I'm shwya in Love with this.

Reaffirmation.

First of all, I am fine. Cairo will be fine. The world at large will be fine. It's just at the moment it feels like it's moving in some form of alternative gravity. Like it should be spinning another way. But I promise that I am fine.

I want to understand why something like this happens. Actually, I don't think anyone really could understand it, or want to understand the reasoning behind it. I have stood in that spot, exactly. Walked through it dozens of times. Met friends there, laughed there. I could find it in my sleep. And yesterday, there was an explosion there.

Cairo has never left me feeling unsafe or insecure. I have never equated it with terrorism, and I have worked very hard to make sure others understand my conviction. I want people to understand how beautiful it is here, how breathtaking it is. I want people to understand why I love it. And I do. It is not that Egypt is a perfect place. There are many things, in fact, that are wrong with it. Philip's arrest kind of threw that back into focus, and yesterday's events made it even more clear that this country, the region, the mentality that exists about both of them, need work, but more than that - that they are worth working for.

This only reaffirms the choices I have made. There is work to be done and challenges to be faced. And if not me, who? If not now, when? There has been time enough spent worrying, accusing, and vilifying. There needs to be a step towards understanding, although in reality it is more like several leaps, but its not fifteen kilometers of unpassable desert. It is not the expanse of the Atlantic or the Gulf or the gaps in language and culture. It is only the distance between people.

a little late for Valentine's Day.

"If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

Skills I had in the job search.

toothpastefordinner.com

Filling out applications, writing cover letters, stressing about the direction of my professional future? not exciting.
Toothpaste for Dinner? always exciting.