Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work!

zai-yek! (that's howdy in arabic, but in bulgarian it
means rabbit!)

been making some accomplishments and decided it was
time to take a little holiday down to egypt! it was
fantastic!!! i've never traveled with having favorite
places before, it has always been about meeting
people, other travelers. but egypt may have changed
that. i went with goals of seeing the pyramids and
learning more about the mystery that is egypt. but
after arriving, that stuff took a back seat to modern
day egyptians and their culture! crystal somehow
managed to pick up the chicken pox a day before our
arrival into egypt, which was hilarious and
unfortunate at the same time. we decided to go to
egypt without a tour group to allow for more freedom
and also to save some money. we stayed in hostels and
took local transportation and we pretended to be
egyptian even though it was impossible to convince
people of that... even when we said we were from the
far north of egypt. ha! anyway, the first hostel we
got to, in cairo, had some superb people working
there. we befriended them immediately, and the one
guy, amir, took us to the hospital and translated so
crystal could get some help. the whole hospital visit
was less than a dollar! they gave her some kind of
topical medicine to help relieve the itching but it
turned her skin bright, bright purple! oh man! it was
really funny! while she stayed in bed for 2 days, alex
and i explored cairo. it's a neat place! 20 million
people and only a handful of traffic lights! it was
insane! drivers constantly honk to let other drivers
know where they are. intersections were big messes of
merging cars. pedestrians just jumped into the mix and
waited for chances to hop from one lane to the next in
between cars that were within a foot of you on either
side and cruising along like a real life game of
frogger! and in all this chaos - people get to where
they need to be! i can't believe they manage under
these conditions, but they do! the pyramids were
great, of course. but the hoards of tourists really
took away from their magnificence.

headed out into the desert on a 5 hour bus ride to the
bahariya oasis! there was some kind of natural hot
springs that allowed there to be life in the middle of
the desert, and there a small town existed. it was
great to get away from busy cairo. the beauty and
quietness of the desert were something far more
amazing than the overcrowded pile of rocks i had come
for. we hung out with locals, having tea, watching the
sun set, dancing and listening to their music. one of
the things i really appreciated early on from this
culture was the absence of western music! there were
no britney spears, madonna, backstreet boys, 50 cent
or any other horrible sound-atrocities that get sold
around the globe. nope, in egypt, they listen to
egyptian music - and it was wonderful!!! next day we
headed off into the desert for a camping excursion!
spent a good hunk of the day without roads, just
driving along in the sand - it was cool! saw the black
desert, which was created from the erosion of volcanic
rock and now there's a black dusting of rock covering
everything. we climbed a small mountain and the view
looked like it went on like that forever! but of
course, we drove for another hour and we were in a
completely different place called the white desert
with just as beautiful a landscape, and also looked
like it went on forever! i liked this place very much.

headed back to cairo to catch a night train to aswan.
had a quick dinner, which crystal and i both got food
poisoning from. the train was 13 hours long... pure
torture! we arrived at 2pm and i slept for a solid 24
hours once we got our hostel. we both went without
food for the better part of 3 days. so, we didn't see
much of aswan or luxor. alex says they were pretty
cool places. all i can say is that they have crummy
hostels that cost less than 2 dollars.

from luxor, we took a night bus to dahab. our bus
broke down twice before we finally switched to
another. in all, it was a 20 hour bus ride! dahab was
great though, and more than made up for the bus ride!
some damned terrorist bombing had been there a week
before we got there, and as a result the town was
quiet and quite mournful. the water was gorgeous, and
felt great! alex went diving and crystal and i
snorkled! i'd never done that before - it's really
cool! there were some great reefs with all kinds of
fish of all kind of colors!!! it was amazing! and now
i have a new hobby!

took a quick jaunt to alexandria and wandered the town
for a day. we were followed around by children and old
folks alike who were keen to ask us where we were
from, our names, and then would quickly follow with
"welcome to egypt!" they were super friendly people!
the more bold children would see us from far away and
make a b-line for us to shake our hands!

finished up our trip back in cairo. said goodbye to
our new friends, and took one last crazy ride in a
taxi! our favorite taxi driver, who had on a previous
occasion almost plowed over a lady pushing a stroller
to park illegally so he could run into a mosque and
pray really quick - all the while we were en route to
the hostel, took us to the airport and sang and danced
while he did it. he gave me his favorite cassette tape
and told us all "life is delicious, i'm not rich but
i'm happy, what can i do?" what a holiday!

there's a new group of peace corps volunteers in
bulgaria now. group 19! one of the committees i'm on
has to deal with introducing them to the peace corps
lifestyle and be there for them if they have a
problem. so lately, we've been working on that a lot.
the biodiesel is still going... but not nearly as
smoothly as i wanted it to... i wanna just jump into
it and do it and have it be done and functioning!
however, that's not how things work here, and i'm
having a difficult time adjusting to a new way. they
want plans and budgets and partner organizations and
applications for everything! so paperwork is taking up
a great deal of the time that i would have been
getting my hands dirty... guess it's a learning
process for me too.

the other weekend i participated in an orienteering
competition! i've never done this before. the
"Varshets Cup" was held in a small town that attracted
bulgarians from all over the country. my particular
route was 17 markers, spread over a 2.8 kilometer
course. i saw other people using compasses and maps to
navigate their way through the town and the forest
that it bordered, but i wasn't given a compass - they
told me i wouldn't need it. no problem, 2.8km is
short, i thought. i got a map as i left the starting
line and i was running and having fun! up till marker
4. it was far into the forest and my map sucked. i
went way passed it, and ended up off the map and
completely lost! i had almost made it to the
neighboring town before i got my bearings... people
were getting times of 17 and 18 minutes for the
course. i never found the 4th marker, or any other
markers. i did however find my way back to the
starting line only an hour and a half after i had
left! i arrived just as the search party they had
assembled was setting out to find me! it was pretty
funny, and now the entire town will remember me as the
guy who got lost...

here are some updated peace corps pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/00Judkins/PeaceCorpsBulgaria20052007

and here are my egypt pictures:

well, the summer is finally here and the weather is
fantastic! i'm gonna try and take advantage of it and
start a running club! would be cool if it worked, but
i have a feeling it'll be difficult as people here
aren't into health so much. last wednesday was a
national holiday here to celebrate the cyrillic
alphabet! alphabet day, they call it. so everyone had
the day off! i spent it on the beach and now i'm
beginning to appreciate my newer position in varna!
the peace corps rocks!

lots of love from bulgaria,

andy!