Christmas Day in Cairo, Egypt

Yesterday, Christmas Day, we

- were woken up by the boys way too early;

- watched the boys open their presents from Santa Claus and friends in the morning;

- charged a lot of batteries, unscrewed a lot of screws and fiddled with toys that would not work properly;

- concluded that the remote control car and the toy train we had got for the boys at Carrefour really did not work;

- concluded that there was something wrong with the pottery wheel as well;

- called Emad and had him go to Carrefour to return and exchange the broken toys;

- opened the door for the carpenter who delivered our new parquet floor for the small bedroom (a few days before Christmas, the carpenter came by to look at the floor and to ask when he could come by to do the actual work; he suggested December 25th. "That's not possible" I said, "any other day is OK, but the 25th is not good for us". He looked at me with surprize and asked, sincerely "why no possible?!" and it was the first time in my life I had to explain to someone that we celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December . We really are in a different culture here!);

- enjoyed a Swedish Christmas dinner and decided it was not bad but that we would never do it in Egypt again; it was too much work for what we had managed to put together, and it simply wasn’t as good;

- listened to St. Matthew’s passion and had some glogg while sending e-mail Christmas greeting to our friends, playing with toys and reading the book August got from Michael on Egyptology;

- put on our sandals and went for a walk around the neighborhood;

- said “Merry Christmas to you too” probably about 50 times;

- enjoyed the look on the boys’ faces as they watched Courtney entirely dissemble the pottery wheel and replace it’s dependence on batteries with a power adaptor that plugs into the wall, rewire it using the soldering iron Santa Claus had got him and clean the engine, only to assemble all of it again, producing a better and stronger pottery wheel;

- watched in amazement as the Christmas train set Emad got us in exchange at Carrefour actually worked;

- cursed Carrefour when we had to conclude that the remote control monster truck Emad got us in exchange didn’t work either;

- watched an annoying episode of Justice on television;

- noticed that Courtney’s tomato plant on our kitchen balcony is in bloom; and then finally we

- put the boys to bed, had a drink and some chocolates, listened to Mozart’s Requiem and enjoyed each other’s company.