Full Steam to Alexandria, Egypt!

Date: July 29, 2008
Location: The Mediterranean Sea
Lat: 32° 37.53N Long: 029° 5.86E

Well things can sure change quickly. We are no longer headed towards Istanbul, Turkey. We are now en route to Alexandria, Egypt. I suppose I’m also getting a bit too ahead of myself.

Apparently there were some bombings in Istanbul the day before we were supposed to get there. It was a pretty professional attack. The terrorists placed a flashbang in one trashcan in a crowded pedestrian mall. After this blew up, people quickly gathered around the site of the explosion. Around ten minutes later, a much bigger bomb blew up in a trashcan approximately thirty feet away. Last I heard, approximately 20 Turks lost their lives. Clearly it is very sad.

When word of this bombing first got out, the rumor mill started full tilt. This built on earlier news about a shooting at the US Embassy in Istanbul earlier this summer. This led to a lot of theories on where we were going. A few thought we would go to Istanbul still. However, there were a lot of thoughts that we would go to Bulgaria, Crete, Ukraine, and other places like that. However, there were also some thoughts that we would be heading to Alexandria.

People speculated all day. It didn’t help that we were told early in the morning that we would have a decision at 1800 our time. This gave us plenty of time to spin all sorts of rumors. However, we were finally told later that night that we were heading to Alexandria, Egypt.

I am pretty excited about Egypt. I have an SAS trip lined up to go see the Pyramids and Cairo for one day. I am also going to go see Alexandria with some friends. There sounds like there will be plenty to do and I’m looking forward to it.

The Sea Olympics is ongoing. After they made their announcement on where we were going, we had the improvisational comedy contest. This was a lot of fun for sure. It seems like most of the jokes were about the short story “Dragon Ride” from the earlier contest or ragging on our professors. It was fun.

We’re all excited about Egypt tomorrow!