Our last week in Sweden and return to Cairo

Our last week in Sweden went by very quickly. We didn’t do all that many major things – I went into Malmo one day to hang out with one of my best friends since elementary school, and the boys went to the beach – but somehow the week just vanished. When we sat at the airport in Copenhagen, the boys told me they already missed everyone in Sweden, but that they couldn’t wait to see daddy, and I had to agree. It was nice to have three weeks in Sweden, but I found it hard to be apart from my husband for that long. More than anything, all the cool stuff and nice things we did, I kept wishing he could have been there to share it with us. Maybe next year.

The flight to Amsterdam went very well, as did our transfer in Amsterdam (I LOVE their playroom! with the adjacent nursing room). We met up with a family there that was flying from the US to move to Cairo and AUC, and we tried helping them through all the oddities a first entry in Egypt sometimes entails. This time it was the health screening (among other things). When we got off the bus that brought us from the plane to the terminal in Cairo, there was a huge group of people blocking the entrance. As it turns out, it was a sort of line, or rather, pile-up, as people were required to fill out forms and go through a fever detector. Yes, that’s right: people trying to make their way through a Cairo airport crowd with screaming children at 3 am in 35°C heat were heat scanned. I was tired, hungry, stinky, and sweating like a pig! I usually comply even with the most seemingly arbitrary regulations, but this once, with a baby and two children in tow, I snapped. I yelled at the man holding us back as we were being crushed from behind by the pushing crowd; I told him I had no intention of starting to fill out four separate forms, asked him if he really thought it was reasonable to do this to us (all the while gesticulating and shielding my kids from the crowds), briefly paused for the heat scanner, and then made my way through to the passport control. I can understand that they are worried about the swine flu, but that is no excuse for the lack of organization and the poorly performed management that we had to get through! I made sure the AUC man that was there to pick us up located the new family, got them a health form to fill out and got them through, then I held our place in the passport security check line until they caught up with us. We all got our bags eventually, and after a smooth ride home, we finally got to sleep around 5 am.