WE'RE HOME!!!!!!

After 36 hours of traveling (with the poor cat in his carrier), we are finally home! We got a wonderful reception at the airport with all our family holding signs and balloons. Such a nice surprise! But the best welcome home reception was back home with lots of tail wags and wet noses from our dog Desiree. She was psyched to see me and wont let me out of her sight now. (The cat wasn't so psyched to see her though)

I can't get over how luscious and green everything is here! Although it's pretty humid and muggy here also. (icky) We're going to go to Target later, that will be culture shock for me after all this time.

Ma' Sallama to all our Egypt friends. We will miss you and Egypt so much!

Coming Home

Well the students had their last day of school. We celebrated graduation. And we had our last teacher work day at Schutz. In less than one hour we will be loading up a van to drive to the airport in Cairo to start our trip home. It's bittersweet leaving. It's been very hard to say goodbye to the many great friends we have made here and we will miss them and living in Egypt very much. But we are also excited to get home and be close to family again. We can't wait to have our dog Desiree back.

Goodbye our Schutz friends. We will miss you dearly.
Friends and family back home, we can't wait to see you again.

Diving in Qaitbey

As some of you may remember, Kristal and I got PADI certified in Scuba Diving last October/November.  You can refresh your memory here and here.  Anyway, one of the things we’ve wanted to do since we arrived in Egypt is do an archeological dive.  One of the best sites around is just outside of Qaitbey near the old Fort.  It is here that centuries ago old Alexandria stretched out further than it does today.  Over time, earthquakes, rising sea level, etc. has caused much of the old shore to now be under several feet of water.  Unfortunately, Kristal had not been feeling well, so in her best interests, she hung out with several of the girls in Agami while I dove with our friends Mike, Frank, & Jane.

Surprisingly, it’s not terribly deep.  Our first dive had a maximum depth of only 10 meters, or about 33 feet.  Here we saw some remains of the old lighthouse pillars, several Greek, Roman, and Pharonic remains, and even swam through a tunnel created by the fallen objects.  Unlike our certification dives, we also saw several types of fish and such.  I have to say – it was pretty darn awesome looking at all of these remains.  Jane and our guide, Mr. Sayed, even danced on one of the tables down below.  

The second dive was a mix of archeological remains and an old wreck.  It was only 5 meters deep.  However, visibility just flat sucked and it was hard to keep everyone within eyesight some times.  You could see their outline, then the next second they were gone and two seconds later it was all clear.  It was quite important to pay attention to direction and orientation, but nobody was ever worried about losing anyone else. Anyways, we got to see an old WWII plane that crashed in the bay only a couple hundred meters from shore.  You could still identify the cockpit, wings, engines, etc. but you could also see where parts of the tail had been ripped apart in the crash.  We even saw an ammunition pack of still live bullets and a helmet (was it planted or not?) left at the site.  From there we saw a few more pillars and blocks similar to the first dive.

One interesting thing to note is that several of the blocks we saw had thick, heavy ropes tied around them and numbered tags.  We asked Mr. Sayed and he said that those blocks are tagged to be removed from the water soon.  You probably heard about the big news here earlier this year when they removed a 4 ton pylon from another underwater temple in a near by bay.  You can read about it here.

After we finished, we rode back to the dive shop and then headed back home.  During the dive, I didn’t seem to notice that I was working very hard at all.  There were some minor currents since we were in a bay area and very close to shore.  It wasn’t until after I got home that I was SO tired I couldn’t sleep.  I ended up spending all day Saturday resting and recovering…I need to get in better condition!  However, the dive is very worthwhile and definitely on our list of things to do when we come back to Egypt for a visit.  Kristal is sad she missed it but, Insha’Allah, she will have the opportunity again.

Turkey

My parents took this amazing picture of these turkey's in their backyard a few weeks ago.  I can't wait to get back to the mid-west and see some wildlife again and sink my bare feet into that luscious green grass. If you missed it, also check out this great picture of the deer they took a few months ago.  My mom is becoming quite the wildlife photographer.

Sunset

A beautiful Mediterranean sunset we saw while eating at a beach restaurant.

We'll miss these.

Stretch.

Strreeetttccchhhh!  

Yaaaaawwwwwn.

Man it must be good to be a cat!

Cairo Weekend Getaway

At the beginning of this year, Seth and I said we would make it down to Cairo a log more for weekend getaways. Well, as you know, things are easier said than done and the only time we spend in Cairo this year (other than work related trips) was during spring break when Seth’s family was here. Well, we are quickly running out of time so we finally just picked a weekend and stuck to it.

We took the train down right after school on Thursday. We stayed at the President Hotel in Zamelek, an area of Cairo that we really like. We just couldn’t wait another three weeks until we get home and indulged ourselves in ordering Papa John’s! It was quite a treat for us! The next day we spoiled ourselves to Subway. Are you seeing a trend yet? Yep! That’s right! This trip was mostly about treating ourselves to good food we can’t get in Alexandria. Besides eating, the only other thing we did was shop! We spent most of our time at the Khan El Khalili. We finished up all the Egyptian gift buying we needed to do for people back home, as well as, bought a few more things for ourselves that we hadn’t yet gotten. Two years in Egypt and we hadn’t bought a single piece of Alabaster!!!!!

It was a wonderful get away and very relaxing and fun of the two of us. We wish we had made more of an effort to do this more often during the year. The only snafu of the whole trip was that our return train was an hour and a half late! This is very unusual and since Ramses Station in Cairo doesn’t have any signs, message boards and all announcements are only made in Arabic…we had a little trouble figuring out what was going on. But as things usually work out here, we befriended a family that spoke English who were waiting for the same train and they helped make sure we knew what was going on and got us on the correct train home.

Pictures from the Khan el Kahlili

 

We came across a Harley-Davidson store in Zamelek!  Who knew!

(We also have pictures of us stuff our faces with Papa Johns and Subway, but who really want's to see that!)

Also.....

Today is Seth's Birthday!  

Happy Birthday Sweetie.  I love you!