I'm in Egypt! Again!

So today is the last day of our trip to the Middle East with the President and our stop is in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Unfortunately for you, I started my blog after my trip so you might not have heard that many stories! :) In March, I was in Cairo for almost two weeks. Today I'm in Sharm for 10 hours. I didn't make it down here on my vacation so now I can say I've seen even more parts of Egypt. One of my friends described it as the Myrtle Beach of Egypt but it's nicer than that. Maybe more like Hilton Head. The weather here is absolutely beautiful and almost makes up for the fact that I have been freezing for the past week! I won't get to actually see a lot of Sharm but we'll be sitting in the sun for a few hours while our flight crew takes time off before flying home.

So in my down time, I took a walk on the beach. It's beautiful here and what a perfect way to end the trip!! It reminds me a little like Greece (except I've never been there) with the villas on the cliffs. I went walking along the shore of the Red Sea with some colleagues. I did stick my feed in so I can cross that off my list of things to do in life! While we were strolling, we were looking for the plaque that says "Moses parted the Red Sea here" but we never saw it! It's a pretty big sea so this confirms that it was a God-size task!

There's plenty of food on the buffet but they didn't have any kosheri which was my favorite Egyptian food! So I asked for it and next thing you know, one of the chefs was calling his wife to find some and bring it to me! Now that's service!!

This trip has been a great experience- I've seen a ton of really cool, historic things and events. I can say I've been to six countries in the past week but I really can't say that I saw a ton. The whole work thing really got in the way! But I am grateful I got to tour in the Old City and that I saw the King's Palace and places like that. I know which countries I would want to come back and really see! But it would be a lie if I said that I wish I could stay on the road for longer. I am sooooo ready to go home and sleep in my own bed! This has been a good but LONG trip!!

By the way, my blog (well a revised version) from the other day in Riyadh made its way to one of my coworker/tripmate's blog. So check it out!!

Dinner at the King's Palace

And I’m not talking about a Chinese food buffet. Or dining with Elvis. This time I'm referring to the palace of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

For the second part of Monday, I went into travel pool in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We are staying at the Marriott in Riyadh and being at the hotel for just a few minutes showed me a lot. We were told that we didn’t have to cover our heads unless we went out to the market or random streets. But if we stayed on the hotel property and were with the US press delegation, we should be fine. Even so, let’s just say this country is not exactly equal in treatment of the genders and I could immediately sense a slight bit of insecurity in being a blonde here.

We loaded up in the vans and went through Saudi “security”. It’s a little intimidating because they all have machine guns hanging around their necks but the security itself does not make you feel secure. Our van driver nearly killed us as we wove through traffic and I can’t tell you how many almost-accidents almost occurred. I just had to close my eyes and not watch.

We got to the airport, in the royal terminal of the airport, and were ushered into a holding room for a couple of hours. At some point, I needed to go to the bathroom so I asked for an embassy escort. The Saudi folks (with guns) had no idea where the women’s bathroom was because they had had very few women in this part of the airport before. But finally I found a woman’s bathroom that obviously had not been used by many. Two of the stalls just had holes in the floor and the other stall did have a toilet but no sign of toilet paper. So I’m walking out of the stall and all of sudden a man with a machine gun (do you see a trend?) walks in and looks at me like I’ve invaded his space (his weapon wasn’t drawn but it was startling nonetheless!) He really doesn’t care that he’s just walked into the women’s bathroom! So I hightailed it out of there being thankful that I don’t experience that too often!

We went outside and waited for Air Force One to arrive and boy was it cold!! They say it hasn’t been this cold in thirty years or so and they had snow in their forecast for the first time that anyone could remember. I, of course, didn’t bring a coat on this trip. I was thinking that I was coming to the Middle East, the desert, etc. and it had to be warm here. Wrong! I packed one sweater and I’ve worn it every single day. It would be an understatement to say it was frigid out there on the tarmac! The President’s handlers decided it was too cold for the ceremony to take place outside so the President and King Abdullah quickly made their way inside to a very large room packed with Saudi men and incense. I was one of about ten women (all American in the press corps or with the WH) in the room. They did a formal receiving line and drank some tea or coffee and then headed for the limos.

This motorcade was the longest motorcade that I had ever seen… well over 100 cars. We were so far behind the President’s limo that we couldn’t even spot him and all we saw for miles ahead of us were taillights! At one point we picked up some Crown Prince’s motorcade and got even further back.

We headed to the King’s guest palace where there was an arrival ceremony that involved a ton of horses. We spent several hours waiting for the President as he had a little bit of down time. We sat in a lounge in one wing of one building of the Guest Palace and it was pretty nice. I guess I was expecting even more lavishness but we really didn’t see much of that building. There were a lot of rooms and a lot of chandeliers and fancy furniture. But it was kind of 70s looking and a tad tacky, if you ask me. When I have my palace, I’m not going to be quite so gaudy! J We were served dinner at the palace which was in one of the dining rooms. Unfortunately since I had been sick a couple of days ago, I was scared to eat a ton and I skipped dessert. But what I did have was really good!

After being at the guest palace, we moved to a different building and different room of the King’s Palace. We waited in a room that about 300 Saudi men had come out and we relaxed in there. Now there was a lot of marble and a ton of chandeliers but this room didn’t really scream ‘palace’ to me. We went to another building and that was where the President and King were and that was pretty lavish. Words don’t really describe how lavish but let’s just say that if I picked something up and broke it, our national debt would be even more astronomical. The King and the President came out to say hello and drink some coffee. The King gave Bush a huge necklace, named him some huge honor, and then they went off to have a private meeting. We went to sit in the vans for a couple of hours. Not one of the more glamorous points of the day. But there were other moments that had made up for it!

One more country to go! We head to Sharm el Sheikh tomorrow for the day and then we finally head home!!

I'm in Abu Dhabi!

Abu Dhabi has always been one of my favorite world cities to say! And now I'm actually here. For less than 24 hours. It's the fourth country on our tour. I wish I could say that I got to see a lot of it and that I did something really fun today. But it couldn't be farther from the truth. This morning when I woke up in Bahrain, I was on my way down to work and I got incredibly sick. And stayed sick (I won't pass too many details along but suffice it to say that it wasn't fun) for the next five or six hours. It's one thing to be sick at home but being on the road halfway around the world is completely different. Having to get on a bus and catch a flight and then get on another bus all while throwing up every 20 minutes or so is not my idea of a fun time. So when we actually got to the hotel in Abu Dhabi (which is not too shabby but nothing like the 3 billion dollar hotel that the travel pool gets to stay in), I summoned the WH staff to get in touch with a doctor. I was thinking they would get one of their own peeps to call me but instead a Emirati (sp?) doctor and nurse came directly to my hotel room. The doctor didn't speak much English but the nurse was pretty good (and her name was Becky of all names!) and before I knew it, the doctor was giving me two shots, even though I didn't know what the heck he was giving me. But after a long nap, I woke up and most of my suffering was over. I found some bread at the dinner to eat and I had taken ginger ale off the plane with me. So I'm definitely well on the road to recovery but I missed the President's speech at the Emirates Palace today. Oh well! Next time!!

Kuwait for 15 hours and Bahrain for 20!

In the past two days, I've been in three countries. We left Jerusalem and flew to Kuwait City for 15 hours. It was of course my first time in the country. I didn't see any of Kuwait other than what I could see from my hotel window. It looked all dusty outside! We stayed in a pretty nice place. In fact, it's a hotel that was burned by the Iraqis during the Kuwaiti invasion in 1990. So the thing that is worth noting in Kuwait is the food! I don't know what it's like anywhere else in the country but the food here rocks. When we got to the hotel workspace, they had a room for us to eat with candelabras and waiters with white gloves who wouldn't let you pour your own water. The sushi alone in this spread was incredible!! Who knew Kuwaitis were known for sushi?!?! But it was so good! There were several other stations with meat, salad, etc. but since I had already had one dinner for the day, I tried to pace myself! I didn't even know exactly what I was eating, but I made room for dessert which was soooooo good. The chocolate was imported from Paris and someone told me that every bite I took was about $5 worth. All of this was topped off with the best strawberry juice I've ever had! Yum! Yum!!

Now I'm in Bahrain which looks a lot like Kuwait except there's more water visible. I guess because it's an island! :) The part we saw from the airport to the hotel kind of reminds me of an Arab version of Myrtle Beach, just instead of swampy marshes, it's desert. I won't see any more of Bahrain either because I've been doing liveshots at the hotel. Bush did go to an arrival ceremony which included hoisting swords into the air. I'm recommending that we all re-enact it! Our hotel seems pretty nice but apparently it's a hike from the workspace to our rooms so I only want to make that trip once!! But I guess I could stand to walk that far a few times after the amount of food I had in Kuwait! Did I mention the chocolates? :)

Here's a couple of random thoughts about the past few days:
*I wouldn't mind covering my head because I'm not having the best hair days since we can't use our hairdryers on high power. And with only getting a few hours of sleep a night, I can't afford to spend 30 minutes drying my hair on low.
*I somehow have developed a reputation with the Secret Service as being "a trouble maker" (a joke of course!!) The funny thing is that I did nothing to deserve this title but one of the agents decided to randomly give me this title and said that he was specifically on "Becky duty". Now most of the agents not only know my name but know that I "create havoc" which is absolutely untrue!!

Down the Via Dolorosa

Well I didn't make it to Bethlehem but I did spend most of the day in Muqata, the Palestinian President's residence which is in the Palestinian territory, in Ramallah. We left Jerusalem in armored buses for the 45 minute drive through the mountains of Israel and the West Bank. It's actually only about 10 miles away as the crow flies but those curvy roads through the mountains made it a long ride through dense fog. Along the way, we passed through a checkpoint but made it through without any problems. It was amazing to see the difference once we hit the West Bank because there were definitely many more tanks and military vehicles along the way and there was more litter along the road. Oh and there was a huge cement wall with barbed wire fence at the top.

The buses we were riding in were armored in the sense that they had double paned, bullet-proof glass in the windows. (Thus when you eventually see my pictures, you'll understand why they didn't come out so great from the bus.) Also before we left, they were taping white tape over the logos and any Israeli symbols or signs on the bus because these were Israeli buses that normally transport settlers and they didn't want to have any hassles getting through the checkpoint. They took so many precautions that they took the normal drivers off the bus and had Arab-Israelis drive, even though they had never driven those particular buses, just so there wouldn't be any problems.

Once we got to Abbas's compound, we went straight into the press room where the press conference was to be. The first thing we noticed was that there was a picture of Arafat right above where the President was going to stand. (He couldn't have been happy to see that since he wasn't the biggest fan of Arafat and many say he stayed away from the peace process because he didn't want to deal with him.) Obviously the Palestinians set up the room! The presser was relatively uneventful- not much news except President Bush boldly said there would be a peace agreement by the time he left office. The most remarkable thing about this presser was the shear number of cameras and journalists in the room. It was so incredibly crowded! We also were able to see the bullet holes in the wall from where Arafat was holed up in this compound in 2002. Apparently we were very close to where Arafat was buried but we didn't see that. Maybe the next time I spend quality time in Ramallah!!

When we got back to Jerusalem, I had a little bit of down time so I took the opportunity to be a tourist for a short while. One of my cameramen, Khalil is Palestinian, born in Jerusalem so I enlisted his services as a tour guide. We went through the Jaffa Gate and walked through the Old City. It's a lot like the Khan el Kalili in Cairo that I went to last March when I was there on vacation with my friend Kristen. I asked him to take me to the Church of the Sepulchre because that is where they say Jesus died and was crucified. Well Khalil was gracious to lead me there and we walked around but being that Khalil is Muslim, he didn't really know all that we were looking at and some of it wasn't obvious. But he did the best he could. I felt like we hadn't seen everything because I was pretty sure that was where Jesus was crucified and we hadn't seen anything like that. So we randomly walked up some stairs and saw a group of tourists with an English speaking guide. So as I'm trying to figure out what we are looking at, I run into a friend of mine from my church in Alexandria!! What a small world! Anyway, I had my picture taken at the place where Jesus's cross supposedly was. (For the record, I absolutely 100% believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins but I do question how they know the exact location.)

After the Church, Khalil took me to the Arab part of the Old City in which he thought it would be a good idea to cover my head. I never knew that there was a difference between the Christian section and the Arab section but boy is there!! Almost immediately, there is trash every where and it's just dirty. Khalil was telling me the background to the difference and I learned a lot through his unique perspective. We also tried to get into the Holy Shrine (a.k.a. the Dome of the Rock) but somehow the Israeli guards didn't believe me that I was his Muslim wife. I just don't know what gave it away!!! The fact that you could definitely see my blonde hair from under my head scarf?? So the guard decided to let Khalil in and I could stay by the armed guards with machine guns. Thankfully, after the second attempt at getting in failed in the same way, we decided to move on. We walked down parts of the Via Dolorosa but there are some things that I didn't get to which will be put on the list to do the next time I'm here.

All in all, it was a very interesting day which is likely not to be repeated any time in the near future!! I'll work on putting a link to my pictures very soon!

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!

I'm officially in the Middle East and survived my first day of the trip. I have so much to write about!! I was in travel pool today so it was a very, very busy day. We started with a bus ride from Jerusalem to the airport near Tel Aviv. We drove the opposite route last night to Jerusalem but didn't see anything because it was dark. This morning's drive was beautiful along the hills and the roads! There was a fog in the valley along certain villages and it was truly beautiful!

We got to the airport a couple of hours before the plane landed so we watched all the Israelis get set up for the arrival ceremony. I was on the front row and had a fairly good view with the exception of a bunch of rabbis and priests standing in front of me. The whole experience was crazy! They shut down a terminal of the Ben-Guron airport and we went through security which included getting our hands swiped for traces of explosive materials. Don't worry! I was clean! My favorite part of the process was when the Israeli security guy asked very politely in broken English, "Ma'am do you please have weapons?" I said no and he just took my word for it!

Anyway, the ceremony was pretty cool and it was the start of a historic trip and all three leaders talked (Bush, Olmert and Peres). The coolest part was when it was done, we took helicopters from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I didn't really see anything specific but just flying over the small cities, villages, and farmlands was incredibly cool. It seemed to me that we had extra choppers in the air protecting us. Or least I'm going to think that to make myself feel safer. Anyway, we landed in a soccer field and motorcaded to the King David Hotel, where the President had a little down time. I ate hummus and felafel while he took a little nap or something.

Then we went to the President of Israel, Shimon Peres's house. When we got there, there will a bunch of kids waving Israeli flags and singing some song. (We were actually about 40 vehicles behind the Pres's limo so we missed the first song by the time we walked all the way to the building.) But we did make it inside in time to hear a 12 year-old girl serenading Bush with a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" alternating from Hebrew to English and the President just kind of chuckling at her. Then these other kids did this weird dancing and the whole thing was a bit cheesy if you ask me. The scene for the press area was a mob scene and I got pushed around by these very mean Israeli women. We waited there for a while and then we got in the motorcade to drive to the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert's house. We hung outside in a tent while they met (and I had some really good pastries) and then about two hours later, we were at the press conference of the two leaders. It was in this courtyard outside his house and it was cold! I can finally feel my feet again!

Finally when that was over, we motorcaded back to the King David and my travel pool day was officially over. It all went incredibly smoothly with only a few issues that were quickly resolved with a few questions. I was just glad to make it through with never feeling unsafe or completely stressed with work issues.

Here are a few random observations from my trip so far!

*There are a LOT of guns in Israel and EVERYONE carries them. At the airport, we saw a group of teenage girls and ALL of them were carrying machine guns. Every policeman or woman and then many, many random folks in street clothes were lining the streets all with their machine guns/uzis.

*The hummus here is really the best I've ever had anywhere in the world. I think so far I've eaten my weight in it.

*Jerusalem is a very, very hilly place. I now understand why it took Jesus forever to walk places. (Speaking of Jesus, I haven't had a chance to see any of the holy sights but maybe I will have a chance to at least check out the Old City on Friday at some point.) Last night, I went to dinner with my friend Aaron who is working for the WH for this trip. We walked about 15 minutes to a Jerusalem cafe which was really good food!!

Tomorrow I'm headed to Ramallah for the day which will be a very cool experience as well!! I'll attempt to blog about it when I get back! I'm also hoping to have some more pictures posted tomorrow!

Off to see the world!!

Happy New Year!! I've settled back into the work thing after only working five days in December! I spent my New Year's Day at the WH waiting for the Prez to come home. It was fairly uneventful. He got off the helicopter. He waved. He walked inside.

Since then, I've been at the bureau getting ready for a big trip to the Middle East. We leave tonight and I'm all packed and just waiting for a ride to Andrews. We'll spend tonight on the plane and then the next ten days in six different countries of the Middle East. We'll hit Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, among others. I'm really excited! I seriously doubt there will be any time for sightseeing but I am in travel pool in Jerusalem so I'm excited to be able to witness some historic moments up close and personal! It's going to be a ton of work (the total opposite of December for me!) and not much sleep. But I plan on trying to update my blog from there when time allows!

Oh, and I'm not on Air Force One for this trip. I'll be on the press charter which trust me, is a good deal. I survived flying internationally on commercial airlines so this will be a piece of cake. The charter is the way to go!!