2 Days of Insanity!

Maggie managed to plan a fun-filled 2 days for the CC team without any of us knowing WHERE we were going! That in itself was a source of relief for me! I had no idea where we were going, nor with whom, nor how we were going, I was being led by someone else and that removed alot of the normal stress that is associated with travelling anywhere. So what did we do?? I was to be ready by 8am Friday morning, so I was, then Maggie picked me up and we went to have breakfast in Maadi at 8:30am. The biggest accomplishment of that part of the day alone was getting Hadia to get out of bed and come! I was incredibly amazed that she woke up and was ready in 10 mins, and even more amazed that she stayed awake and with us the whole weekend! After breakfast, we drove to Fagnoon to do some art. That part was hilarious! Imagine a bunch of 22-25 year olds sitting and concentrating on drawing and carving on this piece of wood. We had quite a number of moments in total silence and I felt we were kids again! Abdo fighting about who's carving was better, Maggie being frustrated that she scratched the wood so spoilt the design, Hadia erasing her drawing a number of times because she didnt think it was good enough. We were all very serious about it! After that we moved on to the Clay, and Sherif showed up only to make matters even funnier. He took the liberty of spreading Clay all over us and our clothes! Even onto Hadia's hair when she had been begging us all morning not to come near her hair! That quickly turned into a mud fight which was a perfect transition into the next game, paint fight! We were dripping paint down each other's shirts, mashing paint onto each other's hair, it was just hilarious! We were dripping everywhere! Then we were told that we would split into girls and boys teams; the girls will go somewhere till lunch time and the boys will go to that same place after lunch time. Where was that? A local Hamaam! That was an experience that we cannot describe...we were a mix of shocked, surprised, and intrigued. Its something that we shared as a team and would probably not talk about it with anyone again haha! We were left thinking "ok should we warn the boys?" then we decided not to, let them experience it and we can have a sharing session later haha. We met the boys at 4 for lunch in Crave and had a nice chat, then sent the boys off to the Hammam wondering if they would actually go through with it or not. To our delight they did! But their experience was different to ours; they received a more professional one! Haha. Off we were to the supermarket at that point to buy supplies for our trip to place X, then off we went in John and Sherif's cars. We were soon to discover that we were on our way to Fayoum! I was too tired to react at the point so dozed off till we arrived. Upon arrival, we found that we were staying in a small hotel that was owned by this family that had adorable little girls. The place had the bare necessities and a nice relaxation area where we sat for the rest of the night talking, drinking tea, smoking sheesha, and taking small power naps now and then. We ended up going to the pool late at night to doze off even more and one of the little girls joined us. Abdo was being a big brother to the little girl which was sweet to watch. Hadia was trying to keep her eyes open by that time so eventually we all headed to the sheesha area again and slept...one by one we got up to go to bed. The next morning we had breakfast and work began. We brainstormed on the results of the conference, how we wanted out report to be structured, and what we were proud of and not proud of. It was a nice session that we continued in the pool where we were writing on flipcharts in the water and sticking them up on the walls. We decided on a structure that was unique and took a more storytelling approach than the previous reports so we are very much looking forward to finishing our IPM experience in that way. We then packed and were off to Makani in Cairo for our final pigging out session before heading home to pass out on our beds. It was a wild 2 days that I'll never forget; I went to 3 places that I had never been to before. Thanks Maggie for all the effort you put into it; the trip rocked!