(11.01.03) Greeting to all of you from Egypt. It gets harder and harder for me to respond to the emails I recieve from you each additional week i stay at this place. Ive been in training school since the end of september and am scheduled to complete it by the middle of december so i can hopefully go back home for a bit and celebrate christmas in the states. i guess i should start from where i left off in the last email since I havent really talked to anyone back home in the last month ive been here. Last time i wrote i was preparing to get out of siberia and travel to egypt. I left one morning for moscow and was able to stay there a day before i had to get on another 5 hour flight for egypt's capital city, cairo. In moscow, i spent my free day walking around the city. Ive found out over the last couple of months that there is a lot i like about russia and being in moscow didnt change my mind a bit. Its a big city, thats for sure... i dont know the total amount, but i know its bigger than most of the cities in the US. I got to see all the attractions that bring most people to moscow. The red square, st basil cathedral (that church that looks like it should be on top of a cake) and a couple other places i enjoyed visiting. I left almost right after I arrived there, (only staying one full day) and finally got into Cairo at 2 in the morning. Now, if moscow is big, cairo is much larger. In fact, the egyptian instructors at the school pride themselves with saying that they (the egyptians) are having a contest with rabbits to see who can procreate more rapidly. It seems the egyptians are winning. There are only a few major cities in all of egypt that hold all the people... not many people like living in the middle of the desert. From being here as long as I have, I know for a fact that I wouldnt enjoy living in this country. Dont get me wrong, I am still having fun, but each day i am thankful i live somewhere else besides egypt. You drive down the street and the biggest thing you notice is not the desert that expands almost as far as the eye can see, but the trash heaped up on the sides of the road that expands almost as far as the desert itself. I dont really understand why there is no desire to clean up the country, but i guess it just got so bad they believe its pointless to start cleaning up now. I have been to the pyramids already, which were pretty much how i imagined them to be. It is awe inspiring to see how much effort was put into their construction so long ago. Also on the trip i rode my first horse, how can it be that im 22, have relatives that own horses.. and still its my first time? I dont know, but it was fun, so i intend to learn how to ride one sometime in my free time in the course of the next year. Speaking of free time, ( which is basically the only time here that I can have fun) I recently went on vacation to a small city on the coast of the red sea, about 100 km south of Mount Sinai. The city is called Sharm el Sheik, and supposedly it is a huge tourist site for people in this corner of the world. There were tons of europeans and russians here just having their vacations.