50 and counting....

Yay! Blog number 50! Woo-hoo! Yay! I'm a big slacker! Woo-hoo! No, no, we didn't get kidnapped in Egypt and taken to the Sudan. We are alive and well and back in Tel Aviv and Phil's folks have returned safely to Florida after a three week visit. I could come up with some really lame excuses for not getting a blog out sooner but, hey, I 'm sure you know by now that I am just damn lazy sometimes. Seriously, I think I caught some sort of laziness disease while in Egypt. But I have been poked and prodded and gently pushed (okay, shoved) by people to get a freakin' blog out already so here it is. Now if I can only remember what has happened in the last month.....

Egypt! Oh, yeah, that's right....we went to Egypt. What a great trip! Discounting, of course, the fact that Phil got sick with a cold the day we left for the airport. And to which I foolishly thought might be the same cold that I had while in Europe so I was so bold as to believe that I was now immune to said cold and would not catch it........wrong! Thus by the time Phil was on the upswing I was heading downhill and pretty much one or the other of us was sneezing and sniffling our way up the Nile. I swear, I haven't had a cold in almost two years and then Bam(!), two within in a month and BOTH while on vacation. I guess that was my punishment for being able to gallivant around the world while other people had to slave away at work (don't worry.....that shall be life again in a few months. *sigh* Now I'm depressed.)

Anyhoo, I digress.....our first but very brief stop was Cairo. Just one quick night, just enough time for a short night's sleep before returning to the airport the next morning for a flight to Luxor. (We would return to Cairo for some actual sightseeing at the end of our trip.) The flight was relatively uneventful, although a tad bumpy, EXCEPT for the fact that the Ben Gurion Airport in Israel somehow managed to not get one of Phil's folks' bag on the short direct flight to Cairo. Instead it went to Cypress. Go figure. So that was a smallish nightmare trying to locate the bag and figure out how it was going to get to them as we were boarding the boat to cruise up the Nile the next day. Miraculously the tour company did indeed locate and hand deliver the bag in time to set sail. Could have been MUCH worse, but really, how did they manage to miss place the damn bag in the first place? It was a non-stop 1 hour flight!!!!!

Goodness, I'm digressing yet again. (Phil, are you rubbing off on me!?!?!?) So basically the first part of our trip entailed a cruise on a river boat up the Nile from Luxor to Aswan with several stops along the way to tour the sights. The boat was "meh", the sights were fantastic! I say the boat was "meh" for several reasons.....first (and of course most importantly!) the food left much to be desired. Second, the crowd was um,.....shall we say a little bit older than Phil and I, so not the best place for us to socialize. But that was okay since the point was to spend time with Jay and Lynn anyway, and we did indeed enjoy our time together. Oh yeah, and there was smoking on the boat. Blegh!!! Egypt is far behind in the banning of smoking in public places! But the boat was indeed super convenient and probably the best way to to get from one sight to the next. Really, I think it would be an absolute nightmare to do it any other way. And I will say one positive thing about the boat - our room was actually pretty nice, certainly much bigger than a standard cabin on a big cruise ship, so that was helpful considering we were both sick and needed to rest.

The sights were indeed spectacular though! Unbelievably old ruins (some of them very well intact) of ancient Egyptian temples. And when I say ancient.....I mean ancient. Like 2000-3000 years before Christ ancient! It was absolutely mind boggling to walk through these temples and contemplate how on earth they were able to construct these masterpieces so long ago without any modern technology. And the carvings and hieroglyphics were equally as impressive and mind boggling. Perhaps what made these tours even more wonderful was our own personal Egyptologist that accompanied us to all the sights. Now when we paid for our trip we chose not to hire a private guide because it was extremely expensive. But upon arrival we discovered that the tour company provided us with the guide at no cost as a gift. We were shocked of course, but did we question it? Heck no! We're just hoping that there isn't some catch and that there isn't a couple thousand dollar bill in the mail right now! But our tour guide ended up being spectacular. He was an Archeology student preparing to study for his PhD and was very, very knowledgeable and eager to share his knowledge with us. Among the sights we saw were the Luxor and Karnak Temples, the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, Philae Temple and many other sights that I am sure I am forgetting. We learned a lot and I am sure I have only retained a fraction of what we were told.

After we disembarked from our boat for good (in Aswan, our final destination) we headed back to Cairo for our last couple of days. Cairo is, well, it's a dump. Makes Tel Aviv look like a pretty spring rose! Seriously, if I never see Cairo again.....I'll be happy. It was a very large (22 million people!), dirty, busy city full of traffic (there are virtually no traffic lights), litter and people constantly hounding you to buy things (okay, that's pretty much true all over Egypt!). But of course the sights to see while in Cairo are the great pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. Phil and I actually went into one of the Pyramids.....which isn't exactly easy to do. You basically have to bend over in half so that you can walk down a steep ramp with a ceiling of about 3 feet high and then back up another steep ramp with the same low ceiling into the middle of the Pyramid. I was a little bit apprehensive as confined spaces are not generally my friend but I decided, hey....we'll only ever be here once. It wasn't actually a long walk but let me tall ya', it was quite rank inside! Just think of a small narrow passage way with thousands of hot sweaty people trekking through it day in and day out and no ventilation whatsoever.....you get the picture. And of course we took the obligatory touristy camel ride because, well, when in Rome...er, I mean Egypt. And finally we got to (sort of) check out the famous museum in Cairo with it's ridiculously huge collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts including King Tutenkhamen's sarcophagus and treasures. I say "sort of" because you could literally spend days there and we spent a total of about two and half hours there. There really is that much to see.

So now we are home and back to our ordinary boring lives. Pretty much all our friends are gone, which is quite sad actually. The only close friend of mine that is left works full time and has an 18 month old son. Yeah....we don't see each other too often. Which is fine I guess because I actually have about a zillion things I could be doing to keep me busy. I say could, because, well, some of them just aren't that appealing to me. Like say, putting my resume together for our return trip home. NOT exactly my idea of a good time. Plus, I suck at putting resumes together. So if there is anyone out there that wants to help me "tweak" my resume once I finally get it done please don't hesitate to offer your services.......I need all the help I can get! (Indeed I have no shame.)

Other than that we are starting to think about our return to the US and all that entails. We're finding that it entails quite a bit. A new job for me (I'm dreading it but it's a necessary evil....but I have no idea what I will be able to find to do), 2 new or most likely new-to-us cars, and of course the big one.....buying a house. Yikes! Needless to say I am stressing out! We're starting to look at houses and cars on line just to get a feel for prices etc. I thought this was a buyers market!?!?!?! Guess that just shows how out of touch I am with prices in the real world. It's easy to forget when you haven't even had to worry about your rent for the past two years. *sigh* Being an expat does indeed have it's perks. So I am going to try my hardest to enjoy these last couple of months (still no word on our exact return date) and enjoy being able to actually do nothing, as I am afraid that is all about to change soon.

Pictures to come soon (hopefully!). It's taking a really long time to go through all 2000 and some pictures we have from Europe and Egypt. I don't want to bore you with too many pics but I definitely want you to see the best. Eventually it will get done. Until then, Cheers to my 50th Blog!