Christmastime

I had a few coworkers over for dinner tonight and it was a great chance to get into the Christmas spirit. I had my tree all decorated and we put together a huge meal to share, with lots of cookies for dessert.
I even figured out how to make homemade eggnog and it was delicious, even if I was a little disgusted by the number of raw eggs in it!

Real-life Grey's Anatomy

Those of you who watch Grey's Anatomy know the situation I'm describing - when all the interns are sitting around the hospital, waiting for something to do, and they hear an announcement that there's some crazy or ridiculous trauma case on its way in. Rather than show any sign of sympathy for the patient or his/her family, they immediately jump on the opportunity to participate in some medically unusual or interesting surgery. They chat about the kind of surgery that needs to be done, discuss the possible cause of the symptom and argue over who will be the one on the surgery. Amidst all of that, they never once discuss the patient or his/her family; they're too caught up in the excitement of the medicine. I used to wonder how they could do that.

Then today I had a real-life Grey's Anatomy moment. My boss walked into my office this morning after the weekly command management meeting and reported that a confirmed case of H5N1 (avian influenza) that had died last night. She was on her way to the Ministry of Health to try to get permission for us send a team to investigate the outbreak. If they gave us permission, one person from my office would be be allowed to go. Within seconds, my coworkers and I became the Grey's Anatomy interns. We started discussing H5N1 and previous outbreaks and the spread of disease and outbreak investigation and the health care system of Egypt and anything else we could think of related to a case of avian influenza. (For those of you who wondered, this was the 51st case in Egypt and the 26th fatality.) We didn't outwardly argue about who would be the one chosen for the case, but I could tell we were all silently vying for the position, trying to figure out why we should each be the one infected and how we could be the one chosen. I had my argument fully prepared within minutes of the first announcement about the case.

But, if this were Grey's Anatomy, the moment would have ended with the case being sent to Mercy West (another hospital, for those of you who aren't as hooked on the show as I am). The Ministry of Health never granted us permission to do the investigation.

Back to Cairo

We made good time on the drive back to Eilat, turned in our rental car and crossed the border without much difficulty. It was much easier and much quicker to cross back in to Egypt than it had been to cross into Israel. I forgot to mention earlier that when we were crossing into Israel, we had a little difficulty because neither Meg nor I could have an Israeli stamp in our passports. Some of the countries where we have to travel for work will not allow entry to persons who have visited Israel, so we had to convince both the Egyptians (with their exit stamp) and the Israelis (with their entrance stamp) to stamp separate pieces of paper outside our passports. After much explaining on both sides of the border, we succeeded. However, the Israelis then noticed that Meg had an Afghani visa in her passport and decided to give us a hard time for a little longer. Finally, though, we passed into Israel, with no passport stamps as proof.

As I said, he way back was much easier, mostly because we already had the separate pieces of paper to be stamped. The only hassle we had was trying to enter Egypt with a number of bottles of wine. Even though there's no sign or written rule about coming into the country with alcohol, the guys who scanned our luggage gave us a hard time and told us that we were only allowed one bottle each (we had a total of eleven). Basically, they were pushing for a bribe, but eventually I talked our way through without even having to pay a single pound.

Once we made it back into Egypt we had to wait a while for the bus. Once it arrived we loaded our luggage on top and were on our way back to Cairo.

Sea level

As we continued driving downhill from Jerusalem, we passed a sign marking the altitude of sea level, and I was reminded how much of Israel is so far below sea level. When we were at the Dead Sea, we were at the lowest point on earth - 400 meters (1,312 feet) below sea level!

Camels

After visiting the sites on the Mount of Olives we unfortunately had to return to Eilat, a resort city on the Red Sea at the very southern tip of Israel, to return to Cairo. On our way to Eilat, we saw what I think is a really neat image of a train of camels walking along the top of one of the many hills in the area.