greetings from Cairo

You never understand the place in which you live until you leave it.

While in Cairo for a debate tournament, I am reminded how bizarre Kuwait is. Here, people walk around and ride their bikes. They cannot go to quickly in cars as the roads are bad and cars are old. People walk places. Locals work and there is not much in the way of foreign labour. Why does this seem odd to me? It is in contrast to Kuwait where the locals drive everywhere and as fast as they possibly can, and again, where locals do not work in jobs where they would be required to interact with the general public or "serve" anyone.

The weather here is lovely and the walk around the Maadi area is gorgeous. We can have wine with dinner. People are ALIVE here.

As I have often mentioned of Kuwait, there is so much in the way of random encounters. Last weekend, I went to a random party because my only other option was to mope around my apartment. Fortunately at this party I met several lovely people, in particular a Syrian architect who is also a guitar player and lover of blues and folk music. AH! So we exchanged numbers and he is going to come play for my guitar students sometime soon. This Wednesday, I attended a folk music club with him. There are many expats who play guitar, sing, etc. and it was great to meet these people. Thank goodness this group meets every second week. Now I may even have a venue to IMPROVE my guitar plaing and singing...this guy will teach me guitar as he's quite skilled. hurray. it took all the bravery I had to badly play the chords and sing Orphan Girl as they told me I had to perfrom something. Then one of the men at Folk club told me I had a nice voice. How sweet.

It's now time to go to a director's social for this tournament.

xo