Desert Vacation

I recently took a vacation into the desert and on this vacation I realized how selfish vacations can be, or really, how selfish I can be on vacations. I saw the ugly face of selfishness arise several times as we had two distinct agendas at work on this vacation. Two of us who went on this vacation live in country had the lovely thought of getting out of the big city and out to a more relaxing, place where we could drink coffee and talk or read or listen to music and if there were some interesting sites to see in the towns we visited, to peruse those as well. The other, I would say, more touristy agenda at play involved stopping quite often to take random pictures of people who didn't want their pictures taken, or haggling with boys selling rocks on the side of the road for long periods of time, or saying extremely culturally inappropriate things and then laughing at it as if it were all right, or telling endless stories about himself or famous people he knows, or well, I could go on and on. So as you can see, things didn't go the way I wanted to, and oh did I boil inside...and I acted like a child unfortunately even to the point of pretending to be asleep to avoid listening to some endless series of stories. It took a little while for us to find a common ground to vacation on, but we did! A story I know about a 'wee little man' that was unloved and not honored in his community was honored by the Good Teacher. When he teaches us to love, he doesn't give stipulations to love in this situation, oh, but you don't have to love in this other situation, he just says love....So through it I think I grew a little, or at least realized areas in my life where I still need to grow.... I did have a good time riding a camel, spending the night in the desert in a Berber tent, exploring Kasbahs, seeing a movie studio (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Babel) and a beautiful gorge (which was similar to a wind tunnel!), awesome oasis's.