Egypt

My father cried when he saw my album chunked full of photos taken over the three weeks I was in Egypt.

This album took a couple of weeks to put together. Along with photos I added stuff from the trip. Egyptian airplane tickets, museum tickets, in Arabic, Egyptian money (pound)~ colorful flyers were cut to use the words needed to enhance and discribe. Then a ton of photos of Egypt and, of course me. There are also photos of the handsome Egyptian General and his wife who sponsored me. The photo album photo/scrap book helps bring the full experience of the trip alive for sure.

Doing this helped me preserve more than the photos...I relived the trip.

I was the guest of our Egyptian friends whom we had known for the year they were in the states on an assignment. After they returned to Egypt, they invited me over to stay two months. To me, two months was unheard of and even three weeks was skidding beyond polite, I thought. They see things differently, however, and insisted that was minium if I really wanted to see and understand Egypt. My husband and children encouraged me to go as had been one of my lifetime wishes and goals.

"Come see Egypt with Egyptians," they said, "otherwise, you will have to see it as a tourists." How could I resist? Never!

As a young girl, I loved books set in far away places and loved reading about the world and especially spending time pouring over National Geographic Magazines.

National Geographic had pictures of naked women of Aftica and the Amazon...I remember being amazed that I was allowed to see these pictures, but reading, I grew to understand these were wonderful and far away places. I wanted to go. I wanted to be a White Witch Doctor. From age 12, I had my list of places I had to see and experience.

1. Hawaii

2. Egypt, the prymids and the Nile River

3. Africia, the jungle and monkeys

4. The Amazon River

5. The Great Wall of China

I wanted to boat down the Amazon..and interlace with the natives, etc...all daydreams of a little girl who loved National Geographic.
I never dreamed of what I probably should have dreamed ...to be a photographer. Those thoughts were not on a list to consider for a little girl of that time.

Now, 30 years later, I shared my trip through photos with my Dad.
And now, my father sat realizing I had made one more of my dreams come truer than he could have hoped for me...and his tears rolled.

"Why are you crying Daddy?" I asked.

Trying to stop the tears that wet his tanned, wrinkled face, he said, "I always wanted to travel, but lost my health and couldn't."

My Dad was a smoker and what he said was true. Smoking cost him 20 years of his life with the last 8years, he was tied to an oxygen tank full time.

There are so many stories within stories of that summer in my life. We will share. Do come back for more.


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