Back in Cairo (for a few days)...

So, I arrived back in Cairo late last night (well actually at 4am this morning) and will be here for a couple of days interviewing people for Makkah/Mecca (I never know how to write it!!). Since we arrived so late and I live on the other side of town from the airport, I slept at our sister hotel, which I've eaten at a lot, but never stayed at. I didn't really notice last night since I was so tired, but the rooms are really um...modern. Today we have the day off so I'm catching up on emails and laundry (well, the hotel is catching up on my laundry...)

I definitely thought Morocco was more interesting and fun than Tunisia, I don't know if it's because the team in Morocco was bigger and we saw and did more in Marrakech, or if Tunis is just more of a low-key city, but the pace there just seemed a little slower (and kind of boring!!). Here are a few pics taken on a walk last night before heading to the airport (the sunset was beautiful) as well as one of us in Marrakech, drinking cappuccinos and writing out employment contracts by the pool (see, we do work a little!)

I don't know if I mentioned it, since the plan seems to be constantly changing, but it sounds like Team Makkah '08 (...the GM wants to get us golf-shirts and matching luggage...) will be on the road recruiting for most of the next month. After Cairo, we're tentatively scheduled to go to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and then after that, to India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines. As you can probably tell from some of my last posts, I haven't been super happy to be in Cairo the last little while, so this is certainly a welcome change! If you told me a year ago that I'd be living across the world and traveling with really great people to all these places I'd never dreamed of going (for free!), I wouldn't have believed it for a second! I'm pretty lucky, I think!

Not so lucky, however, is the fact that somewhere on my travels I developed a really bad allergic reaction to a soap or something and have been itching like crazy the last few days...the worst part is that it's on my inner thigh- not exactly a convenient place to scratch in public, especially when you are interviewing people all day!!! It got so bad that I had to see the hotel doctor in Tunis, who gave me a shot (they looooove giving injections for even the smallest things in this part of the world..), some cream and some antihistamines to take. It made it stop for a while, but now it's back and I am going crazy!!

Okay, it's almost 4pm and I'm still in a bathrobe, so I should try to accomplish something today, but I hope all the dads out there had a great father's day, especially Tim, who is celebrating his very first one!!
xo C