Jennifer and Ken Loos in Cairo, Egypt:
"We are happy (and relieved!) to report that New Year's here came and went without a hitch. After a day of last minute Y2K preparations, I along with my husband and 3 children and about 75 other guests celebrated at a garden barbecue held locally at a friend's villa. We chose this party over others because children were welcome and it was only 3 blocks from our home (Ramadan traffic is bad enough without the additional problems New Year's celebrations would likely cause!). The host used his wristwatch to count down to midnight and then we all toasted the New Year with our duty-free champagne. From there the night turned into a kids night out, as they donned their party fezzes, lit their sparklers, enjoyed a bonfire and danced to music on a portable dance floor. Appropriate as the upcoming century will be mostly theirs!

Everyone was expecting the failure of something, lights, water, telephone, sewage, but so far there has not been so much as a brown-out. Most ex pat families prepared for the worst, stockpiling bottled water and batteries, filling bathtubs and trash cans with water for flushing, and unplugging all appliances before midnight. We're still uncertain about the quality of our tap water as there were strong indications that automated chlorination systems would fail. But we have 10 cases of bottled water on hand for that contingency. We also don't know how the banking system has fared. In any case, Y2K is by no means over and done with here and we're planning to stay prepared through at least next week.