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We're in Dubai now, enjoying the last stage of our amazing trip.

We've had problems with this blog all along, unfortunately, partly due to lack of time to keep it updated, but also it has been quite unwieldy, requiring a lot of effort to upload pictures for example.

Therefore, at this late stage, we've created a Facebook group which you're all welcome to join. The group is likely to live on for quite some time as we go home to upload pictures, sort through our experiences and so on.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118784288140481#!/group.php?gid=118784288140481

Welcome to continue sharing with us!

The District Conference is over

The 74th District Conference in Bahrain is now over. We held our presentation at 11 o'clock and it was both well attended and seemed appreciated. This time we wanted to do something more than just talk about ourselves and Sweden, so we also talked about how our trip has affected us, both professionally and personally. The District Governor, Mr Nijad Al-Atassi - a very nice man! - also seemed pleased with his gift of a chair from Kinnarps.

Apart from that, I think the conference highlight was the announcement of the inclusion of Palestine in District 2450, with its first club in Ramallah. When the flag was carried in people jumped to their feet to applaud and cheer!

A glance in the back mirror...

Going through the captures in my camera I found a couple of things that I would like to mention. I will start with this nice picture from the Arab Academy of Science & Technology in Alexandria the 15th of April. We were lucky to get to visit the academy on the day of their yearly parade as you can see on the picture.

17-18 April, Northern Lebanon
I also found some nice pictures from our first two days in Lebanon when Habib Saba took us for a road trip in the northern parts. In Tripoli we got to meet a group of Rotaracts guiding us through the traditional Khans (market places) where we also learned how soap is manufactured out of olive oil and caustic soda.

The evening was spent in Ehden where we were invited for a 25th Rotary club anniversary. An evening filled with live music and lots of food. The Arabic rhythms even tempted some stiff Scandinavians to start moving for a while.

After a good night’s sleep in the fresh mountain air we took off for a ride over the mountains. Stopping by a peaceful cedar tree forest and passing thorough 2-3 m snow walls on each side of the road we came out on the other side of the mountain viewing the Bekaa Valley. This road trip is one of my best memories of Lebanon and I believe I can speak for the four of us saying that we fell in love with Lebanon this day! After more beautiful view and some insect bites (!) the road finally took us to Baalbeck with some of the best preserved Roman temples in the world.

Now we're going of for a lunch meeting with RC Amman and a visit to the Amman Citadel in the afternoon. Hope to be back here soon again!

Bye bye Lebanon.....gonna miss you...and Hello Jordan.

As you have guessed this trip is very busy and we have a hard time keeping our blogg up to date, but today we have our first free morning.....so now I'm gonna try to tell you in short about our last day in Lebanon and our first day in Jordan.

22nd April....our last day in Lebanon. Our day started with sad farwells to our great host families Mr and Mrs Baalbakki and Mr and Mrs Gebran.

Me and Krisitn who lived with the Balbakis, in Baabdat up in the beautiful hills over Beirut, got a great tour of their garden and got to see all their flowers and animals....including their cock who had pleasently woken us up every morning for the last 5 days.

We then got a great tour of Solidiere, down town Beirut. We got the opportunity to explore the new marina, the new souks (traditional market place) and the magnificent restoredand rebuiled down town area of Beirut.

After a great lunch at the Military beach club hosted by RC Beirut Center, we got transfered to the airport by our lovely friend Kamal Katra, president of RC Metn. At the airport we also got to say our sad good byes to BSE coordinator Habib Saba before flying of for new adventures ín Jordan.

But we wont forget Lebanon that easy.....the culture, the people the landscape and the food is always gonna stay as pleasent memories in our minds. Thank you all for giving us 5 beautiful days in your amazing country.....we will soon be back for sure!

After a 45 min flight we arrived to Amman, Jordan, were we got picked up by the GSE coordinators. After transfer to our host families we spent the evning having dinner with the outgoing GSE team that's gonna go to Germany. We had a great evening and tried some excellent Jordanien food.

23rd April, Friday

This day will stay in our mind for a very long time.......we got to experience weightlessness by floating around in the beautiful Dead sea. An amazing feeling that I wish that everyone could try sometime.

Before our beach afternoon by the dead sea we also got the opportunity to visit Mababa, Mount Nibo (were Moses saw the promissed land) and Jesus Baptism Site.

After we washed of the healing mud in the dead sea and relaxed for a bit in the sun we continued up in the moutines to the Panorama restaurant for a sunset dinner over looking the Dead sea. I don't think I have ever seen a more beutiful sun set. So to sum it up, our visit to Jordan could not have begun in a better way.

.....just some minor info about y thoughts about Jordan..... I didn't know much at all about Jordan before...but guess if this country has surprised me. Amman is so beutiful with all its wite houses on the seven hills.....the climate is perfect, like a wonderful swedish summer, cold mornings warm days and chilly nights. The people we met are great and the food is awsome. The views and sceneries of the country is so wonderful even thogh I(Hanna) just got to see half of it. This because I been half blind the last three days due to an eye infection....but no worries I'm already better thanks to the great people both here in Jordan and in Lebanon that helped me deal with it.....thank you all.

Now it's time to continue mý free morning by catching up with the world....read some news for the first time in 1 week while running some km on the treadmill.

See you soon!

Apology

I'm sure many of you are wondering if we're atill here? We are, but the schedule makes it very difficult to keep our blog up to date. Typically we'll get up around seven and not get back to our host families until after midnight. It's not a complaint, because the progaram is excellent though tight. We haven't said a word abou Lebanon yet, but it was fantastic, and we're now halfway through our stay in Jordan, We'll catch up as soon as we can.

For now, I'll just share a picture from a magical evening listening to Edith Piaf, Nils Ferlin and some Spanish ballads on a balcony in Beirut...

Alexandria - good bye...

Have you missed us? I wrote this sitting in a minibus travelling from Alexandria to Cairo Airport to go to on to Beirut after four intense but wonderful days. Alex, as we've come to call it, is different. The traffic is awful, but not half as bad as in Cairo. The surroundings are a little more green and the waterfront has a lot of colonial-style buildings looking out on the bay. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is an amazing piece of architecture that seems to gleam at you from everywhere. We have had a tour of it, and also visited the very recently renovated jewellery museum which contains lots of fantastic pieces owned by the queens, princesses and kings of the royal family in Egypt. We all wonder if it's possible to ever go into an ordinary jewellery store again.

We met the Governor of Alexandria who governs a city with a population close to that of the whole of Sweden! He gave us some lovely gifts and we also learned abot the mega-project that the Rotary clubs of Alexandria are entering into together with the city - an upgrading of the living conditions for an entire town, with schools, hospitals and other services planned.

Professionally we all had excellent vocational visits. I was hosted by Dr Maged Bedwany, a psychiatrist, at a small charity hospital as well as a rehabilitation center for addicts. Both are showing excellent results and we had such a lot to talk about that we could have gone on for days!

Between this, Rotary Club meetings, boat and beach outings and tours of factories - among them a chocolate factory, Swiza, mmm! - what did we learn? Quite a few things, actually. We learned to be happy to find toilet paper in public toilets. Also that the stomach is a weak thing at times and that it's a joy to recover. We've discovered that we laughed a lot when we're tired but relaxed. Oh, and the honking system - I've learned the code! It's like this, every car honks a lot in Egypt. In Sweden, a honk generally means either that there's danger or an irritable "get out of my way". Here, one quick honk just means "I'm here", in case the others don't see you, and as the lanes are there just for decorative purposes, that's a good thing. A long honk means "I'M HERE, CAN'T YOU SEE?". Two quick taps mean "hello" or "thank you". A long syncopated series of taps, e.g. short short long short is swearing. So don't do that unless you're really annoyed. So there you are, now you can come and drive in Egypt! Oh, but you also have to pretend you're in a video game, drive fast, overtake on either side and go for any gaps that you think you could get through with your rear mirrors intact. Maybe.

Above all, we learned that you can make friends for life in just four days and that saying goodbye isn't easy. Thanks to all our hosts and to Ahmed, Ayman, Shahira, Abdelaziz and all the other kind Rotarians we met!

Pyramides, horseback riding and more

Another two days has passed in wonderful Cairo and it is a little sad to day that this was our last day hosted by Rotary Club Nasr City. Yesterday was busy! All day guided by ex rotaractor Dina Shehab we started off with a visit in the beautiful Mohammed Ali Mosque and visited the Egyptian Antiques Museum. After a good lunch at a local restaurant we continued to the pyramids in Giza. Wow! It is impossible to imagine how big they really are. After a tour on a camelback (!) we got to enter the Chefren pyramid. We were all a bit nervous to climb up and down the narrow tracks and the air inside was warm, humid and contained very little oxygen. Back in the bus Dina translated the meaning of our names based on the hieroglyph signs. In the Papyrus Institute we got a demonstration of the production of papyrus. The day ended up in a Bazaar where we got to try Shisha (water-pipe) and do some shopping.
Today we had our first vocational visits within our respective working fields. After interesting meetings and some adventures in the busy Cairo traffic (well done Yasmeen!) we prepared sushi instructed by my host Tarek Michel and it was delicious! The day ended up in the Pyramid area where Tarek took us for horseback riding in the desert. I will quote Elisabeths facebook status “can easily imagine a life that involves riding by the pyramids on Sunday afternoons... Thanks to Tarek Michel for this wonderful experience!”.



The bags are now packed and we are looking forward to continue our trip to Alexandria where we are heading early tomorrow morning. We would like to thank all Rotarians and Rotaracts in Nasr City that has taken such good care of us and made these five days a memory for life!
Shoukran!

Salamu Aleykum

Another fantastic day in Kairo is getting to an end. Wearing our newly purchased Galabeyas (traditional Egyptian clothing,) we took off to the farmhouse of Rotarian Fadwa El Semman in Berkash. Members from Nasr City Rotary club, Rotaract, Innerwheel, Interact and host families were invited for an Easter Spring Galabeya Bedouin BBQ party.





The day has been filled with typical Egytian food, wonderful meetings, live music, dancing and altogether a nice and, to us, exotic atmosphere. After breakfast we got to see how the meet (to be eaten later) was hung over the glow and then buried in the ground for two hours. I will not even try to describe the taste of that meet but at least we can tell it was delicious! We were served an impressive variety of salads, sauces, rice and noodle dishes etc ending up with baklawas for desert. Yummie!



The day is getting to and end and here in Maadi, where I am hosted by Rotarian Tarek Michel, we have just enjoyed molokhia for dinner. Hopefully I remember how to cook it!

Tomorrow we will see the Pyramids In Sha’Alla!

Second day in Egypt and its just getting better and better. This trip is amazing.

We started our day by going to the Culturama Panorama in the "Smart Village" (like a science park) in the city "6th of October" to learn about the Egypt history and heritage. At the Culturama we got a great tour of their amazing databases, they covered everything from architecture, music, flora and fauna etc, we watched a tour through the Egyptien history in a panorama cimena (with 9 screens) and looked at beautiful historical pictures in 3D.

We continued our morning by going to the "Hope Village of Psycological & Social Rehabilitation Center for young street mothers" and meet and interacted with the mothers and their children. This experiance really got us thinking of how unfair life can be, but also how wonderful people can be at helping each other out. This visit will always stay deep in our hearts. After being served a fantastic lunch at the centre, with a lot of egyptian specialities and desserts, we continued our day by heading for the Nile.

When we arrived at the Nile a Felluca (an Egyptian sailbot) was waiting for us and it took us for an amazing sail on the Nile. During the sail we enjoyed the company of some Rotaractors and the Rotarians Fadwa El Semman anf Tarek Michel. We sang songs, both arabic and swedish and we enjoyed some typical egytian snacks.

After that we threw ourselfs out into the crazy Cairo traffic, in the hunt for the perfect Galabeya (an Egyptian traditional dress) for tomorrow´s Galabeya Bedouin BBQ party. After finally managing to find a spot to stop in the crowded street, (never seen so many cars and people trying to get somewhere at the same time) we jumped out and found our way into a crowded market were we all found beautiful Galabeyas.

Now we, Evelina and Hanna, just finished another lovely dinner here at our host Manal Amins residence and we are soon ready to relax and prepare for the big Happening tomorrow at Fadwa El Semmans farmhouse.

Good Night and In Sha'Alla

Tebah alla-kheir! (Good Night)

We stared our trip early this morning from Landvetter Airport in Gothenburg, Sweden. We arrived to Landvetter the night before and stayed until today at the Landvetter Airport hotel. Our alarm clocks woke us up at 4.30 am this morning after 4 hours of sleep. After a pleasent flight we arrived at Cairo airport where we were received with flowers by the wonderful Rotarian Fadwa El Semman. The welcome we got was more than we could ever expect, and if we were a bit tired before the people receiving us gave us new energy.



From the airport we went straight to the Le Meridien Heliopolis Hotel for our first Rotary meeting and presentation. During the evening we made our presentations about ourselves, our district and Sweden. We enjoyed local soft drinks (made from Hibiscus flower) , "High tea" (a mix of local wonderful dishes) and met the Rotarians, the Rotaractors and members of the Innerweel from the Rotary club Nasr City.



A very long and interesting day has come to an end. Here we are, Hanna and Evelina, well installed in the lovely house of Manal Amin. We just enjoyed a tasteful dinner, together with Manal and her daughter Maii, who´s leaving for Mekka tomorrow. We wish her all the best and a pleasant journey!

We are so happy to be here, the welcoming was great and we look forward to wake up to new adventures tomorrow!


Insha'Allah!

Last night at home

The suitcase lies open at my feet, stuffed with all sorts of clothing. There are still things to pack, but I'll wait until my little girl is asleep - right now she's quite unhappy that Mother's going away for a month. I've tried to teach her to use MSN, and hope I'll get the chance to talk to her across the miles.

Tomorrow night we'll be at the airport hotel, since the plane leaves so early we would have had to travel at night to get there otherwise. We'll do another rehearsal of our presentation to see what else we need to cut out. Our rehearsal on the 27th was an eye-opener - we had to cut the thing by about two thirds! Well, we knew it was too long, we just didn't quite realise by how much. That's what happens when four ambitious ladies get together to do something, I suppose. The Rotary Club of Nasr City I hope will be kind to us, hosting our first presentation on the night of our arrival - that's on Wednesday!

It will be great to finally meet all these people who have spent so much time planning for our visit. We're on our way!

Marhaba – hello!

Time is passing very quickly and we look forward to start our trip in less than four weeks time now! Last weekend was devoted to intensive planning and preparations. We finished a fist disposal of our Sweden presentation and even started a packing list. A squeeze breeze has the first position on the list so far. I am not even sure about its exact functionality but it should be some kind of water fan. Considering that we just woke up from the longest winter rest in decades we might need it when coming to warmer parts of the world.

Egypt was the fourth country to get a closer presentation, which was made by Elisabeth. We all knew that the Nile is a long river…but THAT long, about 3 times the length of Sweden! Having a glance at each country is a real appetizer.

Tomorrow Hanna and I are invited for lunch with Rotary Jönköping Öster local club and we will have the opportunity to present the team, the interesting trip we have ahead of us and how to follow the blog. Welcome back!

The rough schedule

This is the schedule of which countries we will be visiting, copied straight from an e-mail from GSE Chair Dr Ahmed Saada for District 2450:

"The details of your team's visit to countries in D-2450 are:

Egypt 07 April - 16 April, 2010

Lebanon 16 April - 22 April, 2010

Jordan 22 April - 28 April, 2010

Bahrain 28 April - 04 May, 2010

UAE (Dubai) 04 May - 09 May, 2010

Our district conference will take place in Bahrain from April 28 to May 02, 2010."

Who wouldn't love to go on a trip like that?

Paperwork done!

The team met in Skövde on Saturday the 23rd and had a very efficient day. GSE Coordinator for our District, Conny Johansson, joined us for the morning session. That meant we could air plenty of questions that we had about badges, broschures, printing, contacts and many other things. We also filled in the Travel Request Form, went through insurance papers, answers from embassies about visas, and compared notes on vaccinations. This last was interesting - which vaccinations were recommended varied a bit depending on where we asked.

We had another visitor in the afternoon, after another attempt by Mr Hanna to teach us polite introductory phrases in Arabic. Dr Mats Bäckman came, having kindly agreed to give us medical examinations free of charge. Dr Bäckman is an experienced G.P. who may well become more involved in the Rotary community in the future. He also discussed the vaccination issue with us, and promised to look into it a little more deeply. Having examined the three of us that didn't already have signed medical certificates, we all had our paperwork done. Two weeks ahead of schedule, no less, so there will be no last minute pressure with that!

This means we can now devote ourselves to all the other things that we want to have well prepared before we leave: clothes, presentations, brochures and some gifts.

As we are going to five different countries, we have also decided that each team member prepares a short basic introduction to one of the countries for presentation at our meetings. Björn presented some facts on Lebanon last time we met, and this week Kristin told us a little about Bahrain. This really whets our appetite and makes us very eager to see and learn more!

- 10 degrees and learning Arabic

We are leaving in 10 weeks and the preparations are ongoing, with increasing focus. Right now Mr Hanna is trying to teach us basics of Arabic, he has a tough job:)

Back to class!

/Björn

Welcome to our blog!

As Team Leader of the Swedish GSE team from District 2380, I feel I should start this blog off. First, let me say how honoured and thankful I am to have been chosen to lead this team to such an exciting and interesting part of the world! Secondly, I must say how proud I am to have such excellent team members, and how glad I am that we seem to work so well together! We also like each other as individuals, and that’s what I feel will take us through any rocky patches we may have in the time ahead.

We decided to write this blog entirely in English. Even though its primary purpose is to report our doings to our district and to keep in touch with friends, family, sponsoring clubs and employers, we found early in our preparation that reading others’ blogs was very informative. Using a language that is more widespread than Swedish, we hope will mean that more will find our experiences interesting and perhaps helpful.

So why start this blog so early? We haven’t left yet. We have nothing exciting to tell you about, no warm desert breezes, no interesting people and no buildings and monuments to show pictures of. The reason is that we found ourselves looking for information that we couldn’t find. How should we prepare ourselves? What clothes do we need, how many pamphlets should we print? Here, for all other teams struggling with those questions, is our story to be published: our questions, our mistakes, our (hopefully) brilliant ideas.

Our preparations started last year. We met twice after the formation of the team: one evening for the first meeting, and one whole weekend to get to know each other, to make plans and to participate in an introduction to Rotary, where our governor Mrs Edzia Koch, paid special attention to our team and gave us valuable insights.

We discovered that first weekend that the team members all have different talents that made the distribution of tasks easy. As Team Leader I find I mainly sit back and see the work get done around me, which isn’t at all unpleasant!

Since we entered the new year, we have decided on a schedule of meeting roughly every second Saturday a whole day, and one whole weekend in early March. We have planning list of tasks and deadlines. We have also decided to take a short course of elementary introduction to Arabic, some of the culture and some basic knowledge of the region. Our tutor is from Syria, Mr Emad Hanna. How well he succeeds in teaching us force our throats and tongues around the words that sound so strange to us we will see… (Mr Hanna is in the picture on the right.)

So here we are! Wish us luck in being able to represent our district well! We are sure we will all have the experience of a lifetime!