The battered family

I fell off my new bike!!! Stupid really cos I was playing with the gears and was trying to look at the gears changing whilst on the move. I was afraid that I could not ride the 10km back to the car cos I landed on both wrists and they were killing me. (Mat said that it was quite an impressive fall!) A nice man from the National Parks helped massage the hand and though I was screaming in pain when he was working on me, no pain after! The elbow and knee were a different story though. I hurt myself the day before the tri and miraculously, did the mini tri without any discomfort. I even taught yoga immediately after the tri. I don't know what happened, but I woke up on Sunday morning and could not walk ; the knee was completely inflamed. After some icing, self-massage and yoga, I am now back in form again!!! Just a big boo-boo on my elbow!

Mathieu has a huge black eye cos Nic wacked him in the face with a light sabre! Told them not to play fight a million times!!!

Osim Triathlon 2008

Yeah, WE DID IT!!!! OK, it was only a mini (200m swim, 10km bike, 2km run), but that is still quite a feat for me. The boys set me a target of 55mins and I actually did it in 44mins!! I thought the swim was going to be the really tough part but it was actually the run....... I was so tired by the end of it that I could hardly breath and had to run. Guess I need to do more cardio work!!!

Tri-buddies (Emily, spencer, Yen, Shaun, Shannon, vicky, tzen wei, Nic, Mat & I). The "real" OD tri-athletes were taking part the next day so they aren't in this photo........ Thanks for coming to support though. Infact, a big thanks to the whole family too for coming to be with us and looking forward to cheering Mark & Emma next yr!!!

Time = 3.33 swim, 28.38 bike, 11.51 run

I was so thrilled to have Yen to train with......... We didn't really do much, but just having the moral support was great. (Went bike shopping together, tried out the sea together, Called her crying when I fell off my bike....... Thanks YEN!!!) We were pretty much pacing each other all the way and came in exe-co 17th & 18th!!!

The boys did amazingly well too. Nic came in 43rd in his category (10-14yrs old.... and he is 10!!!) and Mat came in 12th in his (7-9yrs old). (Mat had such an awful cough that we were telling him not to participate but he wanted to.....) Good job!!!



Coming out of the water!!! Some awful person pulled my leg during the swim and the championchip nearly came off!! I had to stop and re-fasten the band!

Can't wait for the next event!!!

Egypt - End of story!!!

It's now been almost a month since we returned from Egypt and I have been super-absorbed with getting settled back into everyday mundane life that I have not had the time to finish our travel tales. Sister Peng will probably have something to say about this half-assed attempt at up-dating this blog, but heh........ I'm trying!!!!

Ananda Camp was wonderful but the daily dose of falafel got really tiring quickly. On the last day of the course, the boys and I went to Zaman Castle for delicious slow food.

Touted as the best food along the coast!!!

Boys with their scrabble buddies Dalia & Rex and Henny, the owner of the castle (who is looking for a massage therapist to work at the castle....... boy was I tempted!!!) Dalia had some amazing stories: she actually went and visited all the places in the EAT, PRAY, LOVE book!! How cool is that?

Don't think Henny is too into kids.............. Stephan was not allowed into the pool as he was deemed to be too young!

After the meal, we started on a new adventure! We rented a little car to drive to St Katherine's Monastry. Roads in this part of Egypt are really deserted and it is basically straight roads through the desert! The police stops along the way are kindda intimidating though; I forgot to get an International Drivers license so was driving with a Singaporean license and was petrified that they would hold us at the police post. All the worries were unfounded and we breezed through with no problems (especially after meeting up with Amr who holds a military special ID that got us through everywhere!!!)

Mt Moses was really amazing. We did the 3 1/2hr climb up and slept up in the mountains under the stars, much as Moses might have done after seeing the burning bush!!! I am not sure if God spoke to us when we were up there, but it was beautiful. The climb up was a little tough especially on Nic & Steph. I forgot Nicolas' inhaler and he had altitude sickness which made the end of the climb extremely difficult. The poor boy was puking and shitting his guts out. Anyways, without going into the ghastly details, we survived the night, saw the sunset and sunrise and did the trek down the mountain. Stephan was truely amazing though..... he climbed all the way and hardly complained. Everyone was sooooooo proud of him! Mathieu, usual Mr GungHo complained that the mountain was too easy and wanted to take short-cuts. Silly mummy that I am, I listened to him and got into some horrible scratches with the mountain sliding from under our feet!

Mt Moses is truely a holy mountain. Muslims, Christians & Jews together, all praying in the same place.

I learnt a great lesson from this trip..... whilst downloading the beautiful wonderful photos from the mountain, I accidently deleted 100s of photos without saving em. I started on my usual rant & rave and Amr stopped me............ "DETACHMENT", he said........ even from photos. And you know what, I breathed deeply and let it pass. I still wish I had some of those beautiful shots I took (and they were pretty good!!), but heh, the memories will always be there and guess what, I was there with friends with cameras and they took great shots too!!! :)

Now, the last part of the trip was DAHAB, and it was here that we really fell in love with Egypt. We spent 5-6 days here but it felt like we were living there for months........ and we could have; we'd wake-up, go for a swim in the sea, have breakfast, sit by the pool or a cafe to read, have lunch with friends, go shopping, visit land with Amr, chat with Lucy, hang-out at the internet cafe, chill @ 7 heaven with the divers, went diving (even learnt to free dive), water the plants with Sam............. It was SOOOO nice. Leaving was really difficult after that!!!

Boys @ their Initiation Dive!

Sam from Fightin Kangaroo and the boys

Being invited home to Mohammed's (from 7 heaven) place in Cairo was such a treat!!! Mama was soooo nice to us and fed us like kings!!!