The View is Great From Here!

(Prologue: It has been too many days since I last posted a blog. I had written, but not posted, the following entry before leaving on Spring Break. So, this is an attempt to catch up. Stay tuned for postings on our trip to Egypt!)

It's funny...seems that just when you think you have a pretty good perspective on the world, God treats you to a new view. A couple of weeks ago, I went on two photo excursions with some of the Pixel Chicks. On a Monday, we went out to an area with some village ruins (not the same ones we visited when Jake was here). It was amazing to walk through spaces that used to be people's homes and their place of worship. Who knows what else. With recent (as in 50 years or so recent) growth in this area, the little old villages were abandoned and have become rubble. Chicks Karen, Sybil and I spent a couple of hours capturing images and imagining what might have been. Just as we were getting ready to leave the site, a shepherd and his herd came on the scene. Not sure where they came from as I had been focused on the crumbling walls of Al Khor. We Pixel Chicks are not ones to miss a photo op, so there we went, right in the middle of the herd. Just know that, although we did not think of paying the shepherd for his "services", HE thought of us paying him. We did not mind much...it was worth it and he was happy.

The second field trip was to the outdoor markets on the following Thursday. First, the fruit and veggie market. Wonderful, beautiful color everywhere! Kind of like Whole Foods on steroids! I was not even in the entrance to the market when I had made a new friend. And to think I was naive enough to believe that I was just sitting down to have my picture taken! (Oh well, not the first old man from a foreign country that has kissed me on the cheek, right Mom and Lou Ann??) Once inside the market, the almost invisible Pixel Chicks (not!) began to snap away. Just imagine...five American women with big cameras taking pictures of zuchinni and apples! We had a great time, learned a few things from Mother Hen Sherry and each other and got some really great photos. Mohammed was our wheelbarrow operator. He made sure we did not ever have to touch the produce until we unloaded it from the car! Followed us all around with his faithful two wheeler. Next stop...the Fish Market. Ah, the aroma of fish in the morning! Never have I seen anyplace like it. Lots of fresh local seafood - fish, shrimp, crab, squid. All of it could be purchased and then cleaned for you, right there on the spot. There was the fish chop chop room (so named because of the chopping noise of the hatchets used to....well, you know.) Or, if shrimp is your sea creature du jour, you just take them out to the back covered area for some quick peeling. However, beware of incoming squid. Men were unloading boxes of squid and throwing them on the drain near my feet, black ink and all.

Once all of our "business" was done, we were out of there and on to new adventures. Adventures like the conversation we had with the lady right outside of the fish market. I never had so much fun photographing someone's hands. She had a whole bag full of crabs and informed us that those unlikely creatures were a cure for bedwetting. You DO learn something new everyday!

I am just grateful for the view I am getting of the world from this perspective. Texas may be the center of the universe, but there is a lot of interesting and fun stuff out there! I thank God for an extended world view. And a big view it is!