Miss or Not, Part 2
Ref: Weather Underground
And that, my friends, is a wrap on Not on a Camel! This is the last comic of the series. It’s been a good run, but my contract is up and I’m back in America now so it’s time to end it. Thank you to everyone who read my silly little comic.
Josh gets a cameo here for the sole reason of I needed someone taller than me because of the panel design. And panel two is true in two senses: sometimes, especially with foreign languages, what is meant as a good-natured joke doesn’t always land and I was being cautious, and there was so much stuff at that school that was completely ridiculous/sometimes edging on the illegal side that it would not present well…
I did get the worst food poisoning of the entire two years the weekend before I was due to come home, hence the lateness of this comic. Not fun when needing to pack.
The final panel obviously does not include everyone I met, but I just didn’t have room/skill to draw everyone. I tried to stick to people who had appeared previously, but Rhonda did get to appear for the first time. She is a teacher at Schutz that I got to be good friends with and would have likely appeared in the comic had my update schedule been better this year.
And yes, that is a picture of my visa with ‘WORK IS NOT PERMITTYED’ circled (I did not add the circling). That was a thing that caused much frustration, including (as I later discovered) some of the issues with getting into Turkey. One of the requirements for me to stay at this job was to go to the visa office every few months and lie to a government official, claiming I’m a tourist. That is an experience I will never do again and I absolutely hated it, to the point that I almost left multiple times and probably should have (note: this was not revealed to me until I was already in the country, one of many omissions I encountered). The only thing that kept me from doing so was my life outside of work; I didn’t want to jump ship without completing what I set out to do.
That being said, overall the last two years was a very positive experience and I’m glad I did it. To my friends in Egypt, I miss you already! To everyone else, Egypt is a wonderful and safe place and I hope you get the chance to go sometime!
I can attest to the trruthfulness of everything in these panels. Stretch is absolutely correct about the risk of food poisoning. I only got seriously ill twice over 2 years, so guess I was luckier than others. Also, we probably told too many people where we were touristing (aka working?!). It was much easier and more comfortable to take Uber everywhere, than taxis held together by duct tape and bailing wire, with drivers who couldn’t speak any English. I do miss the people we met and worked with, and the culture. Climate was good, but we were not there in July and half of August, so missed the hottest part of the summer. Alexandria being on the Med helped.
Stretch, you still have to get to Istanbul sometime. It is well worth the trip.
Let me know if and when. I can serve as a guide after spending 4 years WORKING there, which I could because of having a work permit.