i had to share this with everyone just because its hilarious.

Andrew Ghobrial: Marmaduke has had quite an afternoon of misadventure (Marmaduke Fun Fact: Marmaduke is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for approximately 85% of all criminal activity in his town. It's true... Google it!).

Andrew Ghobrial: i dont know why marmaduke hasnt been put down yet

"Austin Shea": cause marmaduke could overpower you

"Austin Shea": and eat you alive

Andrew Ghobrial: haha

"Austin Shea": have you seen how big he is?

Andrew Ghobrial: even from a distance?

Andrew Ghobrial: like he sleeps a lot

Andrew Ghobrial: you cant just wait and like take him out with a high powered sniper rifle

"Austin Shea": i think you're saying that like

"Austin Shea": a bullet would kill him

i know most of you wont find this funny, but for those who might happen to find it funny then awesome!

taking a break

Ok,

So i am going to take a break from this constant blog posting thing. I mean if something truly ridiculous or amazing happens i'll probably post but other than that not much else. So no more thursday dedications either, haha sorry but they'll be back eventually i am sure. Anyway you guys should stop spending so much time in front of the computer screen! go outside and play or something. Anyway have a good time everyone.

I hope Joe got to read this

meh

Hello everyone,

I dont know how often i will be updating these days since i am getting tired and i am starting to get the feeling like i need to post to entertain you rather than just post because i want to post...

so anyway i will say something cool about yesterday. So i was walking back to the seminary when a car flags me over to him. He asks if i know where some street is and i of course dont know anything so i say "marafsh" (mah-rufsh) I then say sorry and he goes "inta kalam shwaeyet engleez?" (do you speak a little english?) haha i said sorry instead of the arabis "asif" so i am like yes i speak english, i am from america. He then goes "oh, i lived in ontario for 2 years, where are you going?" i tell him where i am headed and he invites me into his car to give him a car....haha, so of course i didnt get in for two reasons, one i had to be egyptian about it and argue about having anything done for me and since i argued more that its alright for me to walk he let me go but also because i worry my mother enough as it is, i dont want her going crazy thinking i get into cars with complete strangers. BUT how cool is that? Just like that he was willing to help me out because he wants to be hospitable. I am a visitor technically to egypt and he wanted to show the kindness of the egyptian people...man that was cool.

Other than that i have said i got a haircut and people have requested to gaze upon the amazingness which is now my head....haha, so here it is my hair cut!

haha, pretty fancy huh?

Haha, anyway thats my head now, its nothing special but yeah tomorrow i am going to two birthday parties, one is for my uncle amin and the other is for my grandfather! it should be exciting i may post about it, but who knows. Ok have a good day everyone

I hope Joe got to read this

"do you have a match?"

Hello everyone,

My weekend was really cool and enjoyable. If you would like to know more about it i can tell you guys later in more detail. Basically i went to a sports camp where they were having a bible message televised on a really popular channel called "Sat 7" anyway it was great and other than that I got a haircut and saw family and played with my little cousins. Great weekend.

Haha, so i might have described getting a haircut before but i'll go quickly into it again. This was my second haircut since i have been in egypt and i went to the same place. I was quite surprised that they remembered who i was. They were very nice and it was so cool getting a haircut in egypt. haha they are very thorough, very excellent, AND they massage your head at the end. Haha it was so awesome and the best part is it only cost 25 pounds total with tip. I hear there are places where you can get a hair cut for 5 pounds. 25 pounds is a little less than 5 dollars and 5 pounds is less than 1 dollar...so yeah really good service for like a fraction of what you pay in america. Anyway i feel refreshed to have a hair cut again.

Ok, so i titled my entry do you have a match is because the phenomenon of asking for a match in egypt. So i was in a taxi going to work in the morning and all of a sudden this car pulls up to us and the passenger asks the taxi driver "andokoum kabreet?" (an-doe-kome ka-breet) which means do you guys have a match? the taxi driver did and in the middle of driving down this high way they are exchanging this book of matches back and forth and then the car thanks us and drives away. Haha, i dont know what i am more amazed at, that the driver asked for a match or that the taxi driver was so willing to give it to him! I remember many times back in freshmen year at the University of Hartford. My suitemates all smoked and i hung around them or we would be walkign and someone would simply ask, "hey do you have a light?" and they would always so "nope" or "just ran out" when it wasnt true at all! I would be like "why dont you just give him a light?" they would just respond "if he wants a light so bad he should just go buy his own and stop trying to use up all of mine." haha i just didnt understand, like a lighter costs maybe a dollar 2 dollars and they werent willing to give someone a hand? These people in egypt without thinking about it will give up their stuff in the middle of moving traffic! haha so crazy how different people are here. Anyway that was a cool experience. One thing i dont understand though about taxi drivers here is that for some reason a majority of them have these fake rubber grapes hanging in their cars. I cant figure out if there is a reason for it or if they signify anything. I asked my cousins but they dont ride in taxis often enough to notice i guess. Oh well if i ever find out i'll let you all know.

Hmm i dont really have much to write about these days, i dont know why i cant really sort out all my thoughts...got a lot on my mind i guess. Sorry everyone but soon enough i'll have many exciting things to say.

I hope Joe got to read this

Quick weekend update

Roar! hello everyone!

Ok so a quick update from this weekend. Yesterday i went to an all day christian conference and it was amazing. There were thousands! yes thousands of christian egyptians gathered in one place to enjoy each others company. It was cool, great weather, and a lot to do. There were some rides and games to play but i didnt really want to do any of them. My tunt fifi made me go on this bicycle thing where you peddle really fast and go in a circle or something. Haha it was sort of fun but it was really easy due to all those like 20miles bike rides Dan Larkin and i used to go on! So i circled the thing 25 times and stopped. Haha anyway here is a quick shot or two just to see. I will tell you all more about it but i dont have time right now! Hope you are all well.

B.B.F.G.

Ok its thursday and its time for the dedication blog entry. So let me first update everyone a little bit of what i did this week that i might not have mentioned before....

Last night i got to play football again and it was awesome! Haha, so i fell again and am now 2 for 2 on injuring myself while playing, but thats just part of the game! Also the first time was my fault for losing my footing last night was crazy. So someone was about to take a shot and i dove in the way to block it. So i kick my foot high up to catch the ball but the opponent on the other side was there with me and did the same. Haha but since we were like right next to each other his foot came up under mind kicking my already elevated foot thus spinning me like a pin wheel in the air! So haha i start falling now on my side and i throw my hand down to catch myself so i dont like break a rib or anything and it worked! haha it worked at the expense of cutting up my hand and arm and breakign a few blood vessels in my palm. I regret nothing of course for i was able to save the ball from getting into the goal and we moved on to win. Unfortunately this happened to my left hand which is my drawing hand :'(

Haha anyway that was a lot of fun and speaking of drawing i may be doing a bit of work that involves my "drawing talent" and its also paying work! haha i'll tell you guys more about it when i iron in the detail (or however that saying goes...i dont think you can iron in details..ironing out? yes! ok when i iron out the details...haha ok)

So now onto the dedication post. So i chose my friend Christopher Armand and the reason is, i mean he is cool and stuff, but i was trying to reach this thing high upon a shelf and had to get a chair...haha BUT if Chris was here he would have been able to get it probably while sitting, because Chris Armand is TALL. I mean tall tall like the name of the blog entry is BBFG. It is in regards to that old children's book "Big Friendly Giant"so i had to tweak it to "Big Black Friendly Giant" haha because that pretty much sums up this guy. He is huge and he is one of the friendliest nicest guys i have met. Whenever i would see Chris i would give him a huge hug and wouldnt have to worry about hurting him, because i think its impossible....Haha i remember the first time i hung out with him. We were in the cafeteria and all of a sudden these two silly girls we were hanging out with started like a food fight! I couldnt believe i was in college and there was a food fight going on! haha with Ice cream non the less. So anyway chris took those two out easily, unfortunately there was one causilty...my sweater...i got hit twice with these two huge handfuls of ice cream my sweater was never the same again.

But yeah Chris is tall, nice, and really intelligent. He can talk about just about any sort of topic in a lot of detail because i am pretty sure he knows everything...thats just a guess. Anyway i dont want to flatter him too much or anything. Basically he is the man and when i get back i think i shall challenge him to a game of Basketball. Ok here is also a picture of him. I chose this picture because it has me and him in the same picture and it attempts to give an idea of how tall he is.

In the picture i am standing on the tips of my toes.

I hope Joe got to read this

Rubber Necking

Hello Readers, how are you all doing?

So i dont know how long this post will be but forgive if its too long or too short...

So i walked home last night. The walk is about an hour and half and i have gotten from people that doing that is ridiculous and too much. Haha, I know where they are coming from but hey i used to go running/biking a lot and so i think an hour and a half walk is equivalent to a 30minute run or something like that. It would be one thing if i had some place to be but i didnt so why not enjoy a nice walk? Haha anyway...so i walked home last night.

The thing i like a lot about walking is that you really just get a chance to observe the life around you, speeding down in a taxi you dont really see much so you get to reflect on the things you look at and things like that. Haha, one funny example is before the seminary there is an Infantry School....now i'll give you an example of walking as opposed to speeding by. I see the sign for Infantry School all the time but dont think much of it because i am going by too fast to see anything...haha i'll be honest with everyone and i thought at first it was a giant daycare (haha get it? like a school for infants?...anyway) yeah but just kidding its this huge military complex and the other day while walking i got to witness the army transporting 7 tanks into the school! how awesome is that? these huge massive tanks right in front of me. So yeah walking really gives you the opportunity to see things in a more detailed fashion.

The other thing i saw while walking is that the traffic was stopped completely, so really it was faster at that point to walk than drive. The reason it was blocked was because there was a terrible accident where a car had i guess sped too fast and flew into a pole splitting it in half and killing the two passengers. This is where the title for the blog entry "rubber necking" comes from. For those who arent aware rubber necking can mean a few things, for this its referring to the lines of cars slowing down to see what happened or stuff. In America generally the reason for rubber necking is because people are interested to see an accident and the precise damage done to the person and the car. In one of my criminal justice classes I read about a study where someone did like a huge survery across a few cities to ask "why do you slow down when you come across an accident?" Do you know what the number one reason is? no joke, people said its because they want to see how badly injured the person might be. How ridiculous is that!? People actually stop because they want to see blood and gore so they can tell their friends or whatever about it. I think thats terrible. So yeah whenever you are stuck in bumper to bumper traffic because of an accident know that a good portion of the reason you are stuck is because the people in front of you want to see a dead body...ugh.

So yeah this was actually my second horrible accident to see in Egypt since i got here and both within two weeks. The other accident was a taxi flying into a curb and the driver being hurled through the windshield and smashing his head against a telephone pole and killed instantly. It was terrible and i think the first time i saw a dead body...so haha i am still trying to deal with that and then another one happens. Anyway i wanted to tell you guys the reason why there was bumper to bumper traffic. The two people in the car were dead and there was a bit of rubber necking going on but not because people wanted to see a dead body or anything. Just about everyone stopped right in the middle of the street, got out of their cars, and would come around the bodies to pray, like to honor the dead. That was amazing for me to see. It was a few people, it wasnt even the family members or anything, it was a majority of these strangers just coming together to pray for those who had passed. I said my prayers for them as well and eventually went on my way as well. But yeah it was really impressive to me that the people of Egypt have such a burden for one another such unity, and such a sense of national identity together. I mean they all feel like their know each other and its amazing to see this up close.

Hmm...ok so yeah umm i wanted to just say that because i dont know really how to cope with seeing so much death in such a short period of time, i figured i would share a bit of it with you guys. Other than that work is fine, arabic lessons are fine, i saw my cousin amira and my tunt maggie who came from abu dhabi and that was a lot of fun. Haha, they are really really big night people. I met them at 8 and we sat around in a hotel lounge talking till 2:30am haha, so i mean granted i was exhausted when i got back to the seminary and had to wake up in like 3 hours but it was worth it because i love spending time with my family. Anyway Umm nothing else is new, i need a haircut so i might go do that.

OH! i am going somewhere tomorrow for the entire day. Haha i know that doesnt sound like much but i cant really tell you guys because i am not sure what i am doing...so i wont post tomorrow and all weekend. BUT monday fo' sho i will tell you guys what i did and whats happening. Ok have a good day everyone and a good weekend.

I hope Joe got to read this