it's one of the best words

dear gramma,

i have been dilligently looking for a desk, as you instructed...but all i had found so far were overpriced not very beautiful things. :(

until wednesday, blessed day.

then suddenly, there i was, home from work, standing on my sidewalk, somehow defying the law of the harvest with yet another (yes, it's happened a lot) piece of (not very beautiful but) FREE furniture staring me in the face, basically begging to be in my life.

it sort of repeats the minimalist low white shelving around the other two walls in my room, but i need ideas for some simple treatments i could do on it (did I mention it was completely free?)... I'm thinking of maybe something similar to what I painted on the inside of my door?:

....creative geniuses, any ideas?

sometimes, i don't pay good attention

sometimes i buy tube tops on sale and wear them as skirts.

because sometimes, when i bought them, i thought they WERE skirts.

we should have a garden

but then i learned this: apparently all the fruit trees in state parks and public city parks are public property. and i may or may not have a new source of apples and plums. muhahahha.
*please don't steal all my apples now that i have given you this grand idea. thank you.

in which she learns an important lesson about water storage

so last weekend was the seafair pow wow. this was (sadly) the first pow wow i've been to up in seattle. it didn't seem like there were tons of dancers, but there sure were lots of people there.

Some highlights include:

FANCY DANCERS :) -->

I finally learned where Discovery Park is at.

The sunshine.

This kid, who was dancing with some much older competitors, and definitely keeping up. -->

jingles! -->

lowlights:

fry bread line too long:*( (and believe you me, i would wait a LONG time for fry bread)

and this unfortunate happening--one afternoon that i went was super hot. i forgot to bring a drink, and i forgot to bring extra cash. my car--parked about a mile from the grounds. i remember lukewarm 2 L of sunkist in my car. spirits brighten. i remember a juice bottle of water stored in my trunk for emergencies. spirits brighten further. i time my exit so as not to miss boy's teen fancy dance. i trek the mile or so to the car, take a swig of sunkist, and grab the bottle of water in a rush to catch a shuttle that has stopped in the parking lot nearby. back at the pow wow. enjoying the dancing. enjoying the sun. wait, too much sun. enjoying the water. enjoying more dancing. reach for the water. uh oh. something's in the water. something not previously noted. something that didn't come from me drinking it. something that was there the whole time i was drinking it.

there is a spore of moldiness (presumably--no, not presumably. OBVIOUSLY, from the juice bottle not being thoroughly cleaned out) floating in the water like a little black warning label.

UGH.

if you look close, you can see the little dirtbag on the LH side, near the top of the water level. gross.

weekend.

last weekend: road trip to utah.

one car. five people. so many, many, hours.

it turned out pretty good though.

i got to hang out with this old friend, who is just great (we even somehow knew to wear matching shirts):

i also bought a real dress:

i got to eat cafe rio. which is what i miss most about utah, other than my sister and the mountains.

and we went to s's wedding and reception, which was tear-jerkingly beautiful. yessssss.

also, i feel like a siamese triplet who was surgically removed when i got out of the car for the last time. so, soooo much togetherness on that trip. it was good.

feet. [30 deg, 3.0' N 31 deg 15.9' E]

--trash city, egypt--

this beautiful dirt continued: Muqattam and the zabbaleen

I am finally posting some stories from egypt. Disclaimer: there are lots of words in this post.

the southeast district of the Cairo at the base of the Muqattam hills is home to the Coptic Christians ('Coptic' basically refers to the egyptian Christians--their theology generally follows the Orthodox Christian persuasion... ), known as zabbaleen. i wanted to visit there because (1) it's called 'trash city ' (and it looks like it) because the people there collect, sort, and recycle the city's trash (because of the zabbaleen, Cairo has had one of the highest recycling rates of any city in the world--pew pew! take that seattle) and it sounded like a scene from Baraka, and because (2) there is a huge system of Christian churches there that are carved into the side of the mountains that sounded pretty dope.

The streets in the town at the base of the mountains mostly look like this (these are all bags of trash waiting to be sorted and recycled):










As you wind up towards the mountains, you can see the churches and biblical reliefs carved into the rock walls. The largest of the churches is huuuuuge:

Three crosses stand on the hill in front:


Reliefs of Jesus adorn the rock walls above and across the rock walls where the churches are carved out:


The ten commandments in Arabic:

i met a robed man (typical garb, even in Christian areas) in front of the largest of the churches who didn't seem to have an occupation other than wandering around with his large print arabic bible. maybe he was a plainclothes preacher trying to teach the good word. anyways, i asked him to tell me about the 'miracle of the mountain,' which has to do with the Muqattam hills and seems to motivate the Coptics to take pilgrimmages there...

His eyes light up when i ask. "Ahhhh! Dee Meeraicul!"

(he begins) Over a thousand years ago, the Pope governing the Christians living around Muqattam is challenged to prove their God, or face the obliteration of their religion at the hands of the Muslims in power. In answer to fasting and praying by the believers, God chooses to use a humble tanner and his faith fulfill Mat 17:20 in the flesh--(the man lovingly turns the pages of his Bible and then reads the arabic script out loud in broken english) '...If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove...' (i finish saying the verse with him. as he continues the story, he gets more and more excited.) The earth shakes and the very mountain that we stand on lifts into the air. The Muslims see underneath the mountain to the other side (he cuts his hands through thin air, as if feeling the voided space under the base of the mountain) and leave the Christians in peace. They are so moved by the miracle, they even help in building the churches.

Then bible guy tells me something very profound.

Three words are dee same in every language, he says.

"Hallejulah! "

"Hallejulah!" I echo.

"Amen!"

"Amen!" I cry, this time copying his outstretched hands.

"COCA-COLA!!!!!" (his laughter booms)

*Standing there halfway across the world, talking to this man, I suddenly feel like I am on one of those old-everyone-getting-along-give-you-warm-fuzzies Coke commercials. It's funny, I think, that the two things that me, american kid, and egyptian large print arabic bible man have most obviously in common are our belief in Jesus Christ as Savior, and familiarity with Coca Cola.
I'm not sure if that's a point for Christianity or commercialism. But they're points of commonality, nonetheless.*

"COCA-COLA!!" I shout.

it's true.

happy fourth. or, the revolution holds many lessons.

let's just all take a few minutes today and think about how thankful we are to be basically free.
but let it be a lesson to us all, that we are still never free of consequences. thanks for the lesson, K. hahahah.