Busy days, happy days

Our life here in Cairo passes by so quickly I’m unable to take in even the few things I manage to get through every day.

When we decided to move to Cairo, I was a full-time working mother and wife commuting from Leuven to Brussels (in Belgium) every day. My days started at 6 am; I would get ready for work, get the boys’ lunches made, prepare their clothes and breakfast and catch the 7:42 to Brussels where I would work until dinner time (running errands on my lunch break), take the train back, have dinner, see my husband off to his office where he would work on his dissertation, put the boys to bed, clean up and do the dishes, pay bills, do the laundry, mow the lawn – there was always something extra, get things ready for the next day and then drop dead in my bed.

When we decided to move to Cairo, I imagined that without having to work, I would have so much time on my hands I wouldn’t know what to do with it. The first weeks, months even, we were so busy getting into our new lives here in Cairo that I didn’t change my pace. I would still move laundry from the washer to the dryer and write the shopping list while on the toilet (OK, sorry – too much information, I’m sure!). After we had somewhat settled in, Christmas was here, then we traveled through Upper Egypt, then the ‘deadline period’ started with editing jobs, papers and articles to be done, and then last week, classes began again!

Over the past week we’ve been focusing on getting my articles off to the magazine I write for, and Courtney’s paper finished for his conference end of February. Add Courtney’s teaching, the home schooling, socializing, Arabic, general house care, trips, choir practice, sports and activities, and the days fill up with more than can comfortably be handled. We are, still, enjoying our life here though, and as busy as we are, I’ll try to post blogs more frequently then I have been over the past couple of months.