March 2012 – robinchartier

back home in Maadi

We are having a great time in Egypt. It’s as if we never left. Our kids picked right back up with friends and we’ve even been to Maadi house already (the American Club). The friends we are staying with were invited to a kid’s birthday party there so we went to eat lunch at the restaurant while their kids went to the party. It was a big party (over 50 kids) and Caleb made himself right at home. He was 3rd in line for cotton candy, took a few whacks at the piñata, got himself a goodie bag, made himself an ice cream sundae with marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles . . . that’s pretty much how he always approaches life. Enjoy as much as possible without worrying or feeling self conscious. Good for him.

While I was inside eating lunch, Calvin was “babysitting” Camille and I turned around just in time to see him sliding her down the huge slide.

Oh my . . .

She loved it. Of course — she adores slides. Why wouldn’t she love the biggest slide ever?

It was quite a “Welcome Back to Egypt” party.

From the party we walked the two blocks to church, just like old times.

The younger boys went to children’s church and Calvin sat with us.

I love going to church at Maadi Community Church because it’s right in the middle of a neighborhood and we meet under a permanent tent in the courtyard of the church property. Being able to worship as part of a Christian community in a Muslim country feels even more significant when you hear the call to prayer going off in the middle of the service. Plus birds flying through church or cats creeping around keeps things interesting.

She got squirmy and wanted to check out the table of beaded items that were being sold to support the church’s prison ministry. She wanted all of it and kept saying: “this one! this one!” as she tried to get as many pieces as possible.

We settled on a pink coin purse

Toward the end of the service, the kids all came out waving palm fronds to celebrate “Palm Friday.” The boys’ Friday school teachers were the same and they walked right into class like they’d only been gone on a short vacation.

I’ve decided that I love Egypt and Oman like I love my children. I love them both, but for different reasons and in different ways. I couldn’t say that I love one more than the other, I’m just happy to have them both.

I didn’t think I’d be able to update today because we don’t have internet, but you can all thank ThomsonE850w9 for leaving his/her wifi unsecured.

Waiting for our flight to be called

On the shuttle heading to the plane

Aside from almost missing the first flight and a yelling baby (unfortunately mine) and a bumpy landing on the second flight, it was a pretty good trip. Oh wait, now that I’m thinking about it, that second flight was pretty intolerable. This is the secret to how I stay so content — the moment the bad parts are over it’s like I completely forget they ever happened. Better living through senility.

So on the flight from Abu Dhabi to Cairo, I was sitting next to a very large man who was encroaching on what little space I had in my middle seat — made even smaller by the squirmy toddler on my lap. (To Josh’s credit, he did his fair share of baby holding throughout the trip.)

Thankfully very large man was also a very nice and understanding man when Camille, in the middle of a fit, dumped some water on him. Oops.

In her defense, she had been up since 3am and was tired of being cooped up in the seats.

This Egypt leg shouldn’t have been too big of a deal because everyone has their own screens to watch TV and movies. This professional TV watcher can easily burn 4 hours. Nope. My individual screen was dead. All around me people were watching Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory, but I was wrestling a crabby baby and trying to make myself as small as possible so I could avoid being elbowed by my seat mate as he ate his chicken and rice. Sob.

All these happy TV watchers — so not fair

Oh well, all’s well that ends. We are currently happily at home here in Maadi. We already stopped for for coffee at my favorite latte stop, just finished dinner with friends and all the kids are having a giant slumber party while I crash after being up for almost 24 hours.

Ah, our favorite coffee spot

This morning I woke up with a stranger in my bed. I haven’t seen the crazy lady in months — really, for years. But this morning she took up residence in my head, making sure I knew that she thought this trip to Egypt was a really bad idea. She’s the one who makes my heart pound and my stomach churn as she whispers all the things that could possibly go wrong.

I can usually drive her away by being rude — telling her to go away, that she’s not welcome here, but she ignored me, deciding she wanted to come along for the ride. At the airport she kept looking for excuses for me to stay home. There was a mixup with Camille’s ticket and as Josh spent 45 minutes trying to check in, she kept reminding me that this was the perfect opportunity to leap to safety. Take the baby, head home, and crawl back into bed while the boys went on without me. I told her she was being ridiculous.

And then, when it turned out that we were going to have to run to make our flight, she said it was a sign that I shouldn’t be going. She tried to draw a line in the sand and say if we missed the flight, that I should give up, call it quits and go home. Normally I can get rid of her on my own, but today I called in reinforcements. Half of a yellow pill and 30 minutes later she was sufficiently muffled.

Intellectually I knew I was fine, but it was sort of a shock to see her again after all this time. I know it’s because I’ve been under a lot of stress lately with thinking about another move in 2 1/2 months to a new country, Josh has been traveling, juggling all my kids who seem particularly needy lately (probably because they’re stressed too). She likes to sneak in unnoticed when I’m preoccupied with other things and then she pops out with a “Surprise!” and tries to throw the kind of party that nightmares are made of.

But, since I’m able to write this while we’re flying over Oman and UAE, I’d say she’s been mostly disarmed this morning. Now I just have to leave her behind in the Abu Dhabi airport. Maybe I’ll buy her a cappuccino at Costa Coffee and sneak away to our next flight while she’s not looking.

Thou O Lord, are a shield about me. You’re my glory, you’re the lifter of my head. Psalm 3:3

~~nervous~~, ~~anxious~~, ~~excited~~, ~~apprehensive~~ . . . I can’t think of the right words to describe how I feel about going to Egypt for spring break. We leave in about 24 hours, my camera is charging, I’m mostly packed and all that’s left is for the kids to finish their last day of school and we’ll be off.

I’ve been calling our trip Egypt 2012: The No Regrets Tour. The idea is that this is our chance to go back and do the things we missed the first time around because our time there was suddenly cut short. For example, I am finally going to go to the Egyptian museum to see the mummies (last time I stayed home with a sick Camille, figuring I’d have tons of other opportunities to visit the museum). We’re also planning to take a train to the port city of Alexandria for a few days to see a different side of Egypt. When we first arrive we’ll be crashing with friends in the neighborhood where we used to live and visiting some familiar favorite places. All great things to look forward to.

However, the closer we get to leaving, the less I feel like I need to have a “last hurrah” in Cairo. I’ve become quite content in my clean, beautiful Muscat and no longer miss the crazy and chaotic pace of life in the city. I see two options for this trip — I love it and regret having to leave Egypt all over again. Boo hoo, woe is me, etc, etc. Or we arrive and I suddenly see Cairo through the eyes of someone who has lived in a beautiful and clean Middle Eastern country for the past year and I instantly hate it and want to go home to Oman. Neither of those sound like very fun options for a vacation, do they?

It doesn’t help that I keep getting email alerts from the American Embassy whenever protests are going on in the city. I keep forwarding them to Josh in case he feels like they are important enough to consider changing our plans. He doesn’t. (And truthfully, neither do I.)

So we’re off on another adventure — hopefully one that features lots of great stories, good food, and no emergency evacuations. Stay tuned . . .

Pirate rugby

Here are several of the videos that I’ve uploaded from the tournament. I have many more of Caleb scoring and only a handful of Calvin playing. Mostly because Caleb was always playing at the same time as Calvin and I wanted to make sure the baby of the family had someone to cheer for him. From the “woo-ing” that the mike on the camera picked up, I’d say I did my job well.

Calvin passing the ball