Spring Break

It's finally Spring Break! We've been looking forward to this for a long time. We need a break! We are so excited because Kristal's parents are coming for 16 days!

They arrived around 4:30 p.m. today. They were exhausted from the travel: Kansas City to New York to Cairo and then a car trip to Alexandria which took 26 hours. The look on Sheila's face when she finally saw Kristal was priceless. A mix between utter fear from the driving in Egypt and surprised to still be alive, exhaustion, and gratefulness to finally see her baby girl. She immediately burst into tears; I'm not sure if they were happy, scared, or tired tears.

We immediately fully immersed them in Egyptian life since we needed to walk to a store to get a part for Kristal's computer before we left. Although they were totally out of their comfort zone they were good sports about the trip and enjoyed the difference in cultures of walking through very poor neighborhoods with torn up streets strewn in trash and being narrowly missed by the passing cars by a mere inch. Typical walk here. We had a total role reversal when Kristal had to hold her mom's hand to cross the street. Granted, crossing streets here mean crossing a very busy four lane road with actually 6 cars across since they don't use the lanes and you have to cross only by one car lane at a time, kind of like the old Atari game Frogger.

Once we safely got them back to campus, they got to experiance a typical dinner in our dining hall by our chefs and meet some of the the other staff whom we work with that haven't already left for their spring break trips.

After they unpacked, they brought a full suitcase of stuff that we requested from home including many belated birthday gifts for Kristal; we let them go to bed a little early. Besides, we knew they would be up at 4:00 am due to the morning call of prayer.

We'll try to keep you up-to-date on our spring break travels as much as possible. We are going on a Nile cruise and also spend a few days in Cairo so I'm not sure how much internet access we'll have. Mom is keeping a journal and I plan on letting them write to give you their personal experiences and opinions.