Author Archives: Eric

11 Days Into Our Visit To Eric’s Mom

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A week has passed since our last blog entry, and we are pleased to report that Eric’s mom continues to improve a little every day. She is in good spirits, her appetite is increasing, and she can do more and more things for herself with less/no help. The doctor said if she continues to improve, they will let her go home soon. Don’t get us wrong, she is still very sick. But now it looks like she will be fighting a long battle with cancer instead of a short one. We are all thrilled about that.

Chemotherapy has come a long, long way from what it was only 7 years ago when Christi’s mom had cancer. The chemo is more targeted, killing less healthy cells, and the anti-nausea drugs are fabulous. Eric’s mom is experiencing very few of the horrible side effects that Christi’s mom had to endure. Her type of cancer is also especially responsive to chemo.

Eric has spent every single day Continue reading →

New Perspective of Life in Southern California

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As you all know, our blog postings are behind real time (see About the Blog). You may have noticed that sometimes a post will cover only half a day, and sometime a post will cover three or four days. We only write about what we think is interesting, so if nothing interesting happens for a few days, we condense those days into one story. Over the next few posts, this condensing will be very noticeable. This compression of time simply means the blog is closer to real-time than it was, which is a good thing, since we were getting pretty far behind real time. As an FYI, because it takes hours to write the stories and sort through the photos, the blog will always be behind real time.

We have been in Southern California for four days now. In some ways, it feels like we have never left. Almost everything looks the same and we immediately started to get back into the groove of our old life. When we saw Christi’s family, we just picked up where we left off.

But in other ways, it feels like a lot has changed. First Continue reading →

Welcome to Port Ghalib, Marsa Alam, Egypt

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We approached the channel entrance at 0000 (midnight). The prudent thing to do would be to do circles until dawn. Since this is a brand new development, we didn’t have charts. The main channel buoy light was out. But there were additional channel markers that were visible, with an entrance buoy and red and green flashing lights. The whole development is well lit, and the ambient light made it bright enough to see well. The wind was still and the sea completely flat, helping with visibility. We decided Continue reading →

About The Republic of Egypt

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Egypt is located in the northeastern corner of the African continent, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea and Israel to the East, Libya to the west and Sudan to the south. The country consists of 400,000 square miles of desert, bisected by the Nile River. Along the Nile is a narrow, fertile river valley, where 90% of the country’s 80 million population resides. Cairo is, of course, situated along the Nile, and 25% of Egyptians live in Cairo. Cairo is the pretty much the most densely packed city in the world. The land on the west side of the Nile is part of the greater Sahara desert.

Historians believe that the whole of Egypt was occupied since before 25,000 BC, when North Africa was a grassy savannah with abundant wildlife and lakes. When the climate changed to a desert, people migrated to the water. Settlements have been found that date back to 5,000 BC, and it is believed that their hieroglyphic writing begin about this time. Little is known about the people of that era, except that they lived on fishing and agriculture, and made pottery and woven material. Artifacts indicate that Egypt became unified under King Narmer around 3,100 BC, believed to be the first in a royal bloodline that lasted 3,000 years. Egyptian history is grouped into three major periods Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, each separated by periods of decline known as Intermediate Periods.

The Old Kingdom reigned from Memphis, which is in the northern portion of the country, just south of Cairo. The first pyramids were Continue reading →