Friday, December 4, 2009

The new normal






As Christmas is almost upon us, I reflect on how desperate I was to return home for the holidays last year. That is not to say that I miss my friends and family any less. On the contrary, I think I miss them more. Instead, I think this all reflects "the new normal". This semester passed with incredible speed consuming us with school decisions for the kids, me going back to work full-time, Joe searching for the ever-allusive publication, etc etc. We met some new friends, we played soccer, we got a puppy. Sounds kinda....normal.

Despite the vast differences in culture, we have found our groove. This is good and bad I guess. On the one hand, I finally have stopped waking up in a cold sweat worried that we will starve to death for lack of clean, safe food (and have accepted whatever food I can get!). On the other hand, we have done hardly any touristy fun things this semester. We haven't been back to the pyramids, nor have we gone sailing down the Nile. It is kind of sad that we are in such a cool place and the only thing we have managed to do is go to work, school, and schlep the kids around to all of their activities. Then again, this is normal too, right?

I've posted some pictures from our feeble attempt to correct this boring pattern here. Today we went rock trekking in the Wadi Desert near our house. Note the size of our 3 month old "baby" dog. She was supposed to be the runt of the litter...at 28 lbs so far...I don't think so!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You & Joe look like yall had a good time at the wedding, you were not kidding when you said it was a HUGE event !

snow cone looks alot bigger