Month: February 2011

I had the best night’s sleep in over a week, got my Via and TJ’s soy creamer, a little Top Chef All-Stars on the TV, and I feel like a new woman. So driving on with our story:

So if you watched the videos in the previous posts, both my version and the MSNBC coverage, you can see that the airport was swarming with people. When the buses pulled up, we were unloaded into lines by bus. We were bus #2 so we all parked ourselves and our luggage on the sidewalk and waited for someone to tell us what to do next.

Like all good evacuations, this one had some food. The boys broke out the MREs while we were waiting to find out which flight we’d be assigned to. I snaked some of the cheese and crackers — my favorite part.

The line through security fed from two sides. Half of the flight had to be American civilians, the other half could be embassy families. So they’d take a group from the tourist line and then take a group from the embassy line. Once all the people for our flight made it through security, then we waited in another line to have our passports stamped. Camille was fantastic the entire time.

Post passport check, waiting in the holding pen for the shuttle to take us to the plane. I think this is where I started mooing.

Yea, we finally made it on the shuttle. To give you a sense of how long this took, we arrived at the airport around 1 or 1:30 and our flight didn’t actually take off until almost 7pm. We spent the entire 6 hours in line, moving inches at a time.

We were on the last shuttle bus — Carter making sure we all got on the flight.

And then to kill time on the flight we just took lots of pictures of each other. It was a regular commercial-looking plane, but no TV, no movies, and a tiny snack.

But good things were waiting for us in Athens . . .

I found this video about the day of our evacuation from MSNBC news:

It’s actually very accurate coverage except for the part about how all the diplomats requested to leave and our drive to the airport was actually very fast. Our buses took a different road that must not have been open to regular people. Their video captures the masses of people much better than my little video.

I recognized several people from our plane and a few American friends. I didn’t see us, but I didn’t look very closely yet. It’s so crazy that that was us a week ago.

I found out this week that my 90 year old grandpa goes to the library to read my blog. How cool is that? Hi Grandpa! Hope the Packers give you a win today!

Since I’m not up to continuing the story of our Exodus from Egypt today, I thought I’d post some pictures from our last normal day. Josh’s birthday, January 28th, forever to be known as Egypt’s “Day of Rage.”

We celebrated with a baked donut cake, covered with butter, cinnamon, and sugar while watching the protests in Tahrir Square. We made 1/2 the batch the day before and then it was Carter’s idea to turn the rest of the dough into one big donut cake for Josh’s birthday.

 

Later, we went outside in our backyard where the boys played with our fly zapper. It’s basically an electrified tennis racket that zaps the flies in mid-air. All the crackles and pops you hear on the video are bugs being zapped. They love this thing so much that they insisted on packing it when we evacuated.

Finishing out the night with more news. Happy and oblivious to the fact that we would shortly be evacuated. Not bad for a Day of Rage, right?

OK, I was going to continue my evacuation story yesterday, but in the middle of the day I hit the wall. After a week of 3-4 hours of sleep each night and cleaning up after a bunch of sickies non-stop since we arrived in the US, my body said, “enough.” I barely made it to 7pm and then I crashed.

Thankfully no one new has gotten sick in the past 24 hours. I’m really hoping that means that Caleb and I (and my parents!) have escaped this plague. This morning I still feel like I could sleep for another week, but I’m better than I was.

Hopefully everyone will enjoy the Superbowl today. Since I didn’t even know who was playing until we landed in the states, I’m not terribly invested in the game. Maybe I’ll have time to continue our evacuation adventure while everyone else is cheering for Green Bay.

So the story of our evacuation. I’ve told it a bazillion times already, but I haven’t been able to put it in writing yet. Looking at the pictures reminds me that we’re really gone and because of how quickly it happened it doesn’t seem real yet. Looking through the pictures of our last week there feels like a whole different life.

So Josh and I were all fine and happy and cheering on the Egyptian people in their revolution and then we started hearing rumors of a possible evacuation. Honestly, we thought we weren’t even close to evacuation threat levels so it was quite a shock on Sunday morning when we go the call. OK, that’s not entirely true. We were lying in bed on Saturday night, listening to the Egyptian army firing artillery and shooting guns and I felt sick to my stomach because I knew that each blast was going to create more anxiety for people and increase the likelihood that we would have to leave.

 

We took breaks from packing to go sit in our yard and tried to calculate the odds of us being able to stay and debating whether that would be a stupid move or not. Josh gave it his best effort. He volunteered to stay, to do whatever anyone needed him to do, but in the end he was sent home with the women and children. Just kidding. That’s how he thought it was going to be, but there were plenty of other men who were sent home too. They determined that all “non-essential” personnel needed to evacuate.

Anyway, we found out at 11:30pm Sunday night that not only did we have to leave, but we had to be ready for a shuttle to pick us up at 8am the following morning. Less than 12 hours when we thought we had several days. We were each allowed to take 1 bag that weighed less than 44 lbs and 1 small carry on. And because it didn’t look likely that we would be able to return, we had to move everything we owned that wasn’t coming with us into one room in the house, increasing the odds that if someone else comes in to pack up our stuff to ship it back to us, that more of it will make it home.

It was a late night. This picture only shows part of it. By the end I was thinking that even if we could come back, would I really want to return to this mess? But then Josh reminded me that all we would have to do would be to call Madiha, and she would have everything back in place in a few hours.

Monday morning we were ready and waiting for the shuttle with all our neighbors. We ended up having plenty of time to kill, since we didn’t actually get picked up until 11.

Hanging out in the police shelter. All the cops disappeared a few days earlier so this structure, along with other random items were dragged into the streets at night to create barricades. Then all the boabs (doormen) patrolled the streets with knives, sticks, baseball bats to keep anyone out who didn’t belong.

Once the shuttle arrived we loaded all our bags and everyone crowded in — we were all sitting on top of each other, no seatbelts either. I considered the irony that the driving part of the evacuation process was probably more dangerous than staying put.

Once we were shuttled to the commissary compound we met up with other embassy evacuees who had been brought there from all over Maadi. Everyone had to check in, get their orders, grab some snacks and get on one of 7 buses. It looked like what I imagine a refugee camp would look like — if refugees had nice luggage.