DAY 3 Tue 15 June

Got one of the best nights sleeps that I have had for a long time last night - got woken up by Buffy at 2.30am, but managed to head right back to sleep again, and slept through until 6.30am, despite the heat. I said I was coming over here to reset my sleeping clock that has been all mixed up lately, and it seems to be working already - thank goodness! Lay in bed for a bit reading, before heading over to the house to see if Maryanne was up yet, and what the plan was for the day. While I was over there, one of the grooms came over to tell Maryanne that she had two brand new kid goats :) They are sooo cute, with their lovely shiny black coats, with little patterns of white. Georgeous! Around 10am we took out Dooby and Shaboura for a quiet ride through the desert, pretty much just to see how they coped. They coped great - in fact both of them really wanted to run and run - Shibs especially. We walked in to the desert just below the Sun Temple at Abu Sir, up past the Abu Sir pyramids and on to the Japanese hill (a hill where the Japanese started excavating), before heading back towards the farm. Oh boy - those two knew it was the way home, and wanted to run even more than before, so Maryanne relented and let them go for a run. The initial plan was a quiet canter, but they had different ideas, so a nice gallop through the sand was a lovely way to end the ride (well, not end it as we still had to exit the desert and head back to the farm). It was really nice to have my first ride back in Egypt on my favourite Egyptian mare (even if she is the wrong colour :P).
There isn't much of a plan for the rest of the day - shopping day is tomorrow, today is another day of rest to let Maryanne recover and catch up on stuff she has to do, which has given me time to download the photos I have taken, and catch up on my diary.
Because there was nothing much to do I headed on over to Morad's for a bit, and got to spend time with some of his horses. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, outside in the shade with a nice breeze blowing through, watching a weanling as she tried to work out how to eat grass. And then after she went out into the yard, Morad brought out Birdie and her young colt. He was so inquisitive, exploring the world all by himself. He would stay away for quite a while too before coming running back to his mum. Then there was the time he came back proud of himself with the remains of a cigarette carton in his mouth to show us. While I was standing there holding Birdie at one stage a falcon flew over, circled the field beside us, circled over Morad's place and then headed off again, while in the distance I could hear the call to prayer. That really just made my afternoon - I love watching the falcons fly in Egypt, and spending the time with a friend and lovely horses is perfect! Eventually it was time to put Birdie and the foal back in the stable, and Morad had to head into town, so he dropped me off at Maryanne's so I could download the photos to my laptop and see if I got any good photos of Birdie and the foal - shame I didn't have my real camera, but the iphone does take pretty good photos too! Then it was a matter of relaxing for the rest of the night, after a bite of dinner, watching episodes of the Deadliest Catch (kinda a weird programme to be watching in the heat of the Egyptian desert), and playing round with the computer.