Hey guys Im a little late to the party but figured i would chime in on this since I think its a pretty awesome topic and a pretty awesome community here at Piratecraft.

I was born in Dalton Georgia USA a small city close to the beginning of the Appalachian trail. We moved to the middle of nowhere Florida for a few years then back to a small farming town about 30 mins drive from Dalton where i was born. So Im a country boy at heart and love wide open spaces and the beauty of nature.

Then after the unfortunate event of my parents splitting up I found my self living just out side of Atlanta, Georgia’s capitol city, with my mom. There are quite big domestic cultural differences just in moving from rural to suburb as well as the exposure to a big international city such as Atlanta.

My father was (from before my birth) and still is a pastor of a baptist church and he traveled to many places in South America and Africa. Some were remote villages and some were bigger cities and as far back as I can remember there was always a slide show (slide shows were pictures put in front of a projector. Kinda irl powerpoint.) that chronicled his travels. I was amazed by all the different, and to me at the time strange, people that I saw in those slides.

One group of people were the Maasai tribe in Kenya. They were a very colorful and tall people who were warriors that still lived as their ancestors had and it blew my mind as a 7 year old. In talking with him about how these different people lived, what they ate, how they interacted with one another I found myself such adventures of my own.  Though that would not be until after i was in my 30’s

Fast forward to 2005 and i found my self on a team that was heading to Nepal to deliver medical aid and training to remote villages in the Himalayas. We made this trip to Nepal 3 times each time spending a month bringing supplies from Kathmandu to the villages in the Lang Tang region. The Nepali’s are a wonderful and kind people. Every where you went someone would invite you for milk tea and conversation. I made some deep friendships there and learned a lot about Hindi and Buddhist culture that were woven throughout the Nepali people.

During those trips we also would visit our friends in India for a couple of weeks who helped out with several orphanages. We would help out in anyway we could. India is a vibrant, busy, and crowded place and even though like Nepal it is a Hindi nation it was expressed in a very distinctly Indian way culturally.

Through those years of getting to experience so many different cultures, some very intimately like Nepal, India and Mexico, and some just in a more touristy manner like Thailand, Paris, Hong Kong, and The British Virgin Islands, completely change my narrow and self focused worldview I had as an American.

Now I live in Alexandria Egypt with my wife and two kids. We have lived here for the last 5 years and consider this our home now. The Egyptian culture is quite diverse here in Alexandria since it is the second largest city in Egypt. So you have some very traditional type cultural things like children live with their parents until they get married, both boys and girls. Or the eating of a traditional fish meal called feseek at the start of spring holiday Shams el Nissem. I have not been brave enough to try that yet. Its basically spoiled fish thats salted and it smells horrid. And some more resent cultural developments like Shaabi music that was born from the streets kind of a mix between traditional Arab, house, and pop.

The people here are really nice and love to eat, drink tea, and chat about you most personal things haha. There are like in every place on earth people that believe the media and hate you just because of where your from but thankfully they are the minority despite our politicians pissing everyone off with their foreign policy. But we wont go there 🙂

Other that English I speak some Spanish from 20 years in the construction business as a lot of crews I hired were from Spanish speaking countries. Mostly food and bad words are all I remember.

I am also learning Egyptian Arabic which is called Amaya. I’m not quite fully conversational yet but can do pretty much any task i need to without assistance and hold very basic conversation. To learn and understand the language fully you need to understand the cultural aspect which is a much deeper and lengthy process.

As far as food goes I’ll eat pretty much anything. I love all good food. In my travels Ive eaten every part of the goat literally. Eye, brains, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, testicles, either fried boiled and grilled. Some on purpose and some out of respect for the person serving it. Brains are actually good breaded and fried on a sandwich as well as liver if its done right. Ive been feed donkey meat, yak meat and milk, water buffalo, and some things that were just a mystery.

The yak milk was straight from the teat to my cup and had some hair in it. It was horrible.

My favorite Nepali dish was momo’s which are a steamed meat dumpling. I dont recall the names of the Indian dishes but they were mostly all good. All Mexican food, most Chinese food, fast food well like I said all food pretty much fits into my favorite category. 🙂

My kids tell me they cant remember what i told them because I talk to much so i’ll stop here.

This community is remarkable and full of remarkable folks. I love it.

Blu