Blastoff

So I'm leaving for just about the entire summer, some traveling, some "learning advanced Arabic", which may just be doublespeak for how long you can go without going on a spectacular murder/suicide spree. Anyway, Jake and Amanda can be praised/blamed for me releasing a blog unto the world. I called it "Team Khateer" after a imaginary adventure group I thought up, complete with awesome patches and matching clothes, "khateer" means danger in Arabic fyi. Apparently, I'm just so darn interesting people that can not be near me must read about my goings-on, or, choice B, is I'm that kid that says "Should I ride my bike down these stairs?" and his friends answer is "Wait, let me get the video camera." So here it is, now I'm one of those people with a blog, but I mean, atleast I'm not a Xanga person. Then, I'd just have to quit and to show my emotions and look foward to the next Dashboard cd.

Okay, so I'm going to outline how this will work and set up a pre-launch senario (this is going to be a long post-I'll try to keep it short). Number one, I'm going to do my best to keep ranting to a minimum. I was thinking about all the crap I could write out on a blog, and then a few things occured to me. A) You can rant about nearly everything; girls/boys, politics, religion, etc. etc. I realized I could spend pages talking about politics and religion, but if you care about any of that stuff, you've already had a conversation with me about it and already know what I think. So don't worry about pages and pages of essays and long explanations. (Thats going to be harder than I thought, I had to erase a paragraph of ranting about explaning there would be no ranting)

Number two, this blog will (hopefully) be actually interesting to read. I promise not to recount every lame minute of my day, or skip on the good parts. I've noticed alot of people say something like "then I went over to Johnny's house and the party was CRAZY!" then they go onto what they had for breakfast the next day. Rather than having the skeletal boring blog, I'll have the muscular blog that kicks the others in the balls.

Number three, I'm going for some blend of a minority of commentary on certain things I see or people I meet, but I'm going to try to focus more on the actual action of the trip. Below will be a list of reasons the action shouldn't ever be on the short end.

First off, from June 5-21 I'll be basically in the same room or standing next to Jane the entire time. Even though we'll be staying in hostel rooms with other people, she'll still be there. When I'm walking down the street, Jane will be there. When I'm wondering why I went to Europe with Jane, she'll be there. Most of you are aware of the pressure cooker relationship Jane and I have. We're friends normally, but one quip about philosophy, politics, or religion can spark a debate, which may or may not lead to yelling. Examples? I tried to watch "I heart Huckabees" with her, and I missed the last half of the movie b/c we got into a big debate about the philosophy of identity. Another time I made a quip about the falling Euro (yes!) and the French regreting their slimey socialist economic practices-yeah, another big discussion. Yesterday Jane and I talked about whether we would even be talking at the end of the trip, I'll say 40% "no". A finally, a quiz: What did Jane tell me what phrase she's going to learn in all the three languages of the countries we'll be in?

A. Where is the bathroom?

B. He very allergic to fish, do not allow any fish near my traveling partners food.

C. The guy next to me is a ninja. I know nothing about politics, and 98% of everything I think about philosophy and religion is wrong.

If you guessed "D-He's not with me (referring to talking to guys)" then you are correct. Europe is going to be a blast.

The other part of the trip is a short stay in Athens, then arriving in Cairo at 2:45 AM, then crossing the Israeli-Jordanian border 2x, and finally settling in Jordan for 6 weeks. I might mention the Jordan program still has not told us where we are staying, and we had one meeting to prepare us for it. I'll also be in class 5-6 hours a day with one other person. Basically, right now the whole Jordan thing is a big qeustion mark, the guy there said he'll email us about it (I'm guessing on Arab time, which is similar to Indian time), and I'm leaving the country tomorrow. It's going to be an interesting stay.

So now I go, leaving the gleaming alabaster city on a hill, and into the darkness. See you in August.