January 1, 2019: Happy New Year from Cairo!

My family is in Egypt!  Mom, Uncle Herb, and Luann are spending two weeks here.  We will head to Upper Egypt on a Nile Cruise to see all the temples and tombs of ancient Egypt.  They'll come with me to Alex for a day or so, then they head to Cairo to see the pyramids and the rest of the city.  I could not be more excited.

At midnight we were in the airport, in the middle of an argument between two cab drivers over who would drive us to our hotel.  Or it's possible that midnight was the moment when the airport security guard finally intervened and helped the two men solve their argument.  Or maybe midnight was when we shoved ourselves into the "spacious" sedan taxi cab, with our luggage piled on top of us just so we could be driven 45 seconds (NO exaggeration here) to our hotel room (which was connected to the airport).  At whatever moment midnight actually occurred, my family was being fully immersed into a part of Egypt that I have come to love.  You never quite know what's going to happen.  Most likely something memorable, a bit confusing, and a little chaotic.  Life here is never boring.

Either way, we celebrated properly once we got to the hotel and settled in.  Because of the time change, this was the first NYE where I've stayed up significantly later than midnight.  My just-off-the-airplane smell and comfy travel clothing kept me grounded and reminded me that I still wasn't "cool" just because I was awake and celebrating at 2am.  But at 35, I've been over being cool for a long time now.