world away. I am absolutely dumbstruck that I was somehow lucky enough to be born into such an amazingly supportive family. Also, my friends Becky and Megan were great about going apartment hunting with me, and being my voices of reason when I got too swept up in the excitement of a new place.

My landlady doesnt speak much English, but I'm trying to see that as an added bonus: by having to communicate with her on a semi-regular basis, I will be improving my Arabic since I don't have room in my class schedule to take Arabic classes anymore.

Have I mentioned I did this all after not sleeping for 30+ hours? I hate to sing my own praises, but I'm really proud of myself.

Anyway, I move in tomorrow at 3pm and will probably spend the rest of the weekend getting settled. And if you were wondering, yes, this means I will be spending most of the summer in Cairo. At the end of May I will go home and stay for about 5 weeks [my mom is taking me to Vegas to celebrate my 21st birthday!] before I head back to the sandbox in the first half of July.

Phew! That's a lot of news! Yall take some time to digest that, readers, while I start packing up my dorm room [I might actually miss it a little] and then promptly pass out.

Pictures to come soon!

salaam wa hubb,

Danielle

ps- completely unrelated, but i officially must have these leggings.
http://www.veinticuatrodientes.com/mediaspalabras02.html

Neofeminism, in regard to relationships

DISCLAIMER: This really has nothing to do with Egypt. I know this is supposed to be a travel blog, but it's become much for than that since I started it in the summer of 2008. If you don't give a damn about my relationships, or my beliefs, or anything other than interesting facts about the pyramids and the state of affairs in the Middle East, feel free so skip this post.

In case you don't know me, or haven't talked to me for more than ten minutes, I'm something of a feminist. Not so much an "I hate men, don't shave my legs, think Hooters is degrading, and never want to get married" feminist...rather than pointing out negative aspects, I would rather take a more ambitious approach. Girls rule [I'm a child of the Spice Girls generation]! Men and women are equal, and I will fight for women's rights to prove it. If women can use their bodies to exploit men's weaknesses, whether in Playboy, or James Bond, or Hooters, and they feel okay about that, more power to them! But all of that has nothing to do with the thought that occurred to me on the bus tonight.

In light of a recent failed romantic endeavor, which I spent nearly six months laying groundwork for, constantly flirting, hinting, and overall enjoying the slow, torturous chase, I came to a conclusion: As much as I enjoy pursuing men, as much fun as it is, no relationship which began with me initiating the chase has ever gone much of anywhere, been healthy or fulfilling. The problem therein is that I've always felt as if me choosing a man I know I must chase will prevent me from becoming some sort of a prize; if a man chases a woman, once he succeeds, hasn't she merely become something that he has won, thanks to his persistence and charm? Watching entirely too much Aladdin as a child [which probably contributed to my love of the Arab world, distorted as the facts in that movie are] taught me that I as a woman am "not a prize to be won". So, what goes wrong when I engage in the chase? What makes things go awry? The answer is simple..much the same as a woman who has been pursued feels when she finally acquieses to the persistent male, a man who has been pursued feels as if he has done you a favor in giving you a chance, and when things do not work out, the pursuer often bears the blame.

I am not referring to any one incident, but rather my collective romantic experience. But which is preferable? Feeling as if you are a trophy, or being treated by a man as if he had done you a favor? I'm not entirely sure. But if you look at my personal history, all my great loves have been men that pursued me, and all of my biggest failures have resulted from me taking on the traditional role of a man- pursuing, initiating the chase. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe some of my forward-thinking ideas about women being able to assume men's roles do not, can not, apply to every aspect of life. I am not entirely comfortable with this idea. In fact, it is making my head spin. Perhaps it's just me. At any rate, we'll return to this subject when I've thought more on it.

The Burden of Knowledge, The Bliss of Relief

I wrote this a while ago, but I thought about it again today, and thought I would share it with you guys.





This morning, I got to talk to my friend Weaver. I’ve known him since I was 16; he worked at the Army recruiting station next to the tanning bed where I worked. He would come in and visit us at night, and sometimes I would whine enough and he would vacuum for me. I haven’t seen him since right after my 17th birthday. He’s in Iraq right now. This morning, I finally asked when he was coming home. When he said it was less than a month, I felt a feeling wash over me…something like….relief.

I grew up with what my dad calls the “burden of knowledge”. He was in the Army until I was 18, and in those 18 years, we moved well over a dozen times and I attended about as many schools. I always adjusted faster and fit in better at schools on post, where I was surrounded with others who shared the burden of knowledge. To this day, I have a hard time identifying with my peers who weren’t raised the way I was.

The burden of knowledge is that concept that most people choose to ignore; but that we couldn’t: the knowledge that there is pure evil in the world; the acknowledgement of those hovering on the periphery of humanity, the rim of sanity, who are constantly threatening our safety, our freedom. The “burden of knowledge” is found in those who grow up knowing this, coming face to face with it everyday, as we watch our neighbors, fathers, brothers don their ACUs and board Chinooks bound for the other side of the globe, unsure every time of whether or not they will come back. We grew up knowing that true peace is not necessarily a realistic concept, because men are inherently wicked, as evidenced each time that black government vehicle pulled up to a neighbor’s house, uniformed men handing an envelope over to a sobbing newly-widowed Army wife, a woman who, like any other, wanted nothing more than a happily ever after with the man of her dreams. I felt that reality every time I heard about a helicopter crash on the news growing up, felt the familiar clenching in my throat, the sinking in my stomach, hoping it wasn’t my father, but knowing that if it wasn’t my father, it was someone else’s. I know it every time I see my ex-boyfriend, and see the dog tags dangling from his neck, knowing that they’re little more than aids in death, one destined to become a toe tag, the other heading to his commander, and eventually to his parents. I know it every time my brother and I put joking wagers on who will be injured in the Middle East first; me, working in an embassy, or him, flying helicopters above the chaos. I know it because really, we aren’t joking.

I grew up on various forts, posts, and bases, surrounded by walls and fences, kept segregated from a society I didn’t understand, and who in turn didn’t understand me or the way I was raised. And I wish I could describe it to you and do it justice. It's amazing to me, to think that I grew up on a street surrounded by America's heroes. I could be surrounded by the biggest movie stars in the world and it wouldn't come close to the sheer GREATNESS that I was so blessed to be around every day of my life. I am so grateful for that. To lay your life on the line for people you don't even know--that is noble. To go into a war that you might not believe in or agree with but still be willing to die to do your duty....that is loyalty.

Because it's sick when Lindsay Lohan is on the front page of the newspaper...and a story about soldier deaths in Iraq is on the back page, at the bottom, in a teeny little box that no one will pay any attention to. Because once a certain amount of soldiers die, 2 or 3 more...so what? Right? WRONG. Because any one of those men could be my father. Or my brother, my ex-boyfriend, neighbor. Or someone I know. Someone my parents know. But does anyone care??? No. Why don't you care when these are the men who are keeping you free? You should care wholeheartedly. You should be GRATEFUL for that.

I can't describe what it was like when my dad retired. Looking around at that ceremony, at all those soldiers in their ACUs, and looking at the American flag, and thinking, this is what my father chose to do with his life, was one of the most amazing feelings in the world…and suddenly I found myself sobbing uncontrollably; I can’t imagine what it was like for him, the loss he must have felt leaving what has been his home since he was a teenager..I felt the loss, I felt the pride, I felt more things than I could keep track of. He has made a real difference in the world. Bono makes a ruckus about everything..but has he DONE anything??? NO. I'm so proud. I have been an Army daughter, sister, and girlfriend. The sad part is I don't think half of you could understand that. I have faith in this government. And I have faith in our military. I'm so thankful that that was my way of life, despite all the hard parts of it. Despite watching my daddy go away to war. Despite having to move every year. It was worth it. It's worth it to know what it costs to be free. It's worth it to know with every fiber of my being that I am lucky. That I am truly, truly blessed to have grown up like I have. I wish that all of you reading this could know that feeling. Because it is incredible. There's so much ceremony and tradition and prestige in every part of that life.

The last time I felt relief like I did talking to Weaver this morning, I was standing in an air hanger in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I had been there for hours, shaking wildly. It had been a year since I had seen my dad, and I was angry. I had just finished my freshman year of high school. He had moved my family to North Carolina, and left for Iraq days later. He had missed my first day of high school and innumerable other important things. For the entire time he was gone, I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him on the phone. And then there I was, standing there, surrounded by hundreds of other family members and friends, waiting. The plane landed. The troops marched in, and there he was, in front. My mom and I were standing literally ten feet from him, but there was a ceremony to finish before the troops were dismissed, and he was in charge of it. I could have reached out and touched him. But as always, duty came first. I can’t imagine what it was like for him, seeing us, but not being able to go to us right away, after so long. As he was giving orders, I heard his voice crack and falter, and suddenly, I was shaking and crying in a way I can’t remember ever doing before or since then. The next thing I knew, I was squished in between my parents, everyone crying and kissing, and I felt it. Relief. It washed over me over and over again. It was over.

That feeling, knowing what he had done, what he had been through…that relief makes the burden of knowledge worth it. The pride makes every sleepless night, every missed birthday, every tearful Thanksgiving prayer worth it.

The burden of knowledge is nothing compared to the bliss of relief.

Twofer

This weekend was ridiculous. I figured moving to the city would make going out and having fun in Cairo easier, and boy...I was right.



Thursday night, me, Becky, Megan, Romani, Joe and his friend Remy from Bahrain decided to go out and have some fun. We left the apartment a little after midnight and headed to our favorite bar, Hurriya, where they have 8 LE Stellas, and proceeded to get drunk. When [our dear friend and beer-tender] Milad finally kicked us out around 3am, shisha at Pottery Cafe was the obvious next step. Fast forward to 6:30am, when we finally found our way back to the dorms and promptly ordered KFC. We crawled into bed around 8am and slept Friday away.



Exhausted from the previous night's adventure, we opted to stay in Friday night. After a quick trip to Metro to stock up on popcorn and other necessities, we spent the better part of the next 3 hours watching Romani [the Resident Director here in Zamalek] attempt to hook up a laptop to the big screen in the lobby so we could watch Sweeney Todd. Rarely have I been prouder of a boy than I was when he finally succeeded in syncing the two up. We watched Sweeney Todd, ordered some Papa John's, then watched some bizarre music videos until 4am. Did you know Akon did a collaboration in Arabic? Hello, awesomeness.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYPeGvYEJpI
We slept again all day Saturday, and were planning on getting a good night's rest Saturday night since we have school Sunday. But alas, it was not to be. Frankie invited us out for a felucca ride with a few friends, and, thinking it would be an hourlong thing, we said sure. We showed up in Garden City at 9:30 and ended up boarding a yacht with about 30 random people- friends of friends of friends. Lots of alcohol-fueled ridiculousness ensued. Finally, around 3am, I looked around and thought, it's 3am. I have a bus to catch at 9:30. It's a school night. And I'm on a yacht in the middle of the f------ Nile drinking Stella and chainsmoking. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!
Having a damn good time, apparently.
My life is ridiculous.
The bad news from this weekend: my beloved 12 year old golden retriever Cody died on Saturday. Living in the alternate universe I inhabit here, I don't think it's totally hit me yet. He was a dear, dear friend. We had had him since I was in the 4th grade and he and I went through so much together. There's no telling how many hundreds of tears I sobbed into his fur over the years. I will miss him terribly.
Another recent development: I have become really, ridiculously insecure, seemingly overnight. I have always been a fairly confident person. But suddenly, I am so consumed with self-doubt it's nearly debilitating. Some of this has to do with the Murphy debacle [recap: Murphy was one of my three best friends in college. My sophomore year, we briefly dated. We decided it was a bad idea and I feel head over heels for my other best friend and his roommate, Kenny. Murphy had a hard time dealing with this and cut me out of his life. We reconciled days before I moved to Egypt and everything was great. Once I got back to the States in December, however, he decided once again that we shouldn't be friends, and told me, much to my surprise that we "haven't been friends for nearly a year". That was news to me.]. Because I was so taken aback by this, and because I thought things between us were fine, I am suddenly completely unsure of all of my relationships. I am constantly wondering if my friends are really my friends, or if they feel obligated to hang out with me. Even when I'm hanging out with my best friends here, I'm wondering if they would rather be somewhere else, if they like me at all. Let it be known: I have amazing friends. Becky and Megan picked me up from the airport when I flew back in to Cairo, Frankie brought me my favorite cigarettes all the way from Amsterdam, and Sachi, Joe, and Romani are the first people to come to my aid if I need anything, day or night. I can feel my insecurities straining my friendships, but a large part of me keeps nagging...if Murphy, your nearest and dearest, felt that way about you and you had no clue, what makes you think these people really like you? It's terrible, and I hate the needy, clingy person it's made me.
Other insecurities have arisen too. It is no secret that I like to have fun; I love nothing more than to waste away and evening drinking, being vulgar, talking about football, shaking my ass, and being silly. However, it seems people have begun to equate this light-heartedness for light-headedness. Two of my best friends routinely have intellectual conversations about the Middle East right in front of me, and blatanly leave me out of them, and I've begun to feel like maybe they think that because I'm not as serious as they are, perhaps I'm not as smart as they are, either. It's really started to get to me, but instead of piping up and defending my intellect, I've started doing something I've never, ever done before: wonder if maybe I am stupid. I mean sure, I know about a lot of things, but I'm not an expert in any one topic. It's a bizarre feeling; after being so confident in myself for so long, suddenly starting to wonder what my worth is on so many different levels. It's frustrating.
Ugh. Enough of my pity party. This is a travel blog, not a therapist's office.
If you need a lift after that depressing entry, here's the most bizarre music video EVER for your enjoyment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypb12ezLVE
Love.

Starting over

As a child coloring in my basement playroom, nine times out of ten I would become disenchanted with "the rules"- staying inside the lines, coloring people peach instead of green or blue, making the typical pretty picture all seemed silly and pointless to me. So I would create a radically abstract picture, damn the rules to hell. After I had created my masterpiece, which seconds before I had been so passionate about, I would step back, cock my head to the side, and realize with a sinking feeling, that my different picture was..ugly. So I crumpled it up, threw it away, and started over, abiding by the rules this time.

This weekend, I am drawing far too many parallels between my life as an adult and my coloring escapades as a child. With more and more of my facebook friends slowly changing their relationship statuses to "engaged", a nauseating anxiety is rising in me. Yet another of my best friends from high school has a rock on her finger and will soon be planning another wedding that I won't be invited to, because I veered off the "right" path; as everyone was beginning to settle down, I did the exact opposite and hopped a flight to the Middle East. And I'm left wondering...am I doing something wrong? If everyone seems to be so caught up in this marriage thing, there must be a reason for it, right? If I'm the only one not down with this whole marriage deal, the problem must be me. Sometimes I feel like maybe I only ran away to the Middle East to avoid the prospect of marriage, so as not to be embarrassed if it never happened to me. Living here, I have an excuse. But now I'm starting to wonder if I'll regret this radical deviation from the norm in 5, 7, 9 years. I certainly don't now, but when I'm done with my picture, I might look at it, decide it's ugly, and want to start over. Unfortunately, this is one picture that can't be erased or redone. This is my life. God knows I hope I'm doing it right.

i'm miles from where you are

All too clearly, I remember standing in the airport. As hard as I tried to act like it was no big deal, just moving to Egypt, whatever, I could hardly breathe. Against my will, the lump formed in my throat, tears clouded my eyes, I wondered if it was too late to back out, to slink back to Tuscaloosa...just kidding, I didn't go, I want to stay here with you. I sat there with my parents..stalling, waiting...finally, I realized there was no going back. Better to just get this over with. Goodbye, goodbye, see you at Christmas..

Going back to Egypt this time will not be so hard, I hope. It's home now. I miss it. I miss Cairo; the dirt, the grime, the magnificent decay. The honking, the cacophony of a city in a state of perpetual motion. The smell of shisha wafting on the night air, the sweet aroma of spices in the market, the calls of shopkeepers, the pushing and shoving of people impatient to get wherever they're going, so that they can sit around and do nothing in particular.

I won't miss home so much this semester. I realized in the past month..there's not much left for me here. Somehow, I don't belong here anymore. The people I missed the most...well, only one of them actually deserved my constant longing.

I will miss my family, and I'll miss Kenny...but other than that, I'm ready for another amazing semester in the Middle East. I can't wait to see what adventures are in store for me this time.

Keep your fingers crossed!

So in November I applied for a travel writing scholarship with World Nomads. The winner gets an all expenses paid 11 day trip to Japan in February to shadow a professional travel writer from Rough Guides and write their own chapter in the Rough Guide to Japan. I wasn't expecting to win, but my goal was to make the shortlist. Today I got word that I did, in fact, make the short list of 18 selected from hundreds of entries. The winner will be announced January 8 and the trip starts Feb 15. I've included my entry, which consists of a paragraph stating why I should win the trip, and a 500 word essary written on the prompt "A Strange Experience Involving Food in a Foreign Culture". I've also included the website, if you care to look. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

The original guidelines and info:
http://journals.worldnomads.com/scholarships/post/35985.aspx

The short list:
http://journals.worldnomads.com/scholarships/post/52951.aspx

Why I should get the scholarship:

I was raised a military dependent and have travelled all over the world, which has cultivated in me an insatiable, obsessive wanderlust. I consider myself a "third-culture kid"; I have the wonderful ability to fit in nearly anywhere on the planet, but lack strong roots in any one place. I have lived in Japan in elementary school, which I believe is an advantage as it was long enough ago that the novelty of travelling there would not be lost on me, but I have a basic knowledge of customs and social norms which would give me a foundation to build upon for my writing. I have a passion for language and writing; I am conversational in over five languages. I would love to work as a travel writer one day and combine my restless feet and my need to document everything I experience. This would be an incredible opportunity to introduce me to the world of travel writing and give me invaluable experience. My eventual goal is to write travel guides focusing on the Middle East/ North Africa which would help steer the reader through and illuminate beautiful, ancient and often misunderstood cultures.


The essay:

I looked down at the bun in my hand, cradled in a greasy brown paper, with a mixture of horror and awe. Overstuffed, meat, gelatinous fat, and a curious unknown brown substance oozed out of both ends. I was in Fez, Morocco, where I had been living and studying for the summer, on a weekend excursion to the market. I had been warned about "street meat" over and over, and over and over my stomach had suffered unspeakable devastation for my impudence. Here I was, yet again, on the verge of gastrointestinal desolation, holding a sheep's head sandwich, bought from a haphazardly-constructed kiosk picked at random among the rows which lined the walkway out of the souk. My friends gathered around me, convinced I would not eat it. Testing the proverbial waters, I cautiously squeezed the now-soggy bun. With a deliciously grotesque squish, a mess of brown and gray slop streamed out of the bun and splattered all over my worn sandals. I swallowed hard upon noticing a patch of sticky black hair which had adhered itself to my pant leg. Slowly, warily, I put the bun to my mouth, hesitated, and sunk my teeth into the sandwich. Tearing off the first bite, I reported to my friends that it was delicious, and they were obviously missing out. Emboldened, I hastily bit into the sandwich again. There was a glutinous, cold explosion which drenched my entire mouth in a bitter, basic taste: an eyeball. The vendor, having kept a watchful eye on me throughout the ordeal, offered me a bit of toilet paper to use as a napkin. I wiped the eyeball fluid off my chin and weakly returned the thumbs-up he offered, assuring him in Arabic that it was, in fact, the best sheep's head sandwich I had ever had. Briefly I considered giving up; I had tried it, and this sheep had defeated me from beyond the grave. It was then that a sympathetic friend of mine pulled a small bottle of Texas Pete Hot Sauce from her bag, which I snatched and doused all over the offending sandwich. Suddenly, the scorching summer fog of pollution cleared, the Saharan sun seemed to oppress me less, and all was right with the medina. This sheep's head was, unbelievably, delicious! It took me less than a minute to devour the remaining sandwich. Even pulling a small, sharp piece of skull from my mouth could not dissuade me from my savory endeavor. Shocked, my friends stood speechless as I licked my fingers, one by one. Then, in a collective group, they all turned to the vendor and ordered their own sheep's head sandwiches. Contented, with my stomach already beginning to collapse upon itself in cartwheels and acrobatics stomachs are most definitely not supposed to participate in, I mused to myself about my victory over my opponent from the East, parallel to the journey I had begun. Like all the very best things in life, it simply needed a little spice.

The one that got away

Today I miss him.

It's days like these I spend with my head in my hands, wondering what could have been if I had been content to just go with the flow; not challenged the status quo; accept a normal, safe-yet-stale existence in the Southeast United States. Staring out my window, at the crescent moon, cradling a single star, hanging just above the distant lights of downtown Cairo, effectively transforming the entire city into one blazing, beautiful mosque, I can't help but wonder "what if?" What if I had been less headstrong? What if he had asked me to stay? What if I said yes? What if he had loved me more? I remember one night, shamelessly drunk and standing before him in my purple formal gown, begging him to tell me to stay- for him, for us. I think he loved me enough to refuse, if only because he didn't love me enough to promise that my choice to stay in America would be worth it.

That moon that I'm looking up at has not even thought about rising in his sky yet. 10 AM in his world, where he is comfortably wrapped in the security of the life he has chosen: safe, logical, familiar. That life seems so far from me now, a distant memory, a shadow, a fog. And here I sit smoking on the roof of a building he has never seen, could never imagine, will never know. Is it possible that we have two such opposite realities now?

Today I miss him.

Today I think of the plans we tried to make together, plans for a life together which seemed unavoidable in its rationality. Now, however, I see we were vainly pulling the ends of fraying, mismatched strings, too far apart to be joined; an exercise in futility. Today I think of the plans that remain: innocent, simple, uncomplicated, unambitious. What if, what if, what if?

I would have stayed if he had asked me. I would not know this building, this moon, this country, this life. A sacrifice I was not asked to make. But what did I end up sacrificing for this building, this moon, this country, this life? This man, this friend, these plans, that future, those possibilities.

Was it worth it?

Yes, I think perhaps it was. This world, my new world, has been beckoning me, silently pulling me towards her for too long; she would not be ignored. She wanted me more than he did. I could never have been content in his world, his safe, predictable existence. I know this.

But today I miss him.

Tell me did you think we'd all dream the same?

Isn't it funny the way your passions and goals evolve over time? Have you ever stopped and taken stock of the ways you've grown and changed? Because the past two years of my life have been spent in constant motion- spent bouncing around between Virginia, Alabama, Morocco, Georgia, and Egypt- I have been pretty aware of the changes I've undergone as I have matured and experienced things. But it was only just now that I really started thinking and taking stock of my own personal evolution, in the context of career goals in particular, over the course of my entire life. It's a pretty interesting path.

When I was four, during my bath, I told my mom I wanted to be a model. She smiled encouragingly, at which point I dashed out of the bath, sopping wet and butt naked, to the front door, where I stuck my little four year old leg out the door provocatively, showgirl style. I returned to the bathroom and corrected myself: "A NUDE model."

A few months later, I amended this goal to include bricklaying. A nude bricklayer/model. Isn't that just a centerfold waiting to happen?

A few years later, I wrote a letter to American Girl Magazine [remember them?] imploring them to help me figure out how to become a successful child actor. After all, I wrote, I was much better at acting than all of the girls on the Disney channel..this was my destiny! I also bought all the Harriet the Spy spy equipment and considered becoming an international sleuth.

After a brief, not-so-successful child modelling career in Japan, I decided I very much needed to be a model, get rich, and be on billboards.

Along with three friends in Hawaii, I formed a band called Crush. At the age of 10, I was convinced Crush was the next Spice Girls. Anyone who has heard me sing will attest to the fact that I cannot carry a tune in a bucket.

In middle school I briefly considered joining the Army one day. Fashion designer and best-selling writer followed.

In high school my main goal was to find a husband and get married, and I almost succeeded- twice. My two high school sweethearts both proclaimed their intent to marry me, and at one point I had a real diamond ring on my finger. Looking back, I can't help but laugh at how silly it all was and marvel at how unhappy I would be now had I gone through with those plans.

When I realized I would, at some point, have to have a job, I dreamt of opening my own all-star cheerleading gym or becoming a fashion marketing executive.

As college loomed closer and I began to become more acutely aware of world events, I coupled my love of writing with my support for the American military, and began laying plans to become a wartime correspondent. Little did I know that this interest would blossom into a love of the Middle East and one day lead me to Morocco and Egypt.

To make that dream a reality, I began taking Arabic classes my first semester of college. As I fell in love with the language, I adjusted my plans to include working for the American governemnt and routinely pushed myself to the brink of a breakdown as I began transforming myself into the ideal candidate- restricting my behavior, learning to supress my emotions, devouring every bit of information on the Middle East that I could get my hands on.

Morocco reintroduced me to the beauty of the world, reawakened my senses and my imagination, forced me to remember that life was meant to be really LIVED and not just controlled in pursuit of some distant goal. My plans, so strict and without room for deviation, relaxed and once again I became the author of my plans rather than a cog in the machine propelling me towards some far-off goal. Sure, my plan was much less focused, but I was happier and healthier than I had been in a long time, much more at peace with myself and my future, whatever it may be.

Today my dreams are open and endless, but firmly rooted in the Middle East, this beautiful, crazy, terribly, mysterious, misunderstood corner of the earth that I now call home. I would still be honored to one day serve my country working in an embassy in the Middle East or North Africa, but certainly not at the cost of denying myself the amazing experiences I want to have first. I am determined to experience the world on my own terms, in every conceivable way, beforehand. And if that doesn't work out? I would be more than happy to commit my life to working for any number of beautiful nonprofit organizations devoted to bettering the world I love so much. Or perhaps I will be a travel writer, specializing in ME/NA, sharing with the world this beautiful culture that has so captivated my mind and my heart. We'll see what happens.

I guess this was a long-winded way of saying this: Life is beautiful; the world is beautiful; change is beautiful. Personal evolution is healthy and inevitable and so necessary. Your life is your own; let your cast-off plans become a foundation upon which to build bigger, better dreams; take the broken shards of your old dreams and build beautiful dream mosaic masterpieces. You are the author of your own plan; write "vivid sentences in a bold hand".

It's funny how time and distance change you..the road you take don't always lead you home

I moved for the first time when I was nine days old. Since then, my life has been one of constant motion. By the time I graduated from high school, I had been to ten different schools, and spent most of my formative years outside the contiguous United States, living in Japan and Hawaii. When I got to college in Tuscaloosa and the prospect of staying put for four years became a reality, I got restless again, and now here I am, sitting in my room in Cairo, Egypt, typing this. Which all leads me to December 22-- the day I fly "home" to America. I will be visiting friends and family in the states for almost five weeks before I come back to Cairo in January 28.
I've been progressively getting more anxious about returning to the States, mostly because I've come to the realization that it isn't "home" anymore. It's the place I used to call home; the world I left behind in search of something new. I'm excited to see my mom and dad and spend some much-needed time spoiling my precious nephew, but beyond that, I'm absolutely terrified. Terrified I won't have any fun plans for New Years. Terrified that all of my friends won't like me anymore or appreciate the changes I've made in my life. Terrified I'll come to the inevitable conclusion that I don't belong there anymore.
After all, the world didn't stop turning when I left Alabama. My friends' lives didnt halt, frozen in the moment I left them. They've all moved on, created lives that no longer include me. And while I hope that during the time I'm visiting Tuscaloosa, they'll be able to fit me back into their lives, I know the reality of visiting will be painful, albeit necessary. The two people I miss all day, every day, my best friends Murphy and Kenny, are preoccupied with getting ready to graduate, applying to grad school,and figuring out how to get out to Pasadena for the National Championship. None of these things include me. While I left my whole life behind when I came here, only a small part of their lives left. Sometimes I get my feelings hurt when they arent enthusiastic enough about Skyping with me or making plans for the time I'm back, but the truth is: their lives can't stop just because I decided to come back to the States to visit. I made the choice to leave, and I will have to accept the reality of the repercussions from that choice. Don't get me wrong; it was absolutely the right choice for me. But that doesn't make the realization of what I lost any less brutal. It's a very humbling thing to realize that the world doesn't revolve around me, like I was so convinced it did as a teenager, and that my best friends don't spend every waking moment waiting for my return. But that's life.
In the novella I just finished reading [and will soon be posting an entry about], Seasons of Migration to the North, the antagonist, Mustafa Saeed, a prodigy from the Sudan, leaves his homeland to get an education in Europe. One of the defining lines in the book is spoken by his lawyer at his trial for the murder of his wife "Mustafa Saeed...is a noble person whose mind was able to absorb Western civilization but it broke his heart." The reader draws the conclusion that the "infection" or spark on insanity which caused him to kill his wife came from the constant state of limbo Saeed was is- belonging to neither the North [Europe] or the South [the Sudan] anymore; a man without roots.
Sometimes I'm afraid this is the destiny I'm slowly moving towards. Not the killing people part, to be sure, but the slow decay of one's heart that happens when you do not really belong here nor there. America is no longer home, but I will never completely fit in in the Middle East. What space between, then, is left for me? Growing up an Army child, we had a picture that hung on the wall which said "Home is where the heart is". But where is my heart? Half of it is in Alabama, with Murphy and Kenny and the rest of my friends and family, but half of it is here, in Africa, the place which has been beckoning me, incessantly pulling me toward it, absorbing me into itself, for over two years. The bittersweet truth is that I am a "third-culture kid", with the uncanny ability to fit in everywhere, but nowhere at the same time.
So where do I belong? Where is home? The East or the West? When will I know?