ETA: I have no other details other than they gave us the go-ahead to apply for visas and to start the process of redirecting our car and stuff from Egypt to Oman. Combine that with the Mubarak resigning/not resigning game playing and our Egypt door has closed. I don’t actually have an opinion on it at the moment. I’m sure it will be fine. We have friends in Oman at the moment and from their pictures it looks like a beautiful country. I think I just don’t have the energy to get geared up and get excited about another country/culture at the moment. Been there, done that, and now I’m sitting on my parents’ couch, lol.
Clean laundry, waiting to be folded. Of course, as soon as baby or I put on an article of clothing, she pukes all over, so folding the clothes appears to be an unnecessary step. Actually even wearing the clean clothing is proving to be an exercise in futility . . .
I should just take the clothes from the dryer and add them to this pile
or this one.
Good thing she’s cute, cause she’s not winning any awards in the Easy department . . .
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.
Baby and I caught a nap until we were given numbers assigning us to a flight to Athens, Greece. Then we were allowed inside the terminal to wait in another line. The other possible destinations were Turkey and Cypress.
Josh saying goodbye to one of our Egyptian friends. I pulled out the video camera because when he started talking in Arabic, the woman you see at the edge of the frame turned to stare at him, eyes and mouth wide open. By the time I started filming she was trying to be less obvious and wasn’t staring straight at him anymore.
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 . . .
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.
Camille sat and ate grass.
Just a normal day, playing in the sunshine.
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?
