I’ve always thought this way - that bad things make us what we are as much as good things. Which is why there are some bad things I’ve always wanted to experience. Some that I put on my list of 100 things, like have my heart broken. Probably inspired by my love of Savage Garden and the line from Affirmation, “I believe you can’t appreciate real love till you’ve been burned.”

I’m not asking for bad things to happen to me (in fact, I’m knocking on wood, lifting my feet and holding my breath right now to prevent it) but I truly think that to understand the enormity of human experience and human emotion, you have experience both the bad and the good. But I’ve been lucky. Nothing truly bad has ever happened to me.

This is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to me:

I went to Spain to visit my friend Chris, who was, in turn, visiting her parents. Though I flew into Malaga, we spent the two nights in Algeciras since it was right next to Gibraltar, our plan for Saturday. We were staying in a “hostal” which I think translates to hostel, but was more like a budget hotel. It was ridiculously cold in the room, but we were trying desperately to sleep. Until 2am when we were woken up by extremely loud screaming. At first we thought it was kids outside, drunk or high. It was Carnivale that week in Spain, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that people might be partying too hard. Then we realized that it wasn’t outside, it was only two floors down. They were SCREAMING. I’ve never actually heard someone scream like that before. We had no idea what they were saying, because we don’t speak (much) Spanish. There was a lot of crying, the sounds of someone throwing up and a bunch of different voices, one of which sounded like a child.

The screaming continued for two hours, and finally we got back to sleep around 4am. We didn’t venture out to see what was happening, because we were scared and we wouldn’t have been any help anyway, as we don’t speak the language. But when we went downstairs to the lobby the next morning, we asked the man what had happened. He didn’t speak any English, but we asked via charades what had happened. Chris held up two fingers, then four and did some screaming. He got it and started to explain, with his own charades. We gathered from this and a few key words (like “morta”) that someone had died! Apparently a woman had a heart attack. I don’t think I will ever forget that screaming. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days after wards.

Let me rephrase that…. I am a person full of thoughts. Interesting that Thesaurus.com lists “anxious” as a synonym for thoughtful. That’s my kind of thoughtful. The kind where my head is so full of thoughts that there simply isn’t space to breathe, and my only option for a moment’s peace is watching mind numbing television shows.

I just sent Fae a really long email, to which she replied:

“It’s sort of funny you rambled about overthinking and that was one huge orgasm of overthinking.”

You’re telling me.

Well, I was right about that. It is near Spain. In fact, it’s practically in Spain (in a purely spatial sense). It’s not part of Spain, though. It is its own little country. Sort of. It’s actually a “British overseas territory.” So it’s British. Mostly.

Confused yet?

They use the pound. They speak English. They love being British. They fly the Union Jack proudly. They love them some football. They serve fish and chips and jacket potatoes in pubs. They have a Marks & Spencer’s!

It’s an entire country in one city. The airport runway (yes, it has an airport!) can be walked or driven across. There are four bus lines. There are about 30,000 people. You can’t take a bus in from Spain. You have to get off outside of Gibraltar, walk over the border and show them your passport (sadly no stamp though!).

And they have monkeys. The only monkeys in Europe! There are over 200 of them, and they live on top of the Rock of Gibraltar, mostly. They’re tagged, fed and kept by a vet and the government. Apparently they’re like the Tower of London ravens. The legend goes that if the monkeys ever disappear from Gibraltar, it will signal the end of British rule over the area. This greatly concerns the British, so much so that Winston Churchill had their stocks replenished after the Second World War.

From the top of the Rock of Gibraltar you can see the Pillars of Hercules, also know as the Strait of Gibraltar. The smallest passage between Europe and Africa. You can see the south most point in Europe on one side and Morocco on the other.

On one side of Gibraltar is the Atlantic. On the other is the Mediterranean.

Because of this geography, Gibraltar was an important place historically. That’s why the British own it. That’s why they want to keep it. That’s why the Spanish want it back.

But it’s a beautiful place. It’s a friendly, multicultural city that draws it’s population from Spain, Britain, Africa and all of the world. It has a mosques, a temple, a synagogue, a cathedral and some churches. It’s pretty cool.

And if you’re like me and can’t speak any Spanish, Italian, Greek or Arabic… it’s a city on the Mediterranean where the principle language is English!

Also, they have monkeys.

I measure minutes in bus stops, train stations and flight times. Two hours early to wait around. Through blurry eyes I watch the miles fade into memory and blur into one another.

I add to my list: What countries have you been to? Spain. Gibraltar. I was in Amsterdam for two hours, Paris for three. I went to Devon for the first time and the rolling hills looked beautiful from behind the terminal glass. I mark the time with pieces of a Galaxy bar and sips of weak tea.

A template for writing postcards. Hello from  insert country here . Interesting fact goes here. Made me think of you. Wish you were here/miss you/see you soon. Love, Heather. As I write I imagine the fridges and bulletin boards the cards will grace, the homes and the people they will see before me.

It seems like everything I write now could be from a chapter titled “Trains, planes and automobiles.” A few lines in a travelling song. A few words in monologue about leaving and arriving and the spaces in between.

I’m crossing things off lists and counting flights on two hands worth of cold fingers. My passport is smeared with black ink and bending at the corners. I need new walking shoes.

Footage by myself and Chandra. Photos mostly by Chandra. So Many Miles by Sarah Slean. Many the Miles by Sara Bareilles. Videos by me!

At least two people I know have attempted the 50 Books in a year since I did, most recently my former roommate and dearly-missed friend, Kristen, who just started a lovely blog called Living Literary. I was reading her newest post last night and thinking about how I had failed to post about my books recently, but also that I seem to fail to provide any criticism, most of the time, of what I read.

Well, that isn’t going to change in this post.

It All Changed in an Instant is the new six word memoir book from Smith Magazine. I read their earlier books, Not Quite What I Was Planning and Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak for last year’s 50 books in a year. I really love the format, just as I love websites like onesentence.org. I got an email a while ago saying that one of the six word memoirs I had posted to the Smith Magazine website had been chosen as a finalist for the new book. I hadn’t heard anything since then, but I was still hopeful that maybe it would be in this book.

It wasn’t, but that’s okay. Because my six word memoir, which I wrote last year after reading Not Quite What I Was Planning, was “Happiest pretending to be someone else.” And while that was quite perfect for me at that point in my life, it’s not true anymore. And so, I posted some more over there and hold out hope for the next book.

I truly love the six word memoir books. The people at Smith Magazine set out to do something different - to challenge people to tell their story in only six words, the way Ernest Hemingway had (For sale: baby shoes, never worn.) and in the process proved that you really can tell a powerful story with only six words. Sometimes, I’d say, a great deal better than with 6,000 or 600,000.

I’ll be thinking in six word sentences for a couple of days now.

My favourites?

Writing is easy. Life is hard.
Nearing 60, still on rough draft.
Friendship test: willingness to be inconvenienced.
Only I define who I am.
Why walk when you can fly?
“Give up.” “Never.” “You’ll die.” “Maybe.”
A series of self fulfilling prophecies.
Last chapter hasn’t been written yet.
We’re both someone else’s problem now.
Off in my own little world.
Journalism? Hah! Just make stuff up.
I’m holding on with both hands.
One plane ride can change everything.

Comment in six words. I dare you.

Because of Bastet, cats were sacred to the Ancient Egyptians. The bodies of pet cats where mummified along with their owners, cat statues were carved and royal cats were even given elaborately jeweled collars and necklaces.

Cats are everywhere in Egypt, to this day. They are underfoot at monuments, in markets, on the streets. Some of them are ugly and vicious, wild things. Others are much more friendly and will come when you call them. The rough cats in the meat market in Cairo sat underneath the carcasses and licked the blood. An adorable orange tabby wound itself around my legs at the Cairo museum. We saw two cats tear chunks of fur off each other in Alexandria.

There’s a very interesting custom that derives from Bastet, that our tour guide finally explained to us. When you walk down the street in Egypt, you often hear Egyptian men making an odd noise as you walk past. Bsbsbsbsbsbs, they hiss. I was confused.

Apparently, Egyptian men compare sexually attractive women to cats. And so they make that noise, bsbsbsbs, because it is the same noise they make to call a cat, after the name Bastet. Interestingly, cats actually to respond better when you make that noise. And maybe women too?

There are some stray dogs around too, for you dog lovers.

Number 82 is the third on my list of 100 things to do before I die that I got to do by going to Egypt.

Originally I wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride because a) I’m afraid of heights and I’m all about conquering my fears (except spiders) and b) when I was a teenager and printing other people’s photographs, someone came in with the most beautiful pictures from a hot air balloon ride in Ottawa. You see, the best times of day to go on a hot air balloon ride are dawn and dusk. When I was little (and even to this day) I used to watch the bright balloons appear one by one on the horizon as the sun began to set. We used to count them out loud and pick our favourites.

I never imagined that I’d get to go on a hot air balloon ride in Egypt.

When Chandra and I booked our Egypt package, I saw that there was a supplement you could add for a hot air balloon ride. It was expensive. I was afraid to mention it. But Chandra said it first. “How cool would it be to go on a hot air balloon ride over Egypt?” And done.

It was worth every penny. It was even worth waking up at 4:30am. Because we watched the sunrise over the Nile. Because we saw the Valley of the Kings stretch out beneath us in the early morning light. Because we glided over the city of Luxor.

I wasn’t afraid, not for a second. I thought I might be. But I was too busy taking photos, and then suddenly we were in the air, 200 metres up.

It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever done in my life. And that, my friends, is why my list of 100 Things to Do Before I Die exists.

In case you didn’t know, Egypt is in Africa.

I knew this. I think. I mean, my brain knew this. It’s pretty much common knowledge. It’s just that when I thought of Africa, when I wrote #89 on my list of things to do before I die, I wasn’t thinking about Egypt. I was thinking about safaris and places like Kenya or Madagascar. Or maybe even someplace like Rwanda (since I was a member of Journalists for Human Rights at the time and we were working with the Rwanda Initiative.)

The only images I had in my mind of Egypt were pyramids, temples and sheer linen dresses. We are a product of the media, and my expectations were fabricated mostly from historical fiction and BBC documentaries.

But Egypt is one of the most populated countries in Africa. Cairo is the largest city in Africa. There are about 25 million people in Cairo on any given day. In one city. There are 33 million people all of Canada. Our largest city, Toronto, has just over 2 million people.

Cairo isn’t just the home of the Great Pyramids of Giza, it’s also the home of millions of people and is the densest metropolis that I have ever seen.

Needless to say, it was an intense culture shock. I have never been to a city even a little bit like Cairo before. The traffic is so bad that it can take over three hours to make a 30 min drive. Every time we were on the roads, I thought we were going to die. There are no road rules, no traffic lights. There’s only pure determination. Every vehicle is dented, scratched, damaged in some way by its life on the streets of Cairo.

And there aren’t just cars on the streets either. There are also carts, drawn by donkeys and horses. Egypt is very much a city where the modern and the antiquated are thrown together and live side by side. I half expected to see a Bennett Buggy driving down the street.

The houses in Cairo are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There are thousands of huge apartment buildings, stacked almost on top of each other. There are buildings that look more like shacks, with satellite dishes on top. Everything seems to be in a minor state of disrepair and in need of a good paint job.

There’s another aspect of the culture in Egypt that I wasn’t prepared for. As an obvious tourist, I meant only one thing to the people of Egypt. Money. Everywhere you go in Egypt, someone is trying to sell you something or ask you for money. They will take your luggage from you and then ask you for money for carrying it, even though you were perfectly capable of doing it yourself. They charge you 5 Egyptian pounds for a camel ride, then ask for another 20 for you to get off.

Everything is about hassling and haggling and it is thoroughly exhausting. No one even speaks to you unless they want you to buy something. And when you walk through the market, the vendors yell things at you to get your attention. “Do you want Egyptian husband?” “You have beautiful eyes!” “Are you from the moon?” “I will kill my four wives for you!” “You walk like an Egyptian.”

They offer camels in exchange for your hand in marriage. Someone offered me 2 millions camels. It was a good day.

Egypt was a definite culture shock. It was my first African country. Next time, I’ll be better prepared.

Next time, I probably won’t go to Cairo. Luxor was much nicer.

I’ve seen the only remaining wonder of the seven wonders of the world, have you?

The first thing that I ever wrote down on my list of 100 things to do before I die was to see the pyramids. I have been fascinated by Egyptian history since reading Lloyd Alexander’s Time Cat when I was little and finding out that the Egyptians thought that cats were gods. I’ve always been a cat person, okay?

There’s something iconic about getting to see the pyramids. Eiffel towers, Colosseums, Statues of Liberty are the bookmarks of travel guides, the milestones of trips around the world.

The question is, do you see the pyramids to say that you have seen the pyramids, or do you actually see the pyramids? Do you stop and think about what you’re seeing? About how long it has survived? About the thousands of people who built it, or the millions of people who have stood where you’re standing and looked up?

The pyramids aren’t what you think they’re going to be. Behind them you can see downtown Cairo. Across the street from the Sphinx there’s a Pizza Hut and a KFC. The pyramids are no longer a relic of a great civilization. They are, instead, a magnet for tourist dollars and cheap souvenirs.

I wouldn’t let them ruin it for me. As I stood there on the sand, I forced myself to look up and not at the merchants circling nearby. I forced myself to remember every favourite moment in all of my favourite historical fictions that made me fall in love with ancient Egypt.

The pyramids are a feat of engineering and design. A colossus, withstanding the test of time and giving the Pharaohs what they desired most - immortality. Because thousands of years later, we still stand amazed.