Back from the sunny Egypt

Arrived back here late Sunday night after a week of sunshine and warmth. The good thing here - most of the snow is gone now and the worst slosh was here while we were away!
Egypt was fab. Similar temperatures to Singapore (+28C) but very dry, so it doesn't make you sweat at all. And it cools down quite a bit in the evenings, so really pleasant. The sea was +26C - still warmer than the unheated swimming pools at the hotel. And we loved it! Just on the beach of the hotel was a beautiful reef, dropping down 10 meters or so just some 10 meters from the shore. They had their own jetty, so you could walk to the drop-off point. We usually swam but on the last days the water got very shallow, so couldn't swim from the shore. Beautiful coral and fish life! We spotted a giant puffer - about 1 m long and nice fat in a kind of cave on the shallow bit and it was sitting there and blinking its big dark blue eyes for several days. Then Robert scared him away unfortunately and on our last day the water was to shallow to get to it (him,her?). But a very funny fish it was indeed.
We also made a small half day trip to the Ras Mohammed nature reserve - more snorkelling and some other sites. It was more open sea so the water was too cold for the kids to swim. Beatrice swam out at one spot. Robert saw a barracuda, I didn't see anything that I didn't see at the hotel reef as well. They showed us the cracks in the desert that happened during 1981 earthquake. Now filled with water and up to 15 meters deep. First time for all of us to see anything like it, very interesting. And there is a small mangrove forest as well. Rather different from S-E Asian mangroves and a bit of a surprize there right next to the desert. Then we had a "buffet lunch" with a difference - sitting on rugs by the beach. Men had been cooking on charcole there and then. We were the first ones there but then groups started to arrive one after another dominated by Russians and it got very busy and noisy. Food was tasty though and nobody got sick.
The rest of the time we just stayed at our hotel - with the beach, several pools, gym and kids club there was enough to do for us. Beatrice probably liked the kids club best - a bit of a homecoming really with an Indonesian nanny Resa, who was the sweetest person you can imagine. Just like they are - happy and playful. It was in fact always a struggle to make them leave the club to come to the beach.
Food was great but we tryed to stick to a certain exercise routine and with all these stairs to go up and down to get to the beach and back managed to balance it quite well.
Would definitely do that again - such an easy break to take from here with direct flight and no time difference. There had to be a hickup at the end of course. Were on the plane already (that was delayed by half a day that we spent at the hotel)as they were calling for a passanger. She arrived finally. Then the captain announces that because of her delay we had lost our slot for take-off and the next one available is in 2 hours 30 minutes. I was sure there would be an announcement after a few minutes that this was a joke but there wasn't and it wasn't a joke. So we sat there for 2 hours! And with the Estonians being so calm and patient nobody even tryed to lynch the lady (who was in check-in before us!).
Meanwhile here - as I had expected my article was published in the beginning of last week and it had caused a real storm - 400 comments on the website within the first day, official replies from the ministry of education, teacher's association, student's association etc. However the only people who shared my views seem to be the ones who live or have lived abroad and have had kids in school in UK or other places. Everyone here seems to think 3 months summer break is fine because the kids are so tired of school and work so hard and there is so little sunlight most of the year! Well, I give up. But a great experiment in a way that one comment can stir such an upheaval!