Dana's Guest Blog - (v)ac(u)ation

Hi all,

In keeping with my theme of asking my visitors to write my next blog post when they visit, my friend Dana wrote the most recent one. It is extremely interesting because she is in the process of getting her masters in Cairo, but evacuated to London during the recent uprising! Another exciting this is that her evacuation also brought together many old friends. You see, I originally met Dana when I did a semester abroad in Australia, and many of my good friends happen to be in the UK. As such, when Alexandra Doherty, Sarah Elliott, Andrew Tumulak and Ollie Williams found out Dana was coming, they dropped everything and made their way to London (actually we all live here except for Ollie [in Leeds] and Sarah [ in Manchester]).

Also, not mentioned in the below blog but equally important, was Leanne’s going away party. I am sure you have seen her in many a picture in my blogs in the past, as well as a mention in the below post, but she has returned to the US after her 6-month stint in London. Yes, I arrived before her and I am still here. Crazy, I can’t believe I have been here 8 months now, but she will be missed. I had no idea how it is possible to spend so little time with someone but come to care about them so much, miss you Leanne!

As some of you also know, I will be heading back to the states next week. I will be arriving to Houston at 9PM, then fly out to Mexico at 6Am the following morning for a wedding. My good friends Meghan and George are getting married in Manzanillo, Mexico. (I know, my parents have already tried to get me to not go to Mexico now, but I have been assured it is safe). After a week in an all-inclusive beach resort, I head back to Texas to finally spend time with my parents and sisters, who I miss a great deal. So my next blog post should be interesting, as it will deal with reverse-culture shock and I can tell you all the weird things Americans do! Until next time, enjoy Dana’s guest blog entry!

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(e)vac(u)ation – by Dana Kightlinger

I have packed up my stuff to move across the country or world many times. For the past seven years I have essentially been able to condense my life into two suitcases and a couple carry-ons. Each time, however, things accumulate. Leaving each place that has come to feel like home is a difficult task, saying goodbye to friends who have become like family, picking and choosing which items are worth that precious suitcase space, and generally taking my time to close one chapter of my life in favor of opening another. My moves have been quite calculated and I know weeks or months in advance when I need to say goodbye to a place and usually whether or not I am coming back.

None of these experiences prepared me for what I experienced in Egypt at the end of January this year. The first few days of what is now being referred to as a revolution I maintained a healthy sense of denial. I thought classes might still start on January 31 and that Mubarak would die as President of Egypt. I thought I would stay through the end of the semester and have no problem getting my thesis and then moving back to the States. I was ready to leave Egypt in May at the end of two years here. So after a week of continued demonstrations and daily meetings at the local dorms which led to the announcement that the University opening would be delayed, coupled with the availability of charter flights for American citizens and the closure of the American embassy, I decided to leave. I would evacuate. I laid in bed the night that I bought my ticket, wondering aloud whether I had made the right decision. Cairo responded with bouts of machine gun fire. Two days later I was on a flight to London, anxious to see Belton who I hadn’t seen in two years, since Seattle, which was two years after we had met in Australia.

Leaving Cairo was hard. I had spent the previous two days packing up my stuff, wondering what was important to bring with me and what I would be willing to leave in Cairo in case I never came back. This is normally a several week long process for me. The urgency of packing up quickly was almost liberating in a way, but I also knew that I was going to London with the intention of coming back to Cairo at some point. If I was really done, then I probably would have gone home to America and wouldn’t have used the excuse of doing research to justify my one way ticket to a ridiculously expensive city. I was exhausted and emotionally drained even though I had no problems at the airport or getting out of Cairo. In true BT fashion, however, both of these factors were ignored upon my arrival at the South Kensington tube station and BT helped me promptly drop my stuff off and get back on the tube to head out for karaoke. My flight was a little late so we had to run in order to see everyone before they left, but we did manage to sing a few songs (even though the machine kept breaking) and wish Alex a happy birthday. After about an hour out, we all headed back to our homes since most of us were getting up bright and early to be tourists the next morning.

If you ever have to evacuate your current country of residence, don’t despair. There are always people and things somewhere to distract you. In my case, those things were Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath, and the people were BT and Leanne. Windsor is beautiful and even though I had been there before, I easily could have spent the whole day wandering around the grounds. The audio guide is easy to follow and the whole place is so picturesque you can’t help but feel a sense of awe as you look and listen to history around you. Before we knew it, we were late for the bus because we had been wandering through the rooms of the castle. We didn’t get to see St George’s Chapel, but I guess that just means I’ll have to go back eventually. Our next stop was lunch on the way to Stonehenge. I figured that time was as good of a time as any to start including alcohol and pork products at every meal during my time outside of Egypt and the Chinese food we had lent itself to that perfectly - cider, spare ribs, sweet and sour pork, mmmmmm. We were quite content and (naturally) the last ones on the bus to drive out to Stonehenge. This was again a place I had been before (at age 11 I think), and one that we often have grand ideas about. Yes it’s very interesting to see how they were able to situate the stones in ways that we still don’t really understand and how they were able to get them to lock together all those thousands of years ago and even how they were able to shape and move the stones to get them there, but for something that’s part of human history (and for someone living about twenty minutes away from the Great Pyramids) Stonehenge is small (not like This Is Spinal Tap Stonehenge small, but still way smaller than expected, even though I had already been there!). Through minimal forced perspective photography, BT was able to hold it in his hands while I was able to stomp on it. It’s also completely exposed to the elements, which in our case included a pretty strong wind and some horizontal rain. My coat was not waterproof, so I was not bummed that we didn’t have as much time out there as we had had at Windsor plus the cider and pork was starting to set in and a nap was sounding pretty nice. Our guide, who had an excellent sense of humor (or should I say humour since I was in England) told us a few anecdotes along the way and then gave us some time to sleep before we arrived in Bath. Bath is famous for, well, the baths. I always forget that the Romans made it all the way to England but they did; and they left baths. We checked out the Roman ruins (which seemed way out of place in dreary rainy England) and then got clotted cream ice cream and fudge and went book shopping and had a quaint little evening before climbing back on the bus for the couple hour drive back to London. This time I napped; I was exhausted.

When we arrived back at Sloane Square I told BT that I didn’t think I could go out that night, I was just too sleepy. He agreed so we decided to have a few drinks and dinner at home. Well, the drinks had red bull in them, so a few hours later we were meeting up with Andrew and some of his friends at a birthday party and only after getting home from that was I allowed to sleep. Sunday saw me curling up on the couch until well after noon with a potent combination of jet lag, exhaustion, and sheer laziness knocking me out. That night we went out again looking for wings (TGI Friday’s fail - they kicked us out for not ordering meals; BT got it resolved though and the next week I believe they got free food vouchers for the poor service) and then wound up in a tiny little underground club watching the Super Bowl at 11 pm with a bunch of people who probably had the impression that football is a game played by kicking a round ball across a field with your feet. A lot of the same people from karaoke or the epic tourist adventure from the previous day were there, and most of them had work in the morning so after the Black Eyed Peas and Usher played their very bright half time show everybody except Leanne and I went home. We stayed for the end of the game, cheering slightly that Green Bay won (I really could have cared less, the Patriots weren’t in it) and then Leanne put me on a bus to Sloane Square, from which I was under the impression I could make it home on my own. I did. Eventually. This was my first time walking home without BT and I forgot a crucial turn, thus sending me on a wild goose chase looking for two streets with the same name. I made it home and to the couch much later than expected, but what’s an (e)vac(u)ation (see what I did there? It’s evacuation vacation!) for if not sleeping in all the next day?

I spent most of my time in London on BT’s couch talking to friends in Cairo and trying to assess the situation and when I would be able to return. We went over to Leanne’s one night and BT cooked, some of his other friends came over to his place one night...and BT cooked, I tried to go to the V&A Museum right down the street from BT’s place, but I got lost, and I went to Harrods. One day I did go to the Egyptian Embassy to see if there were protests, but it was quite small and I was wearing flip flops so I left after a little over an hour. I stopped by the original Hard Rock Cafe to get pins for my collection. I had been to London before, so touristy things weren’t my priority, and after having spent a week in Cairo with a fairly high level of anxiety, I was quite enjoying the ability to just lounge around and relax and not hear machine gun fire or the noise from jets circling or the chants of people hoping their President would step down.

I did head out to Oxford one day to visit a friend I met in Africa a few years ago. Though it was a short visit, it was nice to know I was making the most of my (e)vac(u)ation and seeing everyone I could. I arrived back in London on Thursday and Friday was to be the mother of all reunions. First I had lunch with a friend from California whom I hadn’t seen in years, then I went to St Paul’s Cathedral, then I went to a pub and saw that Mubarak had indeed stepped down (really Hosni? Could you not have waited two days until I was back in the country so that I could celebrate with the Egyptian people too?), and then I went to go pick up Sarah at the train station. True to form, we couldn’t find each other for a while but eventually made it back to Belton’s place, picking up my roommate from Egypt along the way. Ollie and BT made it back soon enough and the wine (in bottles, not goon like I kind of expected) was opened. My roommate headed back to where she was staying in the city and the four of us Monashians headed out to meet up with Ali and Andrew for a lovely Valentine’s Day dinner at a casino. After the dinner there was a string of other bars, lines, misguided bouncers, credit card charges, and dancing. Slowly but surely, the group began to dwindle and eventually we made it home full of red bull and delicious pizza. I still can’t believe the random circumstances that brought that group together that night - Ollie, Andrew, and BT had just spent a weekend together a few weeks prior and Sarah had visited not too long ago either, but everybody came out to get back together - as you do when a friend has just evacuated.

The next day, Sarah, BT and I went looking for breakfast and found the most amazing full English breakfast place (BT ordered pasta for some reason; I ordered extra bacon) and then wound up at the Saatchi gallery (a place BT had been encouraging me to go to all week) but it was closed for a private event (drat!). Early in the afternoon we sent Sarah to meet up with a friend who would take her to the train station and then BT and I went shopping for costumes for his flatmate’s birthday party that night. (I was supposed to be leaving at 6am the next day, but BT had decided that I would leave London in just as much of a fun time crunch as I arrived). We got our costumes (glasses and suspenders for my ‘dork’ outfit, boxing gloves for BT) went home and had some dinner (sushi) and headed back out nearly exactly where we had just been to go to the fancy dress party where nobody really quite knew what the theme was. I got a few winks of sleep before the alarm went off and I had to scramble to the airport via the tube - an hour and a half later (thanks to trains not running quite as frequently as you’d like them to on a Sunday morning) I made it to the gate just before it was set to open and was ready to board a flight back to a country that looked nothing like the one I had left.

I didn’t intend to wind up in London in February; I didn’t intend to have to leave Cairo; I frankly didn’t intend to ever refer to Hosni Mubarak as Egypt’s former President while the man was still alive. But this is what happens when you live abroad and if you’re lucky, you have excellent friends in excellent places who are willing to take you in, take you out, and take the time to help you figure out what’s going on in this crazy world. Thanks BT.