Back to Reality

I have been back to Egypt for a few weeks now and things have been busy.  Work is finally starting to click and things are starting to pick up.  Unfortuantely I can't post any pictures of my work but I can tell you I am working on the Marassi Project.  This is a new development located on the North Coast of Egypt.  There are some pretty good websites for it on the internet just look up Marassi which is being developed by a company call Emaar.  I will try to put up pictures every now and then but I have to get permission before I can do that.

Anyways besides work I have moved into a new villa with another American guy named Eric.  Like me he worked for Turner Construction in the States and moved out here the same time I did.  Our new Villa is awesome.  At the bottom of my blog site there is a photo stream which includes all my most recent photos. I believe it will also take you to my flickr account which I just started.  I am slowly getting better at this blogging thing so hopefully my skills will develop as time goes on.

So besides moving not a whole lot to report.  I am heading to Doha, Qatar tomorrow morning for some training.  I am excited to see that city and hopefully can make a trip to the Pearl (look it up on the internet).  Miss you all!!

The Revolution (Part 2)

A lot of people have asked me if I saw anything crazy during the riots, but I was not close to any of the action.  The only thing that really changed for me is that they beefed up the security where I was living and the police abandoned all the checkpoints in my city and they were taken over by the bedouins.  The bedouins are the local people that live in the deserts.  There are hundreds that work on my job site and a lot of them stay in tents on the site as well.  So instead of coming to the checkpoints and seeing a couple cops there were about 10-15 bedouins and a few with some large weapons, but fortunately they like expats so there wasn't any issues.  Other things was I saw some tanks mobilized and a few military units assembling. Supposedly there were some buildings that got burnt down close to me but I never saw them.

This entire situation was very new and foreign to me so at the time was never worried or scared for my safety.  Actually the more I thought about it I really couldn't blame them.  Reasons being is that over the past decade or so it seems like a lot of foreign money was put in/invested into Egypt.  The problem was that the money doesn't work its way through the social classes.  In the Egyptian society there seems to be a lot of poor people and a few rich people but the rich are very very rich.  Workers barely make enough to feed their families and I heard something like 90% of people under the age of 30 are unemployed in Egypt.  Probably one of the main reason why the younger generation was so involved in the revolution.  It seemed like Mobarik was almost running a dictatorship.  All past elections over the last 30 years were rigged to keep him in office.  Now I know he has been portrayed as an awful guy but he was a big part of keeping peace in the middle east over the past few decades.  He has done a few good things but obviously they haven't weighed out the bad.  

All in all my feelings on the revolution are mixed.  I do believe it is time for a change, but the way it was carried out I don't agree with.  Although I know it wasn't portrayed in the media this way but it was for the most part a non-violent protest.  There was some rock throwing and fire starting, but before each large protest the protestors would have someone checking people for weapons before they entered the large crowds in the square (however this didn't keep them from digging up rocks).  Okay I am starting to feel like I am rambling so I will finish my story from the previous post.......

After a few days of house arrest I got a phone call from the Egyptian Embassy telling me its time to skidaddle.  I was relieved to be leaving for a while because the news of the prisoners escaping made me kind of nervous.  Then the next day I went to the airport at 11am..... flew out at 6pm..... landed in Jordan at 8 or 9pm........ flew out to Germany at 1am........ landed around 5 or 6am......... flew to Chicago at 11am....... landed in Chicago around noon.............. with all the time changes, layovers, and flight time it took me about 36 hours to get home.  Oh and lets not forget I got called into customs and had to sit in a waiting room for 30 minutes until I got interviewed before I could enter back into the states.

Then over the next few weeks I stayed with friends and family.  I had a good time just relaxing and getting ready for my journey back.  I know these last couple posts are short little explanations of what I experienced during the revolution and it is kind of neat to look at this situation and know that I was apart of history.  Let the adventure continue...............   

The Revolution (Part 1)

Okay okay okay I know it has been a long time since my last post and I am sorry.  I will try to be better in the upcoming months but the last few weeks have been busy.......... (I am lazy).

In this post I am going to explain my views and experiences of the revolution in Egypt.  I want to avoid getting political with any of the issues I just want to tell the story from my point of view.

Anyways I was at work on Wednesday January 25th 2011 and we heard about some riots going on in Cairo.  At the time I didn't think anything of it and didn't really start paying attention to it until a few days later.  We had a three day weekend because of the Police Day so I went golfing one day and hung out at my deserted beach the other two.  Saturday afternoon my boss comes over to my place and tells me that work is cancelled for tomorrow because of the riots.  I knew things were starting to escalate because they had non stop news coverage of what was going on in Cairo and facebook was blocked in Egypt.  So not a couple hours later I get a call from my boss and asks me where in the world I want to hide out for a few weeks until this stuff blows over.  Now I know what you are thinking if someone offered you a free trip to anywhere in the world going back home wouldn't be your first choice.  Well I was afraid of the wrath of my mother if I wouldn't have come home immediately after something like this occurred.  So I told them to send me back home until this blows over.  So initially the plan was to fly out that day and then return when things are safe.  The problem was that there is really only one place to fly out of in Egypt and that is in Cairo.  At that time the airports were one of the worst places to be and chances of getting a flight out of the country in the next 48 hours were slim.  So they made the decision to keep us in our current location for the time being.  I was located in a place called Marina.  Marina is a guarded compound that has thousands of villas in it located on the Mediterrian about an hour west of Alexandria. So I was a safe distance away from the riots.

The next few days were very very boring!!  No internet, no long distance calling, and only 2 or 3 english speaking channels on the TV.  We couldn't leave the compound because it was to dangerous.  I didn't have any books and ran out of movies to watch so the days were very long.  Although I was very lucky to be where I was.  A lot of Egyptian people that I work with live in Cairo.  Most families own and live in apartments in Cairo.  The men in each apartment complex would all meet on the ground floor with bats, knives, or whatever they could get their hands on and stayed there all night protecting their families from protestors breaking in and stealing things.  Fortuantly everyone I work with made it back to work safely.

I promise to post the rest tomorrow........