Less than stellar

Any place this beautiful, no matter how remote the surroundings, should lead to good times with the right company...Let's just begin by saying the company is less than stellar...

This is a view from our cottage..This beach, 3ageeba, right on the Med Sea is one of my favorite places. I actually like the fact that there isn't a café-filled, disco-teched out night life, and that I can swim all day, nap read and walk around outside at night...But apparently my idea of a relaxing trip is not what others would call enjoyable...My Texan cousins are on this trip...I think the quote that best sums up my cousin's personality is..."wouldn't it be cool to have a hummer in Egypt?!"...she actually said that...ya, that's what I am faced with. Reading is apparently an absurd hobby, and good music consists of Britney Spears and other pop bands...my music taste is ridiculous, my ambition is strange to say the least, and my sarcasm is outright cruel. According to these cousins from down south, what this place is missing is air conditioning, a night life, and a few hummers here and there just to make things really good.

I haven't even started on the Egyptians...There are now two men that tell bad Egyptian jokes, sing much more often than they should, and push buttons way past their limits, my father and his best friend. That's right, I now have to deal with two of my father. When they get together, they tell corny joke after corny joke, and everyone actually laughs, except of course my brother and I...they all then realize we're not laughing, decide we don't understand arabic well enough to get the hillarity of the said joke, and explain why it is so great...this happens after every joke...every single one. The fact that we just find the jokes as painful as rusty nails gouging our eyes out just never really occurs to them...

I am then shoved into a room to greet more family friends, and as I'm shaking my mom's friend's hand she says, "Oh my God what happened to your face?!" I stare back blankly trying to figure out what the hell she's talking about, and she continues, "your face! Oh my God you poor girl! What are all those dark spots on your face! This is just not right, you have permanent scars!," I finally figure out she's talking about a small scar that has tanned darker than the rest of my skin...and she continues doing so for about ten minutes as I awkwardly stare back trying to grab my hand away....

Their daughter then decides it is time she tells me about the ways of love...I am, of course, the naive American girl who is sadly driven by ambitions and careers and success, and who doesn't realize the importance of romance, loving unconditionally, sacrifice, emotional dependence, and marriage...apparently marriage should be one of my top priorities at this point...I should realize that love at first sight could hit me at any moment, and that when it does, I should be able to drop everything to make my husband happy...my husband is, of course, the head of the household, so wherever he decides to move me (which will obviously be Egypt since he will, of course, be Egyptian), i will have to agree to in order to please his every need, because his career is obviously more important than my own. God gets upset, I was reminded, when a perfectly good man comes along and we turn him away because he is not everything...we are in fact put on this Earth to procreate, and although careers are a fun little hobby, the job at hand is of course to make babies. She, of course, can speak from experience, since she has been in one relationship 3 years ago, and she is now at the wise wise age of 22.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Kaitlin, Williams, and Ryan...this place is too beautiful to be spent with people like this...