Air born

Hello and welcome to my adventures in Egypt! This is the blog of Katharine Dubois. Please forgive me if I begin in a whimsical tone, I have been looking very forward to this trip for some time and have recently been reading a lot of Tad Williams...

I made my escape from work, routine and the familiar on June 19, 2007 to travel to Egypt with my best friend Donia and her family. It was a warm afternoon in Toronto as we made our way to the airport - at least I had thought it was warm, I now know that I didn't even know what warm was... yet!

Getting to the airport and on the plane itself was quite the accomplishment. We had already had quite an adventure already, what with travel agents who 'forgot' to book our tickets and an evil principal who at the last minute ruined my sweet farewell with my boyfriend Jack and forced me to scramble for travel arrangements from our home in St. Catharines to Toronto (thank you mom and dad!!!!!). But all that takes us too far back, I will begin with our flight...

Delayed. Surprise! Yes, delayed because of thunderstorms in Toronto which made us arrive in Frankfurt at approximately 7:10am to catch our connecting flight to Cairo which was supposed to leave at approximately 7:10am....
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Lucky we were not the only connecting flight that the plane was waiting for. So, my time spent in Germany was on an incredibly crammed bus (so full by the end that there wasn't even any standing room), without air conditioning for half an hour until they shuttled us over on a half minute ride to the air plane. I'm sure we could have gotten there much faster if we could have just walked. The German airport was very organized and orderly though and we only had to promise them my first born child so that Donia and I could sit together on the flight... just kidding... sort of. Once again, thank you travel agent.

Not much to tell about the flying itself, airplane food is airplane food, we had minor turbulance coming into Germany but the flight out was fine. A much more interesting flight must have been the one that Donia's brother-in-law, Sam, and son, Joey, took a few days earlier. Unfortunately, Sam forgot that Joey has an instant reflex of being sick to his stomach immediately upon stepping into an airplane and thus was not prepared for the spray that covered himself and the surrounding chairs. Poor Joey, poor Sam. At least Sam did not forget after that whenever they switched planes and Joey felt fine apart from his initial first reaction upon getting onto each plane.
Joey's nickname hensforth on this trip has been "...Ah-blaa".

Many of you may have heard that Donia seems to get a lot of unrequited... attention, while here in Egypt. I believe that her record for marriage proposals in one summer so far was 15? Well don't you all worry I will be keeping track of how many she gets this summer and reporting frequently. If any of you thought that this ailment was an exaggeration let me tell you what happened literally THE MOMENT we set foot on Egyptian soil (well I guess 'sand' technically but whatever, it's just an expression after all).

We were next in line to be cleared through customs. Before the officer waved us forward he paused. He took a long moment to look us both over and then took a long drag from his ciragette, eyes narrowing but his gaze never leaving us. He waved us forward and began talking to Donia in Egyptian, smiling in a coy, confident way. I could tell by the way Donia had gone bright red and was smiling in a way that looked like she was trying to be polite while two fat dung beetles had become wedged up her nose that this situation was going to cause me much merryment and mirth at poor Donia's expense. Finally after forcing a crumpled piece of paper with arabic writing and numbers on it into Donia's hand he handed me back my passport without ever actually taking his eyes off Donia to look at it.

Thus marked our official landing in Egypt. Donia had to promise she would discuss the offer with her father and get back to him if they would consider it. Marriage Proposal #1.