Hello, hello!

First, I want to explain that 'becomingyasmeen' is not supposed to mean that I am on some sort of undercover mission, that I am taking on a new identity here and losing my old one. It's just that here my name, which is an anglicized version of the originally Persian and Arabic word, tends to get taken back to its roots. To people here, if I am not 'Jessi' (which I usually don't like to be called, because it takes away everything that's special about my name), then I must be Yasmeen, or--as a compromise-- Jassmyn. So living in Egypt is kind of like becoming Yasmeen. And being called Yasmeen doesn't mean I am losing my name, it just means being called by another version of it. I think that makes sense, because living in a foreign country requires you to make some changes that don't necessarily keep you from being yourself, but they do cause you to discover another version of that self. I expect that to happen during my time here, though it is not really the point of this blog.

The point of this blog, actually, is to maintain contact with all of you...my family and friends in the U.S....and to tell you about my life in Alexandria, and more generally Egypt and the Middle East.