photos from alexandria

ما هي العلاقة بين كيمياء و اللغة العربية؟

2009-08-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

اطلبوا تجدوا

لماذا ادرس عربية و بيوكيمياء؟

The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

على مستوية عالي، العلم ليس اللغة و اللغات ليست العلم. لذلك، لا اعرف اذا هناك العلاقة بين الاثنين، بس ربما فيها بين الشرق الاوسط و بيوكيمياء. فكرت عن هذا بعد ان قرأت هذا

waves in alexandria

2009-07-31T01:45:00.000-07:00

this is from this really cool little cafe that is tucked under the corniche, looking out at the mediterranean, right in front of the biblioteca alexandrina. i have read and seen pictures of people surfing in almost every mediterranean country, but i think getting any sizable waves requires fairly specific weather conditions. i don't think you really need that much fetch to generate headhigh waves, even if the swell period is fairly short...i've seen 3-4 foot waves breaking with only a mile of fetch before (of course, the wind was ridiculous). i also found an incredible-looking point break in lebanon last summer using google earth, and i've seen pictures of people getting really good-sized waves in tunisia and syria. i think if i ever have the chance to live in the middle east for longer than a few months, i'll bring a surfboard...

if you can't tell, i really need to get on a surfboard, mountain bike, pair of skis, rock wall, glacier, or something cool sometime soon. i should have studied bahasa indonesia.

الفلفل

2009-07-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

what you can buy in alex...

2009-07-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

القارب في الاسكندريةا

2009-07-27T02:52:00.000-07:00

mosaic

2009-07-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

احسن صورة من رحلتي

2009-07-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

my middle eastern vocabulary: zaatar, lebneh, halloumi

more from ras mohammad

2009-07-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

not actually sure what this guy (or girl) is. the boat captain said a beluga, but they apparently only live in the arctic. maybe a large dolphin?

snorkeling in sharm el sheikh

2009-07-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

this is another picture of me snorkeling from joe's underwater camera, which is a great point and shoot digital camera that is also waterproof and shockproof (both within a few meter limit). having a DSLR without a housing made me wonder about creating HDR images from underwater shots, so i looked it up on flickr when i got back and it turns out that it's a relatively unexplored territory in the world of digitally-enhanced photography. maybe fi mustaqbel.

here's a link to see more pictures from our trip to the sinai:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2456460&id=10713238&l=37eeced3db

sinai peninsula

2009-07-21T01:55:00.000-07:00

sunset from the top of mount sinai

we just got back last night from several days on the sinai peninsula. we climbed mount sinai at sunset, which was incredibly beautiful...i did the same hike at sunrise two years ago when i was here, and so it was great to get to see the sunset this time.

monastery at the top of mount sinai

apparently this is probably not the real mount sinai. not being religious, it's just a mountain with a nice view to me either way.

mount sinai's shadow at sunset

watching a mountain's shadow grow or shrink at sunset/sunrise is an incredible sight. it makes the mountain feel more discrete and much larger than it probably actually is....the only other time i've seen it happen is when i took a picture of this shadow from the top of mount baker a few years ago:

CLSers climbing to the top of sinai

people hiking on the other side of the mountain

CLSers on mount sinai

camels

after a visit to saint catherine's monastery, we drove out to sharm el sheikh, which is more or less cancun of the middle east on the tip of the sinai peninsula for a few days of swimming, snorkeling, relaxing on the red sea, and of course the obligatory belly dancing/bedouin night experience:

belly dancing in sharm el sheikh

we stayed in a luxurious hotel right on the beach with a pool and an incredible breakfast/dinner buffet. it is hard to not feel guilty about being spoiled by the state department like this, particularly in light of the economic chaos back in amreeka, but i basically just have to keep reminding myself that this is nothing compared to the checks that the government has written to the irresponsible american execs in the last several months.

the snorkeling in ras mohammad was incredible - i saw a moray eel, ray, squid, puffer fish, and tons of beautiful tropical reef fish. i had never seen a morey eel or squid live before, wow, i almost wrote in vivo, so those were particularly cool, and it made me particularly jealous of my little sister Martha, who spent the first half of the summer snorkeling and studying coral reefs/wildlife in the Marshall Islands.

boat trip in ras mohammad reserve

my friend joe had a waterproof digital camera which he used to take some spectacular pictures of the wildlife we saw...maybe i'll see if i can post a few of those later. in the meantime, it's back to arabic...three days of class this week, one day off, six days of class, and i'll be finished, insha'allah.

sunflower near st. catherine's monastery

2009-07-21T01:36:00.000-07:00

sunset

2009-07-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

زهرة

2009-07-15T01:27:00.000-07:00

tree branches

2009-07-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

This is from Magda's (our director at the ACL) backyard. We got to sleep out there last night...ate amazing food, swam in the pool, watched the sunset on the beach, discussed religion and food with her family...I also took a lot of pictures, as usual, and showed them the pictures that I had taken before. Middle Eastern hospitality continues to treat me quite well!

turkish coffee

2009-07-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

art gallery piano

2009-07-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

alexandria artist - mohamad shaker

2009-07-12T14:11:00.001-07:00

oud video

2009-07-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

magda's beach house

2009-07-10T15:35:00.001-07:00

magda's beach house 2

2009-07-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

We just got back from an amazing afternoon/evening at our program director Magda's summer beach house outside of Alexandria. We swam in the Mediterranean, ate some amazing Egyptian food, played frisbee with whole extended family, including her ~9 grandchildren, and listened to the oud being played. I really wanted to take a lot of people pictures but I didn't really feel comfortable at first but then Magda encouraged me because she wanted pictures of her different family members and instructors and everything.... so I took a bunch of pictures of the different families there and their kids, and I'm going to give them copies on CDs later in the week.

Also, I will never leave my room without my 50mm prime lens again. I was somewhat happy with a few of the pictures I got with my 28-200mm, particularly since the light wasn't great by the time I started shooting, but the 50mm prime would have been quite an asset.

ظلال البنات في الكورنيش

2009-07-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

النيل في الليل

2009-07-08T02:30:00.000-07:00

our trip to south Egypt

2009-07-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

Even photo blogs need verbal backup sometimes. 3-4 days in the south of Egypt, visiting temples of cosmic proportions, traveling from Luxor to Aswan on the Nile River, and witnessing quite tangible - sometimes dramatic - cultural, linguistic, and geological novelties is really hard to capture in 10 megapixels.

(There are more pictures at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2449521&id=10713238&l=1e9a894f8f )

We left Alex at midnight, drove to Cairo, and flew to Aswan at 6am. The first site we visited was the Nassar Dam, the downriver side of the 550km-long Lake Nasser, which extends all the way to Northern Sudan. The dam allows for relatively precise control of the Nile River levels, which throughout history had caused seasonal flooding in many areas in Egypt.

We visited the Philae Temple after this, which amazingly was moved from its old location (which had been flooded/submerged) to a new location on an island. "Amazingly" is somewhat of an understatement - it's not just a temple, it's an entire complex with multiple structures, columns, stonework, etc., that a dedicated team had moved piece by piece and reassembled. Here's a small portion of it:

We then visited an aromatic oil/perfume factory, where a guy explained the medical benefits of a variety of different oils and proved their worth to us by treating us to complementary samples. Inhaling the steam from pure mint oil dissolved in boiling water is actually an incredibly invigorating experience!

We then headed to our new extravagant floating cruise vessel (not quite a cruise ship) on the Nile River. I think this is possible one of the most luxurious places that I've ever stayed. The rooms were incredible comfortable, there was a pool on the top deck, and amazing meals served three times a day. This kind of luxury honestly leaves me feeling uncomfortable and undeserving a lot of the time, especially when I'm not even paying for it, but I have to admit that the AC, fresh fruits/vegetables, swimming, and relaxing felt amazing.

That afternoon, several of us boarded a small, open boat and headed down the Nile to see a Nubian village. The Nubians are a people that speak their own language (in addition to Arabic), and inhabit areas from northen Sudan up into Egypt. Their language is only spoken (though transliterated into Arabic and English), and in retrospect of antiquity, the Nubian civilization was incredibly wealthy and powerful, rivaling even ancient Egypt at times. We rode camels along the Nile to arrive to the actual village, where we were brought to a small teahouse to drink tea, make friends with a young crocodile, and get Henna tattoos. I got a scarab:

Asmaa (our coordinator at the Alexandria Center for Languages):

Experiences like visiting the Nubian village, riding camels, etc., always feel quite deliberately structured - it's not like everyday Nubians really spend their days with crocodiles crawling on their shoulders and getting Henna tattoos of a scarab - but the more I travel the more I realize that you just have to have fun with it and appreciate it for what it is. There are always travelers with the attitude that these experiences are bad or worthless because they're not entirely "authentic", but I'm not convinced that it's possible for a traveler, tourist, backpacker, foreign student - whatever you want to call yourself; they're increasingly synonymous to me - to ever be more than just a brief witness to another place, culture, lifestyle. I could spent years in places like Beirut or Alexandria, and I may integrate, become fluent, change, but it would compromise the incredible depth of those places and people for me to ever claim that I was truly one of them. Riding camels along the Nile, sampling local tea and food, and chatting a little bit in Arabic, English, and even a little Spanish with the local kids and vendors was just an immensely gratifying experience for this afternoon, and I hope that the opportunity remains open for visitors in the future.

Early the next morning, the boat headed downriver to the Kom Ombo temple, which is a massive temple built alongside the Nile during the Ptolemeic dynasty. Being a biochemistry student with no real background or strong interest in ancient history, I'm honestly not sure why I've seen so much of the ancient world or why I'm always so captivated by these places, but I think they'll continue to stun me every time.

The ship then continued downstream, and the subsequent day of cruising along the Nile might have been one of the most enjoyable days of traveling of my life. The Nile we saw was the Nile that I'd always imagined. Green on both sides, palm trees, the occasional ancient ruin or cave, solitary families, houses, or compounds every mile or two, and the desert extending to the Red Sea on our right and to the heart of Saharan Africa on our left; Khartoum and Addis Ababa behind us and the Mediterranean in front of us.

We arrived in Luxor that night, and spent the next two days visiting the Valley of the Kings and a variety of other temples. We saw some incredible tombs in the Valley of the Kings that still maintained their vivid colors after thousands of years. The tombs are located deep underground, and were designed and placed in sharp contrast to the dramatic pyramids to try to avoid falling prey to grave robbers. I took this picture at the Luxor temple:

I took it because it was in the last 10 minutes of one of the last temples that we'd be visiting during the trip, and this particular patch of the wall was about 8 feet above the ground. I think that somewhere around 75% of the surface area of every temple we saw was covered in hieroglyphics and designs like this that told stories, explained things, or whatever, and honestly after a few days of seeing it, it's easy to grow a little numb. I just happened to look up, and I saw this patch that really looked no different than the surrounding areas on this wall and on virtually every other stone wall that I'd seen in the preceding days. I got struck by the fact that thousands of people must pass under it every year without glancing at it because it might not hold any significant meaning relative to the rest of the temple, but really, it's an incredible work of art and design. It meant something to some people at some distant point in history...figuratively speaking, this impressive canvas is about 1 millionth of the total visible volume of carving and writing on the several temples that we saw in our few days.

South of Egypt - Aswan to Luxor

2009-07-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

a few pics before i leave for luxor

2009-07-02T10:44:00.000-07:00