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Well, we have been in Egypt 4 weeks today, and I have been writing a very successful "head-blog" about all our activities so far. Blogging in your head is much easier and in many ways more satisfactory than bothering to write it all down, and you are guaranteed 100% positive feedback. However it does mean people still keep asking me what we have been up to, so here goes...(and trust me, it was a lot more exciting, witty and entertaining when it was just in my head!)
We flew to Sharm el Sheikh on 28 August, and took a taxi straight to the town of Dahab, which is about 100km north of Sharm el Sheikh, in the south of the Sinai peninsula, on the Red Sea. It is a peaceful, fabulous seaside town, with relaxing restaurants on the water's edge and coral reef right by. We planned to spend 2 days (recovery time after the insanity of packing up the house!) but ended up staying an extra 3 days.
This meant that we had plenty of time to catch up with Amy Pritchard (former colleague of mine from NHS Richmond) who moved to Dahab in April to set up a yoga camp - the rather lovely El Salam Camp & Yoga Shala. They have evening yoga classes 4 times a week, and they have monthly 10 day retreats planned - hopefully I'll get a chance to attend one over the next year!
Finally we forced ourselves to leave, and arrived in Alexandria by 10-hour taxi ride through the night. This took us via Cairo, where we drove past Giza, and Patrick got to see the pyramids for the first time.
We spent the next 2 weeks in the Swiss Canal hotel. (It took us a while to work out that if you write "Swiss" and "Suez" in Arabic they look basically the same...) During this time I spent a lot of time revising from "Al Kitab", the Arabic book we'll be using for classes, Patrick spent a lot of time setting up his mobile broadband connection and working, we found a flat (though we can't move into it till 1 October), had various adventures in Arabic (ordering food, buying a loo brush, ordering food, buying bus tickets, ordering food, ordering drinks, ordering food...)
Since classes didn't start till 26 September, and the flat wasn't available yet, we decided to go to Siwa Oasis for a week. I visited Siwa for a week in 2003 and it is one of my favourite places in the whole world. Siwa deserves a post of its own, so more on that later!
Now we are back in Alexandria, staying in a different hotel, in a 'deluxe' room with the most incredible view of the harbour. We have successfully extended our visas for an additional 6 months. (Patrick is going to write a special post about the bureaucracy involved!) Arabic classes start tomorrow, and all's well with the world, insh'allah!
