Category: The Prep

We have in our front yard these two, rather entwined, plum trees.

We planted them as itty bitty little sticks 6 years ago when we bought the house. They were a gift from one of Kaddee’s co-workers.

Last year, much to our surprise we got many beautiful plums. They are small “italian plums”. Two bite, free-stone. Very juicy.

I say “to our surprise” because we didn’t really pay any attention to the tree, because we weren’t expecting fruit.

This fall, we pruned it back.

This spring, we noticed that we had HUNDREDS of plums, not counting the dozens that have fallen before they were ripe, or those countless that were eaten by the birds and squirrels.

As I look out at the tree, the plums are almost ripe. They are very very close. We can almost taste them. They are almost the right shade of purple. They are almost soft enough to eat.

They sit on the tree, tantalizingly close. They are a light shade of purple. They smell wonderful. They are perfiectly shaped. The skins are unbruised. They taunt me.

I see them every morning on my way to work. I examine the tree to see if any are ready. I talk to the tree and the fruit, offering encouragement. “Time to rise and shine! Grow strong. We want just one plum each before we go.”

Every night when I come home, I examine the tree and the fruit. I whisper to it “time to rest for the night so that you can grow strong tomorrow. Sleep well.”
I refer to this as “the race for the plums.” We hope to win the race, insh’allah.

If not, the tree will be standing 2 years hence.

If we time our return just right, I hope to open the gate and pluck a plum from the tree, close my eyes and taste the flavors of home.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must go whisper to my tree..

Update: We have plums. Dozens! They drop from the tree, ripe and delicious.

We have eaten our fill. Feel free to come by and take a handful and taste what we call home.

We finally received our travel plans from AUC. (well, we received 1 set that had the incorrect dates. That was quickly resolved.)

We depart the country Sunday, Aug 20th.

We fly, British Airways, direct from Seattle to London. We then get to set a spell (6 hours) in Heathrow and arrive around 1AM in Cairo.

Unfortunately, the BA website won’t allow us to select seats. We are going to have to get them assigned at the gate. Hopefully we don’t get stuck in a middle seat for 9 hours…

Anybody got any FF miles for BA they want to donate so we can upgrade 🙂

26 days! Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock….

We are entering the home-stretch…

Same Job, Only Different, Announcement.

I have been talking back and forth with my company since March, trying to come to some agreement that would allow me to continue to work for them while we are in Cairo.

Well, today I had a meeting with my supervisor and have signed a Memorandum of Understanding.

It outlines my responsibilites (projects, hours, status reports, trips back to corporate etc) and the companies responsibilities (uh, they continue to pay me a prorated salary based on hours, they continue to pay my benefits etc)

And working 30 hours a week without all the distractions of the office will probalby be more productive than 40(or more) hours in the office.

I am very pleased with this turn of events. It was beginning to look like it wasn’t going to happen.

Now all I gotta do is figure out how I am going to manage ~8 computers from 10k miles away….

Well, based on the information we received about baggage restrictions, we have changed our travel plans.

We have requested that AUC fly us to Cairo without a layover in Europe, which is kind of a bummer.

Hopefully we will get a chance to spend some time in Europe after we arrive, either for Christmas break, spring break or summer.

On the bright side, this change in plans gives us slightly more time to pack and get organized, and more time to say goodbye to our friends here in Seattle.

AUC buys our tickets to Cairo. They say that we can make a stop over where ever
we want, and we just pay the difference between the direct fare and the fare for
our itinerary. Fair enough.

We notified them that we wanted to stop over in Europe for 2 weeks.
It is meant to be our sanity break. 2 weeks with nothing left to
pack, no deadlines. Just hanging out. Ahhh, pure bliss.

The plan is to fly into Paris or Amsterdam. Those 2 were chosen
because the goal of this trip is to go to Belgium and tour
a few of the monastery breweries and in general drink some
of the best beer in the world, near or at where it is produced.

Flying into Brussels is prohibitive in both price and scheduling.
For instance, it would add approx $1k to EACH ticket AND require
a flight from Brussels to somewhere else, with a 6 hour layover
and then a flight into Cairo that arrives around 3am. Blech.

But flying into Amsterdam or Paris is cheap, they have decent
connections to Cairo, and are a relatively quick train ride
to Brussels.

Anyway, we have been communicating with the nice folks at AUC
and they told us we could do this if we want, but that luggage
rules will work against us.

If we fly “direct” from the US to Cairo, we fly under international
rules for luggage and weight restrictions.

That means that we are each allowed 2 bags with at 50lbs (each) for a
total of 200lbs. [Note, that sounds like a lot, but we have to
live out of those suitcases for up to a month until our shipment
arrives from Seattle.]

If we do a layover in Europe, we have to fly from our European
airport to Cairo under “European” rules. Which limit us to
1 bag of checked luggage and 40 lbs, for a total of 80lbs.

If they allow us to check 2 bags each, there is an additional
bag fee (not sure what that is) and a ~$4/lb fee.

So that is potentially 112lb * $4 = $448.

On top of the extra cost of the ticket, train fares, car rental,
hotels, food, beer (mmmm beer).

It is starting to get expensive.

Then there is the recommendation of the nice man from AUC that
said “You might want to consider going to Europe from Cairo
during one of your many AUC holidays….”

Which is fine if I can get the time off my job. (Assuming
I have a job).

Many decisions to make, too many unknowns.

That is our unaccompanied air freight shipping allowance. It gets shipped to NYC, where it gets palletized and combined with other faculty members shipments, and then shipped on to Cairo
I don’t know if that means it is 750lbs FULL STOP, or if that is all that AUC will pay for, and if we go over, we pay the difference.

AUC has an arrangement with the Egyptian government:

They sign a letter of guarantee that all the items we are shipping over air freight will be taken out of the country by us when we leave. That means that everything we ship in is duty free.

If, for any reason, an item does not get shipped out, we would have to pay a duty (which is oftern in excess of 100% of the value of the item).

Even if an item breaks, we have to ship it home, or pay the duty.

750 lbs. We both use a lot of books in our day to day jobs. We will have to get as many as possible on CD-ROM.

It will be interesting.