Home again

Hi everyone. Ryan and i are both home safe and sound in Canada now. For the time being that is. Very recent developments have come about which will see me moving to San Diego to continue working with the YWAM ministry that I first was involved in years ago. I will give a concise update about this a bit later but just wanted to put that little bit out there for all to know about. Thank you SO much for all of your prayers while I was traveling. They were felt, dreamt about and appreciated.

Sleepless Whining

Well I seem to be doing really well at the forced jet lag game we are playing. For some reason we all decided to make ourselves stay up ridiculously late and then sleep in for the last week we are in Cairo. This way we won’t have so much jet lag to get over when we get home. I’m winning right now. It is currently 2:47 in the morning and I have had a lot of coffee to drink today. Speaking of coffee, normally I drink coffee to keep myself from getting a headache. But today coffee gave me a headache, or shall I say buying a coffee gave me a headache. I must start this story by saying that I had already woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning (doing puzzles until 2am may have had something to do with this) and then we made the unfortunate decision to visit the Pyramids. The first sign that this outing was to be a disaster was the fact that the Pyramids are crawling with camels. They are everywhere; even if you close your eyes to block the hideous sight of them you can still smell their stench. Then you have the owners of the camels who desperately want to charge you an outrageous amount of money to sit on their stinking animals. These camel drivers follow so closely at your heels mostly because they really want to see their camels step on you. They get quite a laugh out of this. On top of the camels, there are a lot of very forceful men who want to sell you something, give you something even pay you to buy something. It really can be wearing on the nerves. Once we finished with the Pyramids and I was now able to say that I had actually seen them from somewhere other than the Pizza Hut across the street, we took off for the mall. As the guys were shopping for guy clothes and I was shopping for girl clothes, we decided to split up for a bit. This also proved disastrous for me because every shop I went into was being “manned” by a man. This meant that I had Egyptian guy’s eyes boring into my flesh the whole time I perused the store. And then if I wanted to try something on, well that was a whole other level of awkwardness. By the time the three of us met up again I had nothing and they each had a couple bags of clothes. When does that ever happen? As we left the mall I remembered seeing a nice looking coffee shop across the street and decided to grab a cup of java to go. That’s when things really got messy. What should have been a fast and easy process ended up not only frustrating me, but I ended up making the well intentioned greeter/waiter/barista angry to top things off. I think it all went wrong when the nice guy was trying to help me decide which kind of cheesecake I REALLY wanted to have because I “looked hungry” when all I wanted was a regular coffee. He was pretty in my face at first and after all the other in my face I had had so far today, I gave him the hand. It was pretty much a blur after that between paying an outrageous price by Egyptian standards, finding out that I paid extra for whip cream when I can’t stand the stuff and just wanted cream and scaring all the employees with my frustration at the whole day. I think tomorrow I might need to go back and take them flowers or something to apologize. They will probably all run and hide though when they see me coming.
Besides today we haven’t done anything too eventful since we got back to Egypt. We are all pretty big readers I think, so we sit around and read a lot. The first day we were back we were so lazy we didn’t even leave the house once. We even ordered in McDonalds. Can you believe that? What a truly great civilization this is. Speaking of ordering in McDonalds and other ingenious conveniences, when I was in Israel I kept seeing Blockbuster DVD vending machines on the street. Why do we NOT have those in North America? Someone needs to get on that.
Tomorrow we are going to the deaf unit that Ryan’s WONDERFUL host family runs. I am really excited about that, it should be a sweet time. I’ll update you on all the exciting things to come in a few more days. In the meantime, here is a smattering of pictures from the past couple weeks for you to enjoy. Thank you for reading and good night.


Bedouin garage.


This is our friend Soodeya from South Korea and a Bedouin woman that I passed the breeze with for awhile.


Here is the monastary at Petra. If you look real close you can see a person standing in the doorway. That should give you an idea of the size of this structure. It is completely carved out of the mountain.


Oh I wish I could post this one bigger. It's genius. Matt is really just holding his hand up so that it appears he is holding a tiny flag of Jordan when really the flag is massive and 15 miles away.


Ryan and Matt goofing off on some ancient architecture at Jerash.


Little kids in the Jewish quarter of the old city.


Japanese CIA, Israeli CIA and soldiers hanging out below my balcony awaiting the arrivel of the Japanese Prime Minister. Never a dull moment at the Petra hostel.


Surfers in Tel Aviv


Palestinian kids showing off their superbe diving skills.


A view of Tel Aviv from Jaffa


The dome of the rock and the wailing wall below. It is PACKED on Friday nights. I was in happy tears watching all the dancing, rejoicing, praying, hugging and general comradrie of everyone all evening long.


A view of our hostel, the legendary Petra hostel just inside Jaffa gate. I found a book of 19th century photography of Jerusalem and there is a picture of this hostel with the same iron balconys even. My balcony is the second in from the left where there is a girl sitting (my friend Johanna from Sweden. The boys slept on the roof


The front dooe of the Church of the Sepulchure and a Armenian priest in the background


A Pelestinian kid I met in the Arab quarter of the old city. We had a heated disagreement about Zedane's little head butting incident during the final World Cup Game and played a little soccer.


Jewish kid at the wall.


Guy at the wall.


Prayer Shawl


Orthodox man.

Out Of Control

It seems like the last few days have been crazy. The most crazy being what I am sure you are all watching on the news over and over. Israel and Lebanon are close to being at war with each other, rockets are being fired back and forth and all seems to be normal here in Israel. Yesterday I layed on the beach in Tel Aviv all morning while army helicopters and planes flew north up the coast one after another. It was such a strange feeling to know that an hour and a half north of where I was getting a great tan, rockets were flying back and forth. (I hope my mom isn't having a heart attack right now) Yes there have been less people out and about the past couple days, but life seems to go on as usual here. I had quite a chuckle when I got back to the hostel last night to find about 30 people glued to CNN and on the phone trying to book flights home at the last minute. Jumpy I tell ya. Another fun event I got to witness was the Japanese Prime Minister coming to the old city. His entourage showed up right inside Jaffa gate under my balcony. It was a circus of Israeli soldiers, Japanese secret service and Israeli secret service. Craziness.
Today I went to the Holocaust museum. It took me 5 and a half hours to get through it all. I can't even put into words the impact it had on me. Everything was done so beautifuly/tragically. The rest of the afternoon has been a bit of a write off for me now. Have to go. the internet cafe is closing.

Where Am I From?

Today has been a shopping day today. I am officially cut off now, no more buying clothes for me for two more years! Well, It wasn't that bad, but pretty bad. Aunty Felicia took over for awhile too when I entered a baby clothes store. Ohhhh Katelyn, be excited. As I have perused streets and shops, I have gotten confused about where I'm from. Between over a dozen Israeli shop keepers telling me they could have sworn I was Israeli after I looked confused by their questions posed in Hebrew, too many Palestinian shop keepers saying, "I don't believe you are from Canada, you are American, too Spanish tourists asking me in spanish how to find Jaffa gate, I am getting really muddled in the head. And that my friends is the beauty of Jerusalem! The whole world is here and is one big mish mash, every culture blending and melding into a beautiful chaos. I love it. I am going up to Tel Aviv to see my Finnish friend Andreas in two more days. I did my DTS with him in New Zealand 5 years ago and haven't seen him since. Since my DTS I have actually only seen my fellow DTS'ers here in Israel, except my best DTS friend Clayton, I saw him for 10 minutes at Tim Hortons near the airport, Awwww, I miss Clayton. He has a great laugh, the throw your head back and put your whole body into it laugh. Everyone should meet him sometime. Maybe if I ever get married, him and his wife will be there and then you could be there and you will have to find the skinny Saskatchewan boy with the great laugh and introduce yourself. Bueno! Shalom to all.

They Are Everywhere!

They really are, YWAM'ers that is. I can't stop running into them over here. As we were leaving my brothers church last week, a group of hip young people came walking in. They stood out to me because they looked a little out of place amongst all the older ex-patriate types. As we walked down the street Ryan asked me if I had seen the YWAM'ers from Perth come in. This caused me to turn and go back as I had been trying to get in touch with anyone from Perth that was going to be involved in the city wide youth ralley that the Perth base was spearheading. Friends of mine were scheduled to speak at and participate in this event meant to get the local Christian young people fired up for Jesus. Very exciting stuff. Anyways, I got talking with them and sure enough a bunch of us had mutual friends so I was able to pass messages of greeting on to those I know that were on thier way.
Then again when I was wandering around the ancient ruins of Petra I spotted a young lady wearing a Mission Adventures backpack. We got talking and she told me that she was there with some other young couples who had all just moved to Jordan to learn Arabic and teach for 4 years. I later ran into the whole group at my hotel, we were staying in the same place. One of the guys happened to have staffed my best friends DTS in Orlando 6 years ago. It was so exciting to see so many coming to this part of the world that desperatly needs people that love Jesus and these nations. Praise god!

I Have Stooped

It's official, I have gone down to the depths of lowness that I never thought I would end up at. I am a tourist through and through. For some reason I have always had an intense aversion to becoming one of the tennis shoe wearing, camera carrying, loud voiced, awkward, out of place tourist types. This is the first time in my life that I have traveled for no other reason than to travel. I AM a big advocate of being in a place, learning the culture, language, knowing the people, knowing simple things such as where to get the best tacos, shwaerma or chai tea and how much to pay for it, how to get around town and where things are. I don't like to be a spectator, I want to be involved in my surroundings. Well today Matt informed me that I sound incredibly American. Apparently there have been a few times where Ryan said something to a local in a fairly clear and concise way only to have me back it up with a shouting voice accompanied by a southern drawl. 'Does this guy speak English?' How did this ever happen to me? I am absolutely mortified. So this week I am going to try and concentrate on becoming a little more Canadian again. I've noticed that no one here believes me when I say I am Canadian. Why is that? Just because I don't have a flag on my bag dosn't disqualify me.
In other news, we had a beautiful time in Petra the other day. I was blown away by the history, and craftsmanship of the place. If you have never heard of it look it up and read a bit. Here are a couple pictures from the day, the boys being goofy and suprise suprise, a camel kissing his boy. Despite my extreme aversion to camels I can't stop taking pictures of them. It's sickening! OK, sighing off for now. Felicia

Those Darn Camels!

I had almost forgotten how much I HATE Camels until last night when I was climbing Mt.Sianai for the second time. I believe my distaste for these poor miserable beasts began the last time I climbed Mt. Sianai and had them breathing down my neck in the desert darkness for 2 hours. It was the same thing again this time, coming around a corner only to stumble upon one of the silent creatures eerily staring me down. The only warning of them was the stench of their manure coated hides. And then the worst part of course is the Bedouin men whispering in low startling voices, "want to ride a camel? want to ride a camel?" I will dream those voices in my head for awhile. I really don't like those camels very much at all.
Besides that Matt and I had a very enjoyable hike up the mountian with our new traveling buddies Alex from Baltimore and Peter from Hungary. Ryan didn't come as he was having some slight bowel problems. Speaking of my cutie brother, he got some swimming lessons in the Red Sea today from Mr. Matt. He even made it out to where his feet couldn't touch bottom anymore without panicking. Such a good little swimmer. I had my camera ready to take pictures in case he started stuffing empty water bottles into his swim trunks to help him float after the example of Ahmed, the kid that was having alot of fun swimming by himself for a very long time. I got to lay out in a bathing suit today which made me extremely happy.
In other news we should be heading to Jordan tomorrow by boat where we will see some sights and then off to Israel!
Love to all who read this!