We drove past a Cypriot monastery today on tope of a mountain and learned a great story about a monk who lives there. His name is Kalinikos and he’s the most famous icon painter in Cyprus. Apparently he has had exhibits all over Europe and the Near East. When the monastery decided to hire Romanian painters to help paint icons, Kalinikos get very angry that they were quickly painting a head every day while he spent a week on one and he yelled to the whole monastery, “God damn it, I am Kalinikos. This is not good work!”
On our way to the Larnaca airport, we stopped at a mosque that is apparently very important in the Muslim world. It is the fourth most important mosque behind Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem and it is where Muhammad’s aunt is buried. The speaker of the house of Syria was coincidentally there at the same time. His men picked us out as Americans because they thought Toumazou’s hat was a cowboy hat (which was the second time that had happened). Toumazou is of course the only non- American in the group; he’s actually a Cypriot. Everyone except his bodyguard thought it was very funny that they were with a bunch of American students and they asked to take the speaker’s picture with all of us. He also asked us to give his regards to his American colleagues.
We just arrived in Egypt after quite the airport experience. We flew from Larnaca and connected through Cairo to Luxor. Cairo customs proved to be very interesting and quite the introduction to Arabic. When I went through the metal detector it beeped. I was ready to go back through when the three airport officials started yelling at each other and apparently forgot about me. I stood for a few minutes waiting and then tried to blend into the crowd of American tourists.
Our hotel is very nice. We’ve been told it’s the best in Luxor. To get in we went through a guard station, over a moat and then individually through metal detectors.
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