Traditional Team Dinner – Sunday 22 April 2007

As thank you to Chris and I, and as celebration for all the work the team’s done, Ahmed (developer in our team) had his wife, sister and mother cook a fantastic feast for us all.

We finished work about 6pm and drove COMPLETELY across town. It took nearly 1½ hours to drive to Ahmed’s house – I felt so queasy. I think it was a combination of it being hot and me being tired. Normally I’m so useless in the car, but for some reason I’ve only felt off a couple of times here despite the crazy traffic and then it’s only been late at night.

So we get to Ahmed’s house a bit after 7:30pm. His family had laid on the enormous spread – they had an 8-10 seater table and it was filled with food. There wasn’t even enough room for us to put our plates down.

Most of the team was there. Noha didn’t come because her fiancé doesn’t finish work until 9:30pm and it was ‘inappropriate’ for her to come without an escort. Maha came, apparently because she’s already married it was OK… or at least she made it OK.

Chris and I just couldn’t get over the volume of food. Admittedly they were catering for four extra people who didn’t come, but still there was way too much food. I think they’d been cooking for three days in preparation! Ahmed mum doesn’t really speak English but when Chris and I were talking about how great the food was Maha assured us she understood enough to get the gist. Maha also told her in Arabic that it was lovely.

I was so tired. All I wanted to do was go to bed but they’d gone to so much trouble that we had to stay and try all the foods.

The boys spent today in Alex. I arranged a tour for them and they went to the major attraction – Pompey’s Pillar, the Roman Amphitheatre, the Alexandria Library etc. They had a really nice day, but it’s a long drive there and back so they were pretty shattered by the time they got home. Wesley had lent Aidan his mobile so they had a way to contact us but he accidentally left it in the tour bus. I got a text from my driver man saying Aidan had left his phone in the car and that the tour driver was going to drop it off. So luckily I texted Aidan’s Australia phone to let him know it had been found but meanwhile Wesley had been ringing and ringing to check on them and they weren’t answering. Wesley was at a Hash committee meeting and had left a key for the boys but coz they had no phone we had no way of knowing whether they’d made it home ok.

I got home about 11pm. Aidan was asleep but Colin said they’d found the key and had just had some toast for dinner as they were still full from the crazy seafood lunch they’d had in Alex.

All in all a big food day. Chris and I had stuffed ourselves on Ahmed’s families feast and the boys pigged out on Alexandrian seafood and Wesley got his fill at the committee meeting!