As you probably know, there was a pretty large scale attack at a hotel in the Sinai pennisula a few days ago in Dahab, which is one of the larger tourist destinations. Dozens were killed and many were wounded...Americans, Israelis, Europeans and local Egyptians.
The Egyptian police are cracking down similarly to their response to the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings, but Sinai has been unstable historically since the Israeli pullout in 1982.
So, what's this about worry from the US? I'm not worried, of course.
It's my family and friends.
<begin rant...skip if you don't feel like reading something I'm writing from my admittedly negative and angry feelings at the moment>
Similar to the response I got before I went to Jordan, many people back home--especially family--are hearing the news of the attack, and apparently after seeing spot after spot on CNN or Fox, are only processing the words "Bomb" "Egypt" "targeted" and "tourists," and thus deducing that the Sphinx is going to morph into Osama and stab me to death with a clicker pen or something.
I went to Jordan and came back unscathed, less than three weeks after Al-Qaeda did a major attack in the capital, and even stayed in one of the hotels that Al-Qaeda blew up!! The greatest risk to me was from the bus and the disorganization of the shady tour I booked, not from terrorism!!
So why my gripe? Because it has been less than four months since they freaked out about me going to Jordan, and my Stateside friends and family, pumped full of apparently even greater levels of fear from the media and their own apparent lack of understanding about or experience from the real dangers and threats that terrorism presents, are projecting all this irrationality and fear onto me with full force at every chance they get, and refuse to engage me in a discussion as if they know everything about the world from watching it on the television.
And it's driving me batshit. :greenguy:
I'll go, have a fantastic time, come back with a ton of stories and experiences, and then they'll just repeat the same ridiculous process again when I'm getting prepared to travel to my next destination.
I sincerely appreciate their concern, but the way they're going about it is just ridiculous, ethnocentric and ignorant. I'm not even responding and they still won't stop with the emails and phone conversations.
It makes me want to just not tell anyone anything about what I'm doing, not share any of my feelings of excitement and anticipation, and if ANYTHING just wait until after the fact to tell them where I was briefly.
And maybe not even that.
<end rant...I feel better now.
>
Ok. Now that all that bile is out of my system, I'm really stoked!
Only 8 more days, and I have all my stuff ready, including my new pack!
...and I have a clicker pen in case the Sphinx really does morph and try to stab me...I'll show that bastard who has the real black belt in clickerpen-fu
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