Luxor and lice

Luxor Egypt

Bad:  We are still fighting off the lice.  I found a 'momma' on Kalin yesterday.  I never thought I would pine for North American lice, but these Thai lice make me long for the critters from home.  These lice are much smaller with much smaller nits.  'Our' lice concentrate behind the ears and nape of the neck.  These ones dwell happily anywhere.  So we cannot just do a quick check in  few target spots.  We have to look everywhere.  Last time we had lice, when Kalin was in 1st grade, I just chopped off her hair.  It was so cute!  But she won't go for it this time.  What a surprise-not!

Good:  The full moon over Karnak during the Sound and Light Show.  The show is as cheesy as anything you have ever experienced.  Big, booming voices of various gods and pharaohs.   It is light on history and heavy on pageantry.  But it is the kind of experience that lodges in your memory forever.

Surprising:  Not really surprising, but it is sobering to realize how much the Egyptian people feel under attack from America.  We have heard over and over again that they 'love America;  please tell people there we want peace, no war.'    They go on to tell us how the whole Arab world has been affected by the invasion of Iraq.  My cousin's wife told me that Egypt alone has integrated 2 million Iraqi refugees.  With only 70 million people that is a huge percentage increase in their population.  Their unemployment has always been high and the tourist industry was devastated after 9/11.  Our tour guide in Luxor told us the city went from 6,000 tourists a day in to 800 a day .  It is now back to 2,000 a day, but it is still hard.  There are very few American tourists too.  It may just be that we are not on the US package tour, but we have met no other American's here.   Many Egyptians try to guess where we are from and America is rarely on the list.  

We met several Egyptian men who used to come to the States regularly and they now find it too 'humiliating to come to America as an Arab man.'  They are thrilled when they realize that we too hate George Bush and cannot wait for the new president.  And like us, everyone we have talked to here is 'hoping for Clinton or Obama' followed by quick appeals to god, 'Inshallah',  which all of us repeat emphatically:  inshallah, inshallah, inshallah.