ahumbledream.com

you feel like writing and sometimes you don’t.  I guess I’ve been in the latter category lately.

I’m not sure when the next update will be.  We shall see =)  But if you want to hear about anything in particular, give me a call!

01-708-572-0205   (leave me a voicemail if Im not around =)

a wonderful time talking with my Mom tonight and recounting some of my spring break stories and hearing about her and my sister’s trip to San Diego to visit my aunt.  Also, I slept a lot.  And I saw the president’s palace (kind of) and had a great time talking with Bradford and sharing a meal, well 2 actually if you count the half of chicken we ate beforehand.  Haha, this post has to be the most rambling one yet.  Peace and stay tuned for more stories about the Middle East and oh so many pictures!

I just bought the new Derek Webb cd online: “The Ringing Bell”.  It is a-m-a-z-i-n-g.   I cannot think of a better songwriter than Derek Webb, his lyrics are truly inspired.  I’m still working on pictures.  Currently, I’m trying to salvage the 30 or so that got corrupted when I burned them to a cd during my trip…  There were a couple that I really wanted =(

This journey started like every journey here in Egypt: a taxi ride to Turgemon bus station and a subsequent wait. This time, the bus station had a roof (!) and they were actually actively working on completing the soon-to-be amazing hub in and out of Cairo.

Our bus from Cairo to Nuweiba took about, well I don’t remember how long it took, but we left sometime Wednesday night and got to the beach in Nuweiba just before sunrise Thursday morning, just in time to watch the sunrise over the Saudi Arabian mountains. I read and spent some much needed time centering myself with God while laying back on a hammock.

We ate an amazing breakfast (I ate two =) and then a nap was enjoyed by all… except me, I couldn’t sleep so I read part of “Life from the Battlefield: the autobiogrpahy of Peter Arnett”, which I’ve been working my way through most of this semester. Reading about his travels and reporting (and photographing) of places like Vietnam has all but completley entranced me (which is probably why I haven’t given up reading this massive book). I imagine only a reporter could so accuratley account so many details of his life, it makes for interesting and informative reading.

Eventually I fell asleep in the sun, by mid-afternoon (which felt like an entirely new day than the one we started) I was a nice shade of red, just before burnt, but balmily tan (I know that isn’t a real word but thinking back on the feeling it’s how I want to describe it =). We took off in the back of a pickup truck to Nuwieba port authority docks for our ferry ride to Aqaba. I took a picture on the boat of myself: tired and burnt…

Over the course of the trip I would learn that very few things could be expected in the Middle East. My first such experiance was aboard the “fast boat” to Aqaba. Seated in a plush seat, being waited on, served a cheeseburger, and enjoying a comfortable atmosphere, the ferry was pleasant and surreal, watching the other occupants dressed in middle-eastern clothing enjoying the pleasantries of the boat starkly contrasted the normally dirty, dusty, “unrefined” scenery of Egypt I had been used to. I knew it was a stereotype and so it was a gentle reminder to me that things were definitley not always how I percieve them. Jordan would confirm this and man if I had a “jay-dee” for every time someone in our group said “Jordan is soooo much nicer than Egypt” I would be very rich (1.4 USD = 1 JD Jordian Dinar).

We arrived in Aqaba and found that 1) things were much more expensive (as we expected) 2) there were no rooms at the 3 hostels we had pre-planned to stay at. So we slept on the roof of one of them for 2 jd a person. It was gorgeous! The cool breeze from the Aqaba Channel made the night so relaxing.

Ugh this week has seemingly lasted forever and yet it was only a 3day week of classes!  I don’t seem to be getting all that much better with my new medication, although it is making me very tired, groggy, and in general I feel like I can’t concentrate on anything.  I will be going to the local hospital this weekend to get checked out by one of their doctors (per recommendation of my Arabic teacher) as she said the quality there is much better and since I get treatment for free there, I might as well get a second opinion.

Dawn, you asked if I met any Haddads?  Only this one, but thankfully it was a brief acquaintance that lasted all of the time it took me to take this picture =)

809 more pictures coming soon…. my entire plan for this weekend: sleep and write and homework.  oh yeah and sleep =)

miss you all!

• Updated: sometimes I forget to mention one of the most obvious things: my family.  I think about them so much some times that it doesn’t strike me that I am thinking about them.  But by far they are the most important people to me, I wouldn’t be who am I today without my mom and sister, I owe them more than words (literally! =)  But seriously, I cannot wait to be home with them.  Besides the rest of my family (like my awesome sister Dawn and neice and newphew) my mom and sister probably read this more than anyone.  I love you guys!
• Arabic… and lots of it. We started Al-Kitaab 2 today, I have my mid-term tommorrow, and tons of hw
• Babyback ribs from the Patio..mmmmm
• My amazing girlfriend (no, this is not in order of importance… believe me, Samantha is much more important than those tangy, tender, succulent ribs… )
• The decidely amatuer performance of the doctors at the AUC Clinic: I’ve seem to come down with bronchitis =(
• How many hundreds of pictures I have to edit from my spring break in the middle east…
• How lazy I’ve become (in a fun silly way, but also in a serious I-need-to-step-it-up-way, as well.)
• Lyrics by Derek Webb:
  • there are days i don’t believe the words i say
    like a life that i’m not living
    a song that i’m not singing but to youthere are times that i believe i’m satisfied
    like an intimate connection
    despite this bad reception with youbecause i can’t afford to pay
    for most of what i say
    so it’s a lucky thing
    that the truth’s public domain

and i am like a mockingbird
i’ve got no new song to sing
and i am like an amplifier
i just tell you what i’ve heard
oh, i’m like a mockingbird

• How easy it is to slip into vulgarity and unwholesome speech… The Lord says “3But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; 4and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. Eph 5:3-5 NASB” Please pray for me about this. I have no doubt that now that I’ve acknowledged it I will be better about it, but that only fixes a symptom of me, and doesn’t really reach the true condition of my heart which allows me to exhibit such behavior in the first place. Praise be to our God that He can so totally heal and sanctify!
• My new friends!
• The hurt and hardship that so many people throughout the Middle East are undergoing.
• My seeming lack of ability to do anything about it (these are words I normally despise people saying)
• Updating my blog (and finally catching up on the stories I promised to tell!) I think I will work on getting my lastest travels through Jordan, Lebanon and Israel into words first though. If you are reading this, keep on me to write… please =)
• My best friend Byron and how much I miss him.
• how despite having a church here which supports me and kind people who are faithful which I can talk with, there is nothing like my home church, my pastor, my guys, and all the people there… however broken and struggling but faithful in Christ we all are together…
• how I want to love Christ with everything I have again…
• cameras and how/if they will play a part in my life
• the decidedly unknown future to all but God
• joy, joy, joy. and how despite how pressed on every side I can feel sometimes, that somehow joy remains and while of course He remains absolute I somehow still almost always get to remember that and witness it and be warmed in His radiant glory. thats what I’m thinking now and I hope always!