We arrived in Bahrain on June 6, and were surprised to be greeted at the airport by almost all of my aunts and uncles. My cousin Wahid even showed up in full Bedouin dress to impress Aaron.

We stayed with my Uncle Ismail, my Aunt Mary and cousin Sam in their huge house. Mary and Ismail couldn’t have been more hospitable, and Aunt Mary was sweet enough to drive us around and show us the sights of Bahrain during our week long stay.

I was surprised by how much Bahrain had grown in the two years since my last visit. There was construction everywhere and a lot more cars (and hence, traffic) on the road. It was apparent that the economy is booming. Everywhere we went appeared new and modern, with all the comforts of home. We were even able to find ingredients to make Mexican food in the local grocery store! Bahrain is a very cosmopolitan place, much like the U.S. or Europe in terms of standard of living. And, much like home, there are malls just about everywhere!

We were showered with affection and stuffed with food in Bahrain. We spent time playing video games with Sam and reading and relaxing. Aaron learned lots of new recipes from Alsabi, my aunt and uncle’s housekeeper. It was just what we needed after all our travels. It was too hot to spend much time outdoors but thankfully, everywhere we went had air conditioning.

We spent lots of time being driven around by Aunt Mary, who is a great tour guide. She is our unofficial family historian, and we enjoyed her stories. Aunt Mary drove us out to the desert, where many Bahrainis still camp out in the winter, sometimes for months at a time! Aunt Mary explained that many tents had satellite TV and all the luxuries of home. Not exactly roughing it! Camping season was over when we visited, but we hope to come back and experience it ourselves one day. We did see lots of oil rigs.

We visited Al-Areen Wildlife Park, which is a nature preserve for many of Arabia’s indigenous animals. The park had quite an array of deer and birds, some of which were very beautiful. Some of the birds were quite aggressive- Aunt Mary got attacked by one and had to defend herself with her handbag.

We saw ancient beehive graves dating from 4100 – 3700 BC. Bahrain was once known as Dilmun and has been inhabited since the Bronze Age. It was amazing to see remnants of Bahrain’s 7000 year old history scattered in between homes!

Another tourism highlight was our visit to Sheikh Issa’s house in Muharraq. My cousin Wahid took us here and showed us around. After seeing so much of Bahrain’s growth and modernity, we enjoyed this trip into old Bahrain. We walked through the souk to get here and found ourselves in a beautiful old complex that was once the Sheikh’s home. There was even a wind tower, which I remember my mom telling stories about from when she was young. The wind tower is an element of architecture in Persian and Bahraini homes that acts as an ancient form of air conditioning. My mom has childhood memories of hanging out in the wind tower in her parents’ home to escape the heat.

We enjoyed touring around Bahrain, but the absolute highlight of our stay was spending time with family. My mother’s four brothers and one of her sisters live in Bahrain, and much of the extended family. They couldn’t have been more warm and welcoming and we had such a great time with everyone.

My Uncle Ebrahim and Aunt Fatima hosted a delicious luncheon for us, and Aaron met most of the family there. I heard some great stories about my mom from my aunties.

Afterwards, my cousin Deena took us to the family business, fabric shops started by my great-grandfather and passed down to his sons. Uncle Ebrahim now owns the shops, and Deena manages them. The stores still bear my great-grandfather’s name.

We had the chance to spend lots of time with various cousins and aunts and uncles, and were taken out to dinner almost every night. One night, Deena and Wahid took us to a delicious fusion Asian restaurant. Another night, we celebrated Hisham’s 28th birthday with him, my cousins Safiya and Tariq and their friends. And yet another night, we were treated to a delicious dinner by my cousins Nasreen, Sohair, and Ali, Ali’s wife Julie, and Sohair’s son Yusef. Most of my memories of Bahrain revolve around eating, and now I understand why!

Our visit culminated in a wonderful family party that my Uncle Ismail and Aunt Mary hosted for us at their home. My cousin Mohamed happened to be visiting from Egypt and we were happy to see him again. It was great to see all the family together! The Khonjis are known for their love of singing and dancing, so it was appropriate that the evening ended with an impromptu concert by my four uncles.

We had such a wonderful time spending time with family in Bahrain and are excited for our next visit!

Aaron and I celebrated his 29th birthday in Egypt. Cairo is a beautiful and ancient city, with monuments that span thousands of years. We stayed in Egypt for ten days and most of our visit was in Cairo, with an additional four days on a Nile cruise. We stayed with my cousin Mohamed in a newly built community, called El-Rehab, half an hour’s drive from Cairo.

Egypt was a bit overwhelming at first, with the noise, heat and sheer amount of people (20 million in Cairo.) Mohamed was nice enough to let us use his driver Tariq, which was a good thing since we could never drive in Cairo. The painted dividers separating lanes seemed to be for decoration only, as most cars straddled the lanes and zipped by one another with only a honk to signify that you would be hit if you didn’t move. Meanwhile, pedestrians strolled through the highways and streets at a leisurely pace, seemingly unaffected by the danger. Walking anywhere seemed like a constant stream of near-death experiences. I warned Aaron that Mumbai would be much worse, since in India we would also have to contend with cows and other animals sharing the road, and lots more cars.

Our first day in Cairo was spent touring the pyramids, including the pyramids of Khafre and Khufu, as well as a visit to the Sphinx. The pyramids were stripped of all the wealth and statues, but climbing through a pyramid was an experience in itself. I say climbing because we had to squat and wobble up a long passageway, and Aaron was bent completely double. Pyramids are not for the claustrophobic! I did feel a bit like Indiana Jones as we struggled ahead in the dim lighting and narrow passageways.

Outside, we saw the Sphinx, which is being corroded by a kind of monument cancer from within. And of course, camel drivers were everywhere, following us around and telling us “My friend, I will give you a good price for a ride.” Or, “You want to take a picture?” Overall, everywhere we went there were people constantly coming up to us and asking us to buy things. Having a six foot white guy next to me certainly added to the harassment level.

Afterwards, we spent the afternoon with Aaron’s friend Shady, his American wife Kate and their adorable six month old baby, Ray. Shady and Kate took us to lunch on the Nile, then we spent a relaxing afternoon at the beautiful Al-Azhar park that was recently built near the Citadel. The park was apparently once a garbage dump, but is now a beautiful and relaxing oasis in the city. We had dessert and drinks at a restaurant inside the park, and spent the afternoon chatting and catching up.

The next day we spent the morning at the Egyptian Museum, where we wandered around with our guidebooks on a self-guided tour. Aaron joked that everyone must have thought I was his Egyptian guide. In fact, many people asked if I was Egyptian on the trip, but of course once I opened my mouth the illusion was lost.

One of the more interesting and morbid exhibits in the Museum is the display of royal mummies. There were about a dozen pharoah’s mummies on display, including Hatshepsut, a few of the Ramses, etc. It was a bit eerie considering we were basically staring at ancient bodies. It was amazing how the facial features, and in some cases even the hair, were intact! Another highlight was the golden treasure of King Tut, the boy king whose tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and is one of the only examples of an intact tomb.

In the afternoon, my college friend Monem treated us to a sumptuous Egyptian lunch at Abu el-Sid and told us he was recently engaged! Congratulations Monem! Later, we wandered around Khan Al Khalili, the biggest bazaar in the middle East, and enjoyed browsing around, though we didn’t enjoy the constant harassment by the vendors.

In the evening, we had made plans to meet Aaron’s friends Heba and Nahla at a restaurant on the Nile, called Sequoyah. Getting there was an adventure itself. We took a taxi for the first time alone. The ettiquette of taxis in Egypt is that you are supposed to get into a cab, tell the driver where you are going, then once you arrive at the destination you are supposed to just pay what you assume is the fare and hop out.

This was Aaron’s second visit to Cairo, so he knew that if we followed the normal ettiquette, we would be overcharged, and the driver would yell at us and cause a scene when we refused to pay more. So, we stood on the side of the road, as Aaron negotiated rates with every taxi driver that stopped. When they failed to give a good price, he waved them on. Finally, the third (or was it the fourth?) agreed to take us at a reasonable rate. We hopped in, told the driver the destination, and started the journey.

We soon realized the driver did not speak English. He said he spoke some French so I tried that, but he only knew greetings. We called Heba to tell him where to go in Arabic, and he said he understood, but then kept stopping and asking people if they spoke English and could tell us to tell him where to go. Since we had no idea where the restaurant was, this was imposible, and after much discussion in broken Arabic, French and English, we decided to get out on the Nile and figure it out from there. By some miracle, we found ourselves at the restaurant and enjoyed the evening with Heba, her fiance Sami, and Nahla.

We went on a Nile cruise for several days, which deserves it’s own blog entry. When we returned to Cairo, we had planned to go to Alexandria for Aaron’s birthday, but we had both eaten something that made us sick (or what I call, the real curse of the pharaohs) and had to take it easy for the rest of our visit. We enjoyed spending time with Mohamed, who we also visited at his office in Heliopolis. Mohamed is regional director of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) which is a UN agency, and we enjoyed the tour of his office and the chance to meet his staff.

I loved Egypt and its history, and we both especially enjoyed getting to know Mohamed and spending time with our Egyptian friends.