Al-Azhar Park - Cairo, Egypt

I miss Middle Eastern culture. The people in Egypt have taught me so much about hospitality and love for family and community. I was so impressed, in fact, that I've been wanting to incorporate some of this good stuff into my own lifestyle. Wouldn't it be awesome if you can combine all the good qualities about each culture and make some sort of super culture?! I don't know how they manage to do it. Nothing ever runs on time there, which was really frustrating to get used to. Well, to be honest, I don't even think I could ever get used to it. BUT I love how their time revolves around their relationships rather than the opposite, relationships revolving around time.

I dislike having to tell people for example, I'm too busy for them Monday, but I can fit them into my 5-7 slot on Wednesday. I want to be as open and available whenever I'm needed. I do realize after a couple schedule conflicts that this doesn't quite work in a culture when everyone else is that busy and sometimes you do need to schedule a few weeks in advance to get things done. I'm still trying to work it all out. Other than work, I want to still remain open. We'll see how things work out.

I really like the 'I'm Yours' song by Jason Mraz. Especially these lyrics:
'Well open up your mind and see like me, open up your plans and damn you're free, look into your heart and you'll find love love love.'

I know my job allows me to be a lot more flexible with my time, and I am very grateful for it, but even when I had a 9-5, I knew it was still possible to have a more free and flexible schedule. Sometimes when I'm running in circles trying to get things done, I have to stop myself and ask what is really that important about what I'm doing. I've come to find that in the end, people are always more important than most of what I think I need to get done.

With that said, I wanted to update with a few photos from Egypt. One of the last days we were there, we went to Al-Azhar park. This woman kinda walked into my photo, but that's okay!



This is an area overlooking the city where you can see a mosque at almost every corner. Supposedly there are so many mosques that there is one mosque per family.





We randomly met a group of six girls at the park and ended up sitting and chatting with them. They taught us so much about their culture and identity. It's cool to learn how different they see the world in being part of an honor-shame culture. It really makes you wonder how much of how you perceive the world is from your upbringing. After chatting some, we were suddenly being fed by them and celebrated one of the girl's birthday with them. :) Seriously, southern hospitality has nothing on Egyptian hospitality. Of course, I couldn't help but ask to get a few portraits of these beautiful girls.