Day 1 & 2 - The Trip Begins

May 24 & 25, 2008



Sorry for the delay, folks. It's taken me a little longer to get my act together to start posting. As Belinda indicated, we had no internet access during the entire duration of the trip. For those who live by their email, this was both a blessing and a curse. I think 13 days is the longest I've gone without checking my email in years. The first few nights, I actually had dreams about checking my email. Scary.

Anyway, the first two days of our trip were spent traveling to Cairo. We left for the Houston airport on Saturday morning around 8ish and didn't arrive at our final destination until 3-ish the next day. We left Natchitoches around 8:30 on Saturday morning to drive to Houston to catch a 9.5 hour Lufthansa Airlines flight to Frankfurt, Germany. *Note: a recurring theme throughout the journey through the breadbasket of the world is fraught with sickness – air, motion, and food.* Spirits were high at this point as we all crammed our luggage and 13 people into a 15 person passenger van. I’m not sure who the makers of this vehicle were kidding but 13 people do not fit comfortable in one of those vans and you can certainly not fit luggage into what they call “cargo space.” Thank goodness Dr. Hailey drilled us that we were to pack light. If anyone had packed adequately for a 13 day trip we most certainly would not have arrived in Houston fully luggaged.

After safely arriving at Houston Intercontinental Airport with a brief “technical stop” in Lufkin, everyone managed to make it through check-in and security in one piece. Prior to boarding, a few of us separated from the group to enjoy one last meal on American soil at a diner in the international terminal. Word to the wise, do not eat a guacamole hamburger and fried zucchini before getting on an international flight. I don’t know about those who ate with me but too much fried food does not a happy Kate make.



After we landed in Frankfurt, our connecting flight to Cairo was so close that we literally stepped off one plane and right onto the next. Fifteen or so hours in a tin can hurtling across space at 500 miles an hour is exhausting, especially once you've crammed 13 people into a 15 passenger van, including luggage, for four additional hours.



On the first leg of the trip, Belinda, Florence and I got a little punchy and decided to take lots of pictures of Boudin (which might be some of the only ones you'll see). For those of you who don't know, we took a little bit of Louisiana with us to Egypt. We officially dubbed him Boudin Praline LaFitte, or Bou for short. Surprisingly, he met a friend while over there, a little dinosaur named Melvin. We had a last-minute addition to our tour group, Michelle, a recent graduate from a small college in Massachusetts, who decided to bring a little bit of home with her as well.

The next leg of our flight left much to be desired. Belinda and I both suffer motion sickness. On the flight to Cairo it felt like we were on a bad rollercoaster. I guess the winds were high that day because for the last hour of the trip there were many moans and groans coming from various areas of the plane. Three of us sat in the middle section of the plane, me on the aisle, then Florence, then Belinda. Florence does not suffer this crippling ailment and was fine as our plane was tossed about. B and I, on the other hand, were miserable. At one point, a scream rang out in the back section of the plane. Apparently, a passenger couldn't contain himself and threw up on the flight attendant seated opposite him. If I had seen that, I would have surely lost it. Despite the trauma of flying into Africa, we made it safely to the ground -- only after the steering mechanism of the plane broke and we had to be ferried to the gate. (I'm not sure when that happened and I didn't want to ask.)

Following a quick trip through customs to purchase our visa and get a stamp in our passports, we made it to baggage. It was there we discovered that 7 pieces of luggage decided they needed a longer stay in Frankfurt and would join us two days later, meaning we would be wearing basically the same sets of clothing for four days in a row. Our tour coordinator, Tarek, was wonderful about it. Since this was an EF (Education First!) tour, we had a tour coordinator (TC), a tour guide, and full-time security. The TC met us at the airport and during our three stays in Cairo.

I don't remember the bus ride from the airport to the hotel, I was too sick to look out the window. Maybe Belinda can expound on that. We stayed in the Concorde Hotel about a block from the Nile River. We did not have a view of it, but we did have a lovely view of the building next door. Thankfully our guide, Magdi, was kind to us that first day and, after we arrived at the hotel, allowed us to eat dinner and go to bed. The next morning we were awoken at 2am to board a flight to Luxor to cruise down the Nile. More to come, so stay tuned!

Kate