Egypt

The week and a half in Egypt was just what the doctor ordered. I was lucky enough to have met Mona’s aunts from Cairo when they were visiting the US last summer. The collective Barrada family was immensely gracious for my entire Egypt stay. Mona’s aunt Mona (I know, it is hard when they have the same name) invited me to stay with them at their place outside Alexandria for the beginning of my stay. A cousin, Nevine, who is a local tour guide made sure I saw all the great sites in Alexandria, and organized my itineraries for Luxor to see the tombs and temples, and Sharm El Sheikh for an adventurous scuba diving weekend on the Red Sea. Uncle Rafik took me two afternoons to play some tennis with his friends, at an absolutely amazing villa. And I didn’t even embarrass myself too bad. At least not until I missed a shot while running toward the net and ended up falling over it backward, and ultimately breaking the rusted support post. That ended tennis for the day. Another cousin, Hussein, met me one evening in Cairo to show me around some historic and cultural neighborhoods. This was quite a nice change from the crowded, dirty parts of downtown Cairo that I had been seeing. And, obviously you can’t be in Cairo (or Egypt for that matter) and not go see the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, which were astounding.
It was great to be around people that made me feel so comfortable. After two and a half months of travel so far, I greatly enjoyed this comfort break. Which is odd to say it was a comfort break, because most of the time I was running on an extremely tight schedule to get everything in. So it says tons about my Egyptian friends if I still considered the time to be comforting.