(photo unknown)
So excited to announce a new Bureau Chief hailing out of Cairo, Egypt. How is that for exotic? And how is that for global reach? I am just tickled!
Let me introduce Sherif one of my walking partners in the 2014 trek on the Frances. We were together off and on from the Pyrenees almost to León. He was part of the mix with the film crew and Kelly, Mary Margaret and The Angels. Man we had an awesome group. It was the old moveable feast as Hemingway coined it.
So, Sherif is married with a two year old gorgeous little girl. He grew up and lives in Cairo with his family and is an on the go food photographer. Recently I was looking for someone in the world closer to the Equator than here to take a pic of the conjugation of the planets on December 21st. It just so happens that Sherif had just bought a 3000mm lens and was writing about it. So I put two and two together. And I said heck while I’m at it I will ask him to be a Bureau Chief. And darn it if he didn’t say yes!
Advent Calendar #6:
Have a great laugh, or evoke one of those moments when you had a loud long belly laugh until tears came down, and write about it or tell someone about it. Cris CSABC (Actually my Rebecca and I are on a roll with this. We laughed and laughed watching 9 to 5 and The Gods Must Be Crazy in the last two nights. Oh my.)
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. William Shakespeare
Sundae loves, Felipé.
That’s so cool!
Be nice to get the planetry conjunction next to the tip of the Great Pyrimid of Giza!Giza is a suburb of Cairo and many are suprised by the urban setting of the pyrimids.
Hola, Sherif! And from the nautical background of Felipe y Juan, “Welcome Aboard”!
Our second daughter, Kelley Clare, is the only member of our greatly extended family who has had the pleasure of visiting Egypt. She would return in the proverbial heartbeat! She visited while still a college student, so that’s been a while ago now, but she still gets all excited going over pictures and reminiscing.
Is there any chance at all that you would be able to attend the (scheduled) Raven Ranch Veranda next year? You would certainly be a stellar draw!
We look excitedly forward to your “Christmas Star” photographs!
SF,
PFJ
How cool is all this??!!!
This is becoming a difficult to believe business!!!
“What you can plan is too small for you to live” Loves,
Cris
PS: As for the quote, I am evoking the part of “Phil’s Camino So Far So Good”, when we watched in the Vashon Theatre for the first time, and there is this scene with Rebecca and you discussing the “Tinfoil day” and the “Cheese fortnight”! That was such an expected moment of belly laugh made it nicer by the fact that it was shared with so many, while watching such a tender story. A priceless moment!
Cris ~ are you excited? I think that we can pull off some quality moves in 2020! Oh, the whole Cheese Fortnight scene is memorable. I’m chuckling! Felipé.x
Sorry for a second comment (you shouldn’t have said that comments are welcome, you know I am a bit of an over-compliant with the prompts, so… ) but let me share with you a funny event when we had such a loud long belly laugh and the tears could have filled a coffee mug!
October 2015, a year after the Camino, my Camino friend Pat from Boise, ID and I decided to meet in Seattle and do a road trip in Western Canada and visit another Camino friend, Martin from Kelowna. Pat drove to Seattle, we met there, spent a couple days at her sister’s (the same lady that took me to the ferry for the Veranda), and then we headed to Canada. We got to the border, and the immigration officer wanted our passports and started asking the usual questions: What is the purpose of your trip? “Visiting a Camino friend in Kelowna”… the officer already looked at Pat with a “Camino? what’s that?”, second question: “How are the two of you related? Do you know each other from the past? Is this lady a hitchhiker?; Pat went again explaining: “Oh, she is my friend Cris, we met walking in Spain last year and she just came to visit and we are visiting a Canadian man, Martin, that we also met there.”; the official was puzzled, you could tell by his face, and Pat had started to feel frustrated, with a “What is so strange about this?”… Then the guy asked: “what’s the Camino?” and Pat had no better idea to reply: “It is a walk, you walked like 500 miles across Spain for 30-35 days just with your backpack, and you meet people along the way”… You could tell the guy was like: “This woman is nuts”… He asked a few more questions like “so you just walk?”, “and so you meet people and the next thing is that they show up in your house or you show up in their house?” and he kept scratching his head… and we were trying hard not to laugh, because you know, for us that is normal… but this guy was an immigration officer, and for him, this was just unbelievable… the last question he asked was: “Are you carrying a fire arm or more than 10.000 dollars cash?” and Pat couldn’t help and replied: “come on, we are pilgrims, and she is from Argentina, where will she get 10.000 dollars cash?”… the guy stamped our passports rolling his eyes, and as we were rolling up the windows, we started laughing so hard that as soon as we saw a Tim Hortons we had to stop to stretch as our abdominal muscles were hurting!
We were thinking all the different things this officer could do with that information we gave him: google the Camino, tell his colleagues he had this talk with these 2 crazy women, warning Kelowna population of 2 women driving a subaru SUV that might show up in a house saying they were visiting a man they met walking 500 miles in Spain, and so on… (I am laughing right now again thinking of the episode!!!)
Cris ~ this is a great story! We so think that we and what we do is normal but we need a reminder now and again that we are a really a separate subspecies. We didn’t ask for that it just happened. I keep hoping that we are at least a valuable prototype model. Can you put your story up on the blog, your Friday is soon. Felipé.x