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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So, yesterday afternoon at the end of the day, I was half-dreading seeing the woman in the gray van again, but instead I had an uneventful walk to my rental car in the parking lot.

When I got there, however, I found a couple of folded sheets of paper placed under the windshield wiper. They had several Bible verses printed on them, and the first sheet had a handwritten scrawled note on top :

“I’m sorry for being so rude yesterday.”

Whaaa….??
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Okay, so after almost ten years of living in these United States and I have just encountered my first serious case of prejudice.

In St Louis.

In this allegedly Christian heartland of America. Go figure…
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There’s really nothing much going on in St Louis this week - so Alexis came to class with me and sat in as a student for the first half of the day She got to learn introductory MATLAB! She’s dangerous now, folks, watch out…
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