see you soon...

If any of you have visited Venice, you might remember the Bridge of Sighs, the small covered bridge that connects the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace to the prison...apparently it got its name because the view from the small windows of the bridge was the last look at freedom the prisoners had before they went to the jail to carry out their sentences...in most cases this involved torture and sometimes, death (hence the sighing.....). Flying into Cairo from Dubai last night, I felt a strange connection with those poor prisoners...it was a bit of a bumpy landing so when we finally stopped everyone was cheering, except me....at that moment there were very few places I wanted to be less...

HOWEVER, this morning as I was being squeezed and hugged and kissed and welcomed back so genuinely and heartfelt-ly (what is the adjective of heartfelt??) by all my friends at the hotel...I realized that although Cairo really isn't a nice city to live in, I do have a really great group of co-workers, and I didn't realize how much I missed them while I was gone...

The last few days in Dubai were sort of uneventful, mostly because Michelle and I (we think) developed heatstroke- [who would have thought that spending 50 minutes in direct 50 degree sunlight would have any negative effects...] but in spite of this, we got a car and went to Abu Dhabi one day to see what it was like- we explored one of the hotels that looks like a palace, saw the mosque being built in honour of the beloved late ruler of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed who died a few years ago and took a lot of pictures (or "snaps" as our driver called them), orignainally they were going to build it bigger than Al Haram in Mecca (which I now know a lot about!) but that 'wasn't cool' with some of the big guys in Mecca, so they had to scale back the plans a little...but we didn't get out of the car much as it was reaaaaaaally hot- that night, I met up with Stephanie for dinner, it was great to catch up with her!

I am a little late in this, but Michael, who is currently in Argentina (or maybe Bolivia) right now, had a birthday the other day, I hope you had a great one Mikety Mike!! xoxoxo (I also discoverd that Stephanie's is the same day, but passed along her greetings in person)

Soooooo not much else is new, except that I'M FLYING TO BC on Thursday!!!

I was planning to wait to the weekend but Lufthansa is having some sort of labour dispute so i figured if they were out for long, the other carriers might raise their prices (because they know people want to get out of the middle east in August!!) so it's better safe than sorry... although, even though I was so careful to make sure every leg of my flight (and there are a lot of them...) was not with Lufthansa... when I received the e-ticket it said that the Cairo- Munich leg is X airline (see mum....not putting too much personal info online) "operated by....you guessed it... Lufthansa!".....sneaky of them not to show that on the original booking... but I'm hoping that X airline will take responsibility and make sure that its flight goes despite the strike.

At the moment, I am about to start taking my bike apart and putting it back into its box- I never use it here (even inside), so I figure I should take it home where it might have the chance of being ridden once in a while.. I really wish I took a picture of it in its box before I put it together earlier this spring...i have the feeling it's going to be like a sleeping bag that you can never fit back into the bag the same way again-- wish me luck!!

Okay hope you're all doing well and I'll SEE some of you very soon. xoxo C