Orientation is Over.

Tonight concluded the end of our Orientation period. For the past few days we have been touring the city on a bus or trying to get around through various scavenger hunt activities. It has been so interesting learning how to ask various questions knowing that you are speaking very broken Arabic.

We have done a lot of things: used the Metro and used a taxi, went to a city called the Garbage city, saw an amazing coptic christian church in , visited a Mosque during service, smoked shisha in this nice downtown area, took a felucca down the Nile.

Orienting myself to the people here in Egypt and to the people of my co-hort has been great. It will be cool to also start classes on Wednesday and get a set pattern to normal day life here. Tomorrow we start our service projects that we will be doing every Tuesday. I will be teaching an English class with a friend named Kyra but tomorrow actually we will be working in this orphanage in garbage city that we had gone to do today.

Please email me with any questions or comments if you want! (potticus@gmail.com). Sometimes I feel like blogs are so impersonal!

"Ahlan wa sahlan" (Welcome)

After about 14 hours of travel, my co-hort and I safely arrived in Cairo! can already tell this group has a lot of different personalities and we are going to gel well. When we arrived we were welcomed by the staff and then went to our Villa, had a little orientation then went to our flats. Hopefully eventually I can post pictures of where I live. because the area is great and the pad I live in is awesome. We have some ancient style furniture and definitely some interesting toilets. It's gonna be a fun time living in this flat with the 6 other guys I live with.

Today we did a basic arabic introduction for words/phrases to get us around and then did a bus tour around Cairo. I love the architecture of this place and am excited to see them up close and personal. Mosques, citadels, the homes all have a beautiful ancient beauty to them. Even seeing the pyramids from the bus windows. This place is amazing.

One downside so far:
This place is also HOT. Walking around in the 100+ dry heat is definitely crazy. Being a California guy (the only Californian doing this program), I am used to wearing shorts in pretty much every season. In Cairo, we are only allowed to wear pants so it's a crazy adjustment having to wear pants in such heat. Luckily our flats and classroom have air conditioning.

Being here for such a short while and already being entranced by the area is such a new feeling for me. When in Nepal, it was hard to be in love with the area for me. Even this last trip I had found it hard to be back and was happy to be leaving in the end. Here, it is day 2 and I am so excited to explore everything, to learn the language and meet people. It is doesn't matter that it is hotter than blazes here, I just feel at great peace being here.

Sorry if this post is a little glib on the descriptions of the place. I have just a short time at this internet cafe. Also these posts will be more spread out as I don't think I'll always being walking over to here in order to use the internet. Hopefully our laptops can get into unprotected wi-fi networks near our flat :]

Love you all!

"The World Traveler"

I seem to have been given a new label from many here at home: “the world traveler”. I have been blessed with the opportunity to go many places: many through family vacations but also I have been to places with a team of people, especially these past few years. It was on these trips, dependent not on my family but on the Lord and the team, that I have learned so much:

In Ethiopia, I experienced the voice of the Lord in a way I had never experienced, being used to reach a person I had just had a “feeling” about.

In Nepal and another country in that region, I was introduced to a whole new spiritual realm, seeing the power of the Lord that physically heals people. Also witnessing and experiencing the persecuted church by meeting in secret and knowing the government was monitoring our movements.

In Nepal the second time, I felt the burden of long-term ministry. Hearing from organizations of how long ministry takes to make even the slightest bit of change and witnessing the hurt that the church is trying to aid.

With these life experiences abroad, I am all the more excited to be going on this trip to Egypt with all the possibilities that I can learn in this land. I am excited to be in a place I have known little about prior to this point, to learn of a conflict that has been going on for years, to be a minority both ethnically and religiously, to be a resident with another culture instead of just a visitor, and to see a part of the world that I only hear through the American press. I can only imagine what I will be seeing, what I will be facing, and I am so excited for what is to come.

Countdown: 3 days until D.C., 5 days until Cairo.