More Ain Sokhna and Goodbye to Naanii (August 8 & 9)

Due to Rachel’s early hour of rising on Saturday morning, we got to the beach earlier than usual, as well. The tide was coming in, so the beach was void of jellyfish bodies, since the tide is what brings them in. Instead little crabs had been at work all night long, burrowing under the sand and leaving intricate star patterns in the sand. 

It was as captivating a sight as freshly fallen snow; we didn’t want to walk on it and ruin their pristine piles of sand, but Rachel had already taken across the sandbar at a dead run and we wanted to catch up with her before she swam to Sinai or something. We followed her sandaled footprints to the end of the sandbar where she sat, splashing happily, in the water.

Of course, she wasn’t in the water alone. She had dragged Naanii off to the water before we’d even gotten to the umbrella Andrew was headed to. Andrew was leading, and carrying most of the stuff. I was following him, and Rachel and Naanii were right behind us. Next thing I knew, they were tearing off through the sand towards the water. It took Andrew and I a little while to get caught up with them since we had to set up camp.

We spent all morning at the beach, then had lunch at the condo. We left Naanii and Rachel there while we went snorkeling, then we went back to the condo to pick them up and we all went to the beach again. It was a long beach day!

Something bit Rachel, either in the water or before she got in the water. We’re not sure what, but I suspect mosquitoes or these little pesky black flies that I’ve caught biting me. She, however, blamed it on the little minnows swimming around her and wailed about the fish all day.

“Little fish eating me!” she’d shriek whenever she saw a fish or remembered that she had a bite on her foot.

Soon she forgot about the fish enough to enjoy herself in the water and was just as excited as the day before. We stayed until sunset again and wished that we had our camera with us for our last trip to the beach on Saturday because we saw, get this, a cloud! And not just any cloud, either. It was a cloud that was big enough to cover the whole sun, making for a beautiful sunset.

It’s been a while since we’d seen such an enormous cloud and I have no proof that it happened.

We stopped by a swimming pool to rinse the salt off before going back to the condo for dinner. The shallow end hit Rachel’s chest, which she found thrilling. She demanded to be put down every time anyone touched her and kept trying to swim. Again, this was a little scary for me to watch--I always worry about secondary drowning—but she’s bound and determined to swim. She kept dunking herself and then reaching around for something to grab onto to help upright herself.

“I went in there!” she would say each time she came back up.

I kept reminding her to blow her bubbles under water so that I could have some security that she wasn’t inhaling too much water.

We were all exhausted when we got back to the condo and fixed a quick dinner of sandwiches before getting ready for bed. Rachel took forever to fall asleep, it seemed, because her bites hurt so bad. She kept scratching at them and irritating them so they were all swollen and, indeed, painful looking. She woke up in the middle of the night and stayed up for forever, crying about how the fish were eating her and how bad her foot hurt.

It was a long night. She finally fell asleep at around 4:00 AM in our bed and slept in until 9:00, which was nice. We were all so exhausted, but she remembered that we had promised we could go to the beach one last time, so we rushed off to the beach and spent a while there before cleaning up the condo and heading back to Cairo.

It was a long car ride. Rachel wouldn’t sit in her own seat, so she sat on my lap…or at least what’s left of my lap. She kept trying to climb all over everything and I kept trying to convince her to sit down, preferably in her own seat.

“Rachel, we are in a car and when we are in cars we have to sit down.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” she stalled while she thought of the right word, “No, not car. Van.”

SUV. But still, that’s not the point. The point was to sit down!

Miriam kept kicking me and Rachel kept elbowing me and I was going crazy. I can’t really do much about Miriam kicking at this point, but I can do things about Rachel’s behavior.

“Rachel, take your elbow off my belly, please. You’re hurting me.”

“No, please! Please may I more having elbow there?”

“Why? Why would you want to have your elbow there when you are hurting Mommy?”

“Why-cuz…crazy!”

I was so happy when we saw the city rise out of the nothingness of the desert. It doesn’t take very long to get anywhere once you’re in Cairo. As much as we complain about the traffic, things run remarkably smoothly.

When Rachel saw that we were in Cairo she immediately asked if she could see a donkey.

“Please may I more seeing donkey?”

“Maybe,” I answered. “We can look for one but I don’t know if we’ll see one today.”

“Please, Mommy! Please!”

“Let’s just look out the window and see if we can find one. I don’t know if we will, but we might.”

We looked and looked and looked, but we didn’t see any donkeys. Sometimes we see donkey carts passing under the overpass by Carrefour. I knew that if we were going to see a donkey, that would be where we would see it. We didn’t see one. Rachel kept on with her pleading.

“Please, Mommy! Please more seeing donkey! Please, please please!”

I told her that I would love to have her see a donkey but that I really couldn’t do anything about it. For some reason she thinks I’m magic and can conjure up anything her little heart desires if only she says please enough. That might work some of the time, but it certainly doesn’t work all of the time.

It was so nice to get home and showered. We all needed a good scrub down after being incrusted in sand all weekend.

We went out to dinner at Arzak so that my mom could try some local Egyptian food. I don’t cook Egyptian food much here because it’s so cheap at Arzak.

After a quick trip to Road 9 to search out some aloe vera for Andrew’s back (yeah, they don’t have that here, apparently) we went home and relaxed until Rachel’s bedtime. Time was dragging by. We were all so tired! Seven o’clock…eight o’clock…

We played some Cinderella Go Fish and Winnie the Pooh UNO to help pass the time.

The grumpies started around nine o’clock so we got Rachel ready for bed, and she said goodbye to Naanii. Then Naanii took a nap while I put Rachel to bed and cried. When Naanii woke up, we talked and talked until 1:00 AM when her ride came to take her to the airport.

She told me not to cry, so I didn’t. We like to pretend that we’re just going on little trips instead of great big ones so that we can hold things together a little better. We pretend that we’ll see each other tomorrow or next week instead of next year.

I lost it when she drove away, though. Poor Andrew, always having to console me. We stayed up far too much longer and didn’t get to bed until after 2 AM.

And then Rachel ran into our room this morning at 5:45 AM.

“Hi, Mommy! I want cereal. Naanii goes back Mrita? I like clouds. I’m dry. I want water. I wanna hold baby sister. Hold me, Mommy!”

She wasn’t dry, so I had her pull off her wet underwear and climb into bed with us, bare bum and all. She fell back asleep after about a half hour, which was wonderful. We all slept in until 10 AM and had the most lazy day today, with Rachel running in to Naanii’s room every once in a while to see whether she was still sleeping or if she really left for America.

It was so fun to have my mom here, but so sad it was for such a short time. And now the countdown really begins, I guess. Uncle Patrick comes in two weeks. By the time he leaves I’ll be 33 weeks pregnant. Grandma will get here 6 weeks after that, a week before Miriam’s due date. Then we’ll have Miriam. At least, that’s our plan for the order of arrival. It wouldn’t be much fun if Grandma came after Miriam was born since we’re banking on having Grandma here to help with Rachel while I’m busy having the baby and everything…we still need to come up with a solid backup plan just in case.

Sometime in there Andrew’s next semester will start, and then before we know it the semester will be over and Grandpa and Uncle Jacob will get here and…and I need to stop thinking about time like this because it’s going by way too fast. Already I have Miriam aged to 2 months post-delivery and we still have the whole third trimester to go through!

What’s goin’ on?

When we got back from the beach on Saturday evening we walked into the backyard to desandify ourselves in the grass and were pleasantly surprised by the sprinklers coming on.

Rachel hasn’t seen sprinklers for such a long time (about a year) and wasn’t really sure what to think. We all started running around in the sprinklers and Rachel was right there with us, laughing and asking,

“What’s goin’ on? What’s goin’ on? What’s goin’ on?”

After asking that for a while she’d stop and do something new, like putting her head in the water or spinning in circles or attempting summersaults or practicing karate kicks, and then she’d start asking again like the little broken record she is.

“Oh! What’s goin’ on, Mommy? What’s goin’ on!?”

It was so much fun to watch her play! She was so thrilled and genuinely curious about what was going on. If she knew what rain was, I’m sure she would have thought it was raining upside down. She couldn’t have thought that, though, because she hasn’t ever really experienced rain, either. Sprinklers were just another novelty.

She was such a hoot all weekend! I should have followed her around with a tape recorder so that we didn’t miss anything she said.

We took the “tram” to the beach a lot. The resort has two open-air buses that have no windows or doors, but instead have a railing to keep passengers inside. There are park benches secured to the floor of the bus and they really aren’t the most comfortable thing to ride on since we have to go over speed bumps every few minutes.

I used to wonder why the pioneer children walked and walked and walked instead of riding in the carriage. I think I understand why now because sitting on a rickety wooden bench for a long, bumpy ride really isn’t a whole lot of fun.

When we got off the bus one time, Rachel waved at the driver and yelled out a friendly, “Shukran!” And then she added, “Means thank you! In Arabic! For riding bus beach!”

Later we had a discussion about where we live. We’re trying to get her to say Egypt, but she just can’t or won’t. She’s always willing to share her little gems of wisdom, though.

“Where are you from, Rachel?”

“I’m from Mrita!”

“Where do you live?”

“Home.”

“You live at home, yes. Our home is in Egypt. Can you say Egypt?”

“Yeah, Eshiwogpt. Lotsa Arabics live there.”

At least she tried to say Egypt. Some things she won’t even attempt.

During an early morning breakfast (a too early of the morning breakfast, if you ask me), Rachel said,

“Shukran nana, Mommy?”

“Do you want a banana?” I asked her. “Banana is mooz in Arabic. If you want one you say, ‘Mumkin mooz,’ or ‘Mooz minfudlik.’ After I give you one is when you say shukran. Can you say mumkin?”

Clearly my Arabic is a little primitive and I shouldn’t be the one teaching her the language. Oh, well. They’re letting me raise her and I’m not sure how I qualified for that position, either.

“No, I can’t!” she said, “Too hard say mumkin!”

Oh, it was so funny! She said it perfectly.

When we were having our second breakfast with Naanii and Daddy, she shared some more Arabic that she had learned earlier that morning.

“Ishishishishishish!”

I asked her what she was talking about.

“Mommy said, ‘Mishish!’” she quoted.

She was mishish-ing and ishish-ing the whole day long! We had been talking about flavors of yogurt before everyone else got up. Andrew told me that we had purchased apricot yogurt but the kind Rachel and I had was definitely peach, so I taught her that word, too—khoukh, which really is too hard to say. We all had fun laughing about Rachel trying to say apricot in Arabic and how if the yogurt wasn’t apricot flavored than it was mish mishmish flavor, since mish means not in Arabic. We really did have apricot yogurt in the fridge, too, but Rachel and I hadn’t seen it.

Rachel had a bit of a hard potty day on Saturday; just having too much fun to think about getting to a potty, I guess. She peed while we were playing on the sandbar, while running up to me and saying,

“Oh, no! I’m going pee!”

It wasn’t that big of a deal. Andrew just ran her into the sea to rinse her off and let her finish her business. When we were at the condo having lunch, though, it was a bit more of a problem, though not a huge one.

In the middle of lunch, Rachel started whimpering and looking really nervous.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“My bum’s going pee!” she said.

“Well, stop!” I instructed her and, again, Daddy rushed her away to find a better place to relieve herself. This time it was the toilet. Daddy gets to do a lot of the rushing since my rushing is a little less rushful as of late.

While they were in the bathroom, Rachel told Andrew,

“My bum is soooo bad! My bum went potty in my seat!”

It’s a little difficult to play the blame game when you’re they only child, but Rachel seems to do an okay job of it.

She really did a full-on peeing on the chair when Naanii was watching her that afternoon. Luckily the chairs are made of woven plastic fibers (they remind me of sitting in a wicker basket) and the floor under the chairs is tile, so clean up was simple.

While spending time alone with Naanii, she also started nursing her baby doll. Mom said that she sat down, held baby doll in just the right way, and covered herself up with a blanket while she nursed. I happen to think this is hilarious because the last baby Rachel saw nursing was herself, pretty much. And she didn’t ever watch herself nurse because she was too busy nursing. Apparently she remembered our technique well enough to mimic it, though.

She also tried to nurse her baby doll with her belly button, which is not a technique we ever tried.

When we came home from snorkeling, Rachel tried to quote Naanii to us. She’s all about quoting people and movies, but this time was a little different because she was quoting a gesture.

“Naanii said,” Rachel said, before tilting her head to one side.

“What did Naanii say?” I asked her.

“Naanii said…” Head tilt.

“What?”

Dramatic head tilt. Rachel was obviously losing patience. “Naanii said…” she said slowly, drawing out the said in an annoyed fashion before stopping talking and finishing off with a flourished head tilt.

It took us a few minutes to understand that the *quote, unquote* quote was actually the head tilt she kept doing.

Ain Sokhna with Naanii (August 7)

Every time we go to Ain Sokhna, the beach is completely different. This time when we arrived, the beach was littered with hundreds and hundreds of purple jellyfish. We were a little timid about getting in the water at first because of all the jellyfish, so Andrew and I left my mom with Rachel and wandered down the beach looking for a less infested area of beach to play at. There wasn’t really an area untouched by jellyfish, though, so we started back to find Rachel and Naanii and tell them that where we were was as good as anywhere.

On the way we stopped by the dive center to ask about snorkeling. While we were there I also asked about the jellyfish. So, these little purple guys really, really are moon jellyfish and are completely harmless. I don’t know about the ones we saw before…because we didn’t ever get stung by them, either. Maybe that was just luck.

After enough goading from Andrew, I got brave enough to touch the jellyfish. First I poked it with my finger and when it didn’t sting me I got really brave and put my whole hand on it. Then I picked it up. They are the weirdest things ever. No digestive system, no brain, no central nervous system, no respiratory or circulatory system. They can’t even osmose, which kind of explains their odd consistency.

 

Even with my remarkable example of valor in picking up a jellyfish, Andrew didn’t get the guts to touch one until the next day when we went snorkeling…

Obviously we’re quite fascinated by jellyfish. They’re too weird not to be. Rachel didn’t find them quite as interesting. All she could think about was the water and she dragged Naanii right into the it chanting, “I wanna go beach! I wanna go beach!”

The water was perfect—calm, clear, warm. Perfect.

We were surprised she was being so brave because usually we have to coax her into the water slowly. Sure, she’s been talking about going to the beach with Naanii for about a month and was so excited when Naanii got here so that we could finally go (and was a little disappointed that we didn’t leave for the beach the minute Naanii got here), but we really didn’t expect her to actually initiate the getting-in-the-water part of our beach trip. She’s always been a sand baby, happy to sit on the beach but screaming her head off in the waves. Not today.

She was all about swimming this time around. We couldn’t keep her out of the water. She was putting her face in, blowing bubbles, jumping waves, riding around on Daddy and Naanii’s backs and stomachs, holding our hands and kicking her legs, laying down on her stomach and crawling around while the waves splashed in her face. She was so brave it was scary to watch.

Rachel even got brave enough to touch a jellyfish, although she thought it was very gross. Every time one washed into her she’d scream, “Jellyfish getting me!” and make terrified shrieking sounds. It’s probably best that she remains wary of jellyfish since I really wouldn’t want her running up to grab one that actually stings.

 

We stayed until sunset and were all exhausted when we got home. It was hard to believe that just that morning we had gotten up and gone to church, but we had. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Naanii got up and bore her testimony…and as she was walking back down, Rachel said, “Naanii said ‘amen.’”

Rachel was so loud and exhausting during church. She kept yelling out things that I would have preferred she had whispered, like:

“Jesus has bellybutton!” and “Where’s Jesus’ clothes?” when we looked at a picture of Jesus on the cross. Or, “Nephi’s naked!” when we looked at a picture of Nephi looking at the liahona. He didn’t quite have a full shirt on…

It was nice to have Naanii there because now that there are so many nursery-aged children around, Rachel’s out of primary and back in nursery. Unfortunately, she isn’t transitioning back very well and always wants me to stay with her, but I have so much to do during primary that I can’t. Naanii stayed with her, and that was very helpful because then I could help worry about the 20 some-odd kids we have in primary now instead of helping Rachel feel comfortable in her new class. We’re rather understaffed at the moment, but it is fun to see the primary room so full again!

Snorkeling at Ain Sokhna (August 8)

Signing up to go snorkeling was pretty nerve-wracking for both of us. We’ve been wanting to go for quite some time since the Red Sea boasts some of the best snorkeling/scuba diving destinations in the world…and here we are in Egypt, just an hour and a half away from the Red Sea.

This weekend we found ourselves up at Ain Sokhna, with a babysitter no less! We decided to drop by the dive center to ask about things and the next thing we knew we were running off to find my mom so that we could ask her if she wouldn’t mind watching Rachel for a few hours the next day while we went out to the reef. She said she would, so we went ahead and signed up for the trip.

And then we started to get nervous.

I’ve always had a lot of reservations about the open sea. Sharks, for one thing; then there’s the whole Gilligan’s Island scenario; and jellyfish and stingrays and waves…among other things like knowing that I’m too far away from shore to swim back without dying of exhaustion first.

That night I had a dream that my stomach had been filled with seawater and tropical fish. I could feel the fish moving around and everything; it was the oddest sensation. I woke up thinking what a strange dream that was, then realized that my stomach was still moving and I kind of freaked out.

And then I remembered that I’m pregnant.

We spent the morning at the beach, wearing Rachel out so that she and Naanii could go back to the condo for a nice afternoon nap while Andrew and I went on our snorkeling trip.

Andrew was so jittery while we were waiting at the dive center. I don’t know if I was visibly nervous since I can’t see myself, but Andrew was obviously edgy. He couldn’t even remember his shoe size when it came time to pick out our flippers and mask.

Granted, they wanted to know his European shoe size, but still. I couldn’t remember his shoe size, either. I used to know what size of shoes he wore, both in European and North American sizes, but I have too much to remember to keep that information near and dear to my heart. I figure he’s a big boy and can keep track of his own feet, which don’t grow, while I try to remember what size of shoes Rachel needs. We’re constantly moving her shoes into the “it fat* yesterday” pile and it’s all I can do to keep up with her.

He wears a 40-42, we found out. At least in flipper size. I’m not sure how well that translates into shoe size, but when I asked for my size (36-38) the flippers fit perfectly, so apparently it’s pretty accurate.

After we tried on our equipment, we sat and dithered a while longer while the two other couples who had booked the same trip as us backed out. We ended up getting the whole boat to ourselves, besides the captain and our guide.

We took a little dingy from the shore out to a larger boat. I almost laughed when they told us to climb from the dingy over the railing of the big ship to get on deck, but I heaved my huge belly on board, anyway, and then we sped off away from the mainland, watching somewhat torpidly as the people, trees, and beach umbrellas faded off into the distance. As if that wasn’t enough to shake up these two mainlanders, the water had the gall to turn a brilliant, beautiful blue, proving to us how deep it was.

It was so beautiful that by the time we reached the reef, we were pretty excited to jump in. We put on our flippers and mask and practiced breathing for a minute before taking the plunge. Breathing in was easy enough, as long as you remembered to always breathe through your mouth. Breathing out was a little more difficult since you have to exhale and clear any water out of the snorkel so you end up breathing out in short, powerful blasts. I felt like a whale the whole time, spouting out a column of water and air every time a wave washed over me.

I was a little embarrassed that they threw the life ring to me to carry around while we swam since I’m a pretty strong swimmer, but I was glad to have it in the end. I guess they were worried about me because I was pregnant, and pregnancy really does take a toll on one’s endurance. I got tired of battling waves pretty fast and my feet kept cramping up from having to be pointed for so long. When I had had enough, the guide half-towed me back to the boat because I wasn’t swimming fast enough for him and then offered me a bed in the cabin, which I didn’t take.

Aside from pregnancy complaints, though, it was an amazing experience. Kind of surreal, like how I imagine going to the moon would be—a completely foreign view of our world.

The fish were looking at us all curiously and we were looking back at them with the same look of awe, I’m sure. We felt like we were thrown into Finding Nemo. We saw clownfish (anemonefish), angelfish, and even some blue tang (which are also known as dory fish, making Dory’s name on Finding Nemo rather ironic since no one ever seems to know what kind of fish Dory is. She’s a dory). We also saw some carpet fish, several kinds of butterfly fish (including lined, chevron, bannerfish and raccoon), Forster's hawkfish, Emporer’s angelfish, and Arabian surgeonfish.

The coral reef, itself, was an amazing conglomeration of color and shape with varying kinds of urchins and anemones nestled in crevices of the brain and branching fire coral. The vibrant and flashy fish were darting in and out of the coral and anemones. The big, ugly fish were slowly swimming on the ocean floor. It was amazing. We even got brave enough to dive below the surface to get a closer look at things.

We swam through schools of small silvery fish and swarms of moon jellyfish. The fish avoided us, but the jellyfish are at the mercy of the current and could do nothing to avoid hitting us. They’re much more solid than they look and feel more like silicon than jelly. The small ones are barely noticeable when they bump up against you, but the big ones get quite heavy and crash into you with considerable force. Not enough to hurt, really, but enough to surprise you with how heavy and solid they are.

They’re completely benign—we were poking them back and forth at each other in the water and on shore people pick them up and throw them at each other like balls—but it was still so strange to swim through a whole swarm of them. We are so conditioned to fear jellyfish, and while there were a few “dangerous” jellyfish lurking about they never got close enough to be alarming.

I don’t think we would ever have wanted to leave if we both didn’t get headaches from breathing funny and tired from fighting against the sea. Poor Andrew also got completely fried. For some reason he decided to take off his “beach shirt” but I didn’t put sunscreen on his back before we left because he was wearing his “beach shirt.” Andrew doesn’t touch sunscreen, see, so I basically have to tackle him just to smear sunscreen on his face.

We were out swimming by the coral reef for over two hours, belly down the whole time. From the back, Andrew looks like a lobster, but he’s still smiling.

Now we’re tempted to get scuba certified…. We had so much fun on our little snorkeling adventure, we couldn’t help but think of what else we could do and see with some more training and practice…and equipment. Obviously this will have to wait until I’m not pregnant and we have more money to spend on things like this…

*Otherwise translated as “too small.” Once Andrew accidentally used “fat” as the past tense of “fit” and we’ve been saying it ever since. Especially in the context of “it fat yesterday.” I believe those were his exact words when he made that error. It’s been years, but we don’t let these things slide by in our family. Because we think they’re hilarious.

More of Ain Sokhna

We woke up early on Wednesday morning, courtesy of Mr. Sun. He comes up way too early, a fact that we can ignore in the relative comfort of our own apartment since our building, like most in Cairo, has shutters over the windows so only a minimal amount of sunlight can get through.

It still gets light in the morning, but there’s definitely no light streaming through the windows, either.

Since we were up, we decided to just head straight to the beach. We made a big lunch, soaked ourselves in sunscreen again, and headed out to the beach.

There is a bus system that is supposed to work, but doesn’t, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been to Egypt. The bus is supposed to run every 15 minutes during peak season and every 30 minutes during the off season. We were clearly there during the off season, and the bus drivers were clearly taking advantage of the fact that it was off season.

No buses were coming around to pick people up. Instead they were waiting at the beach to bring people back home, which is really convenient at 5 PM, but not so convenient at 9 AM.

We walked to the beach both days—a long and hot walk. It takes us longer than a half hour to get to the beach, but I guess it’s worth it in the end.

The tide was still in when we got there and the water still was pretty warm, which was nice. We found some more “wild life” including a starfish and some mollusks. We kept the starfish for a while, but Rachel found it too boring, so we put it back.

 

We kept the mollusks for longer since we could dig them up and watch them bury themselves over and over again. That was much more entertaining than a boring, old starfish.

We were able to find several mollusks because we spent most of the morning sitting in beach chairs that we had moved into the water. The tide was going out and was stirring up a lot of shells, several of them still containing living things. The living things went into Rachel’s bucket, the non-living things went to Rachel.

 

Big, flat shells were plates and bowls. Coral were sticks and spoons. Round rocks and shells were food, usually apples. She had a great time pretending to eat various shells and rocks, while sitting on the chair in the water. The chair was keeping her safe from jelly beans and fish, while still letting the waves splash her to keep her cool.

 

Before lunch we did some digging and built some more castles and sand. Rachel started doing this ridiculous pose where every time I would ask her to smile she’d first lie down on her tummy and then grin like a banshee. Lucky for her almost everything she does at this age is cute.

   

By early afternoon the tide had gone out far, far away again and we had to walk quite a ways out to get to any water. Rachel wasn’t very happy about all the crabs. They dig holes to hide in an instead of making piles of sand (like ants do), the crabs make little balls of sand and toss them to the side while they work.

This means that the beach is covered with crabs, holes, and balls of sand. The balls of sand are what tipped Rachel’s scales. She insisted they were balls of “poo-poo” and didn’t want to stand anywhere there were remnants of crab-digging, which was pretty much everywhere.

Eventually she forgot about the “mean tuwabs” (they weren’t about to pick on Rachel—they were the size of her big toe), relaxed and really got into mud-flinging and mosque-building again.

She even almost voluntarily got into the water by herself, but only because I had decided to walk all the way out to the “deep” water (meaning it was at least up to my knees) so that I could cool off a bit more and Rachel wanted to follow me. She could only go so far before she froze in fright and started screaming for me to come back.

So I did, because I’m a nice mom like that. Rachel stumbled across the very same sand dollar that we had found the day before, which we thought was a little weird. I wonder if we accidentally killed it by using it as a shovel the day before (and by “we” I mean Rachel) or if it was already dead. Either way, Rachel was happy to have her “money” back.

When we were all hot, sunburned, and exhausted, we decided to call it a day. We released our mollusks back into the wild and went back to the condo. We had been at the beach for over 6 hours and Rachel was so tuckered out that she suggested having a nap!

   

I think our mollusk looked very happy to be going home. Rachel, on the other hand, just looks tired.

 

After napping and dinner, we went to explore the pools in the neighbourhood. Andrew asked a security guard about them and apparently we can use any pool we want. Unfortunately it was a rather cool and windy evening; Andrew was the only one brave enough to get in the pool, although the next day we all got in. We were still too tired and sunburned from the day before to fathom walking all the way to the beach just to repeat the day. The pool is just a short walk away, so we spent our last day relaxing at the condo and playing in the pool, which was just nice.

A spoonful of roaches

Sleep was elusive our first night at Ain Sokhna. Andrew discovered a relatively large cockroach in the bathroom, which made me rather nervous. I really don’t like cockroaches.

Before we went to bed, I went in to check on Rachel. I peeked around her door; she was sleeping soundly. I stood there for a minute, looking at her sweet face highlighted by the moonlight, wondering how she ever got to be so big and independent and about ready to have a pregnancy-induced emotional breakdown when I saw it: a many-legged creature waving its long antenne.

I just about died.

“Andrew!” I hissed, “There is something by Rachel’s head!”

He got a flashlight and went to investigate things for himself. A cockroach had also been admiring Rachel’s beautiful moonlit face. I insisted that he go in to get it. I wouldn’t be able to sleep thinking an army of cockroaches was going to carry my baby girl off into the night.

“I’ll wake her up,” Andrew warned me.

I didn’t care. She could go back to sleep. He went in and started the hunt. He hit the cockroach off the bed using his shoe. Then he shook it out of the sheets and chased it around under Rachel’s cot. As he had guessed, Rachel woke up.

“Daddy?” she asked.

“It’s okay,” he lied, “Daddy…dropped something. I just have to find it. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay, Daddy,” she complied easily and drifted back to sleep.

He found the cockroach, killed it, and disposed of it. And found some more cockroaches of competing size running around the shower. He started hunting around for their port of entry and closed it off the best he could, once he had found it. This took a lot of banging around, which woke Rachel up.

She stumbled out of her room, dragging her blankey behind her.

“Mommy. Stairwy.” she sniffed.

“Are you scared?” I asked.

We went and lied down together on the big bed in the master bedroom and waited for Andrew to finish with his scary noises, but even after he was done Rachel didn’t want to go back to bed. She slept with us.

Anyone who has had a toddler sleep with them in bed knows that this means that Andrew was almost falling off one side of the bed while I was almost falling off the other side of the bed. Rachel, on the other hand, was comfortably sprawled out horizontally, with her head in my back and her feet in Andrew’s.

We vowed to not repeat that the next night and thought that we wouldn’t have to since Andrew had plugged up the hole they were coming through. We had also invested in some roach killer since ant killer just wasn’t working any magic for us.

Unfortunately Andrew had only found one entrance. There were others. If I could start any two public service campaigns in Egypt, the first would be this:

Plug up your drains so that cockroaches don’t infest your house.

(The second would be:

Contrary to popular belief, smoking actually is bad for your health.)

The floor drain, instead of being solid, was a grate and the cockroaches were squeezing their way through by the dozens. All of them were plump and juicy.

Andrew wrapped the grate with tinfoil and replaced it on the hole, then he sprayed it with roach killer and hunted down the ones that had already come through.

After spraying so much bug spray, he thought he’d be considerate and open the bathroom window to let it slowly dissipate out of the house. He closed the bathroom door so that the spray wouldn’t come into the rest of the house, but when he did so, a big cockroach fell right on him.

He wigged out and accidentally threw the can of roach spray. The nozzle fell off and the can started dancing around the floor. Luckily it stopped spraying bug spray after the initial impact and was just releasing the pressurized air.

I ran out of the room and opened a window and Andrew threw the can outside where it finished its course.

Then we opened up all the windows and doors to air out the house and stayed outside for a while to avoid inhaling too much bug killer. Rachel’s door, fortunately, was closed and we didn’t smell anything in there, so we just let her keep sleeping.

But the tinfoil-plated drain cover and roach killer seemed to do the trick. We didn’t see any more cockroaches and were able to sleep soundly, or at least as soundly as you can after collecting a plateful of cockroaches…because a spoonful of roaches doesn’t really help anyone sleep.