Photos

Speaking of eyes, Jack...

Sunrise in the desert, our first morning in Egypt.


For our first week here we stayed in Donia's family's beach house right on the Red Sea. It was SO beautiful! The Ocean was practically right on our doorstep. We went swimming everyday, forced out of the water only to eat and when we where sure that no sunscreen in the world could protect us if we spent any more time in the water under the sun.

The summer house was in a desert area outside of Cairo, on the other side of the Suez Canal called Raas-Sidr. It was unusually cool in there for this time of year (but still quite hot!) and there was a constant beautifully cool breeze off the ocean. Every night Donia and I slept outside under the stars on the roof of the home. Below are a few pictures of our room under the stars.


Apparently there is a large population of Gekos in the area that constantly invade the beach homes. This poor, ill fated geko showed up one night and Donia killed it - but not before chasing it around the room as we all screamed and it letting it's tail fall off in hopes that we would loose it's trail. From that moment on I vowed to free any gekos I see before D can get her hands on them!
Every day we would make a trip into the small village nearby to pick up groceries and supplies. The locals would use these clay pots to cool and clean their water. We only drank bottled water though (doctor's orders!)

There were always grazing animals - goats, sheep, even donkeys that would wander by the side of the road. Look! Baby Donkey!!!

The people who live as nomads in the desert are called Bedawin. We often saw them traveling on camels with their herds. These Bedawin started waving at the camera as I was taking pictures.

More on our wonderful time at the Red Sea and pictures to come soon! I am enjoying taking some time to look back and reflect. Now we back in Cairo where we are experiencing a severe heat wave so we are keeping pretty low key and staying indoors as much as possible!

Emails

Thank you all for the emails asking about my trip!!! I miss you guys like crazee!!


Everyone has been asking for photos and because there is only dial up over here it has been really hard to send them to everyone. So!! I plan to be posting MANY photos here for everyone to see. Hope you enjoy them!!!

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.