Eid Mubarack عيد مبارك

Happy Eid Al Fitir,

Last night Ramadan ended, and the country is now celebrating one of the biggest religious holidays of the year (think Christmas). This is bittersweet; it is easier to accomplish tasks and it is again culturally appropriate to eat and drink in public during the day, but there is something great about Ramadan. Last night at church a some friends told us the night after they returned from the states they went for a walk during the time that Egyptian Muslims were breaking their fast.

They only walked about 1/2 mile, but in that time four groups of people on the street asked them if they would like to join them for dinner. So in someways we will miss it... but in other ways not at all.

I also thought I would post a few photos that show the general disparity in our everyday life. The first few are from the beach last weekend. We live 2 hours from the Red Sea, so we slipped away with a few friends and spent 24 hours relaxing at the Red Sea.

Playing Volleyball on the beach

Crosswords by the pool

Relaxing in the pool

So this was obviously wonderful and relaxing. We returned home to Cairo and Emily got busy on her first paper for school, and I worked on the sermon I preached this morning. But life in Cairo rarely goes as planned. This week's drama was that our what was essentially shutoff for 3 days. We usually had water in bathroom (fortunately) but we had no water in the Kitchen. We could handle not cooking, but after three days we had piles of dishes that had to be done. We noticed there was some water in the bathroom, so we went for it and washed our dishes in the bathtub.

Yesterday morning I was thrilled to see that our water was back on, and life could return to normal... for about 12 hours. Water is gone again, but hopefully we will have a functioning kitchen again soon.

In the meantime, we have a few days off for the Eid that we will spend in Cairo relaxing, seeing friends, and doing homework (or at least Emily will be doing homework).

Cheers,

Ben