Guest Columnist David tells of his trip to Eqypt

Recently David and Anna went to Alexandria Egypt for a Fine Arts Festival. David brought back some great pictures and commentary. Pictures coming in about 24 hours
It's a great example of how much we North Americans take travelling for granted. Here when one travels, the passport is the KEY to everything!

David writes..
This was my second trip out of Kuwait on a school trip. The first being to Dubai for a Forensics (speech tournament).
Getting to Egypt had a few bumps but not bad. We got to the airport 30 minutes late. Going through customs one of our students did not have his visa piece of paper. Darrell our fearless leader said - "so how do we fix this in 15 minutes." It turns out Jesse had an extended visa in his passport that worked Then we stopped at Mcdonalds. Anna went to the counter leaving her passport on the table un-guarded so Darrell snapped it up and I had a firm word with her and then another student did the same thing but it was gone from the table. A little panic moment there as we searched for it. His brother had grabbed it. Then a different student was unhappy that we could not bring food onto the plan so he set his passport on the counter, wolfed food and stomped into the plane - on the plane he said "I have to go back" and started to scramble but Darrell had snagged the passport at the gate. Once in Egypt we had to buy visas for 15 dollars, but I had changed all my dollars to pounds so Darrell had to pay for mine and Anna's. One of our guys got stopped and we never found out why his passport went into a back room but 15 minutes later it came back and we were on our way.

The drive into Alexandria was my first impression of Egypt. There are lane lines painted on the road and perhaps they could save money by not painting the lines as the lanes are optional and fluid. There are as many lanes in the road as there is space in the road. In a three lane road there are usually four lanes of cars. This is not a country for the faint of heart or the considerate. Horns, brakes,flashing headlights and acceleration are the most important aspects of the car.

Being a very large vehicle also helps, but with the narrowness of the streets being big has some drawbacks. We took a motor coach bus to a dinner one night and the driver several times fit his 8 foot wide bus into spaces that were 7 feet 11 and 3/4 inches wide. He was amazing and fearless. The one difference between Alexandria and Kuwait streets is the roads in Alexandria are narrow and bumper to bumper so the accidents are fender bender while here in Kuwait the cars can go faster and so the accidents are more spectacular.

My next impression was of the Schutz American School - A very beautiful campus with great trees. It was started 100 years ago at the edge of the city, and then the city grew around it. Now it is a green oasis in desert of concrete and humanity. The staff and students were wonderful, and the event was very well run.
The event was a Fine Arts Festival. Theater, band, choir, and art students from 4 schools come together with their teachers and as a diverse group create art that is presented in a Gala performance at the end of the festival. It was fun to work with 17 students - all who are talented, motivated and creative. It was also exhausting since we as teachers had to match the students with the same energy they were producing. In the end we created an interesting play about the Americanization of the world.

I must admit that I enjoyed the festival more than the Speech competition. I did not have to try to explain to a student why she came in last place after all her hard work. Judging art into first, second, and last seems so arbitrary and a festival works better for me.

Apart from the festival, we had some nice cultural opportunities. We went to a nice Roman ruin of a theater and attached Roman university that is still being unearthed.The group sang Happy Birthday to Anna there, which was pretty cool. We went to see a Chinese orchestra at the Opera House. We saw the Alexandria library- well actually the famous one burned down awhile ago. They just finished building a new one and one of the things the guide talked about was the elaborate fire control system they now have. With any luck the Romans will not come back and try to burn it down again.

The trip back was relatively uneventful. Experiencing seeing upclose poverty and how I dealt with it is still a bit unsettling for me. Seeing horse and donkey drawn carts in a big city is odd for me. Would not the cost of feed be expensive? While in the airport I carried my bag to the x-ray machine, set it down to empty my pockets of metal and a guy set my bag onto the conveyor belt and promptly started to whisper money, money, money. Now comes the quandry - I have money - giving him a dollar wouldn't kill me and might mean a lot to him. But what service did he do for me? Pick up a bag and put in a machine. At what point does a dollar here and there turn into real money for me? Ah well something to consider.

The only real excitement was when at passport control one of the kids said " I don't have my passport" They tried to get back on the plane,but the cleaning people found it and returned it to them. It was the brother of the student who lost his passport just before we left to go to Alexandria.
Overall a good trip - exhausting as I was working for 14 straight days without a break - but don't feel sorry for me as this was one reason we came here - to get experiences like this.