In January, We Were Egyptians!

Hello Egypt!
Our first country to start off 2024 was Egypt.  And we had fun. 🙂  I’m so excited that we’re back to doing country dates that I’ve dedicated a corner of the living room to this little hobby of mine. (I’m so lucky to have a Jac who goes along with all my crazy ideas!)  Here’s Egypt’s theme corner. Hopefully it keeps us excited all month long about our upcoming ‘travel’ adventures. 🙂

We had our usual dress up night, and that was a lot of fun!  I couldn’t decide between these two pictures:

 
 
And since cats were so revered in Ancient Egypt, we even tried to get Billie in the spirit of the day, but he wasn’t having it!  (I photoshopped two pictures together to ‘fake’ this one. Lets just say, we’ve confirmed that Billie is NOT a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian cat.)

 

Before eating dinner, we usually try to do a country themed activity. For this, I bought an ancient Egyptian themed escape room game (that you do at home), but try as we may, we couldn’t make it past the first clue, lol.  So we bagged it and just randomly decided to play backgammon instead. Then, weeks later, I read that backgammon, known in Egypt as tawla, is one of the most popular games in the country.  We were clearly channeling our Egyptian spirit gods on that one. 🙂

After the game, we prepared for our Egyptian feast. We decorated the kitchen

 
 
turned on some Egyptian tunes, and prepared the delicious meal!  As usual, I did all the work! 🙂  Here’s me making the kebabs:

  
Here’s what we had:
  • kafka (lamb and beef kebabs)
  • eggplant with tomato and feta
  • grilled new potatoes
  • pickled onions
     
 
 
We had our own little Egyptian bash, and it was just so fun.  We have such a good time doing these. 🙂

In fact, it’s so fun I’ve decided to spread it out over the whole month.  Rather than trying to cram the activities into one long day (and then not getting to most of it), I am gonna plan several activities over the course of the month in addition to the big feast date. (Again, thank god for Jac, who is so up for anything!!!)

With that in mind, we also:

  • made this 3D wooden sphinx together

  • watched a few Egyptian movies, including Death on the Nile — SO good!  
  • did a puzzle of an Egyptian sarcophagus

  • wrote letters back and forth using Egyptian heiroglyphics, rolled them up into scrolls, and left them for each other to decode. We did this throughout the month. 🙂

It was a fun month.  And next month….we’re off to Switzerland. 

 

There are a few Egypt-related activities we didn’t get to.  If we ever ‘visit’ Egypt again, we should:

  • get our grove on with some belly dancing. Find a youtube tutorial and be sure to dress the part 🙂
  • play Camel Up, a ‘hilarious and unpredictable’ board game where players bet on quirky camels racing around a pyramid
  • learn a few Arabic words via this video