I work with the Canadian embassy to track a group of residents in my area and no one has been told to stay indoors unless they feel it is a good idea. Canadian warnings to residents run along the lines of "You don't want to travel to Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia right now. Other than that, don't do anything stupid." The US embassy warnings are positively inflammatory. The school has the students locked in all day, where usually high school students are allowed off campus for lunch. Students find this silly because in the first place, an easy 65% of the students aren't American and in the second place, at 3 pm they all leave campus and most of them don't go straight home, but out for a coffee or something. Why frighten people for nothing? I really don't understand. Now most of the more seasoned ex-pats check with the Swiss or Canadian embassies for more realistic assessments of the situation.

Mobinil, one of the mobile phone companies, is offering news updates (for free now but of course later you pay) via sms, the phone messaging service. I turn my phone to silent at night when I sleep and wake to find a zillion messages mostly about the progress of the war in Iraq. Not the most welcoming start to the day, but it still beats the television coverage. I think too many are watching "The War" just as they might be watching the Disovery Channel or Survivor, without the realisation that this isn't entertainment, but reality. The presentation, especially by CNN isn't helping this any either. Other than having to check the BBC Arabic Service in the morning to see where the daily demonstration will be so that we re-route any any errands to avoid these errands, the war in Iraq isn't really impinging on my life.

It's not the same for everyone, though. My children graduated from Cairo American College a few years ago and some of their friends are still there. Kids stop by to visit me, knowing that I'm usually home evenings and my own kids are in New York. The American embassy has, by all assessments of other nationalities, gone right off the deep end here.

We've had cold winds from the north, black clouds and rain for the last couple of days. Not really your average Egyptian March weather, although this month in the old Coptic calendar is known for its changeability and winds. Sitting around in offices that are built much more to shed heat than to keep it in, my feet are freezing and my hands get so cold that my typing is clumsy. We are all joking that the weather was especially ordered to keep the American soldiers in Iraq more comfortable....feeling like home in Nebraska. Just got offline with my daughter in New York. Her big news is that they have sun and she wants to go outside and sit in it. Must be nice. But then cold weather here is more of an oddity than a trial.

This is a fascinating time to be living in Egypt. It's always been fascinating to live in Egypt, but it is currently even more so. I've been here since the mid 80's, having moved to Egypt from Toronto, Canada with my husband, son and daughter. When my husband died a few years ago, it never occurred to me to go back to Canada. Egypt had become my home and I can't imagine living anywhere else. This country isn't what foreigners think it is at all, and sometimes it isn't even what most Egyptians think it is. But it is alive, changing, and surviving, just as it has for so many thousands of years. Like everyone else, Egyptians and residents look at Egypt and question whether the changes taking place are for the good or evil, but I'm not sure that we can know yet how change will affect us. Looking around at circumstances and social behaviour I can see where we are with respect to where we have been, but where we will go is mostly guess work. Watching the war in Iraq change this region so quickly has heightened the sense of volatility of change.