Egypt – Its all over… – Saturday 12 May – Monday 14 May

Its all over… my last day in Cairo, its time to go back to reality… I want to see my family again, but I’m sad to leave.

This morning I packed my bags. I left a fair bit of stuff for Wesley’s maid. Most of it she wouldn’t need for herself, but she knows people less fortunate than herself. Just some tops, my old sneakers, that sort of stuff. Then I kinda just fiddled around. I think because we didn’t have to leave until 5pm I knew I had all day to pack, so it was taking all day.

Once I got myself organised, Wesley and I took Bogey to the wadi. I wanted one more wander in the desert before I flew back to Oz. We spent an hour wandering around, soaking up some last Egyptian sun rays and then we dropped her round to Jim and Carol’s. Wesley has to go to Alex tomorrow so they are minding her for him. It was sad to say goodbye to Jim and Carol. They are his good friends, and while thy have children almost my age they were always really nice to me. I often wonder what his friends think about him hooking up with such a young lass… especially as they all knew I was going back. Maybe it’s a girl thing, my mates were all concerned that I’d get my heart broken. Jasmine even had rules – I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with some bloke while I was away, unless I could bring him home.

We have to fly for about two days so I wanted to shower the wadi sand off before getting on the plane. Bawled my eyes out getting cleaned up to fly home, cried some more on the plane, but not too much. Slept most of the way home. Aidan’s been teasing me for weeks - saying, ‘am I going to have to sit next to you while you’re blubbering all the way back to Melbourne?!?’. He got off lightly, I slept most of the way.

Aidan had a better flight too, he didn’t drink any coke and he was able to get a few hours shut eye on the journey home. I think his favourite part of coming home was duty free in Singapore! He bought some iPod paraphernalia and then we quickly jumped back on the plane.

Egypt is just too far away. Two days and two and a half thousand dollars. It’s just too much and too far. The world’s not as big as it used to be, but living in Australia makes everything else so far away.

We left Cairo at 7pm on Saturday May 12 and arrived safely back in Melbourne at 130am on Monday May 14. We were hungry when we landed and were just going to get McDonalds but the driver man suggested a ‘great’ burger place in North Melbourne so we went there and had ‘The BEST burger in Melbourne’. It was sensational. Helped that we were very hungry and more than that, we had a hankering for normal food!

We got back to my place and Neet had made up the single bed in my room. Aidan and I had been sharing a room/tent for weeks now so he plugged in his iPod to drift off to sleep and I crashed out. All in all it had been a tiring and emotional few days.

We got up Monday morning and transferred the photos onto my computer. We were fiddling around, both a bit lethargic and then all of a sudden I realised the time and we jumped in the car. We raced all the way to the airport – first time I’d driven in 7 months! He nearly missed his flight, got to the check in with 10 minutes to spare. Lucky he wasn’t flying jet star! He hadn’t booked his return flight until between Safari and Upper Egypt so we weren’t really thinking about being ready to get him to his flight.

Aidan safely on his way and I headed home to unpack and try and settle back into reality.

It was the most amazing experience and I would do it again in a second. Living in a foreign country, living the expat life, the hash and everything that went with it was fantastic. It feels disjointed being back. Like I stepped away from my life for a second and come back a different person in a different place. I guess I’ll settle back in, but all things being equal I’d rather be in sitting in the wadi with the dog, the boy and the hash, drinking beer under a foreign sun.