Cairo to Uganda!

This was written two days ago… we are now in UGANDA!!!! <3>

Anyway, here’s my blog about Egypt J

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We’re in back in Africa and loving it! I’ve heard a lot of people say that they didn’t enjoy Cairo, but I love it here. Its such a cool city, everyone is so so friendly (especially the guys haha) and there’s so much history, its very interesting.

Just to catch you up, we arrived in Cairo on the early morning of the 22^nd, where we finally met up with Carissa! It was so exciting to turn the corner to passport control and see her sitting and waiting for us at baggage claim! It was a heartwarming reunion, we both dropped our bags, and ran, in slow motion, until colliding in each others’ arms. Haha no but it was so great to see her again. And we’ve been having so much fun since then!

The first full day we were here we spent figuring out our hotel. There was a huge confusion with the hotel and our booking agency, and it ended up with us not having a place to stay. Thankfully we found an amazing guy called Mohammed, who is a tour operator, and he has been so great. He helped us find a new hotel, which is so nice, and since then he’s been amazing. He gets us great deals wherever we go, has contacts everywhere, and keeps on buying little gifts for Josh, Ayana, and Moses.

Anyway, we found our hotel, and that took up pretty much the whole day. Haha my family is such a gongshow, and now with Carissa, we’re 8 people. We’re like a traveling circus. :P

Well since then we have done so many amazing things. I’m not going to go into a ton of details, but I’ll just quickly go over a few of the main things. One of the highlights was… riding camels around the pyramids!! Oh man, it was absolutely amazing, we couldn’t even believe it was happening. Succhhh an incredible experience…. Definitely should be on everyone’s list of things to do before they die, it was worth every penny!

We’ve also gone of the National Museum (so cool! Seeing the grave, and funeral mask and everything of Tutankhamun was so sweet), the Pharaonic Village (live actors acting out scenes from the time of the Pharaohs, very interesting), night markets (sooo much funn!!), a dinner cruise on the NILE, as well as a boat ride down the Nile in one of their old traditional boats (same as the time of the Pharaohs) called Falukas, gone to the Egypt version of Disneyland (Dream Park.. we made some great friends there! :D)… we’ve been enjoying everything we’ve done here. 

We have to buy internet by the minute here at the hotel, so I don’t have enough time to upload pictures, but once we get to Uganda we’re hoping to have free access to internet where we’re staying so I’ll try to put some pictures up then J

Its been a great trip, and we’re leaving tomorrow night, which sucks, but it also means that we’re heading for Uganda! So exciting!

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And now we’re here!! So crazy!!! :D More updates to come J

Taking the Midnight Flight to Cairo

Just wanted to post quickly to say that in 6 1/2 hours we're leaving beautiful Santorini, to head to CAIRO! 

We'll catch a midnight flight from Athens to Cairo, and will arrive there at approximately 2isham, Egypt time. 

There we will finally:

a) Be in Africa!!

b) Meet up with Carissa!! <3 

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we try and work out some miscommunications with hotels and such, and as we travel through the night with little sleep :S

 Please also keep Carissa in your prayers; she's traveling all alone right now as I'm typing this, so please think of her, and pray that she'll be kept safe, and that we'll all be able to meet up with no problems once we arrive in Cairo. 

Thanks! :)

Still in Santorini :)

Well our stay in Santorini is almost over, and it has been amazing! Every day was so much fun, and everywhere is so beautiful. Instead of trying to remember and catch up on everything we’ve done in the last week or so, I’m just going to put a few more pictures up and explain them if they need explaining J

At the Red Beach.. soo pretty there :)

haha random little man selling fruit :P

we're holding lava rocks... I just realized Megan's pretty much the same height as me now!! :S

Stopping at a resort for some icecream 

Ah this didn't load very well :( Anyway, this is our back yard!! :D

Moses modeling :)

The view from Fira.. the island in the middle is the volcano! 

Our donkeys coming....

Riding donkeys!! Me, Megan, and Josh rode twice... once just us three, down and up the stairs towards the port, and then again (this time in the picture) with the whole family, around the town of Fira. SO much fun!

Everyone loved it!! Especially Ayana, who was feeling very grown up on her own donkey :)

Moses showing off his very own donkey!

We leave on Wednesday for Athens, where we will catch our flight to Cairo! Since our stay in Cairo is only for a couple of days, I haven’t really thought of it much more than it being a sweet place to visit (not to mention I finally get to go there, after having my outreach trip to Egyptlast year canceled and locations changed!), and the place where we’re meeting up with Carissa (finally… can’t wait!!! :D). 

But now that its getting closer I’m suddenly realizing how awesome its going to be!! It’ll be a whirlwind tour, but its going to be so amazing.. visiting the Pyramids & Sphinx, hopefully riding camels, going to the Egypt version of Disneyland (haha… Dream Land or Paradise World or something like that :P) and just sightseeing, its going to be so cool!

And, of course, the closer we get to Egypt, the closer we get to Uganda, and the closer we get to my babies!! <3>

Pretty as a Postcard!

I don't have time to put a ton of pictures up, but here are a few of my favourites from the last couple of days... seriously, I can't believe that anywhere can be this stunning!!

Me and Marika the donkey :P ... This guy was SUCH a sweetheart!! 

The restaurant in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 1&2.. haha this guy was so sweet, and so proud of his place. He invited us to come in and see before it was even open :) Oh and Angelina Jolie has been in there too :D

Lena's grandparents' place in the Sisterhood movies :D

Moses and "Herbert" enjoying the view :) 

Santorini, Greece!

Well, I know I haven’t blogged in quite a while, but really, I’m just so frustrated with blogger right now. I wrote a huge long post, with tons of pictures and everything about our last week in England, but when I tried to post it, all the pictures (which had taken me about an hour to load) deleted themselves. Only a few stayed, and they were completely out of order. Ughhhh.

I’ll see if I can post a little bit of that later, but for now I just want to say that we are in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen…. Santorini, Greece!! And we had a bit of an adventure getting here. The morning we left England (Wednesday the 7^th) we had to get up very early- around 4:15am- in order to make our flight from Manchester to London. That was all fine, and we successfully caught our connecting flight to Athens as well. However, once we got to Athens and attempted to check into our last flight, here to Santorini, we were informed that the airline had canceled that flight, and while we didn’t know, they had contacted our travel agency. Now whether they in turn tried to contact us or not, we don’t know, but whatever happened, we were stuck in Athens. Which isn’t really the worst place to be stuck!

My parents were able to book another flight for 6am the next morning, and we went and found a hotel to sleep in for the night. The hotel was pretty good, and even had free wireless.. which was where I wrote my blog post about England, and where the pictures all got messed up L But anyway, we got up the next morning at 3:45am, got dressed and set off in the hotel taxis, caught our very short flight, and 3 hours after getting up, found ourselves on a tiny little plane, watching the sunrise as we flew over Santorini. It was amazing, so so beautiful. We could see all the classically greek white and blue houses and little churches and everything as we flew in and landed. Absolutely gorgeous.

Someone was waiting at the airport for us, and once we finally got here to our gorgeous little villa. Its connected with a hotel here, and they have 4 appartments that they rent out. We have two, and only one other one is occupied- by not very friendly people as far as we can see- and its so so cute J its surrounded by a gorgeous garden, has its own pool, and we can hear and see the ocean from our porches.

Anyway, after sleeping for a few hours, we got up and went swimming and to the beach for a bit, before going into town to explore. We rented a car, and this time, since they drive on the right side of the road,  my dad is able to drive as well J so we headed into town (I forget what it is called.. I know one is called Fira, and the other one is something starting with a C and sounds very Greek) and just explored. We drove around for a couple of hours, before stopping at a little café for dinner (Greek salad J soo good! Not very big, but still very good)

So that was our first day in Santorini at a glance! By the time we got back and went to bed, despite the fact that it was only about 9:30, I was exhausted! I wish I could put some pictures up, but we’re at the hotel and we can’t use the internet for too long right now. Hopefully we’ll have more access later on and I can put up the post about England, as well as some pictures of this incredibly stunning place we’re in now! J

Little Moreton Hall and Butter Chicken :)

Today we spent the day with my little cousin Alicea. She was home from school today and yesterday with a cold and an earache, but since she was feeling a bit better today, and seeing as we’re only here for a short time, her mom let her come with us for lunch, and then to go to Little Moreton Hall in the afternoon.

Little Moreton Hall is this sweet old estate from the early 1500s. It was owned by a wealthy family called the Moretons, and their house is still completely as it was.. it hasn’t been changed, except for upkeep, since the 1700s, and its so interesting. You can go on a guided tour, which we did, of the downstairs, and then the upstairs you can just walk around by yourself. Its so beautiful, and since I absolutely love history and historical artifacts and houses and such, I had a great time there.

You’re only allowed to take pictures outside, not inside, so most of our pictures are just from the outside of the house. However, while we were inside, Megan, Ayana, Moses, Josh, Alicea, and I went into the old bathroom (guarder robe??? Not sure how you spell that), and we closed the door and very quickly took a couple of pictures. :P So those are the only two pictures of the inside, quickly and very sneakily taken by Megan and I. J

Oh and unbeknownst to me, while I was in the upstairs watching everyone and making sure the kids were all behaving and not destroying the house, my parents and grandma had snuck off to the restaurant and were having tea and scones. I wasn’t very impressed. But apart from that it was great J

stealing pears from the orchard :P

our sneaky pictures :P

the kids inside the old dog house :)

After Little Moreton Hall we went to my grandma’s for our daily cup of tea and internet connection (in case I didn’t mention this before, we can only get internet at my grandma’s house, so I have to write all my emails and blog posts the day before, on Microsoft Word, and then post them later at my grandma’s… so my blog posts are usually about the day before it’s posted; today’s- posted on Thursday-was written on and about Wednesday), and then headed over to my aunt and uncle’s (Alicea’s house) for Indian food for dinner. I love Indian food so so much, its my favourite food e.v.e.r., so I was quite excited :) We had a very nice time with them, just eating and chatting, and the kids all played together in Kyle (Alicea’s older brother) and Alicea’s bedrooms… Megan was especially impressed by Alicea’s room- the walls are a shrine to the Jonas Brothers, whom Megan absolutely adores :P

On a side note, Kyle and Josh are about a year apart, and get along super well. Since they’re both into magic tricks and such, and Kyle’s really quite good at it, they came and performed a couple for us. They were actually pretty good! We only figured out one or two… and I am still so confused as to how they do the rest of them. So if anyone is good at magic tricks, and wants to let me know how all those card and coin ones are done, please comment on this post!!! :)  

Well, its nearly midnight, and I’m very pleased with myself. I think I’ve successfully gotten over my yucky jetlag. I’m barely tired (no more than the usual for staying up until midnight), and I didn’t have a single nap today… I think I’ve beaten it!! So, just in case, I’m going to go to bed right now, and get a long sleep and make sure that its really gone for good… goodnight! J

my mum and uncle.. her little brother :P

the boys :)