Big day! Got lots of sun! Went to a waterpark with Craig and the boys, plus Carmen. Fun but it's been a long day and now I'm off to bed!

It just rained. Definitely bizarre for early summer in Egypt. It's been beastly hot the last 2 days, so it was nice to cool off in it for a few minutes. It really onlr rained for about 3 minutes but that's better than all the winds and dust today!

That's your weather report for the day! *grin*

Can it possibly be the end of May already???? Amazing! In some ways, it feels like I’ve been here a long time with all that I’ve done but in other ways it barely feels like I’ve been here any time at all! Yet it’s been almost 4 months!

Up early to have breakfast with Scott and Willie before they head off to the airport. After that I’ll do a bit of studying, take a nap, and go to Arabic tutorial tonight.

After Willie and Scott went to bed last night, I went up to the office to plunk away on the guitar a bit. Unfortunately it’s out of tune, so I need to get some help on that. While I was there, I turned on the TV and got sucked into “Maverick” with Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson.

What a funny movie! I had forgotten how many little jokes were in there! My favorite is the Danny Glover cameo. If you haven’t seen this western or haven’t seen it recently, I highly recommend it!

Hot, hot, hot! It never cooled off last night like it has the past few nights. *sigh* That’s not a good sign! It can’t be summer yet, can it???

So a few days ago, while window-shopping at one of my local computer stores, some of the young Egyptian guys started talking excitedly around me. They were convinced that I look like this famous French soccer player:

Zinedine Zidane

...and some pics...

I had no idea who this guy was, so I went hunting on the net, found some pictures, and then ask for a couple of opinions from folks back home (you know who you are) to see if they agreed.

Opinion 1: “Yeah, I can see the resemblance”
Opinion 2: “Are you taking something hallucinogenic?”

Now, you get to decide. What do you think? Let’s get a vote going here!

Hangin’ out with Scott and Willie from South Africa today!

We had a good time and they are really nice guys. Both are in their 30s, married and have children. Today was quite hot but they saw it as an opportunity to get used to the heat they will feel in Algeria over the next few weeks.

Yes, Algeria. The place that just had the major earthquake. That’s where they are headed now. Nothing associated with the quake, as their trip was already planned when it happened, but things still might be chaotic. They don’t know if there will be power in places…

Scott and Willie work with a Christian organization that my old roommate Darren’s friend Mike is part of. That’s how they got connected with me to stay here. It’s really worked out well.

They arrived around 8am, so we spent a bit of time chatting and relaxing, then went out shopping and checking out Cairo from 1-6pm. Scott got a couple of souvenirs to take back with him. We had nice prayers before both of the meals we shared together.

It’s 9pm and they are both headed for bed, since they’ve been awake for about 40 hours now! Yikes! I’ll stay up awhile yet, probably practicing a bit of Arabic and guitar. I read over Arabic notes earlier and got quite a bit of verbal practice with our outing this afternoon. So that leaves the guitar. I did some finger exercises earlier on the bus, but not much.

We’re getting up around 7am so that the guys can get a bus for the airport around 10am and fly out at 1pm. They’ll be back in a couple of weeks, right before I move to Tanta. Good timing!

Visitors arriving early tomorrow morning from S. Africa. Must get up at 6am to meet them. *sigh*

Arabic went well. That's a plus.

I had my first guitar lesson with my friend Juan. Difficult, but fun! More on that later...

I wasn't home much on Sunday, so please excuse the lack of an update.

Sunday morning, I started a workout routine with Mike, on of the other MCC'ers. We did all upper-body (bicep, tricep, shoulders, chest, forearms) yesterday and abdominals we can do every day just on our own, I think.

After that, I stayed around his place for the day (Clue, Gin Rummy, and a nice spaghetti dinner came with the deal *grin*). One of his students was with us for the afternoon, so that was fun and I got a bit of Arabic conversation practice with him.

I didn’t get home until around 9pm and I was quite tired. I made it until about midnight and then crashed!