FAQ

I always come up with an excuse not to go away on vacation, and it was recently that I started to travel again. It's always been a place I wanted to visit ever since I can remember, and the opportunity was there when my good friend Lorra started working there. She had been there for almost two years, and I still hadn't taken her up on her offer to visit. I guess it was New Years Eve 2000, when I made the decision to finally do it.

It started out with conversations to some friends, and I thought it would be a good idea to send them e-mails from the trip. (Too cheap to buy postcards...lol). I then ran into a site called geocities, and thought it would be less intrusive if I created a website that people could check out at their leisure. When I got to Cairo, I found that the internet stations were too slow to update the pages without it costing me a fortune in internet charges (actually the hourly rates were pretty cheap), so I went back to plan A, which was to e-mail everybody. The website was already half created, so I decided to keep it up as my home page, and update it every once in a while, when I got back. Still procrastinating on updating the pictures. (pictures updated 8/2001)

I don't know. I'd like to travel to Africa again, but perhaps another continent could benefit from the Gersh experience. Perhaps I won't visit a landmass, but go on a cruise and play shuffleboard and eat, and gain back the weight I lost on this trip. Perhaps an all inclusive resort, but I've been there and done that...not much to write home about.

I really enjoyed the wandering around on this trip and experiencing the streets, local transport and not being stuck on a tourist bus. I think the next trip will have to be of the same type, cuz I think I would be bored otherwise. Not to say that I won't take a week off to do totally nothing on some Caribbean island, but I'd rather do this type of trip. You know, the whole backpacking type adventure thing, but still staying in nice hotels.

I've always thought about going on a trip alone. The freedom of being able to do anything without getting a consensus from the group appealed to me. Not that I don't enjoy doing things in groups, but it was just something different. In fact, a few people had asked if they could tag along, and I refused. In retrospect, it was probably a great decision, because I don't think that I would have met the people that I did. Some days I just wandered around not knowing what I was going to do, and ended up having an incredible day, meeting interesting people, and also, okay corny part here, finding out about myself. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like me." (with apologies to Stuart Smalley)