Business accomplished (for now)

So I did survive this past Saturday – I was tired, and I didn’t manage to quite finish my work, but I was able to catch up with everything yesterday. I woke up, got the Professor off to work, finished my edits while the boys did math and had breakfast, finished some chores around the hose while helping the boys with their English, got myself ready, had lunch, and then ventured out with the boys to finally go renew my passport; taxi to the metro, metro to Midan Tahrir, and then another taxi through barely moving traffic to Zamalek. All together it took 1hr15min. We had to wait for a little while, but the boys played with the toys they had brought, and then colored using the crayons and coloring books I had brought. When it was my turn they got to have a lollipop each, and they sat quietly while I got my picture taken (sadly, you will always look a certain way after 1hour and 15 minutes of public transport in a polluted city of millions, but who would care at this point?) and filled out all the papers. As it turns out, my old passport has fallen apart 'due to a fabrication fault' (and not because it's almost 10 years old, has stamps and visas on all the pages, and has functioned as anything from a flower press to an address book in at least 15 different coutries?), and because there have been so many complaints, I will be given a new one for free! This was certainly good news. After our embassy business, we went back home; taxi to Tahrir (the traffic practically stood still!), overcrowded metro, and then taxi again back home. We stopped by Saoudi’s and picked up snacks and dinner ingredients, went home and got soccer and taekwondo suits on, had a quick snack, and then I brought the boys to their activities. When I came home, the kitchen, dining- and living rooms were a complete disaster, our bed sheets were still in the dryer, laundry all over, the boys’ room a total mess, but dinner was ready, so we ate, bathed (it’s amazing how dirty you get just by going downtown for a few hours!) got the worst of the house straightened out, and got to bed. I was exhausted, but very glad to finally have got the passport business out of the way. In a couple of weeks I get to do this all over again to pick it up.