Jenyfer Matthews

Today is our last full day in the “big” city – tomorrow we take a very short flight to our final destination this summer: the woods. I can’t wait. As much as I’ve accomplished this week, it’s been a busy week, what with doing my big annual shop and entertaining the children. Add to that some thunderstorms and a tornado watch and it’s been exciting and scary too!

We’ve been to the Minneapolis zoo, we’ve seen Toy Story 3 in 3D (save yourself some $$ and just see it in 2D), we’ve been bowling every day, and yes I have shopped til I nearly did drop. Tip: never take your kids to the mall for two hours on a power-shopping trip after having spent 5 hours at the zoo. Not a recipe for success (although I did get some tremendous deals). My leg still hurts from all the walking!

Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday so after her tennis camp ended for the day and we did our daily bowl (I bought the kids a pass at the local bowling alley) we got in the car and I drove us to the Mall of America so we could go to the Underwater Adventures aquarium there. It was a happy coincidence that they give you free admission on your birthday. We spent about an hour in the aquarium and then we left. That’s right: other than aquarium tickets and gift shop purchases, I actually walked in and out of the biggest mall I’ve ever seen and didn’t buy a thing.

(There was one scary moment when the children caught sight of the Nickelodean theme park located in the mall. Thank goodness my daughter wasn’t interested in the rides and my son believed me when I told him he was too short to go on any of them. Phew!)

Today? I’m thinking something more restful – like movies. I will likely take my son to see The Karate Kid while my daughter is in her tennis camp, then after she’s finished and we’ve done another bowling trip, we’ll all go and see The Despicables together. A nice calm activity and I can take a nap in the comfy chairs if the movie doesn’t grab me.

Fingers crossed my flight tomorrow goes better than my flight here!

The only thing good I have to say about my flights is that at least the planes had individual TV screens in the seat backs. Since my children were lucky enough to actually get some sleep and I was too exhausted to concentrate on reading, I had plenty of time to watch movies.

Living abroad and not being much of a celebrity watcher, I am clueless about new movies or who is who. How sad is it that planes are my primary time to watch new releases? When I have to crane my neck to watch a screen mounted for the whole cabin, I usually just rely on my ereader. Since I has my own screen and a list of choices, this time I went with movies.

The first movie I watched was called Leap Year. The story of a ridiculously career minded woman who decides to follow her cardiologist boyfriend to Ireland to propose to him on leap year, the one day tradition is reversed in Ireland. She (too) runs into a number of delays and obstacles to her progress and hijinks ensue. This movie had so much potential – the scenery was so lovely and I loved the accent of the Irish man she hired to drive her from the back of beyond to Dublin – but the movie was so riddled with clichés that I could predict every step of the action – and practically the dialog too. Add to that the total lack of believable chemistry between the main characters and this movie was more than a little disappointing. It almost put me off watching any more movies at all and I was glad I hadn’t actually paid to see it in a theater.

The second movie I watched was called When In Rome. This one also featured a ridiculously career minded woman (what is up with that??) She goes to Rome to attend the wedding of her younger sister, who is marrying an Italian man she met on an airplane only a few weeks before. The heroine ends up hitting it off with the very sexy best man – then sees him kissing another woman and is crushed. She ends up sitting on the edge of a famous Italian fountain where people throw coins and wish for love, but instead of tossing in a coin, she climbs in and takes a few, hoping that the magic will wear off on her. It does – each person whose coin she selects falls in love with her (conveniently all male and in the NY area in spite of the fact that the fountain is in Rome). None of them are the least bit appealing to her, except for the best man – only now she’s not sure if his love is genuine or a product of magic from the fountain.

This movie wasn’t totally without its clichés – I think that just goes with the territory of romantic comedy – but it hit all the right notes with me. Restored my faith in watching movies on planes so I went for another.

The third movie I watched, Dear John, was by far my favorite. This was the story of a college girl who meets a soldier during spring break. They fall in love and start corresponding, both thinking he only has a year left in the military, however when the 9/11 attacks occur his sense of duty leads him to re-enlist. They continue to correspond for a while and then…life happens. I don’t want to get too specific in the details because I don’t want to give too much away. This was listed in the independent films section of my menu so I don’t know how widely it was released, but it’s very much worth looking for. The only thing I’ll say is that it does end well, in spite of being set during a war.

I ran out of romantic comedies that looked at all appealing at that point but I still had time on my hands so I watched a Bruce Willis movie called Cop Out. The title was apt. The set up was pretty much like Lethal Weapon or Blue Streak, only those were actually funny. In Cop Out, the light and silly stuff was paired with oddly serious Mexican gang drug violence. Bruce Willis was fine, coasting along on his funny tough guy persona but his partner in the film was working much too hard to act funny to actually be funny. And there was a lot of shooting of bad guys for a cop comedy. There have been tons of successful movies of this sort, but somehow this one just got the tone wrong. It’s movies like this one that lead everyone outside of America to think that neighborhood shoot-outs are an everyday occurrence. Okay, granted the police found murder victims nearly every day in Baton Rouge where I went to high school and college, but I still never personally witnessed violent crime of any sort.

I once had a conversation with a movie producer about the formula for a romantic comedy – he insisted that people want to know what to expect when they watch one. They are the comfort food of films. Of course people want to know what to expect – in broad terms – but they don’t need or want to be bludgeoned to death with the same old scenarios and unfunny slapstick over and over again. The best movies are not the ones that play it safe but the ones that surprise you with new twists on familiar themes.

When my travel agent was booking my summer travel tickets, she suggested that we fly from Cairo to Amsterdam and from there directly to Minneapolis. The benefit of this route was that I would not have to deal with US Immigration and Customs until I reached my final destination. That sounded reasonable to me. Another factor contributing to this decision was that I love Dutch caramel waffle cookies and I planned to bring along a mostly empty trolley as a carry-on bag and buy a case of them while I was in the Amsterdam airport.

I should have known that things were not going to go well when my driver was late to pick us up for the airport. I had booked the car for 1am and he didn’t arrive until nearly half past. The plane left on time from Cairo (4am) and arrived in Amsterdam as scheduled. Since I only had a little more than an hour for my connection, I hurried to find the shop with the cookies before I missed my chance.

I found the shop, got the cookies, and that was pretty much the last thing that went right on this trip.

We had all gone through security and were waiting in the gate area when Delta announced that there was a “technical problem” that they needed to address and that the flight would be delayed. We were supposed to take off at 10:20am. At about 11:30am they finally released us from the gate and gave us some meal vouchers, with instructions to watch the monitors for new gate information and to come back by 1:30pm.

I was happy that I didn’t have any flight connections to worry about but still concerned about the reservations I had for a rental car and a hotel in Minneapolis so I sent a couple of emails while I was in the Amsterdam airport (for a fee – I had my netbook but have yet to find a free wifi connection when I really need one). We had been scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis at noon, and at that point I was still optimistic that we’d arrive only three or four hours late.

We all did as we were told and were corralled into a new gate at 2pm. The technical problem? A catering truck hit a rear door of the plane and damaged it, which required repair and then inspection before we could take off. However, it took them so long to make the repair that our flight crew’s on-duty time had dwindled enough that they were no longer able to fly us all the way to Minneapolis – we would have to fly to New York instead.

Imagine how pleased I was to hear that when, ironically, I usually do a direct flight to New York and if I had done it this time, I would have already arrived by the time that we finally took off, about 3:30pm Amsterdam time.

All the way to NY our flight crew told us that we would not have to deplane, that we would simply land and collect a fresh flight crew. So we landed, then sat on the tarmac for half an hour waiting for a gate. Once we had a gate, of course we had to deplane. It was already 5:30pm NY time and we were told that the Immigration / Customs in Minneapolis would be closed by the time we arrived. So off we all trudged with ALL of our carry-on items to claim our checked bags and go through passport control – so that we could immediately recheck the bags and go directly back to our gate for our flight to Minneapolis, now scheduled for 9pm.

I wasn’t able to find a wifi connection that worked in the NY airport (of course) so a fellow passenger kindly loaned me his phone so I could call my hotel and rental car agency. I was unable to get through to the hotel directly because that would require paying for the call and the numbskull on the national help line seemed distinctly unhelpful. The rental car agency was better, but I did discover that they only stay open until 1am so unless we actually made it to Minneapolis by midnight, I was pretty well screwed.

They herded us back on to the plane for our 9pm departure time, and only then announced that there was no food service. The one time I have not packed a picnic basket of course! I suggested to one of the stewardesses that knowing well in advance that they were going to have a plane load of very crabby people, it might have been smart to either provide a sandwich or at least warn us of the lack of service. (They don’t usually provide food on that route, but surely this was an exceptional circumstance!) So then they started to scramble to get something on board – another delay. Waiting around for permission for our special circumstances flight to take off – another delay. It was going on 10:30pm by the time we were finally allowed to take-off from NY.

And then the pilot announced that it was likely to be very turbulent due to a band of thunderstorms in the area. I’d already spent about five hours delayed in Amsterdam and another five hours in NY. What else could go wrong? Were we going to be hit by lightening next? And so much for the snacks since the captain didn’t want anyone moving around. Add to that an ill passenger (loudly vomiting) a few rows up and I began to expect a quarantine situation!

When we finally arrived in Minneapolis, we were nearly exactly 12 hours late – and from the looks of things the whole place was shut down. It’s strange to see such a big airport in a fairly populous city so deserted. I collected my $$$ vouchers for my inconvenience, good toward future travel because as much as I’d like to say I won’t fly Delta again, I doubt that is true. The least they could give me was a break on future tickets. I also went ahead and made them give me a hotel voucher for the night, just in case the rental car desk was closed.

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to get in a car and drive to the hotel I had reservations in – it was at least half an hour away, it was dark, and I’ve never driven in Minneapolis before. In the end I decided that if the car rental desk was open, I would go ahead and drive to my hotel – I figured that at least at 1am the roads would be less congested.

It was a bit freaky to jump in a car and start driving after such a long, arduous journey – and after a year off from driving! I had to pull over on my way out of the airport when I realized my headlights weren’t on and I couldn’t find the switch! Things were going quite smoothly until I hit a patch of fog and then I though “oh crap” but it was just one little cloud. I found the hotel, the night clerk was awake and checked me in and we got cleaned up. In bed by 3am – and awake again by 6am when jetlag had the kids bouncing off the walls.

I’m whipped. One of our original flight crew said that in all of her 31 years of service, nothing like this had ever happened before. Lucky me!

The Saga of Flight 259… an epic journey, a trial of patience and endurance and the will to go on. If the lightening had materialized I’m sure that someone would have made a TV movie about the whole ordeal. As it is, I’m happy to have gotten my favorite Dutch cookies, but I could have happily lived without them if I could have avoided the rest of it!

Living an expat life means that people come in and out of your life regularly, often in two to three year cycles. Since we arrived in Egypt four years ago (FOUR YEARS!) this just happens to be one of those years where we are staying and several of my closest friends are leaving.

A normal reaction to leaving is to suddenly try to do all the things you’ve been meaning to do for years and have never gotten around to – usually sightseeing and shopping. One of the friends who is leaving arrived the same year we did, but somehow she never bought very much. She’s doing her best to make up for that now, before her shipment goes.

In an effort to be helpful and supportive, I accompanied her to the Tent Maker’s Souk on Monday this week, which is downtown near the Khan al Khalili bazaar.

The last time I visited the Tent Maker’s Souk was in 2004, when I was in Egypt as a tourist. It’s a marvelous place to go, but also very dangerous for me as a total, unrepentant textile whore. Just look at it – you’d have to be totally indifferent to fabric art or have will of steel!

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These are essentially applique pieces done on canvas. Originally these were done in large sheets of geometric design and used as the sides of wedding tents and such. Modern tents are usually done with fabric printed to look like the original applique and most of work done in the souk now is for smaller items like wall hangings and cushions.

This was one of the first pieces that caught my eye, however the shopkeeper didn’t want to bargain very much on the price. Since it was one of the first shops that we looked in, we decided to move on and see what else we could find.

This entire street is nothing but shops selling applique and fabric so we had loads of choices!

After looking at many variations on the same design, my friend ended up buying this lovely piece from a seven year old boy who was tending a shop – for about 1/6 of the price of the first piece I admired. When we saw this one initially we thought of it as “small”. Notice how much bigger the items look when you get them alone!

This is a fairly common sight in downtown Cairo – flat bread delivery by bicycle. I was thrilled to finally get my own picture of it, even if the light could have been better.

I really did think I might make it out of the souk with my money safely stowed in my wallet, and then I saw it. A small tree of life (27″x35″)

I was hesitating between this tree of life and another longer one in a shop across the street when the shopkeeper said he had a larger one in his shop around the corner. We followed him to his other shop – a stuffy room in a building down a mostly deserted alley. I am thrilled that we went though because it was there I found this item.

It was love at first sight. This is a design based on an ancient Egyptian motif and was unlike any of the other appliques I had seen that day. I had to borrow a little money from my friend to get both pieces, but how could I resist? The main challenge now is finding a place to hang it. It’s so pretty I want it in a place where I will see it often, but at 38″x49″ it has to have a fairly large space to hang. Since it’s smaller than the first one I admired and was also only half as expensive, I think I made a good choice all the way around.

Got this last shot on our way out. Another hasty shot – a car or person is always walking in front of you – but I still like it.

We had a beach holiday that was actually spent at the beach and was wonderfully relaxing as well. It’s amazing what only a couple of days away can do for your mood.

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We’ve been to this hotel before so I knew pretty much knew what to expect. We arrived mid-afternoon the first day so we grabbed a couple of sun beds near the back of the beach under the shade of a thatched hut and commenced relaxing. I entertained myself with my nifty camera and it’s super-cool zoom.

I didn’t remember there being so many Egyptians there last time, or at least not in Islamic bathing suits. Made me wonder if they were Egyptian or from Saudi Arabia?

It was hot in the sun. Hot enough that I finally took my first swim in the Red Sea (the water was lovely). Even the birds were hot.

But I can’t quite see the point in this. It’s one thing to be modest and cover, but is that really any fun to wear once it’s wet and clinging to you?

The water at this beach is much shallower and calmer than the beach in Dahab where my son and I were last month. However, the bottom is sandier and there isn’t much to see either. Didn’t stop him from finally going snorkeling!

His proudest find was a dead sting ray, which he gave a decent burial after showing it off to anyone who would look. He was also quite pleased with this crab.

I also finished The Kite Runner over the weekend. More on that later. Right now I have to take a disco ball to the repair shop in preparation for my daughter’s girl-dance party this Friday. A mother’s work is never done…

The last morning of our weekend away we woke early not because of a wake-up call, but because my son, having been reading books about sharks and the Titanic, was determined he was going to go snorkeling before we left. So we got up early, had breakfast, and headed down to the beach.

There was a coral reef right next to the beach, then a drop-off – which is great for snorkelers but doesn’t make for the most child-friendly approach since you have to jump off a pier to get into the immediately deep water. Add to that, it was extremely windy so there were some big waves coming in. Cold wind. Cold water. I wasn’t planning to get in the water, but I got myself a beach towel anyway to wrap myself for warmth!

The water was gorgeous – so clear and inviting. If only it had been a bit warmer!

I took this picture from on top of the pier and I imagine it’s a lot deeper than it looks. That is how clear the water is!

I had no intention of getting in the water after I felt that cold wind, so fortunately for my son there were a couple of really patient and kind people in our group who were going and were willing to swim with him.

Poor little guy though – he was afraid to let go of the stairs because of the waves. We could not convince him that being on the stairs half-in and half-out of the water was the worst place to be because he got slammed by the waves. If he had let go, he could have bobbed on top of them. Eventually, he gave up and let those people go and enjoy their own snorkeling, though he was quite sad and dejected at his “failure”.

He sat for a while, huddled in his towel, thinking. He asked me a few times if I wanted him to go in. I told him honestly that what I really wanted was for him to be happy – there would be other beach trips. But if he wanted to go in that day, he better make up his mind to do it because we didn’t have all day (literally!)

A short time later, he steeled himself and went back for another try.

He still didn’t let go of the stairs, but he got his face under the water and got to see lots and lots of fish. He came up grinning and full of fish reports that time.

I could see some of the more colorful fish darting around from my perch on top of the pier so I can only imagine what wonderful things he could see underneath.

All too soon it was time to take him back to the room to clean up before we checked out. We needed to be back on the (damned) bus by 11am. I’m sure if we’d have had the rest of the day, he’d have been swimming for the horizon by afternoon.

His pleasure in that short-lived activity is what has me considering signing up for a beach trip next month – on a bus. What I won’t do for my children. The beach in question is only two hours away however

Having had a night’s sleep to recover from the long bus ride the day before, you can imagine how pleased I was to have a 6am wake-up call to ensure that I was awake and ready to board the bus again for our trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery and Mt. Sinai.

I was in fact already awake. I don’t always sleep well away from home, and in this case I had two things going against me: the room was a bit stuffy and dinner hadn’t agreed with me (a common occurrence at buffets in Egypt). Still, since I had planned on climbing the mountain, I decided to stick to the original plan and go climb the mountain. I did however skip breakfast as I didn’t want to risk further stomach upset on the way up the mountain.

St. Catherine’s Monastery was about a two hour drive from our hotel. It’s pretty far from just about anything, unless you happen to be a Bedouin goat herder and even then, it’s not that easy to get to. This was actually my second trip to the monastery, my first back in 2003. My primary interest in this trip at the time I booked it was to climb Mt. Sinai.

Since the monastery closes at noon, we visited it first. It was pretty much as I remembered it, only a tad less crowded.

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The monastery has its own gardens where they grow olives and grapes, among other things.

Our first stop was to see the bones of the many monks that lived and died at St. Catherine’s over the centuries. Apparently they don’t do things this way anymore. (I can only imagine it would be a bit demoralizing!)

It was so crowded at the monastery that pretty much the only way to get a decent picture of anything was to look straight up!

There is it – the burning bush. The withered leaves are, I am sure, a result of the extremely arid climate and the fact that the tourists are constantly pulling on the branches they can reach. As I expected, my son was less than impressed. I tried to get a picture of myself with the bush but people kept walking in front of my son as he tried to take my picture or would come up and pose in front of me for their own picture so I finally got fed up and left. I have a picture with it from my previous visit anyway.

After our tour and a break for lunch, it was time to start climbing the mountain. There are two ways to do it: on camel or on foot. We all (foolishly) opted to walk. Check out the grin on that first camel – he was probably laughing at our folly!

We opted for the “easy” path – the camel path. Can you see the tiny people in the lower right corner, on the path near the monastery? Objects may be farther than they appear!

It was a gorgeous day, with a cool breeze blowing, but I was beginning to feel the effects of my fast. And the fact that I was carrying two liters of water in my backpack, along with snacks, my purse and a camera. Ugh. My son skipped along, unencumbered, far ahead.

The lower portion of the trail was fairly wide, but with a steady climb and many switchbacks. The small house is a rest station where they sell water and pop at only a modest markup.

Just when you think that you have to be getting close and that you can’t possibly walk anymore, you come to the last bit: the 700 stairs to the top. There are two ways to climb Mt. Sinai – the “easy” camel path that we took, or a more direct but steeper ascent of 3000 stairs, also known as The Stairs of Repentance. Believe me when I tell you that the 700 stairs were agony enough!

This isn’t quite at the top, but I loved these signs. Duh!

Tah-dah! I made it to the top in only 2 1/2 hours of grueling climbing. My son bounded up the mountain in record time and was all set to go back down the moment I arrived. Ah, to be young again!

I was glad to know these were available and equally as glad I never saw the inside of one!

If the climb up the mountain was hard, the walk down was harder. Not only did you have to watch your footing on the loose dirt / stones on the path so you didn’t slip and fall, but I had a migraine brewing and felt truly awful. Whether it was heat, dehydration, or low-blood sugar contributing, it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other. I tried to distract myself by taking pictures. Even in my distress, it was amazing to see flowers blooming in such a harsh environment.

What I wouldn’t have given to ride a camel down the mountain! I saw many camels, but no drivers. I passed several groups going up the mountain as I was going down, both on foot and on camels. Sunset and sunrise are very popular and more usual times to climb the mountain. People also camp up there to catch one or the other.

I must have looked pretty awful as I made my way down the mountain because a German man on his way up stopped to ask if I was all right and to advise that I find myself some electrolytes. I took one of my magic migraine pills, made my way down the mountain, drank some juice, and forced myself to eat a banana muffin. Within an hour I felt almost normal again, except that I was physically exhausted and my legs felt like jelly.

As we set out on the trip in the morning, our guide told us that our attitude would decide what sort of experience we had and he was right. I didn’t feel well, so I can’t say that I enjoyed the climb as much as I hoped to. I can only say that if I hadn’t have done the climb, I’m sure I would have regretted it, but that having done it, I kind of wish I’d have stayed on the beach! I’m convinced that there were actually more than Ten Commandments, but that Moses just couldn’t face the trek back up the mountain to get any more than the first ten! However, now I can tick this item off my list and I never have to go back again.

My son was fairly upset about the fact that his sister was going on a class trip to Cyprus with her class and he couldn’t go. So, as a way to make it up to him, I booked just the two of us on a weekend trip to Dahab, Egypt.

That was back in March, and by the time this weekend rolled around I’d had a hectic week and enough travel for a while so I was seriously considering canceling. I really really wanted a morning to sleep in and a day to do nothing. I didn’t want to disappoint the boy though, so I soldiered on.

Picture it: me lugging two suitcases and a backpack two blocks down a still quiet street in order to meet the tour bus for a 6am departure. The itinerary indicated that we’d drive seven hours, arriving at the hotel mid-afternoon.

There’s not much to be done on a bus for seven hours except read – and take pictures to amuse yourself.

This didn’t seem the most auspicious start to the trip! Apparently they meant all foreigners except for all the huge buses full of tourists going through…

The landscape varied from flat and featureless to this. Certainly gave me some perspective on why Moses wandered around out there for so long. Even the drive went on and on and on…

After being on the bus for endless hours, even rest stops in the middle of nowhere offered some entertainment. I took these shots from the bus window. I love my new camera.

Is this a great face, or what?

It was closer to 4:30pm when we arrived at the hotel, a mere ten hours later, but just look at the view from our room. Gorgeous.

This is the view in the other direction – and what so much of the coast of the Red Sea looks like. There are an unbelievable number of unfinished hotels / chalets going up along the beaches – so many that I wonder if they were all finished, would there be sufficient demand for them?

The hotel was a pleasant surprise – so many of the hotels that the university books for its tours are total dumps.

The beach was stunning and I was quite sorry that we didn’t have more time that afternoon to enjoy it before the sun set.

A view of the hotel from the pier in the water.

So all in all, while the scenery was lovely, I wouldn’t call sitting on a bus for ten hours all that relaxing a way to start a weekend. Stay tuned – it gets more ridiculous. Wednesday: St. Katherine’s Monastery and Mt. Sinai.

This year has been very episodic and strange. We were just settling in to a nice routine after last summer’s vacation when the school closures started for the 2009 Flu Freakout. Then there were holidays, more flu closures, and more holidays. I went on my trip to Thailand and just when it looked like things were settling down again, I had to go to the US on the medical mission with my son.

And still there’s no stopping in sight.

This weekend my son and I are taking a university organized trip to the Sinai peninsula. Part beach trip, part tour of St. Catherine’s Monastery it should be a lot of fun. Apparently the official name of St. Catherine’s Monastery is The Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai. It’s also home to the well where Moses met his wife and site of THE Burning Bush. My son has been having a hard time understanding that the Burning Bush is not still burning (no eternal flame!) and that there aren’t any charred leaves in evidence either (at least there weren’t when I last visited the site in 2004) If the bush will be underwhelming for him, perhaps a climb up Mt. Sinai at sunset and some beach play in the Red Sea will make up for it.

Expect pictures next week.

I booked this trip for my son and I well before I knew he and I would be spending so much quality time together in Cleveland. It was also meant as a special trip for him to make up for his disappointment over the fact that his sister is taking a week-long class trip to Cyprus next week. I’d kind of like to just relax this weekend, but I also like to take advantage of these sorts of opportunities when they come along. So I spent yesterday packing: for my weekend getaway with my son and also for my daughter’s class trip. I’ll get home on Sunday evening just in time to send my daughter on her way Monday afternoon.

And if all that wasn’t enough, I already booked my reservations for summer vacation (barring more volcanic activity!) I’m racking up the frequent flier miles like you wouldn’t believe!

I’m a wanderer, yeah the wanderer,
I roam around around around around…

I bought four new books for my e-reader for my recent trip to the US. I only read three of them, but I did read one of them twice.

It didn’t occur to me until I started thinking about writing this post (in the dead of the night, thanks jet leg) that the three books I read were all by authors that I first discovered and read the year that my husband and I moved abroad. Picture it: I had no friends, no job, no children, no sewing machine, no TV, and I wasn’t writing. What I did have was an abundance of empty hours to fill each day while my husband was at work and I mostly did that by losing myself in the pages of a book.

Before I left the US, I visited a bookstore and bought myself a paperback – a rare treat because back then we were pretty poor and buying a book new and paying full price was a real luxury. That book was Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I can’t tell you how many times I read that book. There are a lot of books that I find amusing but there are some scenes in this book that make me laugh so hard I cry every time I read them. I recently loaned this book to an older gentleman friend of mine after he reluctantly admitted to me that he enjoyed Nora Roberts. He loved it as much as I did. I still have the same copy and read it from time to time when I need a giggle.

I’ve read several other books by Susan Elizabeth Phillips since then, and have enjoyed them all. I read What I Did For Love on this trip. It had all the classic elements of a SEP book: the couple who hate each other but are thrown together for one reason or another; a hero who has hidden depths; the heroine who falls in love in spite of herself and then withdraws to protect her heart; the hero who realizes too late how he feels and then has to find a way to convince her that his love is for real; a variety of parallel story lines with the quirky family / friends of the main characters.

I liked What I Did For Love but somehow it just fell a little flat for me overall compared to her other books. I gave it the benefit of the doubt because I was trying to read it when I was exhausted and could only read a couple pages at a time so I read it again. It flowed better the second go round, but still felt just a tad off. I think it was Bram – his character never really developed as much as I would have liked. I didn’t get enough of the story from his perspective and when he had his big epiphany about how much he loved Georgie it felt too sudden and too fast. It was no wonder Georgie didn’t believe him in the story because neither did I. It was still a fun read and for once I enjoyed her epilogue, but Lady Be Good is still my favorite.

Another author I discovered the year I moved abroad was Jane Green. There were no public libraries in the small town where we lived in the United Arab Emirates and the only bookstores sold stationery items and Korans. There was a spinning rack in one of the stores downtown that mostly had Harlequin Presents but one day I spotted Mr. Maybe by Jane Green. It was my very first British chick-lit book and I’ve been hooked on them ever since. I read Mr. Maybe obsessively for a few months. Every time I’d finish, I’d start over again. The story was hilarious, but I think it was the first person voice that drew me in. I know some people don’t like books written in first person but when it’s done well, I love it. In the case of this book, it was like having a chat with a friend about her dating misadventures at a time when I didn’t have (many) real life friends to talk to. Since then I’ve read several other of Jane Green’s books, Jemina J being another favorite.

I bought Babyville for this trip and read it in one go on the nonstop flight from Cairo to NY, with only time out for short bouts of unconsciousness. Babyville is the story of three women and motherhood: one who desperately wants a child but can’t conceive, one who gets pregnant by accident (by the boyfriend of woman #1, whoops!), and one who has just had a baby and is finding her goal of being Super Mom just a bit more than she can handle. I enjoyed how Jane Green handled each story line and how the lives of the women intersected – and how each of them handled their individual challenges. It wasn’t as much of a favorite as the two I mentioned above, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt because I read it when I was so exhausted. I’ll definitely reread it at some point. I didn’t like Jemina J much the first time I read it either, but love it now.

I finished the last book, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes, my first two nights home, after my son woke me up in the wee hours with his own jet lag issues – then he got back to sleep and I didn’t.

Once I’d read every book we brought with us – several times – that first year we lived abroad, I started to read just about anything else that I could find. Our first summer there, I was pet sitting for a neighbor upstairs and found a box of books in their living room that they had borrowed from someone else. I read several John Grisham books which have all blurred together in my memory since, but I also read Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes. How I loved that book. It was the story of Rachel, an Irish woman who had been forced into rehab by her (whacko) family. What I loved about it was how cleverly the story was presented – told in first person, Rachel is in total denial about her problems with drugs and alcohol and how badly out of control her life is. And because she presents her side of the story in such a rational and reasonable way, I was totally sucked in to believing that she was as misunderstood by her family as she said she was. (It’s a good thing I don’t have any real life addicts in my life – what a soft touch I would be!) The story was so vivid to me that I was totally sucked in before I figured out what what really going on. My own stories are totally character driven so it’s no wonder I like Marian Keyes so much – the characters and stories she creates make me laugh and cry and read until my eyes are bloodshot.

Of the three books I read in the last two weeks, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married was by far my favorite. It had a similar flavor to it that Rachel’s Holiday did in that the main character Lucy is totally blind to the fact that she’s constantly drawn to drunk losers and that in fact she has the perfect man, her best friend, right in front of her. If there was anything I didn’t like about the book it was how patient and loyal Daniel was throughout – watching her date loser after loser, putting up with her all her “friendly” teasing / verbal abuse. Having read enough Marian Keyes to know how she builds a story, I wasn’t fooled by what fueled Lucy’s self-destructive dating patterns and I picked out Daniel as her eventual partner from the start, but it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book one bit. I’ll definitely read it again.

Maybe even this weekend if the jet lag continues…