Vacation Pictures

The above pictures were taken at the Savoy Resort in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.



It is always nice to have a geography re-fresher

City of Love and Ashes

I am reading at the moment the City of Love and Ashes by Idris Yusuf. There are a couple of excerpts I thought are very interesting. The first one below I believe describes the city of Cairo with such vivacity and accuracy.

"Cairo's streets were day, its lane dawn, its alleyways jetback night. The many districts -Shubra, Abdin, Sayyida, Zaynab, Old Cairo, al-Azhar, Tulun, Fuad Street, al-Darb al-Ahmar; enromous buildings of five, ten, twenty stories; hundreds of throusands of windows; thousands of doors and doormen; apartment blocks whose residents had gone to sleep, blocks that had not yet slept, and blocks that never slept, people out for the cinemas, people out for a good time on the streets and in the nightclubs; evening dress and afternoon wear, suits, woolens, overcoats, bright colored gowns, beautiful women decorated with powder and lipstick, wrapped in pelts of fox and bear and possibly tiger and lion; red, green, yellow traffic signals and neon lights of all colors; cleaning workers and workers far from clean; black soldiers and white soldiers on bicycles, on vehicles, and on patrol; prodigious bank buildings resting solidly like pyramids of the modern age- the National, the Misr, the Credit Lyonnais, the Arab Nation, the Bank of the Colonies and Overseas; Europeans, Turks, Greeks, people of every faith and color; garbage collectors, hawkers, and beggars; people ending their day and people beginning their day; people dying and children being born; radios broadcasting the latest news, reports, and announcements; prices tumbling, prices rising, and people tumbling and rising without price; drinks being mixed, hashish; customers enticed and bargains struck; negotiations over the formation of the cabinet; horse-cabs waiting, and Cadillacs, and taxis piling up like flies whenever a nightspot disgorges its clientele; drivers heaping curses on each other; greeting eachother, joking with each other; they all have a place to go, and places not to go, places they do not even know. Fawziya and Hamza were stealing into the middle of all this, surrounded by the black night and the light of the cars. What frightens people is seeing this, and living among it, but knowing they have no place in it." p. 114

"The night progresses with no thought for the city, and the city lives with no concerns for the night. Its great buildings appear small, its houses like ants' nests, its streets narrower than the eye of a needle, and people, people, people. Fawziya is at Hamza's side and in his essence, her arm through his arm, her breast close to his, a glitter and a challenge in her eyes all around them, and danger every step."

Medtronic Twin Cities 10 Mile

It looks like I will be running the 10 mile at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Sunday October 3rd for the second time. This time, however, my friend Merima has also decided to join me. We have put our group in the lottery and if we are selected that we will be able to run, if not well than we will be missing out. I like our group name I think its super cool, our group name is Bosanceros: Alma i Meri. :) My time last run was 1:41 this time I will need to do better. I was wary of running again this year since last time I found it to be tough, but decided to give it another shot anyways. This means that training will need to begin soon and long runs in the heat.

Med School

It is that time of the year and I am applying to Medical Schools!!! It is a really exciting time for me but it is also so very stressful. I need to get my application in as soon as possible and although I have a draft of my personal statement I still have to modify it and on top of that I need to chose schools. I just started yesterday the primary application process. And have emailed my professors just today. I already received many positive responses. I just want to get into med school and get past this burden of worrying and thinking. Since the competition is so high I will be applying to about 20 allopathic medical schools and about 10 osteopathic medical schools. Hopefully everything will go well and next year I will be writing as a medical student.

Reflections of May 30th through June 5th 2010

I am back from my honeymoon. I must say that I am not so excited to return back, although I glad to see my family again. But coming back without my Alaa, was very difficult to do. And while I was waiting six hours at the airport in Jordan for my connecting flight to New York, I was deeply contemplating to return on one of the many flights back to Cairo that were being announced through the speakers. I was running like a mad woman trying to find a phone booth that works. I finally found the only phone booth that works in the entire airport, only to discover that it does not take any credit cards. Then the challenge was to find a phone card to buy. I finally found a kiosk that sells very expensive phone cards, and on a different occasion due to principal I would not have let someone rip me off. But this occasion I had to call Alaa, I had to hear his voice and I had to make sure that he is ok. So I purchased the phone cards and got through to Alaa to hear his voice for those 5 minutes.

Although I did not discuss this with Alaa on our short phone call, during those long hours at the airport I kept on playing in my mind how things would work out, if I return back to Cairo and call him to pick me up at the airport. I know he would be overjoyed and he would rush to the airport. But where would life go from there? What would I do and what would he do? And would life become boring if we just went to the beaches everyday and go out every night as we used to do for the past three weeks. All of these things were going through my mind the entire time at the airport. At the end I decided not to take any risks and to go with the plan and board my flight to New York. But maybe some day, I will look back and read this entry and think to myself, what if? What if I had returned to Cairo that day? How would our lives be different? Well, I will never know and that is life.

During those amazing three weeks everything went well and it was an amazing time. Both Alaa and I would agree that this time was even more special than our time together back in 2007. As you can imagine I was so nervous to see Alaa after three years! I didn’t know what to expect at the airport. And although I was overjoyed to see him and couldn’t wait, I would be lying if I said that I was not apprehensive. But once I landed, got my bags and walked out of the Sharm El-Sheikh terminal and saw Alaa all smiling and happy, I was taken aback to the time three years ago. And Alaa and I started from where we began a long time ago, as if there were not three years that separated us from each other.

After the airport we went to a small but very nice apartment that Alaa rented for a week. We ended up going to different beaches everyday and went out at night to a different lounge and/or restaurant. The following Saturday it was time to go to Cairo, in order to get married. We reached Cairo very exhausted and checked in to our amazing suite at the Sheraton in downtown Cairo. We had an amazing room, with two balconies, one of which over looked the Nile river, we also had a living room and than the bedroom. That Saturday evening his parents invited us for dinner. As most people eat dinner late, we arrived at his parent’s house at around ten in the evening. We talked about the wedding plans the following two days and we had an amazing Middle Eastern dinner prepared by his mother. By the time we returned back to our hotel room it was early in the morning. As we could not sleep from the anxiety of having to go to the US embassy the next morning in order to get a permission for me to get married in Cairo, we ended up having a class of wine on the balcony overlooking the still alive city below. Usually, drinking a class of wine helps me sleep but apparently that did not work that day. I could not fall asleep due to anticipation and apprehension of the next day.