campaign dreams and another fast food nation.

Another autumnal greeting to you, my gentle readers.
This morning found me bundled in fleece pants and zip-up hoodie, drinking hibiscus tea and eating oatmeal on my balcony under a pleasantly overcast sky. Distressingly reminiscent of Seattle, I found myself channeling the gloomy gem of the northwest with an ample dose of nostalgia.
(Nostalgia that has been fueled, in part, by recent calls and emails with friends back home. A grateful shout out to all of you, my dear friends—and also to the parents of my friends who I've discovered have also taken to reading the blog. Here's to you, Mrs. Castle).

Then, in my nostalgic haze and with a weak spot for commemorating milestones, I found myself thinking back to what I was doing this time last year, at the end of October 2007. Then I remembered: going on a match.com date with Apollo the Ugandan refugee navy engineer, and convincing Marla to let me dress her up as Leila Khalidi, the first female hijacker, for Halloween. It looks like I'm in a better place after all.

In other news, the fall weather is also bringing an end to the historic 2008 Presidential campaign season. As the unofficial American campaign correspondent at work, I've ironically found myself following the election even more closely than I would have if I were in the states. At least, I hope I wouldn't be reading campaign articles 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, if I were back in the States, or I'd be undergoing diagnosis for an obsessive-compulsive tick.

But so much campaign coverage has started to affect my dreams. Example. Last week, I had a dream that John McCain and I were riding in a space-shuttle-for-tourists gig. I actually had the sensation of floating in space and looking at the moon, which was neat. Then I was grateful that in my dream, I wasn't nearly as claustrophobic as I am in real life—a surprisingly lucid moment while moon-gazing with John McCain.

When we came back to earth, a meeting had been arranged for me to sit down for a few minutes with Sarah Palin (I'm apparently moonlighting for the Obama campaign in my sleep). As two pantsuited women with sharp and saucy wit, we sat down for a few folksy, winky minutes of thinly veiled sparring, emerging for a quick photo-op and a return to our respective camps.

Last night I dreamt that I was with Obama—not for the current election, but for his election to President of the Harvard Review. He was nervous and fumbling with the microphone cords. I flashed him a thumbs up and helped him untangle the cords as he went on to address the school auditorium-ish crowd (and onto presidential candidate-glory, it goes without saying).

Right. So either I have some weird megalomaniac streak in my dreams, or I've bonded a little bit too much with the eloquent hope-monger. Or maybe it's just a sign that it's nigh about time for this election to come to an end. Perhaps all three.

Now, in all fairness, the strange dreams could have been induced not so much by the strange working of my brain, but by the unfortunate churnings of my stomach. Yesterday I was defeated once again by yet another insistent Egyptian mother.

Now, I've already documented the dangers of this particular character within Egyptian society—the women who will shove you out of the way on the metro car, marry you off to their sons, and force feed you fried gristle to fatten you up for said son—all while balancing a rack of pita bread on their head. They are a formidable adversary.

I spent last evening at the house of my lovely and sharp-tongued Egyptian friend Sally. I arrived at her house around 6:30 or so. Knowing that 6:30 doesn't equal "dinnertime" on the Egyptian food schedule, I had made sure to eat a small snack before I arrived [Egyptians eat breakfast at 11, lunch at 4, dinner at 9pm]. Around 7:30, they brought in a snack: roasted sweet potatoes, a favorite of mine and the sole source of nutrients in my diet at this point.
They didn't bring me one sweet potato, of course. They brought me three.

Happily, they seemed content when I ate one and a half—"Alissa," I counseled myself. "Remember the fish-induced misery from two days ago. Don't be swayed by their protests of hospitality. Be reasonable." One and a half sweet potatoes as a snack is, in the context of Egyptian portions, perfectly reasonable. So far so good.
By 9pm, there was no sign of food. "Whew," I thought, prematurely. "Perhaps I made it through unscathed."

Around 9:30, Sally's mother barged into the bedroom carrying a plate almost comically piled with a large pyramid of hamburgers. For the two of us, the platter was artistically arranged with a mound of no less than eight, full-sized burgers. With a plate of fries.
"Wow," I thought to myself. "What a display of hospitality, providing so much more food than anyone can possibly eat."

O, how naïve I can still be after so many months in Egypt!

Hungry—this, after all, being 9:30 at night and I hadn't really eaten since [American] lunchtime—I quickly put down one burger. Then another. I munched on a few fries contemplatively ["Alissa," I hissed to myself. "Take it easy. Two burgers? You're going to regret this later. Don't even think about a third."] Still, I was kind of hungry…

I resisted my worst inclinations and held firm at two. Sally stopped eating and looked at me incredulously.
"Alissa. Eat."
"What? Impossible! I just ate two!"
"Only two?"
"What do you mean—'only'? I ate two burgers!"
"We brought you four."
"Four?!"

Two burgers at a go is usually reserved for 6'6" football players and the like, or at least, boys with unnaturally high metabolism. My little 5'5" frame, which (except for the occasional Cardio Salsa or Tahitian Burn workout) rarely gets more daily exercise than my 15 minute walk to work, I hardly thought that three burgers for dinner was justifiable or healthy.

The haggling continued. Her mother returned after a few minutes. Sally immediately reported to her mother that I had "only eaten two" burgers.
"Only two?" she immediately exclaimed. "We brought you four!"

Fast food nation, you've met your match.