Jenyfer Matthews

I’m back from Thailand – what a FANTASTIC week! The measure of a great vacation is when you’ve only been gone 10 days but it feels like months!

I can’t wait to tell you all about it, but first I have some housekeeping to do, literally. My house is a disaster (expected), I have more than 1000 photos to sort through, jetlag to deal with, the usual hectic routine to readjust, and a little medical drama added in just for variety. I’m sure I’ll be up before dawn again tomorrow so with luck I can get a few pictures posted by tomorrow or Wednesday.

All in all it’s good to be home again. How was your week?

With my new camera!

When the children were smaller I had a nice 35mm camera with changeable lenses and a powerful flash. It took wonderful pictures but it quickly became a bit more than I wanted to carry around when I was also toting small children and all of their gear so I switched first to a point-n-shoot 35mm film camera and then to a point-n-shoot digital. I’ve been happy enough with the shots I’ve been able to get with those various cameras but lately I’ve been longing for more.

Now that the children are old enough to move themselves and their own stuff around, I decided to upgrade again. This camera is a nice hybrid: it still only has one lens but it has a powerful zoom and though it has many optional settings, I can totally leave it on automatic if I want to. And because it’s also a Canon, I’m already familiar with many of the functions so once I put the batteries in, I was ready to go.

We took our guests to the Pyramids on New Year’s Day – what better place to take a test drive with a new camera? I normally resize the pictures I post both so they load faster and also so they aren’t as appealing to steal. These images would likely be poster sized if I didn’t resize them!

(Click any image to enlarge)

This guy was actually posing for someone else – he didn’t notice me because I was standing farther back using my powerful zoom and tricky twisty viewing screen

This shot was taken with the camera at belly level, twisty screen up so I could pretend I wasn’t taking a picture when I was. Obviously I need to check the camera is level before I shoot! Or else get some software that will let me straighten it out some.

But check out the zoom!

You can actually get close enough to the Sphinx on foot to get a decent picture with even a not very powerful camera.

With my camera, I can see his pores. Imagine this picture poster sized. Gorgeous!

Here I was just being silly, but you get my point – the zoom is great.

There’s also a sports setting for continuous shooting – I’ll be able to bore close friends and relatives (and probably even the coach!) with action shots of the children playing tennis and soccer. One of our visitors was saying how these sorts of cameras in the hands of amateurs (like me) are putting professional photographers out of business. I can totally see how when it’s so easy to get great photographs on your own.

I opted to get an 8MB memory card for the camera and on the current settings, the camera reports that I can take approximately 2200 photos. I took a little more than 200 over the weekend just messing around. It boggles my mind how many photos I’ll have to review when I get back from Thailand!

I have always loved Twain, and this quote is particularly inspiring:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

I made a decision and booked my next trip: I’m going to Thailand the second week in January.

My husband and I took our daughter to Phuket, an island in the south, in 2001. It was truly a lovely spot but in the end I kind of regretted not going to see the north of the country, particularly after I went to Cambodia a few years later. Since I couldn’t lure anyone into joining me and I don’t like to travel alone, I booked myself on a tour.

But not just any tour. This tour. First a look around Bangkok, then an overnight train to Chiang Mai, followed by three days of trekking around remote villages, sleeping in huts, and elephant rides. It was the elephant ride that clinched the deal for me!

I’m both very excited and just a bit nervous, which is actually great. I wanted to have an adventure, to take a trip that would push me outside my comfort zone a bit. With this tour, I’ll have the safety and company of a group without being stuck taking pictures through the window of a bus the entire time. And I’ll have a day on my own at the end where I can relax in my hotel, take a shower, and have a Thai massage before heading back to Cairo the next day. The best of both worlds!

But I still have to get through December. My son was sent home from school yesterday with a fever and shows symptoms of having the flu. So far my daughter is okay, but for how long? Fingers crossed it passes quickly and without complications.

I love water – being near it or in a boat – and I never get tired of looking at the Nile. There is always something interesting to see and look how lovely it is at sunset. I took this picture from the deck of the restaurant where I had dinner with my friend last week.

I recently read a book that made this view all the more interesting to me, Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney. I’ve wanted to read the book since I ran across an article the author published in The Guardian about her experiences rowing a boat down the Nile. I’ve always like memoir-type books and one that included adventure travel sounded all the more interesting.

The book was fascinating. I’ve never been as far up the river as Aswan, and still so many of her experiences were very familiar to me. When she said she wanted to row down the Nile, everyone said no, you’ll never get permission. In true Egyptian fashion, Mahoney didn’t give up at no, she just asked other people and when that didn’t work she went off and did it anyway. It’s a classic example of the way things work in Egypt! (Also, a bad habit that is all too easy to slip into!) And no matter what topic the topic of conversation, the men Mahoney encountered usually managed to turn the topic to sex. That’s another familiar scenario to me. I’ve been in a shop to buy copper pots for my plants and had the merchant start regaling me with tales of his sexual conquests in Hurgada during the days he was a tour guide there. Um…interesting but I just want to buy these pots…

More than a book about rowing, this is a book about people and culture and attempting to understand each other in spite of the wide gaps in experience that have shaped us all. Mahoney was able to interact with local people in a way that few foreigners ever do, and has provided a very thoughtful account of her interactions from the ridiculous to the poignant.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do on my next get-away lately and reading her book has inspired me to want to step outside my comfort zone and see more. I’m not getting any younger and in the immortal words of the Red Hot Chili Peppers this life is more than just a read through. I haven’t made any firm decisions yet, but I’m close. Stay tuned…

From Engrish.com – I often take pictures of amusing signs when I’m traveling – but I rarely see them as funny as this! (Click to enlarge)

One of the funniest signs I’ve seen recently was in the bathroom of a tour bus. On the back of the door there was a sign advising “No Crunching On Toilet”. I interpreted that to mean “No Crouching”, which is what you would do on a non-Western toilet since it is essentially a hole in the ground (What do you call a non-Western toilet? An Eastern toilet?) I regret not having taken a picture of that sign now, but you know – it just didn’t occur to me to bring my camera into the bathroom with me. And just think what the other passengers would have thought if I’d come out, retrieved my camera, and gone back in again!

Happened to have my camera handy when this lady happened by. You should have seen me trying to get up close enough behind her to get a good shot without alerting her!

You can’t see it in the picture but the English writing under the Arabic on the bag she’s carrying says “Step into Fashion”.

Pictures like these are why I should always carry my camera with me!

It’s the first day of school

I’m not the only one who is happy school is finally starting. My children are happy too! They’ve been whining about how much they miss school for a few weeks now. Little freaks! I can’t recall ever being happy that the summer was over when I was their age.

Not all of the local schools are starting however. Because most of the local news I get is word of mouth and based on rumor (and that includes the “official” news sources) apparently the Ministry of Education here in Egypt has mandated that non-foreign schools that fall under their authority will remain closed until the end of September in an effort to contain / avoid any problems with H1N1 flu.

I suppose the rationale is that a large portion of the population has been traveling over the summer and so if there is going to be an outbreak, it would be now. But a neighbor of mine who is a teacher in one of these schools said that now she’s hearing they may postpone starting until after the Eid holiday which marks the end of Ramadan at the end of September. But since people tend to travel during the Eid as well, then what? There’s another long weekend the first week in October – more travel. Then the second Eid holiday after that. Then the semester break in December followed by the New Year, followed by yet more holidays – and more travel.

Maybe they should just skip the school year just to be safe. Geez…

I guess I just have to be happy that our school *is* starting and if we get the flu, we get the flu. Things happen.

I got all of my suitcases unpacked and am slowly taming the rest of our apartment. It helps that the plant sitter did a pretty thorough clean-up before we arrived home. But I still have plenty to do – it would just be easier if I could kick the jet lag.

The first couple of nights I fell into bed exhausted by 10pm. Then I woke up and tossed and turned between midnight and 4am, finally falling back asleep and intending to get myself up at 8am – or by 9am at the latest. Instead, I slept until 10am. Last night I actually slept most of the night, until one of the usual Cairo summertime brown-outs occurred about 3am, requiring me to get up and deal with the AC in the children’s room when the electricity came back on. I was drowsy but didn’t fall back to sleep immediately. I woke up when my husband went to work then blinked and it was 10am again. The only improvement on this scenario is that at least this time the children were up before me.

We have another week off of school so it’s not crucial that we get up before 10am. I could just go with it and enjoy it. But I have things to do!! In the beginning of the summer when it seemed like I had all the time in the world I didn’t worry about all those math pages the teachers sent home to help give the children a head start for the new year (at my request I feel compelled to add). Now we only have a week left and they each have a stack of pages to do. Since it’s not their fault I procrastinated, I’m picking and choosing which ones we complete.

But we’d get a whole lot more done if I didn’t sleep half the day away!

After every long trip away from home, I always go through a process of settling back in that can only be described of as nesting. I not only unpack and put everything away, but I feel the need to clean everything too. I guess I could compare it to an animal marking its territory, only with a fresher scent!

I hired the maid of a neighbor to come in and water my plants while I was away. She did her job – a little too well. Many of my indoor plants were floating in stinky water when I returned. Apparently she didn’t fully comprehend the subtle nuances of my instructions “water inside plants once a week or as necessary“. I thought that was pretty clear. It never occurred to me to ask her (or my neighbor) if she was any good with plants. It was just watering for goodness sake. Guess I know better now!

(Thank goodness I don’t have any pets!!!)

I only lost a couple of indoor plants – one of which was a favorite unfortunately – and a couple of the less heat tolerant outside plants. It could have been much worse. I spent some time cleaning them up yesterday and it might just be my imagination, but they already look happier.

The rest of my apartment is going to take a little longer to sort out!