Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Big Bird, Tattoos, Cheap Thrills and Being a Woman....

My trip to Egypt is on its last leg.. been here for 3 weeks and I wanna go home...I'm homesick.. miss the good ol' USA, say what you will about us but dammit toilet paper is still free in public rest rooms!!!

It has been wonderful here, made a few friends I plan on staying in touch with and I definitely want to come back next year. The people have been fantastic, my arabic is improving..but still I wanna go home... This morning I was talking to my mom back home and this song just popped into my head ..." i wanna go home to my nest.. i wanna go home to my friends.. i wanna go homeee i misss home and they miss meeeee" it was a song I remembered hearing when I was a little kid in kindergarden I had a talking Big Bird and he had this book and cassette (remember cassettes??!) that went along with it... in the story Big Bird goes to visit his grandma for the summer leaving all of his Sesame Street friends behind.. Don't ask my why or how I remember the damn song but I do.. it's like that with me and music.. it's like I've got a soundtrack playing in my head continously.. my life is set to music.. lol

The other day I was trying on some dresses in a dress shop for some big family jam that required me to wear a dress.. well it wasn't really a requirement but my uncle Hassan insisted on it, high heels too.. that bastard!...How dare he insist I dress like a woman?!! lol Said (saeed) his bro went with me to pick it out and was shocked at what he saw... when I removed my shirt to put the dress over my head (I had a tank top underneath) all of my tattoos were revealed ( 5 )..He wasn't shocked at my tats my family is already used to them, plus they are situated in such a way that unless i'm in a sleeveless outfit you can't see them, except for the one on my neck and my hair has to be up for that one to be seen.. Na, what shocked him was the womens reaction... A crowd of women ran from the other side of the store and mobbed me. These women were mobbing me and feeling up on my tattoos, they were in awe of them..I swear to Spongebob Square Pants if I had been a lesbian I would've gotten my cheap thrills for the day!

Okay I gotta admit I've got some pretty nice looking tattoos they're more like art work... i've got 2 sleeves on each of my upper arms... 1 is an anime fairy.. the other is a really intricate and detailed periot fairy ...drama/comedy masks in color on my upper breast...fairy in lotus position (also in color) on my neck.. and on my shoulder blade an complicated Egyptian Ankh with ying yang in center, flames underneath it and my name in script under that... pretty nice tats if i do say so myself.. the women seemed amazed that I also a woman had these on me they loved the art work of it... I was hoping to get a tat while out here but to tell you the truth finding a place to do it is proving to be hard, even the Coptics have to have the crosses they tatoo on their wrists done in secret and out in the desert some where.. guess it's in the same place where they're hiding the pork chops.


That night I got dressed up for the party and my uncle just stopped and stared at me I think for the first time in his life he realized I wasn't a little girl anymore.. I was standing before him with my hair done, make up on, high heels, and "girly" outfit..he just looked at me and he had this look of pride ..he told me "Maria today you are a woman" ...Said looked at me, and said "you're beautiful" then he told me to close my coat because some guy a few feet away from us was checking me out.. lol.. so I'm guessing i'm still a kid to them in so many ways.. lol

Labels: Egypt

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