Preparing for the trip

Hello Everyone,

I suspect most of you know, but in case you don't I'll give you a little background on our upcoming trip.

In September, Jane was accepted into a workshop put on by the Reda Troupe, a folkdance group which is evidently well-known throughout Egypt. Excited about the opportunity, we decided that it would be a good chance for us to make another trip abroad.

So, we made our travel plans, only to find out the day after we booked our flights that the dates for the workshop were changed to Spring of 08! Not being able to change our flights without major expense, we decided to go anyway. So, here we are a week and a half till we leave, getting very excited about the upcoming journey.

Though we haven't really thought seriously about traveling to Egypt until recently, we have thought many times about going to Turkey. That will have to wait for the time being. Egypt obviously has it's own allures and incredible history and we are doing what we can to educate ourselves about the culture, history and overwhelming number of things to see there.

Estelle doesn't know quite what to expect yet, but she is a great traveler and open to trying new things. This blog will be a way to keep her first and second grade classmates abreast of our travels and serve as a sort of homework assignment while we are away.

We will be taking a friend of ours, Sofia, who is a dance student of Jane's, and also Estelle's favorite babysitter. Sofia also speaks some Arabic, so that will certainly come in handy as well.

We leave on November 2nd, flying non-stop to Frankfurt and then on to Cairo, a city of over 10 million people! We plan to spend a few days in Cairo, go south to Luxor and possibly Aswan before returning north and possibly spending some time in Alexandria on the Mediterranean. We return stateside on October 18th.

So, check back here for updates and we'll do our best to post some reports and pictures as we can.

We love you all,

Tom, Jane and Estelle Archer