So we made it onto the last leg of our flight. Bye bye, frigid Germany, hello desert! The boys (and their mom) were thrilled that this flight had individual screens, unlike the shared screens of the previous flight. First up, a little 30 Rock for me. They must have known I was coming. Bob was happy with cartoons.
This is a picture of the unwashed masses who had to wait in the long customs lines while we skipped through with our diplomatic passports.
And here is where my documentation of our trip failed. This is the only picture I have of our arrival in Egypt. I guess I was too busy experiencing it, huh? From here we went to baggage claim where my smugness at beating the customs wait was replaced by annoyance as we had to wait and wait and wait for our bags — that early arrival in SF ensured our bags were last off the plane.
We were greeted by an expediter named Ahmed who was holding up a sign with our name on it as we came out of customs and the boys all went to retrieve our luggage as I found a place to change the baby before the drive to our house. As I walked in the bathroom, an Egyptian woman motions at me, offering to hold the baby, and I say, “oh, I don’t have to use the bathroom, I’m just changing her diaper.” As I scan the bathroom for an appropriate space, she leads me over to the sinks and points to the counter. I say, “OK, thanks” and then as I pull a diaper out of my bag, the woman starts to undress Camille and take off her diaper. I say, “I’ve got it,” but she just keeps going. And in her defense, she was very sweet and cooing at the baby and making her smile so I wasn’t scared of her, it was just very strange to have this lady take over the diaper changing process.
I let go of Camille for a second to grab the wipes out of my purse and in that split second, the lady picked her up, ran the water in the sink, and started rinsing her privates and behind with her hand! And in the thick fog that was once my brain I realized, “ohh. . . she’s going to want a tip and I have no cash on me. I’m an idiot.” So I try to regain control of the diaper changing situation and as I’m fastening the diaper, she has her hands over mine, “helping” me. And as I pull on the baby’s pants and she takes her from me and pulls them up the rest of the way. Then she coos at Camille, kisses her head and hands her back. Then she puts out her hand and asks, “tips?” I mumbled something like, “sorry, but thank you very much” and hustled out of there, feeling like I failed Traveling the Middle East 101.
Now it’s after 1am and as we exit the airport the air is warm and smells like a mix of cigars, old campfires and sand. It was great. There were masses of men standing at the doors to the airport, all jockeying for position, calling out “Taxi! You need a taxi?” We followed Ahmed through the crowd and he brought us to our driver where we met our sponsor Christy and someone from the embassy. We loaded all our people and our stuff into the car and the van and headed for home.
Within the first 3 minutes I saw 2 cars driving in reverse down the road coming straight at us, but our driver swerved around them without ever taking his foot off the gas. His night time driving technique was interesting. As he would approach intersections he would flash his lights and honk his horn, but never slow down. Considering I couldn’t find the seat belt to my seat, I probably should have been nervous, but I think I was too busy taking it all in . . .