While waiting in line for security, we made friends with a woman who was in line with us who ended up sitting next to me on our flight! Yay, airplane strangers!
While I was sitting there, two guys showed up with upright basses and started playing together. They were both using bows and making haunting, mournful, beautiful sounds and a man wandered over holding his newborn son and was holding him up into the sound. All while reading a book about learning to let go and get lost in life moment to moment. Call it the reason I live here.
After we'd gotten all settled in, this guy came out to explain that
we had been seated in different colored sections, and each section had a knight that we were supposed to cheer for.
On the way back to our apartment, we stopped to purchase FRIED OREOS! While the fried Oreos are photo-worthy on their own, the real reason I asked Josh to hold up the bag is because I wanted to capture a photo of the lady in the background because she's Leigh's nemesis!
Then this lady read from her memoir (about being an early porn star? I can't remember). What I do remember is that before she read she made a big ten minute show of insisting that one of her love slaves get onto his knees and place her candy-red high heel shoes on her feet for her.
On Thursday Sarah invited us to attend a reading her friend Stephen was reading at. We arrived to find out that there were a few other people scheduled to read first.
With over a foot of fresh powder on the ground, I decided to rent a pair of skis for the day and try some deep powder skiing. Oh, and the original inspiration for Borat was in line in front of us.
Next thing we knew we had a new best friend. (A best friend who, incidentally, liked to lift up his shirt and smack his belly loudly and repeatedly after each drink). Pauly can't believe it!
NONE SHALL PASS! (The guy at the temple didn't speak any English, put he certainly understood the pantomime for "Hey, wanna pretend we're having a SWORD fight for this photo?" Yes!)
The temple was getting ready to close and we were the only visitors! Luckily, there was a temple minder there who's job was to show you around and to help keep the monkeys from getting too aggressive!
Mike took this great photo of us with some of the Cathay Pacific flight attendants, then we said goodbye and headed to the gate. Thanks so much for coming out to see us off, Mike!
(PSSST! BUDDY! HELP ME. NO, STOP LAUGHING AND HELP ME! YOU KNOW THIS HAT WASN'T MY CHOICE, SHE DID THIS TO ME! I CAN'T GET IT OFF, PLEASE JUST HELP ME OUT, WILLYA?)
On my commute to work on Wednesday morning, I caught a glimpse of this woman's awesome sweater from a distance and wove my way through the crowd just like the football player knit into the back in order to get close enough to get a clear photo. So good.
That was the sensible choice. Chris, Steve and I decided to keep on drinking heavily and somehow ended up on the beach partying with the locals we'd met in the bar.
It was afterhours at this point, but since it was a real quiet night, the bartender told us we could hang for a bit and he locked the place up. This guy was the only other place in the bar so we agreed to play some Big Buck together.
IT WAS AN HONEST MISTAKE! This poor girl walked past me thinking she was my friend Sarah, I ran up behind her on the dance floor and started grinding all up in her booty from behind like POW! So I'm about 10 seconds into my booty dance when suddenly, the girl who is most-definitely NOT my friend Sarah turns around and just looks at me like, "Seriously?"
Instead of trying to explain, I ran away, went across the bar, found Sarah, dragged her across the bar and was like "THIS IS WHO I THOUGHT YOU WERE AND I'M SO SORRY!" Hahaha. Then I took this photo! Twinsies! (Sorry that you had to be subjected to the way I dance with all my poor female friends!)
On the way to the bathroom I heard what sound like shenanigans coming from behind a half-wall that was propped up to hide a storage closet so I stuck my camera over the wall to do a photojournalistic investigation. Secret make out SCOOP!
Not only was this guy's outfit amazing (he looked like a villain in a video game or something), but he had a monogrammed backpack that made me LOL. Here's me trying to quietly sneak up behind him to get a better photo.
FOR THE WIN! As soon as this image showed up on my camera, we both started chortling and we came dangerously close to awakening our new friends and had to run down the street before our heads exploded with laughter. OMG, I'm crying with laughter right now while I type this. Holy shit, was it funny. (By the way, this is totally the right move in this situation. When I've passed out drunk in a car, I've always made sure to snap a photo of myself before passing out. Hahaha.)
Because "silence" is the only necessity when you're playing a new game we invented on the spot called "Let's see how close I can get this camera to the adorably sleepy faces of these strangers sleeping in their tiny car!"
Karen hopped in a cab and headed up to to Union Square, while I kept walking east with Leigh. On the next block we saw one of those tiny Smart cars pulled over to the side of the rode.
Awww, nappy-nap time! Nothing is funnier than trying to be really quiet around sleeping people that you're kind of fucking with and after I took this photo we were both laughing hysterically but also trying to be as silent as possible.
I don't know this gentleman, but his karaoke game (he's singing a jam from Phantom of the Opera) and his karaoke-face were both so strong, I had no choice but to take photos.
We even managed to convince these four strangers to come to Clem's with us so that we could get credit for one last item on the list: "Bring someone you don't know with you to clem's at 6:30." 25 POINTS!
We went to Hug's and after asking the two bartenders on duty if they had also been on duty the previous evening, nailed "Someone who was clearly at Hug's last night." 5 POINTS! (BTW, I love the picture of these two guys so much. They seem really funny and nice - they are exactly the two bartenders I both want and expect to see pouring the drinks when I go to a bar named "Hug's.")
Ok, the rest of the pics I have from this day are pretty much just a record of all the points I was able to personally capture for my team. "Someone drinking beer out of a styrofoam cup!" 1O POINTS!
I found a small table by myself, ordered a pizza and a big frosty mug of beer and was reading a book when these three characters came over and asked me if I wanted to join them! Who could say no to that? From L to R: My new friends Thomas, Maria and Mohamed!
Maria was from Sweden and approached me because she pegged me for a fellow Swede. She was a self-proclaimed "cougar" who came to Egypt on vacation after a terrible divorce, met Mohamed and fell in love and they'd been together for a couple years. They explained to me that they were working on getting Mohamed a visa so he could live in Sweden, but that everyone was skeptical about their love and thought it was some kind of scam to get a visa!
Here's me saying goodbye to Ahmed after we got back to my hotel around 4pm! This guy was the best! Despite only knowing a few words in each others' language, we managed to talk all day for an eight-hour road trip. Thanks again for driving, Ahmed!
At most of the antiquities sites in Egypt, there are armed guards like this. They all beckon you over (and you pretty much have to go because why would you ever risk disrespecting a man wearing a black wool uniform in the desert sun and carrying an assault-rifle) and when you go over and say hi - they ask you to take a picture of them, then do their best to shake you down for a "tip" for the privilege of capturing them in their uniform.
These girls were cute tourists from, er, somewhere in Asia and Tim The Cap'n sauntered over and offered to take a picture of them in the sunset with their camera. After he did that, he suggested that I take a photo of the three of them with my camera. If it had been a scene in Swingers, it most definitely would have been described as "Money." (He even managed a disco point and a Blue Steel.)
Lawrence, Mandy and Michael! At first I thought Mandy and Michael were sharing a floating red leather hat, but that's when I looked closer and noticed Mr. Creepers McPeepers getting his L U R K on in the background.
Which everyone seemed to understand meant that anyone had the right to join the person that was performing and "help them out." Scott started off with a low-key assist, mostly taking over "pigeon necking" dance duties.
