No-Shave November

Well, it's that time of the year again, and No-Shave November is coming to a close. Tomorrow is the big competition, and the next day is the exhibition. Pretty exciting, I know. It's normally No-Shave December, or Decembeard, or Handlebar Hannakah, but since Molly's coming in December and I know she hates facial hair, I charitably moved it to November. There's actually a Movember, a Mustache November, which is a charity for prostate cancer research. How about that?

Anyway, I went to the orphanage with Saba and Tammam today, and it was awesome. Despite my fears, it was clean, well-kept, and had computers for the children. The workers there were incredibly pleasant and answered all of my questions for me. Simply amazing.

One of the little boys we visited reached out and touched my chin. He rubbed his hand on my beard for a second and then asked, "Are you a sheikh?" He meant a sheikh of Islam, so I said no, and then he asked if Tammam was a sheikh.

So No-Shave November brought holiday cheer to the orphans, too. It's a No-Shave November miracle.

Can we get just a little sense of propriety please?

I don't know if this will mean as much to you as it does to me, so I'll try to explain a little first.

Egyptians are ultra-conservative. I mean, I thought I was ultra-conservative, but I have nothing on the Egyptians. Please forgive my sweeping generalizations, I'm just going to tell you how I see it daily.

Egyptians generally don't wear shorts outside of the home. In fact, I see a lot of people dress up pretty nicely just to go to the grocery store. Lots of women wear the head veil, and those that don't will often be covered neck to ankles anyway.

Sex before marriage is totally anathema to most Egyptians. To many, a guy and a girl leaving together is bad, or being alone in a car together is bad, or even going into an apartment together is bad. Like really bad. It will ruin your reputation, and you can kiss a reputable marriage goodbye after that.

There's more, but to get to my point, our hot water has been out and is getting fixed today. We've been showering downstairs in the Brits' apartment yesterday and today, and if any of the Egyptians knew, i.e., our our landlady, that just wouldn't look good at all.

So I went to let John in, and he had walked up two flights of steps, past our landlady's apartment, only in his towel.

That's courage.

There is another...

I went to Khaled's tonight, great guy, really like him. So Gamila was there too, from the Middlebury program, and when she heard about my kidney surgery, she told me that she only has one kidney. I was surprised, and welcomed her into my One Kidney Club. Now we're four (shout-out to Jason Salas and Deidra).

And then she said that she has two kidneys, but they're stuck together. I asked, "A horse shoe kidney?" Turns out, there are two of us.

We almost did a kidney bump, but I still have a massive wound across my side. Katie, please send me pictures of that so I can decide whether or not they can be posted here.

On an unrelated note, there were literally puddles of blood all over the street today. I mean, they did an amazing job of cleaning up the sheep's blood in my building, I couldn't believe how well they did. But it is still running in the streets, and it smells terrible.



Sarah, the picture is for you. Hopefully more to come soon.

Melissa's Post

I just read Melissa's latest post, and you must read it too. Click here to blow your mind.

Also, how do you get a pilot light to come back on? I'm so useless at this stuff. And our water is freezing. I hate that.

Oh, and today is the day that everyone is on the streets killing sheep. The mosque across the street was reciting a very lovely prayer for a couple of hours. Woke me up. But it was nice.

-------------------------------------------------------
Update, a couple of minutes after I posted above:

OH MY GOODNESS. There has been a pounding sound all morning long, so Michael showed me the source: There are three men downstairs in our building butchering sheep. In our building. I will endeavor to get someone to take a picture.

Happy Thanksgiving

When I was at the grocery store yesterday, a lady turned to me and started up a conversation. Upon hearing my accent, she asked if I was Egyptian. I said, "No, I'm American" and she asked, "But you're Egyptian-American, right?" It took me a couple of minutes to convince her that I was just American. She then asked me if the Egyptians were nice people. I said yes, and she proceeded to ask me three more times just to make sure. She was very happy and pleasant when I said yes.

Then she went to the meat counter and started yelling at a worker there.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

Thanksgiving

So we had our Flagship Family Thanksgiving yesterday, and it was a smashing success.

Lots of people cooked or ordered food, and it was all delicious. We did the traditional giving of thanks individually while we were eating, and it was good times.

But the best times turned out to be the Feel Good Session. Tammam suggested it a while ago, and what a hit. It sounds a little hokie, but we all just went around and said what we liked about each person, and I really feel like that brought us all closer.

Jacob also bought a 28 lb. bird, head included. Oh yeah.

Family Love

So Jacob is my favorite brother. He's awesome. Even his name is awesome: Jacob Matthew Wright. Be careful, just saying this name might result in YOUR MIND BEING BLOWN. Yes.

Here's a recent conversation he and I had on Facebook that I think warrants a blog post:

Jacob Wright: and how was your day today

Tom Wright: It is going well so far. I didn't make it to Church, but that could have something to do with the kidney stone surgery I just went through. Do you read my blog? It's: http://tom-in-egypt.blogspot.com/

Jacob Wright: kidney stone surgery? that sucks and I'm sad to say that I don't read your blog... but maybe I'll start and excuses excuses you need to go to church haha

Tom Wright: Read the blog dude, and show Mom, since I think I forgot to tell her about the surgery. They cut me open dude, I have such a sweet scar. I'll give you one for your birthday later, if you want.

Jacob Wright: haha you're too funny but I'll whoop on you tom you don't know who you're messing with now haha and I'll tell her.

Tom Wright: Trust me pudge-boy, I know exactly who I'm messing with. Now do you want a chill scar or not?

Jacob Wright: pudge-boy? I could gain ten pounds and still be skinny but as for you, you'd jsut get fat, not that your head needs anymore added to it. fatty-mo-fat-fat! and I'll have to consider this "tempting" offer

Tom Wright: Okay, I'm about to write a blog post about this conversation, so go read it in like, I don't know, 10 minutes.

I guess Jacob hasn't seen me lately, since I've lost a ton of weight just being in Egypt, and then a ton more in the hospital. I just asked Michael how much he thinks I've lost, and he said 5-10 pounds. Lots of people at school have commented as well.

Which leads me to my next point: The Egyptian diet. It just works. Forget your weight-loss shakes, pills, and terrible diets, and just come visit me in Egypt. I'll even take you to the hospital if you want.

Connected Again

My computer has been out of commission for a while, but Ahmed Gamal helped me fix it yesterday, and I finally got online from my house today. It's good to be connected again. To fix it, we had to re-install Linux on it, and it erased all of my old pictures, music, videos, and documents. This is not that big of a deal, but for one thing:

I had a really high score on Killbots. I mean, like a really high score.

Man.

Scribbles in the Hospital

So I found some notes that I took while I was in the first couple of days of hallucinations in the hospital. Smart of me to have written what I wouldn't remember, right?

The doctors confronted me about drug abuse. They also asked Robyn. When I told Wahaba about this, he said they asked him the same thing when he took me in for my other surgeries. They put me on double doses of six different kinds. They think that since I'm resistant to the drugs they gave me, I must have used them already and built up an immunity. And I don't even drink alcohol. Hmm.

Oh, and when they were administering some of the drugs, they were afraid I was going to go into arrest, because my blood pressure was dangerously low (which is weird, 'cause the drugs made my heart race uncontrollably sometimes). So they were trying to scale it back, and I was ordering them to give me more, and "the real stuff". They told me the dangers and I said, "I am willing to take that risk". Good thing they listened to a doped-up patient and gave me more. Man, that surgery hurt.

They also didn't have any water in the hospital. So the nurses would often ask, "Did you drink any water today? No? Why not?" I'd never really get why they thought my answer would change if I was confined to bed and they weren't bringing me anything.

Also, I'm lactose intolerant, so I am wary of milk, cheese, yogurt, etc. Most of the meals involved milk, and one was only milk, cheese, and yogurt. I'd tell them that I couldn't eat that, so they'd just take it away and not replace it. Or if they did replace it, they'd make me trade away juice for bread. So then it was a choice of whether I wanted to keep the only liquid around, or if I wanted to eat. Those were fun times.

So yeah, I'm glad I wrote that all down when I was in the midst of it all. Who doesn't love going to the hospital?

Oh, and I went yesterday to get the stitches out at 11AM, so of course the doctor didn't show up until 2:30PM. And they didn't take all of the stitches out. Yippee.

It's just a different culture...

So Nour has featured a couple of times already in my blog, and here goes another:

Whenever a procession of cars goes down the streets honking wildly, I either tune it out since that's totally normal, or I try to tune it out since it's also totally annoying.

Nour starts clapping rhythmically and dancing like she does, and says, "Oh yay, a wedding."

It's just a different culture.

By the way, computer is supposed to get fixed tomorrow, Ahmed Gamal is going to work on it, so I will hopefully soon be writing to all of those that would have otherwise received something from me.

It's a good thing chicks dig scars...

You may have noticed my silence on Gmail, Facebook, and various blogs lately. I've been in Siwa for a bit, as mentioned last post, and my computer is a little out of commission right now. But the last four days I've been in the hospital for a kidney operation.

Let's just say that you'd be surprised how many muscle groups use your abs, obliques, and lower back muscles. I now know just how often those are used as that's where they cut me open to get my massive kidney stone out of me.

So I went in, they put me under, and I woke up and said some unkind things for a couple of minutes to the nurses and doctors. At least, that's all I could remember. Robyn later told me that I was going insane on them for three hours, and I said this (among other things):

(Disclaimer for future employers and voters: I was under six different kinds of medications at this point. I was not responsible for my words or actions.)

Where's Robyn? Robyn, will you please kill everyone in this room for me?
Where's the real doctor? Who are you? Where's the real medicine? What are you giving me?
Robyn, will you shake these people like little children?
This is a nation of liars! They say two minutes, but they mean two hours!
(The doctor told me that it looked like the pain was going away.) No, I'm stoic man!
When does this wear off? Four hours? Great, I get to dance this dance with you again in four hours.
Robyn, tell this nurse to get away from my right side. Tell her to stand on my left. My right side is free, and I can kill her with it.
Stop laughing. You think I can't hear you, but I can. It's not funny.
Stop lying to me! Why are you lying?

There was more, but I don't remember most of it. My eyes were rolled up in the back of my head and I couldn't see anything. They finally got me under control, and the four days of hallucinations started. I remember seeing a woman at the light switch, and a few minutes later I realized that my eyes were closed, so I opened them and there wasn't a lady there at all. I also remember trying to wind my watch, but the hands kept spinning at different intervals. Then I looked in the mirror and half of my face was shaved, but I realized I was still in my bed and there wasn't a mirror and I still hadn't shaved. The hallucinations were weird, but they passed the time.

The doc came in on the fourth day and pulled a tube out of me that was collecting unsafe liquids in my body, and it was attached to a six-inch stick that had been stuck into my side. That was a rather unfortunate experience.

Anyway, I'm out, I'm going to try to fix my computer today or tomorrow so I can get back in touch with the outside world. Oh, and they tell me that I can't exercise for a month. Man.

I'll try to post some pictures when the bandages are off or when I can get an approximate size of the stone or something.

Until.

Siwa

Just got back from Siwa, and what a trip. I usually feel really good about coming back to Alexandria, like coming back home, but this time was different. Siwa was so nice that coming back just wasn't like coming back from Dahab or Sharm or Cairo.

We hit up a hot oasis, and it was amazing. We slept in the desert, and we ran around in Land Cruisers, up and down dunes. So much fun. Sandboarded down a dune a couple of times, and got completely naked and laid down on a dune to watch the stars. Scratched that goal off the list of life goals. Swam in another oasis, and drove a donkey cart when the driver got off and said, "You. You drive. You drive now." He then proceeded to run off to a mosque to pray. Oh, watched the sunrise from the top of a dune, and had to have Katlyn be a human space heater because of my uncontrollable shivering. The desert was freezing at night. Unfortunately, lost my wallet while I was in Siwa, so here's to hoping my new bank card gets here soon.

The best quote of the trip was by Katlyn:
Tom: I have sand in my hair.
Katlyn: I have sand in my everywhere.

Oh, and we also had a dance party in the desert, and that was fun, and really hard. Turns out, dancing on sand is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

Played an intensely cut-throat version of Mafia on the way back, and Tammam was simply amazing. That guy is hilarious.

Choppy post because my computer needs fixing, and I'm on John's, and I feel pressure to hurry even though he's out for the night. Thanks to Abinadi, I'll have my computer up and running soon, so there will be pictures soon.

Until.