Graceland

Yesterday my friend Ali invited some of us to his home in the Nile delta province of Kofer al-Sheik. It is about an hour's drive to the east of Alexandria. We spent the day on a falucca (small to kind of medium size sail boat) on the river. Since it was Friday, the Islamic holy day, there were not many other boats on the water. It was peaceful.

This is a picture on our way to the river.


Funny Happening Corner: (by the way, I wish I established this corner earlier) This story requires us to take a trip in the Not-Too-Way-Back Machine to the last time you were near a boat and a dock. As you may know, boats, when they are untethered from the dock, move with the motion of the water. You have to take care when stepping into the boat to not delay too long as your momentum and weight force the boat away from the dock. If you wait too long, you find yourself in a precarious human leg bridge situation that is sure to end comically. Well:

My friend Mohammad tried to board the falucca from a smaller dingy. The tides were against him, rocking the dingy away from the falucca. To his credit, he remained committed to trying to board the falucca. He managed to grab the falucca with his hands as his feet and the dingy bugged out, drifting away from the falucca. His reaction was hilarious as his body slowly stretched out between the two boats. "Guys. Yo guys...Guys! Help me!!"

The boats drifted apart until his stomach sank into the water, his hands and toes still anchored on their respective boats. We were able to pull the boats back together and avert any further submersion.

We all need moments that make us feel that life could be a cartoon. That was one of them for me.

For Halloween, my friends and I ate candy on the beach. In true American style, we overindulged and all regretted it the next day (but Reeses are soooo good). I can say as well that climbing Sugar Mountain was much more fun than coming back down.

Chipsys, beginner's blues, and sea cows