It must have sounded glamorous when I described walking along the Red Sea. Actually, the smell of polution was everywhere and the amount of trash blowing around was staggering.

On the way back I decided to go back to the pastry shop to buy pastries for the workers at the refinery. The man who owned it offered one of his daughters to be my wife. I think he was joking, but who knows. He kept pointing out how beautiful she was. And I kept thinking, "De-nial ain�t just a river in Egypt." It was plainly obvious, even though only her eyes, nose, and mouth were showing through the curtain-like outfit that most women wear, that she was anything but beautiful. Needless to say I politely declined the proposal.

Thinking about the last week, I realized that I ended up really enjoying the engineers here. They were all incredibly nice. They helped me with my Arabic, and I helped them with their English. I probably doubled my vocabulary, if not more. They shared there lunches with me since food wasn�t available at the refinery. They probably made me about 45,000 cups of tea . . . boy do they love tea!! And they even gave me some going away presents

These are the gifts that the engineers gave me on my last day. The red box is the kind of tea that I liked most.

All in all, I think this turned out to be a positive experience. Just think, in one week I went from Alexandria to Suez, I had a meeting with the head of a refinery, I became a billable employee, I met some interesting people, I learned about work, I learned a lot of Arabic, I took a tour of a military outpost, I got a glimpse of the Great Pyramids, I learned to always travel with a bottle of rum and a roll of toilet paper (for very different reasons), I walked along the Red Sea, and received a marriage proposal. Not a bad week after all.

Yes I questioned what I am doing, but I think I came up with some pretty good answers. I guess I'm traveling for all of the reasons I just listed. It won't always be easy, but I think the new people and experiences make traveling the right thing for me to do.