A mere ten days until departure

Today I am preparing a lecture entitled "Walk Like an Egyptian" based on Egyptian artifacts I have seen around the world for a retirement community in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I have taught classes on Egyptian art and traveled to Egypt for a total of five times. The lecture is tomorrow night at 7:30 pm. I had been invited to give lectures there and thought that this would be a good beginning. When I return in the Spring of 2010, I am going to use my wine knowledge (from an intensive Foundation Wine course at the Philadelphia Wine School, www.vinology.com ) which I completed on Friday. I wanted to create a class on Art, Food, Wine and Film and thought that the senior citizens would be my willing guinea pigs for a very short version of the class complete with real wine tasting. I can't do that in my state of Pennsylvania.

Although I only guessed two of of the four wines on the blind tasting, if I "kick butt" on the written online exam, I can look forward to passing. Actually, that old saying of don't change your first answer is pretty much right on. I had thought at first the wine #1 was a Sauvignon Blanc but the grapefruit didn't hit me as hard as I thought it should. I over thought it and chose Riesling. The other one wine #4 was a Cabernet Sauvignon, which I initially thought it was but I decided the herbiness of it and the bitterness on the back of my tongue made it a Sangiovese. Dumb me. I have to pass the online exam for the Intermediate Global wine studies exam. Holy merde.

In only ten days, I depart via United Airlines/Lufthansa for Cairo spending the next 4.5 months researching women's artistic heritage in over 40 women's organizations and NGOs. I have already done some preliminary work in Cairo last summer with seven workshops. My apartment is in Zamalek and in the same apartment building as a Fulbright couple with triplets who I met at the Orientation meeting in Washington, D.C.

I need to get back to lecture prep but wanted to start this blog. More later.