Author: Robin Chartier

This one is late today since I’m caught in the middle of a Bella, Edward, and Jacob love triangle and even though I know it’s not going to end in a way that makes me happy, I keep pressing on. *sigh* That might also explain why I’m having trouble stringing together coherent sentences – teen vampire romances kill brain cells.

Car Watch 2010 – no need for me to drive tomorrow since we are borrowing a different car instead. No Dirtmobile needed. Yea! Someone asked if “riding Egyptian style” meant car seat or no car seat. We still put Camille in a car seat, but it means that the people in the back seat have to share or go without a seatbelt.

 

Compared to some of the stuff we’ve seen, sharing seatbelts seems like safety overkill. Like the family riding on the freeway all on one scooter – mom, dad and little kid. And no one wears helmets here. The thickest layer of protection between anyone and the asphalt are their flip flops.

Sleep Watch 2010 – still deficient. I’ve decided I breed bad sleepers. I can’t tell if she’s worse than the others or if I just can’t remember how bad it was before. I’m leaning toward the “she’s worse” theory at the moment, especially since she keeps getting sick.

And yes, she’s getting sick again. Or maybe she never got better. I think this is her 3rd cold/fever since we’ve gotten here. Her brothers have also been passing around this nasty cough thing, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

And we have a tooth! I have nicknamed him Edward, since he is our nemesis. Edward is very white with sharp, fang-like points and he causes her lots of pain. He also gives her vampire like qualities of wanting to bite everything in sight and stay up all night.


Don’t let the smile fool you — she’s out for blood.

Speaking of Edward, I have to get back to my stupid book.
Jacob, Jacob, Jacob. That is all.

****If a lot of this post didn’t make sense to you, read Twilight. Actually don’t. You’ve been warned.

my hard knock life

It’s a hazy and dark day today. It looks like rain and in fact Josh said there’s a 20% chance of rain today and tomorrow. But since it’s 70 degrees out, I’m sitting at a table here at Maadi house, sipping a latte and watching Caleb in his tae kwon do class while I write this post.

After the boys finish class (Caleb goes from 10-11 and Calvin and Carter from 11-12) we’ll order lunch and eat out here on the patio. While they’re waiting for class to start, Calvin and Carter are playing with Camille.

You’d never know that she hardly sleeps at night.
This is her “Yeah, I’m awesome” face.
This is where the magic happens. Love, love, love my netbook.

It actually started raining so I had to move my operation inside. It’s still warm so Josh is swimming laps while I’m waiting for lunch to be delivered to our table. Baby is now snoozing on my front in the Ergo. Later we are going to go for a drive to a street with lots of western-looking stores to try and find a sweatshirt for me. It’s the one thing I actually need from our shipment, cause this wimp finds 65 degrees cold. So swimming, lunch, and shopping? Yep, poor me. 

a quick, clarifying note

I love it here, we are having the time of our lives and all the delays in our shipment/car/etc couldn’t begin to diminish the shine of my smile. I find these twists and turns to be funny and ironic and I post about them as part of our “story,” but all is well with us here in Egypt.

I’d still be a happy camper even if our stuff never arrived. I’d just take the insurance money and go to this amazing little furniture store that is a block away from my house and have them make me all sorts of wonderful things . . .a girl can dream, right?

See? Life is great.

It’s all downhill from here

Now that you’ve seen the pyramids and the Sphinx there’s no reason to keep reading. But just in case a few of you still find us mildly interesting, I’ll keep posting. Here’s our version of “the Egypt experience” for today.

Josh went to the embassy to check on the status of our stuff and our car. Our stuff has left customs and is now hanging out in limbo in the hands of some entity called “the Egyptian ministry.” We had a To Be Delivered date of No Later Than December 20th, but when this was pointed out to the person “helping” him, it was met with an “oh well.”

No word on our big shipment yet. Maybe it will arrive in time for us to turn around and send it home. Meanwhile, on the Amazon front, I had 7 packages delivered today. We now have new toys for the baby, an Egyptian pyramid for the boys to play with, new knives and cutting board for Josh to play with and I think I only have 2 packages that are still floating around out there, waiting to be delivered. It’s about time to order some more stuff so the fun never ends. Take that, Egyptian ministry.

Now for car news. We had our car shipped from Richmond and it made its way across the country to sit at the port in Baltimore until we arrived in country. Once we arrived here then our car was put on a boat and it will arrive in Alexandria and then be driven to us. Or not.

Josh found out today that when he checked in on December 2nd and filled out the paperwork to send our car here, that the guy actually forgot to let the people in the states know that we had arrived. Whoops! So since everyone there is out of the office for the Christmas/New Year holiday, the process can’t be started until everyone in America is back to work. Add on another 3-4 weeks for shipping and our car may be arriving right around . . . when we’re in Morocco.

Now Josh was really irritated, but soothing his pain is the fact that we have a car that we are borrowing right now, so we’re not stranded or anything. And when we have to turn that car over to our friends who are arriving in a week, we will have this beauty to drive:


 

 

It’s a Pajero — the European version of Josh’s Montereo. But it’s not actually sand colored, it’s emerald green. You’re just seeing 6 months of Egyptian sand that has embedded itself into the paint.


If you enlarge this picture and zoom in you can see the small line I made in the dirt on the hood so the green shows through. I have never seen a car this dirty before. It’s been sitting in the commissary parking lot for 6 months, but surprisingly it started right up. We’ll be riding Egyptian style since it only seats 5.

Stay tuned for my adventures in driving since I will have to drive to get it home from the commissary. I think the Egyptians will be safe for a few days though, since I need to mentally prepare before I attempt it.

The sphinx: little brother to the great pyramids . . .

If the pyramids are surprisingly huge, the sphinx is surprisingly small. It’s large in its own right, but compared to the monstrosities behind it, it comes off looking more like a cute kitty cat.

You have to hike down a hill to get from the pyramids to the Sphinx, so that is part of why it looks less impressive, because your first look at it is from above. And I say “hike” even though it’s a paved road because in Egypt all walking is really hiking in disguise. You have to stumble over rocks, sidestep to keep from twisting your ankle in the many potholes, leap out of the way of taxis that threaten to slam into you as the driver smokes and talks on his cell phone at the same time, hop over camel poop . . . There is no casual strolling here. It is human “Frogger.”
 

In front of the Sphinx there is a stone building that you can walk through that used to be a temple or the house of someone who built the Sphinx. Or maybe not. I think that’s what one of the kids was telling me.

Who needs Lonely Planet or Fodor’s when you have me as your tour guide?
  

There is a stone wall and gates that surround the entire Sphinx, so you can’t get very close to it. By walking through the building you can go inside the wall and get a little bit closer, but not much. However, you do get to see this very exciting version of an Egyptian wishing well: a dry pit that people toss money into.

We realized that Carter is quite the photographer. He took some of our favorite pictures that day, including this one of Josh and me.

and this one.

Poor Camille. Someday she’s going to realize that she slept through all these once in a lifetime opportunities. Maybe we’ll have to come back and do it all again 10 years from now. 

In case you couldn’t tell, I don’t know much about the Sphinx, except the boys told me that Napoleon and his men used to use it as target practice. Maybe that’s where his nose went. I’m sure by the time we leave here, I’ll know more than I ever wanted to know about Ancient Egypt, but this time it was fun to just go and look at everything.
Another of Carter’s photographic masterpieces. He got us all centered in front of the pyramid and intentionally included the smaller pyramid next to it. Too bad he’s not actually in the photo cause then this could be our Christmas card next year. Or not, since now you’ve all seen it. Let’s just call it the Christmas card for this year since we all know I didn’t send any.