The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

90 MAY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LOCAL LENS Please submit your favorite, recent photograph to be considered for Local Lens. Images must be high resolution (at least 300 dpi at 8” x 10”, or 1 MB or larger) and must not be in print elsewhere. Include a short description of the scene/ event, as well as your name, brief biodata and the type of camera used. Send to locallens@afsa.org . D uring a Nile River cruise in March 2019, I had the opportunity to get a bird’s-eye view of the ancient wonders of Luxor, Egypt. Before dawn, after tea and cakes and a safety briefing aboard the felucca that ferried us across to the west bank of the Nile, we got into Captain Bob’s hot air balloon and ascended just as it was starting to get light. As the sun continued to rise, we floated over the temples and burial grounds of pharaohs, drifting with the wind over the Valleys of the Kings and Queens, the mortuary temples of Ramesses II and Ramesses III, the Karnak temple complex, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut and the mighty Nile River. n BY LORI B. JOHN n EGYPT Lori B. John is an office management specialist in Dublin. She joined the Foreign Service in 2017 and has served previously in Pretoria and Baghdad. She took this photo with a Google Pixel phone.