Xmas in Cairo – Monday 25 December 2006

Well this is the first Christmas I’ve spent away from my family – in fact it’s the first time EVER that our whole family hasn’t been together… I was a bit concerned I’d be massively homesick all day but I survived quite well.

Firstly I stayed up late last night and rang Manda and then rang home and got to talk to Mum, Dad and Aidan all on Christmas Day morning so that was great. Unfortunately I had to buy an international phone card which from here is bloody ridiculously expensive. I paid £100 LE, which equates to about AUD$23 and for this hard earned cash I got a total of 25 minutes and 30 seconds talk time. When Chris buys them he usually gets about 40 minutes to the US… 25 minutes is ridiculous – that works out to be almost a dollar a minute. Normally we’d use Skype but I didn’t want to have to wait at Beno’s til midnight and I didn’t think I’d be able to hear coz it gets quite loud in there.

Then this morning when I got to work mum rang me so I got to talk to everyone again while I opened the lovely necklace that my mummy had chosen and posted to me. I worked till 1:30pm then fought the traffic home. I found out later that there had been demonstrations in Downtown and Mohandiseen – no idea what for or where, presumably politically motivated – but apparently these demonstrations were to blame for the excessively busy traffic.

Once I finally made it home I walked up to the BCA for Christmas lunch. It was a 5 course meal for £120 LE (plus you get to go back for leftovers on boxing day :) ). First up it was soup (tomato -sensational or mushroom – quite good). Second course was a prawn cocktail with teeny tiny shrimps that were absolutely swimming in cocktail sauce. Third course was the main affair with turkey, lamb, roast potatoes, steamed potatoes, broccoli, brussel sprouts, peas, carrots and stuffing and gravy – the plates were overflowing. Very tasty but so much food! This was followed by some sort of Christmas pudding type thing and brandy butter sauce (that had about 10 quarts of brandy in it!). After all this food we were so stuffed we went to sit outside. As a result we missed the last course of cheese and crackers (not that I could have fitted it in).

After stuffing ourselves with all this food most people started to drift off. By about 6:30pm there were only about 25 of the 60 or so people left. Most were just sitting around having a few drinks. I was sitting at the bar with Helen (British hasher) and her partner and this Scottish couple form the Hash came up and started talking to me. Well I don’t think I stopped laughing for the next 2 hours. They were hilarious – they were half cut and Dougal was doing Billy Connelly lines and telling stories. I was laughing so much my face hurt. At times Dougal would say ‘eh, what are you laughing at’ then he’d turn to Margaret and say ‘look at this lass – what’s she laughing at’. I was in hysterics they were so funny. I even got up and danced the hokey pokey and various other action related dances with Margaret – she was adamant that she wasn’t leaving until she’d danced the hokey pokey.

Anyways but 8pm I was fairly tired so decided to pack it in. Margaret and Dougal were off to Harry’s pub (I decided I didn’t need another hung over work day so declined) and I wandered home.

When I got home I opened the present that Chris, sorry I mean Santa, had left behind for me – chocolates, biscuits and lollies – what more does a girl need :)

It was a really good day. I got to talk to nearly everyone either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and I got presents, a decent feed and some laughs. For a girl a long ways from her family I think I did pretty well for Christmas Day.