It has been too long

A combination of too much to do and too little of interest has kept me away from the computer for too long.

Since I last posted properly, lots of things have happened. We had two lovely, but entirely different, Christmases. The first was December 25th, "American Christmas". It was exactly what Christmas should be. We threw a party at the apartment, where we cooked roast lamb, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, carrots, yams, chickens, salad, and then had cheesecake, cookies, fruit salad, fruit, a chocolate gingerbread house and nuts for desert. We had plenty of gifts and things to drink and our neighbor managed to get us a couple of nice bottles of Champagne. 12 people came, all of them Muslim. It was loads of fun, and people left around 3am. Wahied got me a microwave. I got him a dictionary, a book and a remote-control hummer.

Our second Christmas, "Egyptian Christmas" was on January 7th. We went down to Wahied's family's village. I had work the day before so we left early in the morning on Christmas day. Wahied was driving and very eager to get there, and neglected both the speed limit and his wife's warning that major holidays usually come with major radar presence on the highway. Needless to say, we were stopped for speeding and Wahied had to pay a fine. I called it his "insolence ticket" and he called it "highway robbery". Christmas in the village is almost exactly like every other day in the village, except that the street is knee-deep in cellophane sweets wrappers and colorful garbage, kids are exploding firecrackers all day and all night, and everyone has baked 50 kilos of three different kinds of cookies, and force feeds them down your throat. I had eaten about 30 cookies (and had been asked if I'm pregnant more than that) before we even got from the car to the house.

The fact that I am not pregnant is a point of contention between me and, well, everyone else. Every single man, woman and child in Egypt, particularly the village will outright say "Enty Hamil?" (Are you pregnant?) and unless I answer in the affirmative (which I have yet to do) they get furious and say "Le? Ayzeen baby! Ayzeen baby dilwaqti!" (Why? We want a baby! We want a baby now!). Usually I just say "inshallah" (God willing) instead of my more controversial "If you want one, no one's stopping you". It was particularly bad this time, because now that we're approaching six months from the wedding (it has been more than NINE since the marriage) people have begun to gossip about whether or not Wahied is able to get me pregnant. He hates that, I hate that, and we're certainly not going to run off and produce offspring for them just because they're doing that. But really, I just think it's rude to ask.

Despite the pregnancy debate damper, Christmas in the village was good, if not uneventful. We only stayed for three days and then came back to Cairo. Once we got home, we took down our Christmas decorations and cleaned the apartment. I guess we're getting geared up for the longest period of no-holidays in the year.

Between our two Christmases we had New Years. We spent it at Anita and Omar's. It was just a little thing with the four of us, but we had some champagne at midnight and all sorts of little snacks.

Amazingly, two Christmases and a New Years party have somehow made all of my jeans get smaller and have made me appreciate the virtues of a nice green salad.

I'm not entirely sorry the holidays are over. Despite having to re-learn how to get everything done during a two day weekend (we just had four 3 and 4 day weekends-and weeks-in a row) I'm ready to get back into doing everything.

I'm really enjoying work. I'm working on a lot of projects--it feels like too many, but amazingly I'm getting my work done--and am being given a lot of responsibility and freedom in my work. I really feel like I'm learning a lot and accomplishing a lot. It's amazing to me just how different people, services, goods, the market, and research in general are in Egypt from in America. The commute and long days out of the house are still a bit of a downer, but work still nets positive in the happiness index.

Home life is great too. Despite the fact that he's a bit of a worry-wort, and more than a bit of a mess, Wahied is lovely. He's a little nervous about not having enough work (tourism is almost nonexistent this season, due to a combination of global financial crisis and war in the Middle East) but has been putting his extra free time to use, which has meant that we get to spend more of my free time being together. We're still exactly like newly weds, which perhaps we are. I'm sure every newly wed has thought this, but I doubt we'll stop acting like this for a long time yet.

The apartment is also great. It gets pretty cold in the winter, but it is lovely and full of sunlight in the mornings. It has become our home in a way that I never imagined a rental in a brutalistic concrete apartment building could. It has warmth, life and quirks that I really can't imagine living without.

Like we've settled into the apartment, the car has settled into Cairo. I still think that it looks pretty good in comparison to all other cars in Cairo, but I can't delude myself into thinking that it would look nice anywhere else. It is constantly dirty (despite bi-weekly washings) and is beginning to show signs that it has, er, been driven 12,000km in Cairo? Wahied is becoming a very competent driver. He has started driving in Cairo and in heavy traffic, and has already abandoned turn signals, right-of-way, and speed limits.

The reason I was able to write this morning is that I drove Wahied to the US Embassy at 6:30am. They have this crazy system that you have to be inside the embassy before 8:00am, but they don't start any interviews until 9:00am, and then make people wait all day.

He and I are both a little nervous about it. His paperwork is perfect--we have all sorts of proof that we really are married, that we own property, that we work, that we are going to stay here, and we have a letter from a Congressman and a recommendation from a woman at the embassy--and there is no reason why we shouldn't get the visa. But I guess that IS why we're nervous. If we don't get the visa then there's nothing we can do better in the future to help ourselves get it. We've both convinced ourselves that we don't really care about the visa, our home is here, who needs to go back, blah-de-blah, but the truth of the matter is, I desperately want the freedom to go home, and he desperately wants to not disappoint me.

In a few hours, though, we'll know one way or the other. Wish us luck until then!

I'm going to run off to work now. I promise that in the next few days I will keep you all posted on how everything turns out, will get back to all of the people who have contacted me and never heard a reply from me, will contact people I haven't heard from in a while, will swear by salads, and will be grateful.

xx My love to everyone.