The last post I wrote from Egypt. From this description, you can see why we were so sad to go, and why it seemed so unnecessary to us. But, I’m up early watching the news this morning and feeling sad that the wonderful peaceful demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of people of the last few days are starting to be replaced with outbreaks of violence between the people and the military and this new fringe group of “pro-Mubarak” supporters. I really need to see it on Al Jazeera to believe it though. I guess we’ll all see over the next few days if the ambassador made the right call. Either way, she has a good outcome. Americans are safe in America. Zero risk.
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Day 2 – cell phone service was restored around lunchtime, but no internet or text message capabilities yet. I’m not missing access to “social networking sites” nearly as much as I’m missing my access to google. It’s like I’m missing half of my brain. I couldn’t remember the name of the knitting character from A Tale of Two Cities when I was writing my previous post so I had to write “knitting lady” as a placeholder until I can look it up. Watching the 10s of thousands of people flood the streets today demanding change was awe inspiring. If we weren’t under strict orders to stay home I might actually consider heading out there to join them. Of course I’d have to run to catch up with Josh because he would have been out there from the first minute the people started gathering if he could. There are women and children, young men and old all wanting the same thing. Many women in hijabs, a few not. Muslims and Christians on the same side. Other women fully covered, veil and all, carrying signs of protest and shouting for Mubarak to resign. My favorite dude is this wrinkled little old man with a green scarf wrapped around his head who has wooden staff/cane who is bobbing up and down, dancing for change. We’ve seen him on several different news channels, doing his freedom dance. The government has issued a curfew today from 3pm until 8am, but none of the demonstrators are paying attention. Today the police have been pulled back and aren’t visible at all on the streets so the people are peaceful and happy and there has been no violence today.