Enjoying Familiar Scenery

It is nice to be home. I am enjoying time with old friends. I am enjoying talking about my life in Cairo. I am enjoying seeing how people's lives around here have changed. I am enjoying driving and going to all my old hang out spots. It's nice. I don't enjoy not working though. Is that weird? Ok, I think it is pretty strange, but I am so much better when I am working. It's like the freedom of time is just spent doing alot of nothing. At the end of the day I feel like I have accomplished nothing, I have not really made myself or anyone else better in any way, what was the point of my existence today? Plus my mind just goes into female over-drive mode and I feel completely psycho half of the time. So that's always interesting. I suppose I could do some productive things like plan ahead for school or do some reading on teaching techniques, but I've managed to put that off so far. Anyhow, things here are good in general. A big thanks to Von for taking care of a girl who had too much to drink last night.

Walmart. . . an insomniac's best friend

I have ridiculous jet lag. I am ready to crash at around 6:30 in the evening and ready to wake up and start the day around 1:30 in the morning. AAAAHHHHHH!!! It's driving me nuts. So I lie in bed hoping to fall back to sleep for about 2 1/2 hours. Then I get up, check my email, search the internet for random information that has no real relevance to my life, and eat a granola bar. Then I think to myself 5 am is a great time to go to Wally World and use the gift card I got for Christmas! No lines, good parking spots. . . perfect. So by 6:30 in the morning I've already putted around the house, gone to walmart, put gas in my car, and had a nice cup of coffee. It makes you feel really productive, however I know I'll be cranky as hell and ready for bed by 7:00 pm.

Babies, babies, babies

Babies make everything better. Christmas with my family was great. We were all together and there were no fights, no weirdness. It was really good. The babies were, of course, the centers of attention and they did a good job of it. Unfortunately, my niece doesn't like people with blond hair. So she wasn't really crazy about me. But that's ok. My nephew loved, loved, loved me. So I don't feel completely rejected. They are both as cute as they can be. James is so tiny. Emma is such a chunk and has this full head of hair. Anyhow, I will be proudly carrying around their pictures and making all my friends pretend to be interested in my new family members.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope it is a good one for you! I am feeling more positive about this time with my family than I did before. Yes, I am surrounded by three depressed women. Post-pardum (is that how you spell it?) syndrome, empty-nest syndrome, financial stress, physical illness. . . they all have their reasons for not feeling up to this whole Christmas/dealing with issues thing. But these are three women that I love more than life itself and I would do anything to make them happy. I'm not sure if I can do anything to really make them happy, but I can at least try. Today I refuse to give into the negativity which grabbed hold of me yesterday.
In other news, jet lag has finally caught up to me. For the first two and a half days I experienced no jet lag and thought that I must have just lucked out. But last night sleep hit me at around 7:oo pm, though I managed to make myself stay awake till about 11:30. And now it is 4:30am and I am wide awake. I am normally an early riser, but this is ridiculous. However this is my traditional time for waking up on Christmas morning. When I was a kid I got so excited about my presents that I would wake up at 4:00 in the morning and then sit at the top of the stairs for about an hour and a half. Then at around 5:30, when I figured the rest of my lazy bum family should be up, I would wake up my siblings and then we would all wait at the top of the stairs for mom and dad to give us the sign that it is ok to come down. Now my playmates have grown up. There is no one to wake up here except the cat and dog. So instead I blog. I'll blog and then do some cleaning. Why not.

I'm slack

I haven't posted in for-freakin-ever. I'm really sorry about being so boring. But in the last two weeks I've had Christmas performances and parties, moving into a new apartment, loss of internet access in my move, and finally I've spent the last 24 hrs traveling from Cairo to Augusta. It's good to be home for Christmas. It's really good to meet my new nephew and niece! But I was in the airport at the baggage claim waiting for my luggage to appear, when it hit me like a ton of bricks. I suddenly felt what I knew in my head all along. This Christmas will be stressful. I hate to be a prophet of doom, but my family has been on edge with each other for the last 5 months (at least). So now we are trying to get together and pretend like it isn't that way, only that doesn't work at all. We are all either incapable of hiding what we feel or we are able to hide for a bit and then when the next thing happens we explode twice as much. So there in the airport I was almost ready to hop back on a plane to Cairo. I suppose nothing is ever solved by running away from it, but I don't know what I can do to make amends between the battling sides.

Anyhow, my nephew is adorable and he has a striking resemblance to my brother when he was a baby. Well, that's about all for now. I'll see some of you soon!

Bitch Tea

Be warned. Just because a waiter offers you "bitch" tea here in Cairo does not mean that he's insulting you. It's just that somehow the pronunciation of the word "peach" is a little ify for some of the locals.

Moving

I starting moving my things over to my new apartment today. I've got another week and a half here at the old apartment, so for a little while I'll be living between two places. I'm excited about the new place. It makes me want to stay in Egypt longer, just so that this place feels a bit more like home. Then I wouldn't mind putting in some money for really decorating the place and getting all those nice touches that make a place feel like home. However, I suppose an apartment isn't a good enough reason to stay. So for the time being my plans for coming home after this school year stand as before. I could still change my mind. It has been known to happen, but I really want to go back to school. So anyways, that's my update for now.

Dottie

A Little Too Comfortable

One of the nice things about living in a place where most people don't speak your language is that you feel like you can openly talk in public about things that are personal to your friends and not worry too much about the taxi driver or the people at the table next to you listening in on your conversation. But I had to step back today and think that maybe I'd gotten a little too comfortable in my non-english speaking environment. I was in the mall today with Sara and began singing out loud "Like a Virgin". Maybe I can get away with that here, but if I go back to the states and start singing or talking about personal things loudly in public places it will not be good.