Andrew Martin

Since i came here and i met a lot of ppl, i made friends with most of them, and i definetly learnt at least one thing from all of them. But no one had an impact on me as much as Andrew Martin did !!!
This white, blue-eyed, Texan guy, with a nice smile (as obvious in the pic) and an incredible eagrness to drink, and drink, and drink, and drink........(Long Live Recessions DC !!!).......lol
Well officially this guy is the LCP of @ in DC, which basically means he's the leader of the @ team in Washington, so when i first met him, i only thought it will be a normal nice relation between one of the trinaees and the President of the LC who's most probably alwyas busy with lots of stuff, but for our surprise things went in quite an unusual and unique path !!
I can't remember how we first started having long conversations but i guess it started as a political conversation and then it turned out to cover vairous issues of the world. Then we both found out that we are MUNers who share the same passion for going to conferences and learning about international affairs (of course he studies int'l affairs as 99.999% of the GW students) and then our relation started to develop, but one thing i'll never forget for this man was that he truly welcomed me to his circle of friends, and he was always welcoming to take me to hang out with his friends who are outside the @ circle and this was really something that i enjoyed so much and becoz of that our relation became more of a personal friendship than a good president-to-trainee relationship and this relationship added to my experience a lot and as i said.
We talked about everything, politics, middle east, relationship, love, sex, previous experiences, and we talked a lot about @ and about our personal dreams, and these 2 topics were always froming the best conversations we had (beisde politics of course hahahahaha)
Well i can keep talking a lot about him, as i really admire and like the guy (ok i'm not gay if ur wondering!!) but i'd rather post a question for the @ ppl in DC "Tell me what do u like , and hate most about him ?" (waiting for ur comments ppl)
He travelled to Inida to a big @ int'l conf there and i don't think i'll meet him again before i leave and this really bothered me, but i'm sure we're gonna meet in the future(next summer in Cairo man :)
I'll add some stuff more to this topic but not now
Andrew, i miss u man, i hope ur enjoying India

SSC 2005 - New Horizons

Since i came here and there's a lot of issues started to take more space of my mind, most of them were about my country and the big difference i c between here (USA) and there (Egypt), i have a lot of pbservations on the way ppl think, behave and respond to national issues and i noticed how active and effecitve the civil society is here and how the whole system is so opened yet regulated, and here i'm talking about everything, political, social, civil..........i started comparing and trying to figure out what exactly is diff and if i want to c my country progressing, then what really are the challenges and obstacles we're facing, of course a typical response would be lack of democracy and bad economic situation.............that's such a broad and shallow prespective in my opinion for now can i c that it takes much more than that to have an advanced country and even those 2 terms are too broad and entail the work of generations and generations to implement viable and lasting solutions to them !!

Anyways.........again i get distracted and talked abuot my country, i can't help it my mind became really occupied with Its problems and challenges, but this is not the place to open such talk (later)
So my mind was busy with all these issues and then i went to the AIESEC (@) conf in Denver, CO.............i really didn't have much expectations except the ones that Andrew told me about (lots of fun, lots of talk, and lots of girls) :)) mmmm......ok so lets go and c, after all i'm a Salaam trainee and this is the biggest event in @ USA that i'm gonna attend while i'm here.
So i went there and we started having the first session, of course everyone felt a stranger to the others (except ppl form the same place) but of course not so long and it started getting cozy and of course egyptians were loud and talkative (man, i love the way we are lol), though i want to make a remark here that at many point i didn't like the way we handeled the debates and discussions, i hoped that the course of the talk would be more mature, and constructive coz i was sure it would have added more to all of us, anyways i started listening to various ppl from various countries that maybe i can hear about their rulers in our news a lot but i never interacted with one of its ppl b4, and this was the start of opening new horizons for me...................the impact that ppl like Aqeel, Hind, Walid, and Anis had on me was enourmous, each time they were speaking i was very attentive and opened to what they'd say, becoz i've learnt that "A wise mind is the one that can accomodate all what's being introduced, but not Necessarily agree with them" and these guyz really had so many diveresed ideas, abuot religion, women status in their countries, the arab israeli conflict, the american society, their own contries with all its beauties, and culutre...........i heard things about countries like Morroc and Tunisia i've never learnt before and i've discovered that a lot of us, share the same dream of seeing our countries advance each in his/her own way and each one of us has enough potential to move mountains just to c his/her country in more peace, and prosperity that they are now!!
Such ana amazing amount of thoughts, differences pouring out from the room wehre we held our meetings, and mostly all of them kept enlarging my scope and stretching my mentality more and more and challenge me and my ideas and my values, comparing everytihng and analzying mostly everything and contributing to the discussions with my opinoins and hearing the ppl's reaction to them, everything opened so many new horizons to my mind, i went back to Dc and while i was on the plane i found that i'm thinking about things even more deeper, and challenging that i was when i was on my way to the conf !!!
Wonderufl experience @ has given me, and this was one of the main reasons that i decided that i'm gonna get involved with this Org and put real effort in its activities !!
Well enough seirous talk for now, lets talk about the fun side of SSC, but i guessni have to leave now so this will be postponed to a seperate talk where i can talk about the beauty contest (or whatever its name was), the Sober patrol (was he sober ??!!!), the cool shisha (huka) community and the dances that comes from every part of the world !!!!

Loaded Mind

She asked me, why don't u write anymore on ur blog !!!..........This was very unexpected for me, did she really used to read my posts !! i wasn't aware of this fact, i completely forgot that i told her about it !!! it seems this "bad-memory" will screw me sooner or later :)

Anyways i had so many things to talk about, so many events that took place and so many ppl that entered my life lately and left a huge impact on my mentality and perceptions.........
i'm trying now to orgnaize my thoughts into specific topics and posts that i wanna publish while having a good conversatoin with my roommate about our elections in Egypt (ahh btw i'm a lunatic about politics and int'l affairs) however (ohh my mind is so distracted now)
so the coming posts will be :
1- SSC 2005
2- Andrew the man :)
3- PoliticsPoliticsPoliticsPoliticsPoliticsPolitics !!!
4- To Belong (2)

mmm.......enough so far, i really dunno when will i be able to write about all these but i'm sure pretty soon........

Baseball Match

Well this is considered a very new "cultural" activity to do, a couple of days ago, i went with some AIESECers from here to watch a "baseball" match !!! we went ot the stadium near my house, coz i live in SE :(( but anyways, we got the tickets and entered and whooo...........that's a real live baseball game babe, i haven't watched many in my life and i only played once(it wasn't even a complete game by all means) becoz the game in egypt is very rare, like when we played it, we did it only for fun and trying something new. but this time it was coool , of course afteri kept asking all the stupid questions abuot the exact rules of the game and i'm sure the ppl with me got bored from my questions :) poor them they gotta pay a good price for this cultural exchange to work out ;))
but anyways i really got into the game at the end, especially that it was a tight one, with the DC Nationals so close to tie or even win, but the Colorado Rockies got them :(( i was supporting the Nationals out of "geographical" sense of loyalty !!! and i wanted them to win so that i can c what wil the crowd do actually, i kept remembering big imp Soccer matches in Cairo, i guess the stadium would have been 5 times full at least and the crowd wouldn't stop roaring and singing for a second. well generally i think that soccer is more exciting becoz it faster and more in motion than baseball but i enjoyed it anyways, now i'm looking fwd to watch their soccer team "DC United" i guess this would be coool, and lets c how the americans play soccer :PPP
ciao in another post then

FreeeeeeeeeeDDoooooooommmm

hahahahahahahahaha.......................!!

DC at 1.00 am !!

WOW.........i can't really put in words how amazed i felt when i entered the Lincoln Memorial very late at night, and stood watching and wondering the beauty of the place, and how BIG it is......it was really an awesome sight and when u turn around, u can c the refelcting pool with the picture of the washington monument smothly reflected over the water (Though i don't feel comfortable with calling it the washington monument becoz i c it as a typical pharonic obelisque, but however that's only becoz i'm egyptian:))

Well it all started when Franky suggested that she's take me in a walking tour by the famous memorials very late, she said its wonderful and so different that in the morning, well i really liked the passion that she had when she was describing to me how they look gr8 at night, and i think it takes a certain type of personality to actually enjoy the historic places (especially at night) however so, Franky and Richard and i went there and that's how i came to the scene of the Lincoln Memorial, and after that we went to watch the Vietnam Memorial, where they had the names of all the soldiers killed at war written on the wall, and then we went to the Korean Memorial, this was really emotional, it certainly gets into u when u c the faces and the real-size statues of real mean who actually fought and died in the war, with their clothes and gear and true facial expressions.......u know what was the first thing that passed thru my head, i just thought that if we'd do a similar thing for the men who fought the October war in 1973, it would rock egypt to c how these guyz really looked like and who are they and what are their stories...however again i become passionate to my country.....ya3ni i guess this is me and i can't help it :)
however so after that we went to the WWII memorial which is recent as i was told and is an elegant piece of art as well.......the thing that i didn't wanna miss the most was that to read all the qoutes put in the wall in each memorial i've been too, i know that many of them was said by politicians and i'm one of the ppl that consider that most of what the politicians have to say is crap, but i guess the way i saw it this night wasn't political crap, it was more to me of quotes said by leaders to their nation in such a critical and shaping time, and that's why i think i valued what i read gedan.
Well Franky, ur suggestion was amazing and we'll definitely do it again (hopefully with a camera with us) and again my hopes to know more about the american history was stirred inside me.
I really wished we could do something that gr8 or even better to honour ppl who fought for us, i know that being from the younger generation, i didn't witness any war Egypt was into, but i believe that having such memorials would help in attaching the younger generation with our history and encourage them to really "know" about the history (not from school's history books ya3ni)

Beer Pong

Whoo man, i've definitely had the best 4th of July ever, well everything was really amazing, it was so cool to spend such a major national holiday in DC, the fact that this is the capital of this country where most of the major political events and decisions take place, but also this city had an amazing parade, it was so long and so full of different things happening and so many different types of ppl trying to represent their states or their countries, or even their religions (we saw Sikhs in the parade) and it was really cool. After watching the parade we returned to the AIESEC home in GW campus (a really cool place that i really love), we had this 4ht of July party where, it was so fun and it ws mostly about drinking beer and eating burgers and hotdogs........then the guyz started this funny game "Beer Pong" and i'd consider this game the most different cultural experience i've encountered so far :)) well regardless of the fact that its all about drinking more and more beer :))) and regardless alos of the fact that i don't like beer's taste so i don't drink it, what i liked most was the interest and enthusiasm the ppl had for the game, though its very simple but many ppl sat and watched the game, especially if the players are known for their skills ;)
Well the game very simply is that they each team(2 players a team) puts 10 cups in a shape of a pyramid and put beer in them, and then with a ping pong ball they try to throw it inside the cups of the other team, and if this happen then the other team must drink this cup !!!
Well anywyas i finally found a kind partner that was willing to drink all the cups so that i wouldn't drink any, and we started playing, it was so much fun and we stood for the other team till the end, at least we lost with one cup left :)

However after that we went over the roof of a building to wtch the fireworks, and man this was really the most intersting part of the evening, to watch the fireworks for 20 mins or more and stand among some americna students (most of them into politics and stuff) while they're having a national and patriot sentinement and singing out loud some national songs and stuff, this was fascinating for me, really fascinating :)

I guess the more i know about the american history, the more i find in myself te desire to learn more and more about it :)

To Belong

well of course when any blogger starts creating his own blog, takes some time thinking about a unique name for his blog, it usually had to do with his name, personality, something special in his life or with his friends.........i guess i tried to follow this trend, but i realized that it didn't take me more than 5 mins thinking to find that again this thoguht is dominating my mind, it was all an idea that struck me around 7 months ago when i was preparing for this sports camp (this will take a seperate post) however i realized that regardless of where we are or what we do with ourlives, or how much do we seem focused or lost or whatever, we all have some place we belong to, it could be an actuall place, or a group of friends, or a certain community, or maybe u belong to a very special memory in ur head.........i duuno its so random and abstract but eventually u'll find urself belonging to a certain entity.
however what added to this thought is when i traveled to DC, i found out that its when u get out of all ur spheres and daily routines, u start realizing where do u really belong and to what exactly do u belong.....ya3ni.....i'll keep posting about that further but i'd like to hear from anyone that read this post , tell me if u don't think u belong to anywhere, and tell me what do u belong to and talk about, for sure it will feel good talking abuot it :)

DC Life

Well, its the first time for me in the States, and the first time for me to create a Blog and starting publishing my thoughts thru it, well for sure life is so full of new things that u keep discovering and learning about everyday.
However i have many impressions about this city, and i guess through out my posts, i'll be able to point to more specific points of attraction for me in this city.....!!!
Anyways welcome to my blog and ur most welcomed to tell me what do u think of this city as well :)