Day 1

We met our guides Heba and mrs wedad and Amal at 10 am after a noisy night’s sleep. The driving here is a whole new experience which involves lots of horn tooting the noise of which seems to increase when the sun goes down. To add to the fun we couldn’t work out how to use our air conditioning so experienced something similar to sleeping in an oven.
After a breakfast of pitta bread, falafel and boiled egg we headed to the guide federation. Luckily Hayley thought to ask whether we were doing any training today. When we arrived we were greeted by 32 eager smiling faces, lots of clapping, which seems to be their way of welcoming us, and a room much too small and too hot to run around in. Sarah and Kate stepped up to the mark in true guiding style with their intro to English session. The girls seemed a little surprised to be playing games but engaged really well. Luckily many of them speak very good English so with lots of smiles and general bounciness we seemed to make a good first impression. Many of them said that a key thing for them this week was to learn english and many want to visit London, so they were keen to take part.
The girls range in age from 14 to 44 but the majority are mid twenties and seem to be students. Many want to study for doctorate degrees and have similar ambitions to us.
We’ve already demonstrated our adaptability and spent some time teaching our guide songs. I’m not sure whether they understood ‘every where we are’, thunderation and edelweiss but they all tried to join in. They all commented on how smiley we all are so we must be masking the sleep deprivation well!
After training we were taken for lunch by our guides and a gentleman who may be the governor of minya and if not is someway connected to the governate. The restaurant was in the Horus hotel complex which seemed fitting given our team logo!
Lunch started with a hearty soup, followed by a mixed grill with chips.
After lunch our programme became a little confusing but we’ve all adopted a ‘go with it approach’, which is much simpler than asking what the plans are as they seem to change frequently.
We found ourselves at a presidential headquarters that appears to have just been built and something they were very proud to show us. We were shown into the conference hall first and allowed to play with the microphones, which showed us on the tv link when we spoke. The rest of the complex was very grand with guilted furniture, sauna, pool and gym. The men with us were particularly keen to show off the gym so we spent most time in there. Helen and Sarah even tested the running machines.
We were dropped off back at the hotel and discovered that we are expected to have a police escort even to buy water, a police car and a man on foot! It’s a bit like having a bodyguard and seems to involve much planning to make sure they are where we are, or we are where they are.
After a power nap we met for dinner, and ended up back at Horus,and presented with the same meal, this time with the addition of spaghetti, as if we needed any more food.
We’re now back in the hotel, the air con works and the cars are hootling away outside. Time for bed, tomorrow we have afternoon training by the Nile…