Right so here we go again. I'm back at a computer and the time is ticking and price is rising. but don't worry prices out here are generally quite a bit lower than in England. I got two cans of lighter fluid yesterday for five pound. Why? Well because I was using my fire poi for the first time and, as first times go, it was pretty good. I didn't kill maim or injure myself or anyone else, I had loads of fun and it worked pretty well. So yea, I can now say that I've done fire poi *tick* (I don't know exactly what I'm ticking but oh well)
This week I was diving for most of it. I now have my PADI open water diver qualification, which is cool. I almost got eaten alive by a lionfish... well, maybe I exaggerate but it did have it's mouth open and it was looking at me... for those of you familiar to the Edge Chronicles the mouth of the lionfish is as similar to a Hoverworm as I ever thought possible. They are very amazing though, if extremely poisonous and they are now my favourite fish, I even have a poster to prove it. I also indulged in a harmless bit of touristy souvenir buying and also have a nice picture of the bay and area that we've been staying in, much easier than describing everything from a blank canvas when I get home, I think.
Egypt IS good... but it's not England. It's annoying having to pay for water and the internet out here isn't too good; for instance when I went to try and catch up on last night's Dr Who... BBC iplayer wouldn't let me play it from Egypt. I'm not too happy about that.
A rather lonely Easter, being the only person I KNOW who is celebrating it round here for Christian reasons. which is a little disappointing but I'm still hoping to have many Easter's in the future so that's all good. I spent some time with a certain album called "Unbreakable" this morning which was cool. Love some of the lyrics on those songs.
Windsurfing is going well, I'm much better than three weeks ago but I'm going to have to put lots more practise in to get my personal level up to where I want it to be. But don't let that worry anyone, I'm comfortably in the level that is needed for the Instructor Assessment, I just want to better myself. Freestyle in particular I want to focus on, but I just need a few days where I'm on my own windsurfing, not in a group. Knowing that there is a group of people who are all better than you (mainly because the majority of them have had four extra days windsurfing because they're not doing the diving) is not the best situation to try new stuff in. Instead I'm focusing on improving the basics rather than on the freestyle side of things. I'm really happy with what I've achieved and I really am looking forward to (as I said last week I think) continuing this as a personal sport not just as an instructor. It's great fun and looks well good when you get good.
I'm beginning to feel how draining it is to constantly be away from people who are pretty much the exact opposite of your views. It isn't too bad at the moment but I can feel their views and ways of viewing the world beginning to seep into me. Just in the way I think and little things that pop into my mind. It's annoying and I'm looking forwad to being around Christians again. I've heard lots of whispers that "this egyptian is a christian" or "that egyptian is christian" but as yet I haven't met one myself or talked to them. I haven't seen a church since I've been here either.
What else has been going on... lots but then again not much, like last week the things that seemed important at the time don't seem important now or I've forgotten them.
Er....
Diving is well cool. Though it is annoying to have to keep equalizing, it's amazing to see all the fish and stuff. We saw some octopi (correct plural for octopus??) which was amazing, even if I did miss them on the first dive... :S :S :S got a lot of ribbing for that... So yea
I guess that's an extremely brief description of my week.. sorry if it's lacking... I don't really know what else to say.... I have missed blogging more regularly.
The staff here are great and the manager is well cool, always asking how we're getting on with the windsurfing and happy to have a laugh and chat.
Sinai is happening this week, last week we didn't go quad biking in the end but ah well.. It was really good wind today but I decided to keep with the Sunday=day off partly because it was easter and partly because it's good to have a day off each week. It was 33 in the shade today, just so you people in England dare to think that England might be hotter than Egypt... I dare say it could well be sometime but it had better not be whilst i'm in Egypt. I am quite worried that I'm missing the British summer and that when I get home it will be rain for the rest of the year. I would be unbelievably annoyed.
That's about all I think.... :D
Oh it's our last week here this week then we're back in England :D
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Sunday, 17 April 2011
A Week's Windsurfing
So I did manage to get hold of a computer in the end to do this post, which is great. This week has been much better than the last week, now I can actually windsurf it is much more enjoyable to go out on the water and practise technique, stance, manoeuvres and freestyle. I knew there would be a good reason why I wanted to be good at windsurfing immediately and there definitely is, it's a great sport and I'm looking forward not only to doing more out here but carrying it on and getting better. Now that I have the basics I begin to see the similarities between windsurfing and juggling, all of the freestyle is similar to learning a trick when juggling: repetition and breaking down into small chunks.
The week has been a good week, hard at the beginning and getting much better. The last few days have been enjoyable, I've really loved getting out on the water and working on my windsurfing. The wind is looking pretty grim for this week unfortunately, but fortunately I'll be diving from Monday-Thursday this week so I will be not bothering too much about the wind. Hopefully the wind will be good again by Friday. I'm really looking forward to diving, it sounds well cool. Sometime this week we will be going quad-biking I think. This week just gone we went up into the mountains to meet some Bedouins and we had a meal up there under the stars around a fire. That was a great evening and we got some good pictures, we have some photographers in the group so they were experimenting and we got some good shots, which may possibly be appearing as my profile picture on facebook sometime soon.
What else has gone on this week? It's been hotter I think, and the evenings have been great, chilling out at the restaurant we always frequent and then coming back and going to bed. The waffles in the morning for breakfast are great, though the queue is often extremely long and the Egyptian honey is amazing, quite easily had with merely bread.
Every lunch is pretty much rice and chicken, give it another two weeks and I shall be sick of it I think. And for dinner at the restaurant in town the banana splits, though advertised as dessert and served before the starter are rather wonderful.
Having no phone is very annoying and I wish I hadn't been so stupid as to take it for a small windsurf,but too late now. I THINK that it's just the screen that has gone though so I'm still hopeful for not having to replace my SIM and for being able to get all my photos and stuff off my phone via my computer when I get back home. I can't believe that it's halfway through my time here, and I'm still looking forward to going up to see a Sinai sunrise which we're planning on doing in the last week.
Everything is good here and going well. I'm running out of time again, email me or facebook message me if you have other questions which I may answer or may try and deal with next week. Apparently it's Easter Sunday next week? I'm still Christian-less out here which is hard, and the group are almost always trying to get me drunk or allow myself to become drunk and don't understand why I won't, at least it's making me think about my own choices.
I also realised the other day that I may well miss the new Dr Who series.... which I will be most annoyed about. Grrrr. So yea...I think that's everything. I'm sure I had more I was going to say, but I can't think of anything really at the moment, it's funny what appears important at the time loses its importance even in the space of a week.
SO yea, hope everyone is doing well this week. I don't know whether you've still got good weather but according to the owners of the restaurant it's supposed to hit 39-40 Celsius this week. So ya...mega hot... I think I will be extremely grateful for the air con in my room by the end of this, though I reckon I'll end up being much colder than you might expect because I'll be under the water most of the time.
I've dragged this ending on long enough. So, for tonight, goodnight.
The week has been a good week, hard at the beginning and getting much better. The last few days have been enjoyable, I've really loved getting out on the water and working on my windsurfing. The wind is looking pretty grim for this week unfortunately, but fortunately I'll be diving from Monday-Thursday this week so I will be not bothering too much about the wind. Hopefully the wind will be good again by Friday. I'm really looking forward to diving, it sounds well cool. Sometime this week we will be going quad-biking I think. This week just gone we went up into the mountains to meet some Bedouins and we had a meal up there under the stars around a fire. That was a great evening and we got some good pictures, we have some photographers in the group so they were experimenting and we got some good shots, which may possibly be appearing as my profile picture on facebook sometime soon.
What else has gone on this week? It's been hotter I think, and the evenings have been great, chilling out at the restaurant we always frequent and then coming back and going to bed. The waffles in the morning for breakfast are great, though the queue is often extremely long and the Egyptian honey is amazing, quite easily had with merely bread.
Every lunch is pretty much rice and chicken, give it another two weeks and I shall be sick of it I think. And for dinner at the restaurant in town the banana splits, though advertised as dessert and served before the starter are rather wonderful.
Having no phone is very annoying and I wish I hadn't been so stupid as to take it for a small windsurf,but too late now. I THINK that it's just the screen that has gone though so I'm still hopeful for not having to replace my SIM and for being able to get all my photos and stuff off my phone via my computer when I get back home. I can't believe that it's halfway through my time here, and I'm still looking forward to going up to see a Sinai sunrise which we're planning on doing in the last week.
Everything is good here and going well. I'm running out of time again, email me or facebook message me if you have other questions which I may answer or may try and deal with next week. Apparently it's Easter Sunday next week? I'm still Christian-less out here which is hard, and the group are almost always trying to get me drunk or allow myself to become drunk and don't understand why I won't, at least it's making me think about my own choices.
I also realised the other day that I may well miss the new Dr Who series.... which I will be most annoyed about. Grrrr. So yea...I think that's everything. I'm sure I had more I was going to say, but I can't think of anything really at the moment, it's funny what appears important at the time loses its importance even in the space of a week.
SO yea, hope everyone is doing well this week. I don't know whether you've still got good weather but according to the owners of the restaurant it's supposed to hit 39-40 Celsius this week. So ya...mega hot... I think I will be extremely grateful for the air con in my room by the end of this, though I reckon I'll end up being much colder than you might expect because I'll be under the water most of the time.
I've dragged this ending on long enough. So, for tonight, goodnight.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Egypt. Starting to Windsurf and Random Stuff from the Week.
I don't really know where to start... this is costing me a bit more than I thought it would so I'll try and be quick. But I will, obviously still get everything in where I can.
So we've been windsurfing all week. It began well, I picked it up fairly easily and it was cool. Then midway through the week as I was lifting up the sail the wind caught it and threw it behind me... into the arm of someone in our group. Ouch. He was out the rest of the day and the next day. It could have been much worse though, at first we thought it was dislocated or broken. Thankfully it wasn't. But yea, that broke my ocnifdence a little and the last three days have been pretty dreadful. It is a long process to become good at windsurfing, and I've never before wanted to be at the end result before putting in the time and practise to get there, but it's where I find myself at now. When you're good it looks pretty awesome and it's definitely something I'll be practising to get better and better at, however slowly, but for the moment I'm stuck going only normally and tacking and gybing. There is lots of falling in the water, there always is apparently whether you're the best or a beginner windsurfing involves a lot of falling in.\
We did some freestyle stuff on friday as well (Freestyle friday, freeSail Saturday) Freestyle is like flashy, cool-looking tricks whilst windsurfing normally. SO spinning your sail 360 degrees , jumping around your board with the sail, forward/backward loops/flips... all the snazzy, extremely difficult stuff) Well it's nt all difficult, we had a go at a few of the easier ones.. and a few of the harder ones.
The two leaders with us (Steve and Seb) have been amazing this week, from guiding us through the culture to getting us windsurfing fairly decently. Every evening we go to the same restaurant (called "Funny Mummys") and because we told them that on the first day we managed to arrange a deal with them so that we can bring our own drinks in with us (i.e. alcoholic drinks) and also we get free starters. We must be giving them loads of money... for the twelve of us it's about the equivalent of 60 pounds each night. Which is rather amazing. The taxis are crazy. Most of them are pick up trucks and there are no set prices. Every time you ask to go somewhere you have to haggle for prices (there is a LOT of haggling here) and if they don't accept you're offer... walk away because they'll almost always then agree to the lower price. Crazy. So yea, twelve people in the back of a pick up truck hurtling down roads with lots of beeping (though not tooo many cars) and sudden braking when speed bumps come up. Then when you get to the other it it's a 50-50 chance as to whether they'll demand you give them more than you agreed on. Again if you just give them the money you agreed on and walk away they won't hassle you any further.
Lunch breaks here are 2 hours long instead of the 30 mni-1 hour lunch breaks of the UKSA. The food here is fairly good. Lot's of different stuff, and some amazing bits and bobs that pop up from time to time. For instance waffles at breakfast and the Egyptian honey is AMAZING!! Apart from the evening meal, which we have out, we eat at the hotel and enjoy it. There is not what you might called Food and Safety Hygiene here, not that I was really expecting it, for instance the food is buffet style most of the tmie and is mostly open and there are two very annoying, persistant, bold creatures in Egypt: the fly and the bird. The flies are the most annoying, cos you can't swat them away very easily and they have no fear. they're forever landing on you and your food. The birds also will flock around food. Their music is very nice, but when they start eating the food at the buffet/help-yourself it's a bit like "er... what do you think you're doing silly birds" Also when they're zooming past you less than thirty centimetres away from your face it's rather distracting from the important matter of eating.
I hear you've had sun in England... well suprisingly enough, there's sun here in egypt too... lots of it. HOWEVER after a very quick, speedy purchase of some factor 50 suncream you'll all be very amazed to know that I haven't, as yet, burnt... :D :D :D :D So all's good.
Just so you all know where we actually are at the moment. Go to cairo, go south, go east and you'll find a triangular shaped piece of land with two long stretches of sea along two of it's sides. It should be labelled something like "the sinai desert" we are on the south east coast of that bit of land in a place called "Dahab" Just to clear that one up, I thought we were elsewhere in Egypt. So from the restaraunt we can see Saudi Arabia, which is pretty cool.
What else have we been up to othe than windsurfing.. not much. One day when there wasn't much wind we went snorkeling. There are quite a few jellyfish around and you can see their purple-y jelly-ness floating under the water as you windsurf. They are NOT, however, poisonous... most of them. We haven't had any poisonous ones round about here though so everything is fine. The seabed here is sandy but had some sharp rocks and shells in it. It will be interesting whether I can last all four weeks without being forced to buy some wetsuit shoes (I cleverly decided to leave my wetsuit boots at home to dry) They'd better be dry now.. . so I have a few scratches on my feet, but that's all cool.
One of the most surprising and crazy things I've found out this week though was that Seb and Steve were working together in the same resort in Portugal as the one that Madeleine McCann was taken from... at the same time. Hearing how they were part of the searches and stuff brought it all a bit closer to home. Crazy stuff.
As we're training to be windsurf instructors at the end of each day we've been helping out the staff at Neilson's (the resort centre) with jobs like making everything neat and sweeping the sand off the mats and stuff.
With descriptions on what places look like I'll try put up some pictures later. But the bay is surrounded by mountains and the beach is sand/small pebbles. Pretty much nowhere is inside, roofs are rare (restaurants are mats, cushions, low tables) It's very nice. The hotel is great and the accomodation is single rooms. So my room has en suite plus a tv (which I haven't watched, it's rubbish) and then an amazingly large double bed. Instead of duvets they have rug-like things which are surprisingly warm and comfy. And the most important thing about these rooms (apart from the fact that there is a general cleanup and a change of bedding, towels each day) is the air conditioning, which is a life save when it comes to going to sleep.
Generally everything is amazing,. In the coming weeks we plan to have some trips out, so we'll be going to see some Bedouins, do some quad-biking and also go up to see the sunrise from Mount Sinai. (At least everything so far has led me to believe it will be Mount Sinai) I will be glad to get back though, for a Christian it's very isolated. There are no churches in the local area (that I've been able to find anyway) and with the five-per-day calls to prayer it feels like I'm the only christian for miles and miles... POSSIBLY because I am... anyway... I THINK that that is everything I was going to say.... I shudder at my travel writing, I hope that my English teachers never see this, this disorganised, patchy, random, jumping-around-all-over-the-place pile of words that it is. However my time is ticking and the price is rising so it must be like this for the moment, possibly when I get some proper time I'll make it all much nicer and better and STUFF.
So, without a second glance at what I've written, here I go to press the "Publish Post" button for the first post in a week... and the last (most likely) for another week. Sunday is our day off so look out for updates on Sundays.
Done.
So we've been windsurfing all week. It began well, I picked it up fairly easily and it was cool. Then midway through the week as I was lifting up the sail the wind caught it and threw it behind me... into the arm of someone in our group. Ouch. He was out the rest of the day and the next day. It could have been much worse though, at first we thought it was dislocated or broken. Thankfully it wasn't. But yea, that broke my ocnifdence a little and the last three days have been pretty dreadful. It is a long process to become good at windsurfing, and I've never before wanted to be at the end result before putting in the time and practise to get there, but it's where I find myself at now. When you're good it looks pretty awesome and it's definitely something I'll be practising to get better and better at, however slowly, but for the moment I'm stuck going only normally and tacking and gybing. There is lots of falling in the water, there always is apparently whether you're the best or a beginner windsurfing involves a lot of falling in.\
We did some freestyle stuff on friday as well (Freestyle friday, freeSail Saturday) Freestyle is like flashy, cool-looking tricks whilst windsurfing normally. SO spinning your sail 360 degrees , jumping around your board with the sail, forward/backward loops/flips... all the snazzy, extremely difficult stuff) Well it's nt all difficult, we had a go at a few of the easier ones.. and a few of the harder ones.
The two leaders with us (Steve and Seb) have been amazing this week, from guiding us through the culture to getting us windsurfing fairly decently. Every evening we go to the same restaurant (called "Funny Mummys") and because we told them that on the first day we managed to arrange a deal with them so that we can bring our own drinks in with us (i.e. alcoholic drinks) and also we get free starters. We must be giving them loads of money... for the twelve of us it's about the equivalent of 60 pounds each night. Which is rather amazing. The taxis are crazy. Most of them are pick up trucks and there are no set prices. Every time you ask to go somewhere you have to haggle for prices (there is a LOT of haggling here) and if they don't accept you're offer... walk away because they'll almost always then agree to the lower price. Crazy. So yea, twelve people in the back of a pick up truck hurtling down roads with lots of beeping (though not tooo many cars) and sudden braking when speed bumps come up. Then when you get to the other it it's a 50-50 chance as to whether they'll demand you give them more than you agreed on. Again if you just give them the money you agreed on and walk away they won't hassle you any further.
Lunch breaks here are 2 hours long instead of the 30 mni-1 hour lunch breaks of the UKSA. The food here is fairly good. Lot's of different stuff, and some amazing bits and bobs that pop up from time to time. For instance waffles at breakfast and the Egyptian honey is AMAZING!! Apart from the evening meal, which we have out, we eat at the hotel and enjoy it. There is not what you might called Food and Safety Hygiene here, not that I was really expecting it, for instance the food is buffet style most of the tmie and is mostly open and there are two very annoying, persistant, bold creatures in Egypt: the fly and the bird. The flies are the most annoying, cos you can't swat them away very easily and they have no fear. they're forever landing on you and your food. The birds also will flock around food. Their music is very nice, but when they start eating the food at the buffet/help-yourself it's a bit like "er... what do you think you're doing silly birds" Also when they're zooming past you less than thirty centimetres away from your face it's rather distracting from the important matter of eating.
I hear you've had sun in England... well suprisingly enough, there's sun here in egypt too... lots of it. HOWEVER after a very quick, speedy purchase of some factor 50 suncream you'll all be very amazed to know that I haven't, as yet, burnt... :D :D :D :D So all's good.
Just so you all know where we actually are at the moment. Go to cairo, go south, go east and you'll find a triangular shaped piece of land with two long stretches of sea along two of it's sides. It should be labelled something like "the sinai desert" we are on the south east coast of that bit of land in a place called "Dahab" Just to clear that one up, I thought we were elsewhere in Egypt. So from the restaraunt we can see Saudi Arabia, which is pretty cool.
What else have we been up to othe than windsurfing.. not much. One day when there wasn't much wind we went snorkeling. There are quite a few jellyfish around and you can see their purple-y jelly-ness floating under the water as you windsurf. They are NOT, however, poisonous... most of them. We haven't had any poisonous ones round about here though so everything is fine. The seabed here is sandy but had some sharp rocks and shells in it. It will be interesting whether I can last all four weeks without being forced to buy some wetsuit shoes (I cleverly decided to leave my wetsuit boots at home to dry) They'd better be dry now.. . so I have a few scratches on my feet, but that's all cool.
One of the most surprising and crazy things I've found out this week though was that Seb and Steve were working together in the same resort in Portugal as the one that Madeleine McCann was taken from... at the same time. Hearing how they were part of the searches and stuff brought it all a bit closer to home. Crazy stuff.
As we're training to be windsurf instructors at the end of each day we've been helping out the staff at Neilson's (the resort centre) with jobs like making everything neat and sweeping the sand off the mats and stuff.
With descriptions on what places look like I'll try put up some pictures later. But the bay is surrounded by mountains and the beach is sand/small pebbles. Pretty much nowhere is inside, roofs are rare (restaurants are mats, cushions, low tables) It's very nice. The hotel is great and the accomodation is single rooms. So my room has en suite plus a tv (which I haven't watched, it's rubbish) and then an amazingly large double bed. Instead of duvets they have rug-like things which are surprisingly warm and comfy. And the most important thing about these rooms (apart from the fact that there is a general cleanup and a change of bedding, towels each day) is the air conditioning, which is a life save when it comes to going to sleep.
Generally everything is amazing,. In the coming weeks we plan to have some trips out, so we'll be going to see some Bedouins, do some quad-biking and also go up to see the sunrise from Mount Sinai. (At least everything so far has led me to believe it will be Mount Sinai) I will be glad to get back though, for a Christian it's very isolated. There are no churches in the local area (that I've been able to find anyway) and with the five-per-day calls to prayer it feels like I'm the only christian for miles and miles... POSSIBLY because I am... anyway... I THINK that that is everything I was going to say.... I shudder at my travel writing, I hope that my English teachers never see this, this disorganised, patchy, random, jumping-around-all-over-the-place pile of words that it is. However my time is ticking and the price is rising so it must be like this for the moment, possibly when I get some proper time I'll make it all much nicer and better and STUFF.
So, without a second glance at what I've written, here I go to press the "Publish Post" button for the first post in a week... and the last (most likely) for another week. Sunday is our day off so look out for updates on Sundays.
Done.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)