"Self Study" by Natalie Nazanin Abbassi

It is a blog post about Natalie's two different worlds: being an American and being an Iranian. She demonstrates the difference through photos that she takes of herself in different situations. It shows how the same person reacts in two different ways according to the culture that surrounds her/him at that point in time.

It is really a nice work and it also relates to me and reflects some aspects of my life, having also two totally different backgrounds and cultures: Canadian and Egyptian.

Blog post: Self Study by Natalie Nazanin Abbassi

Egyptian Protests 2011

The events currently happening in Egypt have been anticipated for so long. This would eventually happen with all the suffering the people have been living. Follow #Jan25 and #25Jan on Twitter and also Live Steams from Al Jazeera. Also check 2011 Egyptian protests on Wikipedia and Lots of pictures. More pictures, this last link has nicer pictures (last link added on 30th of January 2011).

Egypt.. what is going on.. what is wrong...

After the two violent incidents (first incident, second incident Bikyamasr, Aljazeera and BBC) that happened in Egypt since the beginning of this 2011 year, so in only 12 days, I have decided to put the above title as my status on Facebook and as a Google buzz on my gmail account to see what is the opinion of my friends. For the people having a Facebook account, here is the link to the status with the comments. I have got less comments on the buzz, but here is the link as well. How about you? Please comment by leaving your opinion about what is happening in Egypt. Would love to know about all the different perspectives. 

My sister arrived to Germany!

Saturday, the 7th of August 2010, my sister, Youstina, arrived to Germany! As her plane was landing in Munich, Andrew and I went to pick her up there. Unfortunately, her plane was arriving so early in the morning, that Andrew and I had to begin traveling from Stuttgart the day before so we can be at the airport in time. This trip took around 9 hours, even longer than her trip to come from Cairo to Munich! Wasn't so pleasant.. :D Also after all this trouble, we arrived to her 1 hour after she was already out of the terminal gate! But she said she didn't get bored.. :P

So we were so happy to see each other, and she was so excited about her trip! We then stayed for that day in Munich to visit a bit around. We first left her luggage in the Hbf station and went to Marienplatz. There we got to see the famous Rathaus, walk through the nice streets of Munich's down town, passed by HB, rubbed the lion's nose as the tradition says that you would come again if you do and visited Theatinerkirche. We then took a big walk into the Englischer Garten where we saw some people surfing in a narrow river passing inside the garden! This was amazing to watch! We were by then very hungry, so we went back to HB where we had a nice beer and we ate some Bavarian dishes. After eating and drinking, comes the sleeping effect! We really couldn't do anything anymore and we were very tired. So we walked back to Marienplatz were we saw the famous clock of the Rathaus ringing and rotating showing this cavaliers story. We then went back to Hbf where we picked up her luggage and headed back to Stuttgart.

So it was a nice day after all, even though we were really tired by the end of it!

Egyptian Stall in Pfaffenhof Sommerfest

Every dormitories on Universitaet Stuttgart campus have a Sommerfest in the beginning of the summer. In each of these, students can rent a stall place and offer whatever they like. Our Pfaffenhof Sommerfest was on the 15th of June. Andrew, Garamoun and myself decided to try renting a stall for this fest and see how it turns out. It was a spontaneous decision as we just decided the night before the fest! As we three are Egyptians from origin, we came out with the idea of offering some Egyptian sweets called "Zalabiya" or "Zalabia" or another name is "Lo'met El Ady" or also written "Lo2met Ady" and some fries. I hope that everyone, that tried and tasted our Egyptian sweets, enjoyed it! :)

Cairo here I come!

After 1 year and 3.5 months of not visiting Egypt, I decided it was time to go see my family in Cairo. I hope it turns out to be a nice vacation. I am looking forward to it!