So here we are in Dubai! And, finally, some pictures from the trip so far!

Enjoy! Click on the thumbnails for a larger image:
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So I had quite the experiential whirlwind of a day yesterday, Wednesday Nov 22. Here’s a quick summary of the many intercultural experiences of the day:

* morning : My mom gets a spam email from “gospelnews”, with a document claiming to find references to Jesus in Hindu scriptures. She blows up in a fury and I am the only Christian around for her to vent to. Instead of debating theology with her, I acknowledge the disgusting wrongness of the email and empathize with her as she vents.

* afternoon : The doorman/concierge/handyman/janitor for the apartment building escorts me to a small dusty neighborhood salon, where I try to get a haircut and promptly enter into a theological conversation in Arabic with the right-wing street savvy Muslim barber, who reminds me a lot of my theologically intense friend Dan Gelok back in Texas. On the way back I get to talking with the doorman, who is from a rural village and illiterate, but a devout Muslim who follows the teachings of the imam at the local mosque.

* evening : We drive as a family to meet an Armenian dentist, who has become a family friend to my parents. While there, I am introduced to Hamid, an Egyptian man about my age who has become an ardent student of Indian meditation and yoga. We have a rambling conversation about yoga, meditation, the fluidity of eastern philosophies and the relative blind-fanaticism of adherents of the three main Abrahamic religions. We talk about, in particular, the difficulties of conversing about faith journeys with people who think the Koran or the Bible are the literal words of God with no room for interpretation. Hamid runs into this because he wants to teach Egyptians how to meditate and realize inner peace, but any mention of eastern thought gets him branded as a heretic or an infidel.

* night : My mom and Alexis and myself are playing cards when the doorman’s wife shows up to deliver something for my mother, who invites her to sit with us a while. We find out that the wife recognizes the game we are playing because she has seen the menfolk in her village play the same game, but refuses to join us because women in her village have never been allowed to play cards. She is also illiterate and cannot distinguish the 8 of diamonds from the 10 of diamonds unless she counts the symbols on the cards.
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Wow, has it only been a week? We’re back in Cairo after a relaxing five-day cruise on the Nile river! Last Tuesday we flew from Cairo to Aswan, a city in the far south of Egypt, just north of the massive Aswan dam and Lake Nasser. There, we boarded a cruise ship called the Nile Admiral and spent the next five days relaxing on board as the ship sailed slowly down the Nile northward to Luxor.
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Greetings from Cairo! Alexis and I are relaxing at my parents’ “flat” which is in the suburbs of Cairo. We drove down to see the pyramids yesterday! Alexis has had this big wide grin as she’s been soaking in the bizarreness that is Cairo - the totally chaotic traffic, the camels, the pyramids, the colorful peoples, etc etc. I’ve been soaking in the multicultural experience myself too - it’s been wonderful to share them with Alexis as we observe something notable, e.g. startled awake together somewhen around 4am when the nearby mosque blares out the pre-dawn call to prayer…

So, this is day 10 of our multifarious intercontinental vacation (itinerary still on track here: trip details), and this is the first place I’ve had some time to blog from!

Unfortunately, I’m on a dial-up connection (can you believe it? dial-up???!!), at a blazing 46.6 kbps… Aaaaaah, I miss my 6 Mbps cablemodem back home

We have tons of pictures I wanted to upload, but the slow dial-up speed means we’ll have to wait until probably Dubai to find a decent high-speed connection and send some pics out on the Internet

Some field notes in the meantime:
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