Keeping In Touch

Rebellious Arab Girl had an interesting post today. She suggested that everyone post about their favourite blogger and why this is their favourite. I have to admit to very eclectic tastes and the site where I saw the reference to her suggestion is one of my favourite sites for blogging: Global Voices Online. Technically, I suppose Global Voices isn't a blog, but for someone like myself who is interested in things all over the world, a site that collects blogs and keeps track of who is saying what where is invaluable. I also have a Google News alert set up to give me a link to every news article and blog that mention "Egypt", "Giza", or "Cairo", which drops a little email into my box that gives me pages of reading every morning. This arrangement has brought me travel blogs by people just passing through the area, keeping-in-touch-with-home blogs by people who are living in the Middle East temporarily, and of course some of the more mainstream blogs from Egypt, as long as they are in English. I find, however, that Global Voices still has more depth in the blogging field than Google when in comes to aggregation. So they have my vote for a favourite blog/blogging tool.

I was chided this morning by an email correspondent who was worried that perhaps something was wrong because I hadn't posted for so long...almost two weeks. Well, there was a minor bug that was slowing me down, and I'm finding myself very busy these days on the work front. I've been mostly working my riding trips by word of mouth and such. My website is out there and I get quite a few inquiries from there, but I haven't done much advertising. A week or so ago, however, a newspaper from the UK was doing an article on unusual vacations and they listed my farm. Free advertising is always nice, and this prompted quite a few people to contact me about riding here. Between my usual daytime work with horses, lessons, rides and such, plus correspondence at night, I've been neglecting the blog. The fact that I am still cameraless doesn't help either. I really like having photos to illustrate my posts. But hopefully that will change for the better soon and I will be back to my chatty self.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani