“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”

“Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck. Write them on a tablet on your heart.” Prov 3:3

“How you gonna win when you ain’t right within?” –Lauryn Hill

“No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.” – Brian Tracy.

“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” ~ Confucius

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” – Buddha

If you judge people, you have no time to love them! – Mother Theresa

“God didn’t have time to make a nobody, only a somebody. I believe that each of us has God-given talents within us waiting to be brought to fruition.”
-Mary Kay Ash

“There is always someone else out there who would die for the things you take for granted.” – J Cheng

“I’m telling you that if you ever want anything in life, just go for it and get it for yourself, don’t wait. Not for this instance necessarily, but for other things in life. If you wait, you might lose it. ” – words of a wise woman

“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness” – Oprah

“To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is: a dissatisfaction with self.” – Joan Didion

“Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?” – Fanny Brice

A setback is a setup for a comeback!” –Willie Jolley, Author

“There are lots of things to think about, but nothing to worry about.” –Matt Koepke

“The best way to get to know a person is not by the answers they give, but by the types of questions they ask” – Nailah Ife Sims

People often hate what they cant have, what they cant be, and what they don’t know.

The cheaper the merchandise, the higher the gloss. True of furniture, knives, people.

You don’t drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there.

Don’t let someone else create your world for you, for when they do, they will always make it too small.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily…

Worry looks around. Sorry looks back. Faith looks up.

There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, be patient and wait for them to self destruct. It never fails. – Richard Rybolt

“And now I’m like a major threat/ Cause I remind you of the things you were made to forget” – 2Pac, “Holla if You Hear Me”

“At the end of the day were all just PEOPLE. I dont live to please anyone but MYSELF. Because they’re gonna talk about you whether you do what they want or what you want. Give em something to talk about “-Nia Sunshine Brown

Category: Travel and Places
I’m starting to want to recant my new year’s resolution (take more risks) but I’ve already paid for a hot air balloon ride over Luxor, Egypt at 5-something a.m. tomorrow morning! Wahid (our tour guide) says he’ll show me pictures from others’ rides on Facebook and it will be just fine. Ahhh!

Don’t get me wrong, I still very much love my adventure trip here. Still, I am EXHAUSTED!!!! I’m also SO over hotels. I must have stayed in at least 12 over the past 3 weeks of varying quality (some of them didn’t even have clean dishes or showers – I’ve been sleeping on my own sheet I packed).

I have seen the yesterday I spent all day cruising and sleeping on the Nile river in a felucca (a little boat with sails and no motor), we had a bonfire until all hours of the night, I’ve learned so much about the aftermath of apartheid from South Africans (kinda like extreme affirmative action now) and just enjoyed awesome conversations. To my knowledge, I only got bit by one mosquito (but who knows what happened as I squatted over dirt in those bushes! ) and our tour guide put iodine and a band-aid on it.

Today, I visited the Karnak Temple of Amun-Ra (I probably spelled that wrong) and had another in-home meal with an Egyptian family (they gets down! Love home cooking!!) and am finally having some sit-down time to just relax. Tonight in about 1 1/2 hours at 8pm (Egypt is 10 hours ahead of Vegas, I’ve heard), we watch belly dancing, Sufi dancing and some other sort of Egyptian dances while having a nice meal.

So I’m looking forward to that and some SLEEP.

Lots of love!

Current mood: blessed
Category: Travel and Places
I love love LOVE Egypt! This place is so exciting! Today, we were up and in a convoy to go see the temple of Ramses at Abu Simbel. Yesterday, I rode a camel named Oscar (which got away from the cross-eyed camel guy and started jogging a little – SCARY!!!!) across part of the Sahara dessert to a Nubian village where a family opened up their home to us so we could join them dining on the floor. The food was not new to me – very Aleu-esque – so I dug right in.
After dinner, it was time to party. Out of nowhere, I troupe of drummer boys came in and they started breaking it down. I was ecstatic but then I broke down in happy tears when the little 5 and 8 year old girls grabbed a bunch of us and made us join hands in a cirlce while they danced in the middle. Little mamas were poppin’ like pros. It was amazing! After dinner, I bought some handicraft gifts made by the family (including a scarf for Aunt Veda:) and then a teenager came out to do henna for us (henna is like temporary tattooing with strong color from the root of a plant). I got an “A” with flowers on one hand and a festive design on the other.
Today, in addition to going to see Abu Simbel, I went back to the Aswan Market and bought way too much stuff for other people (what about me??). I met a young man named Mido who did sand art and I got 11 from him with our names in them. Mine is the best, however, because mine has my name in Arabic as well as English (well, Greek actually).
Speaking of Greece, I got mildly offended when some guy in Greece called me “Hey, Barack Obama!” because I thought he was saying I looked like a man. But, after two days in Egypt I have heard constant:
“Hey Nubian!”
“Hey cousin!” (who says Egyptians don’t consider themselves akin to Blacks?)
“Hey Welcome, Obama, ah? Congratulations!”
“Hey Rasta!” (must be the braids)
“Rasta never die, you like ganja?” No, thanks (“la shukra” in Arabic)
Anyway, in Greece, I still had some gorgeous-tasting sandwich at that guy’s shop (I took a picture of the name because I don’t remember). I also bought some stress-relieving beads of some sort, one for me and one as a gift.
There are a lot of African masks (same was true in Italy as well) but Egyptians didn’t use them. Still I’m tempted. It’s time to buy stuff for me. Especially since the exchange rate here is so good for the dollar (the Euro was kicking my butt, before, so I hardly bought anything!).
Thanks for the picture comments, I have way more to come (but probably when I get back home after the 18th). Solymar, yes my tour group was young (19-29) and that company focuses on 18-35 year olds. There were more people in the group than that picture, however. My current group is much older but I am older than one person (a semi-hot South African currently living in Australia that shared the train cabin with me because we both came single .
Dinner time! Ciao!

The letters on this keyboard are all over the place!!! I have not had to hunt and peck for years! Today, I skipped the walking tour of the palace of the French Popes ( in the blistering cold!) to find postcards. That was an adventure in itself! More on that later.

So far, no experiences of rude French people – contrary to what I had been warned!!! We stopped in Aix-en-Provence, birthplace of Cezzane and Nostrodamus, for lunch today en route from Nice, France to Avignon, where I am now.

I never thought I would see a day Id love anything better than Italian food but French food, music and art really floats my boat. I was also told Europe would be only dreary but we spent two days on the beach in Nice (the South African couple on our trip even swam – I wasnt trying to go THAT far).

Here in Avignon, likewise with Florence, it is interesting to see regular stores set up in ancient looking buildings but I can dig it!!! Everyone, Dana Odell says hi, she is the main person (a Taurus from NY that is a first-time traveler like me) that I have been hanging out with. She is also a psych major completing her doctorate that has been analyzing me – oh joy! The rest of France has been pretty modern. Unfortunately I still have no luck uploading pictures and videos on any of these computers but c’est la vie!

I’ll explqin the postcard stories next time; now dinner is ready!

Rome, Tuscany and Florence …. plus NYE be careful what you wish for!
Category: Travel and Places
Happy New Year to all, with love! Ciao! (I didnt know that could also be until here). This places makes me miss my friends and family still I am having an AMAZING time!! I have seen the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican, Colloseum and SO much more. Food in Tuscany is GREAT and some of these places look right out of a story book (meanwhile other parts look so ….. you’ll see when I load pix. I have taken more pictures than I ever thought possible and am running low on memory because I have also been making video diaries to share. Fortunately, our hotel in Florence has one in our room which is cool BUT it wont read my memory card even though it has a slot for it. I will figure something out.

In regards to actual new year’s, I really wished I had someone to kiss at midnight (incidentally, happy birthday to Aleu) . Then along came two different guys trying to grant that and THEN some. Oh, no no! One – cute but WAAAAY short – didnt understand my Spanish and I couldnt understand all his Italian yet he STILL managed to ask me to meet him at a cafe tomorrow for gelato, That was after his initial step down from trying to come with me to my room, after I turned down his invite for a party. Then we parted ways and he tried to kiss me on the lips instead of the Italian cheek thing. Ok, lesson learned! Flattering, but no thanks.