Day 3

It's hot. Not really any hotter than urbana but urbana's to hot too. Anyway, i normally feel crummy in the mornings. I'm "weaker" i guess if i'm out doing something i normally feel fine if i'm tired i get really depressed, but i'm finding out what works best for me. I got up ad took a shower today it felt good. they don't have a shower curtain so after you take a shower you have to get all the water on the floor into this drain with a giant sqeegee. my dreams have been really weird i've been dreaming about people alot. it's hard being awayfrom home but i'll take one day at a time and once things around here get more familiar it will get easier and easier.

I'm Here!!!!

So i got to egypt safely and really the only bad thing so far is no spel chek. it was a long plane ride over but lufthansa has delicious food and i snaped some cool shots of the alps as we flew over. my family is very friendly and welcomeing. i'm really tired so the writing on this blog is not going to be amazing. i didn't sleep so well last night so i'm kind dipressed today but i'll take some melitonin tonight and mabye i'll feel better tomorrow. one of my brothers (Abdul Rakman) speeks pretty good english and has been showing me the ropes. the father Ahmed is very enthusiastic but speaks very little english so most of our conversations "Hallo! Ranner!" "esalamuaalecome Ahmed!" and pointing at thing and saying what they are in aribic. I was asked about global warming yesterday and i think i did a pretty good job of explaining it. anywho maselama.

A few thoughts.

I saw an Anti- War protest the other day and it got me thinking. What does an Anti-War protest achieve? Perhaps a protest of a specific war may prove to be of some affect but a protest of war in general I find relatively pointless. Nobody is really for war in general. Most people don’t wake up each morning thinking, “Man, I wish our country had somebody to kill.” If someone drives by a young woman holding a sign that says, “Say no to war!” they will not be motivated to do anything, in fact they will probably soon forget about it. On the other hand if someone drives by a young woman holding a sign that says, “KILL, KILL, KILL,” or “Bomb the world to pieces!” they won’t forget that, they may even be outraged, and outrage is a good motivator. During the potato famine in Ireland a progressive thinker named Jonathan Swift wrote down a radical solution called, "A Modest Proposal." His idea was that the people of Ireland could solve their problems of surplus population and lack of food by eating their babies. This idea drew huge amounts of attention and upset a lot of people, exactly what it was designed to do. The people of the world suddenly paid a lot more attention to the troubles of Ireland and real ideas began to be concocted.

We are not the only species on earth that commit acts of war and genocide. In actuality all communal species have wars. Whether over territory or food or water, lions, monkeys, wolves, ants, and termites all wage war on each other sometimes even eradicating or enslaving the other colony or species. War is natural, and it hasn’t always been considered bad either. In ancient Sparta to die in battle was the greatest honor one could have. A fallen solder would not be mourned over but celebrated.

With medical advances and new technologies the human quest to prolong life continues. Homo sapiens have no natural predators. War, Disease, Famine, these are our predators. As much as we must fight them we must realize that without them the human race would have died of over population long ago. How can we work so hard to prolong our lives when the quality of so many lives is so little? Is a long life so great if it meant so little?

Fear of death is a human instinct, and if anything makes us civilized it is the ability to overcome primal instincts. Traits that humans value most are all the overcoming of instinct: Courage (overcoming fear), Logic (overcoming impulse), and Selflessness (overcoming greed).

I’m still against war and I still think we should fight AIDS, but I also think we should keep these ideas in the back of our minds because sometime the evil you seek to destroy is the very thing that is keeping you alive.

Leaving the Nest.

There comes a time in every little birds life when it must hurl itself headlong into the blue, spread it's wings, and hope it can fly. Now this very time has come for me and though I think I am ready for it, it does have a way of being a little intimidating.
It's now two weeks until I leave for Egypt and I'm doing all the thing to get ready to leave. I just flew to Minnesota to visit the relatives. I stayed with my aunt and we stayed up late at night talking about ideas for writing we had. She's a poet, I love writing fantasy though I never get around to actually doing it.
Anywho I'm all excited....

America.

For those of use leaving the country whether for good or just a period of time. We need something to help us remember this great land we so lovingly call America. This is a ballad written by the one and only Hugh Laurie to help us remember our beloved homeland... America!!!

ISYM.

Wow I'm so exited for ISYM (Illinois Summer Youth Music camp), they have a musical theater branch that I'm doing and Maura is too. The instructors are really cool and it's loads of fun. You're pretty much singing or dancing or some sort of whatnot every day. At the end of the week there's a performance where we all show everything we've learned in the last week. I'm really pumped.

Lucky.

This is a collage I did with a photo I took of poppies and a photo I took of my friends cat Lucky.