One year later

Just outside the Cairo Airport

San Francisco Airport with my Dad and our life for the last 2 1/2 years (the 6 pieces of luggage)

As of today we have been back in the good old U.S. of A. for a whole year! And what a great year it has been! We have been so blessed this past year. America is such a great place! Lots of people warned us when we were coming back that we would experience a lot of culture shock but looking back I can say, nope! None! I guess we didn't immerse ourselves fully into the Egyptian culture. I remember how excited we were to come home. We flew on our last Egypt Air flight, from Cairo to New York and spent the 4th of July weekend being tourists in our native land. It was a lot of fun. It was a great place to spend our first 4th of July back in the States. I loved seeing the American flag everywhere and feeling so at home. Going to grocery stores was a blast and the sky was so pretty and blue.

Here are some highlights from our first weekend back in the states and some things we were and still are so happy to have in our lives again.



FAMILY! Us with my sister Susanna and her husband Ryan. They flew out to NYC and we got to hang out with them for part of the weekend.



Free, beautifully maintained public parks, Green Space!!



All the BBQ we could want!! Pork included!



Clean(er) streets (it is NYC) where people use crosswalks and there are stop lights and signs in English and a sidewalk too! (I am holding a bag of Dunkin Donuts also a plus! We never could find real donuts in Egypt)

Performances that start on time. (We went to see Wicked, so fun.) In all honesty we really loved the Cairo Opera House, we saw some really good shows while we were over there and they were so affordable too. So we could just say everything being on time not "Egyptian" time because there really is whole different concept of time over there.



American holidays celebrated the American way!

Liberty for all!

Being Americans in Egypt made our lives easier and harder at the same time. It got old always having to pay or be expected to pay the "foreigner price" (No we are not rich just because we are from America.) When we got back we could just feel the freedom. I know that sounds strange but is just felt right.

The Temple! So this wasn't technically that first weekend but it was within the first week or two. We love that we live within an hour of a temple we did miss it while we were gone and we even got to go a few times.
Sacramento, California Temple.

We really are so happy that we are home in this great land that we love but we are also so glad that we got to live in Egypt. It turned out so much better then we thought it would and we wouldn't trade that time together for anything.