How are we old enough to have been friends with people for this many years?

 

Between the county swim meet and attending Sam Lewis's mission homecoming/report, we've missed the last two Sundays at our ward, so I'm sure we'll surprise some people by showing up again!

More Middle East friends

Speaking of good company and flat-sharing, when we lived in Egypt we heard a young couple was coming out for a program at AUC and they hadn't yet secured a place to live (it is (or at least was) virtually impossible to do so without having a swanky job—you have to (or at least had to) wander around the streets asking random boabs if there were vacancies in their buildings) so we offered to host them in our apartment until they could find a place of their own. 

We had some friends in common on Facebook—a friend from high school had married a former student employee of mine (from Special Collections), who'd happened to serve her mission with the wife of this couple—so we figured they couldn't be terrible people. 

And they weren't. They were great!

Let's start at the very beginning

My birthday this year was a million times better than last year! Let's list the reasons why, shall we?

Last year: NICU

This year: Florida

Yup. That just about sums it up.

We had a relatively tame day, just relaxing by the pool while Grandma and Grandpa went to the temple for a wedding. The pool is pretty awesome, though the bottom of it is made of a gigantic emory board or something. The upside is that my feet have been stripped of dead skin and are silky smooth. The downside is that all of my skin junk (and everybody else's) is just floating around in the water. Yum, yum.

But the water was warm and wonderful so I put my thoughts of swimming through people's foot gunk aside and enjoyed the pool. It's mostly about 3 feet deep, with a zero-entry side (Miriam's favourite), a water slide (Rachel's favourite), a splash pad (Benjamin's favourite), and a "deep" end (4 ft. 10 inches) where the grown ups didn't have to be all hunched over to be completely in the water (our favourite).

We spent all morning at the pool.

Cue pictures...

Here's Benjamin at the splash pad:

Grief

You know that feeling when you're going down a hill really fast—maybe in a car or roller coaster—and then you reach the bottom of the hill and and feel, just for a moment, right before you start to go back up, that the world has stopped working?

Your stomach jumps up into your chest and it seems as though gravity is letting you spin off the earth and everything is just... uncontrollably standing still. Just for a moment. You know that it's only happening to you—and those in the car with you—and that everyone else feels perfectly normal...but how can they?

How is it that the cows in the field aren't floating away when you feel so close to being out of control yourself? And why aren't everyone's hands white from gripping onto the nearest handhold so tightly?

That's how I felt on Wednesday, only I wasn't on a roller coaster or in a car zooming down a hill. Instead I got a message from my friend Catharine with a link to a news article and two words: Nacia's brother.

The title of the article?

Crews recover teen's body from Deer Creek reservoir. 

That's all it took for my world to stop spinning and my stomach to jump into my chest.

Welcome to America

The first thing we noticed about America was the absolute soundlessness. It’s so quiet that at night you can hear crickets chirping. That’s the ultimate quiet.

It almost feels like we’re in a vacuum.

I read somewhere once that Cairo’s decibel level is on par with a freight train, constantly. In fact, the daily average is 85 decibels, which, according to Dangerous Decibels is enough to cause permanent damage after just one day.

That totally explains why our heads have been buzzing since we’ve arrived.

AUC Forever

Andrew’s graduation ceremony was yesterday. The semester ended almost a month ago and we’ve seriously been hanging around Egypt just for this. I voted for skipping the ceremony and going home early but Andrew insisted that he wanted to participate. Then about two weeks ago he was like, “What was I thinking!? We should have just gone home!” But I think by yesterday he was back to being happy that we decided to stay.

It seemed like a rather formal affair. They sent out fancy invitations and letters of detailing protocol: no cell phones, no cameras, no children. They even arranged special bus privileges for the guests of the students. So we got a babysitter and headed out to campus at the appointed hour.

The bus was fifteen minutes late. So we stood at the bus stop munching on pistachios and watching people cram themselves into buses like sardines.

Just around the river bend!

So many titles ran through my head while trying to make a title for this post, most of which had to do with Steamboatin’—a musical my brother and I were in when I was in grade 3 and he was in grade 5. I’m sure he remembers even though it was, oh, seventeen years ago.

Paddle wheeler rollin’ down the Mississip’!
Won’t you come and join us for a steamboat trip!
Paddle wheeler standin’ proud as she can be
All decked out and waiting for some company!

Step inside
(Just step inside)
We’re goin’ on a steamboat ride
(We’re goin’ on a steamboat ride)
Come with me
(With me!)
We’ll travel down in history!

It went something like that, anyway, and while judging from the decrepitated condition of the boat, this ride promised to be a ride through history, there was nothing remotely inviting about taking a ride on it. Our original plan was to ride downstream to Kanater, the Nile locks, and play around there for a while. However, no boats were running there when we arrived at the water bus station.

Not a problem

Traffic here is crazy—I think I’ve talked about it before—but somehow I’ve managed to steer clear (haha, no pun intended) of getting hit by rogue vehicles the entire time we’ve lived here.

Until Thursday evening, that is.

I’ve had many close calls but have never actually been hit. I tend to be a bit more cautious than Andrew is when leaping into traffic because I usually have a child or two somewhere on my person. That was still the case on Thursday evening.

Donkeys at Dar es-Salaam

We’ve visited Dar es-Salaam twice with Josie. I wanted to get Andrew a nice galabia before we left and had come across a store that had ones I thought he’d like—I just didn’t have him with me to try them on so I had to bring him back to it. We decided, while we were getting his galabia to get some more traditional clothing.

Isdals—full khimars, or head-style abayas—have been becoming increasingly popular here in Cairo. I started noticing them last year sometime, but I don’t remember seeing them much before.

Kerdasa Bazaar

Way out by the the Giza Plateau is a little street lined with stores displaying colourful wool carpets and stylish galabias . It’s the Kerdasa Bazaar and on Sunday Josie and I joined our friends Clara and Catharine (and several other members of the branch) on a shopping spree there.

Al-Azhar Park

On Saturday afternoon we headed off to al-Azhar park for a final visit. Apparently we’re on a farewell tour of sorts—we need to find something new to do! Al-Azhar park is one of the most beautiful locations in Cairo but it’s such a pain to get to that we rarely go.

Islamic Cairo…again

We decided to go on an adventure today since we’re mostly feeling better and since Andrew has finished with all his coursework and everything. Of all places to visit we decided to go to the Khan. I don’t know how many times we’ve been there, but that old bazaar in Cairo is huge so there are plenty of places we’ve yet to explore.

First we found a brass shop called Three Crazy Brothers that our friends recommended to us. We really had no idea where to find it but everyone knew where it was and pointed us, surprisingly, in the right direction so we found it without a problem. 

Khamsin

This morning when I got up once I was greeted by a sickly, eerie orange glow streaming through our bedroom window instead of what I might normally expect at…excuse me while I fumble around to find the cell phone, which, yes, is in bed with us…six o’clock in the morning.

Sometimes people are shocked with how long I can “sleep in.” But seriously, folks, specifically those who have accused me of leisurely sleep-ins, mothers don’t have sleep schedules (at least, this one doesn’t, at least, not lately) and, therefore, cannot technically sleep in.

I got up at six, fed Miriam, and then went out onto the balcony to take pictures of the festering sandstorm.

Qalawun Complex and Sufi Dancers at the Khan

I ran out of steam the last few days that Amanda was here. We’ve been running around like crazy the past three weeks or so and it’s gotten so darn hot. Like on Sunday it was 117°F (47°C). That’s a little warm…at least, I think.

Saturday wasn’t terribly hot, though we barely managed to get out of the house by noon. We wandered around Dar es-Salaam for a while then headed back to the apartment to get the girls settled before I took off for the evening. Andrew stayed at home with Rachel and Miriam while I took Amanda and Josie to the Khan to watch the Sufi dancers.

We debated taking the metro and walking from there but at this point we were all still so sore from going inside the pyramid that we opted for the relative comfort of a cab ride and got to the Khan much earlier than expected. I led Josie and Amanda to Midaq Alley, which was alive and bustling with patrons.

Well, perhaps not bustling. It is far too hot for any bustling, but people were lounging around drinking tea, smoking shisha, and playing backgammon.

After finding Midaq Alley we still had too much time on our hands before the show started so we wandered around the Khan for a while.

After wandering around for a while we found ourselves standing in front of the Qalawun Complex, quite near the Sabil-Kuttab of Katkhuda, and, much to my surprise, it was open. We have wandered past it so many times and it has always been closed. It was first closed in 2000 for renovations, but other times we tried to get in we were told they were filming inside and another time we were told something else. They always had excuses. We have tried to sneak in on more than one occasion and were consistently thwarted in our efforts.

When I noticed that people appeared to be visiting the complex I got a little excited about it. Amanda and Josie both were less excited since they had already been when they went on an Islamic Cairo tour with Jaehee earlier in the week. I dragged them inside, anyway.

The madrassa was fairly typical but easily falls on the more ornate side of ordinary.

My favourite part of the madrassa was the back courtyard. I’m not sure why. It just had a unique view of the mausoleum and minarets that we usually see from the street, I suppose.

What’s impressive is that the entire complex—comprising of a madrassa (school), mausoleum, and maristan (hospital)—was apparently built in only 13 months. I did the math and I’m still confused. To quote from Wikipedia, “the complex was begun in 1285 by the Mongol Sultan Kitbuqa, who ruled only briefly, and was completed by al-Nasir in 1304.” Now, call me crazy, but I see a span of approximately two decades in there, which is substantially longer than 13 months. Is it possible that Ali Pasha Mubarak made an error in his Khitat? Or perhaps I am figuring the dates incorrectly. If the complex really was completed in 13 months it must have been quite a feat because the mausoleum is amazing.

Sunlight was streaming through beautiful stained glass windows dancing red, blue, orange, and green lights across the marble floors and pillars.

And every surface was absolutely dripping with lacey geometric motifs or gold plating.

After vowing to return again with Andrew I was able to peel myself away from Qalawun in order to make our way to the Wikala of al-Ghouri for the Sufi dancing. We got there plenty early and enjoyed some pastries in the street while watching the feral dogs and cats run around.

The doors open at 6:30 and we got there at around 6:10. We ended up getting seats on the third row and sat there for two whole hours while we waited for the show to start. It was a long wait, but worth it. The show is amazing—it has definitely moved from the “sacred” to the “spectacular” and the routine the troupe has worked out is a showpiece if I’ve ever seen one. Still, it is interesting to watch, and, having seen “actual” whirling dervishes, I can see that they still have some traditional elements in their show.

I was thrilled to see that the older gentleman was back with the finger cymbals. He seems to be the backbone of the show and everyone seems to perform with more gusto when he’s on stage. The audience responds to him very well. He just does a fantastic job.

Just for kicks I timed the spinners this time. The first dancer was spinning for just over 23 minutes. He was very expressive.

The next set of dancers were spinning for approximately 15 minutes. I stopped timing when the dancers stopped twirling in circles even though they continued to twirl and toss their skirts for several minutes after that.

When the performance ended half the audience sat around in stunned, muted silence for a while before filing out the door. It is a fabulous show but so incredibly loud.

We caught a taxi home and were greeted at the door by none other than…Bridget! Yes, yes, Hotel Heiss lives on.

Pekma for Wrold

We don’t do a lot of clothes shopping in Egypt and in case you were wondering why I brought photographic evidence of the things they sell here. Granted, if we were willing to fork out the money we could buy decent clothes, but we aren’t willing to pay much so instead we take pictures of the decently priced clothing and then giggle about them later.

While walking down the street in Alex we came across this shirt:

It’s an absolute classic. In case you can’t read the poem at the bottom it says:

The wind lether
Remembers
aredienched in dix
The wind that know
wands the dow
know that my

Later the lether was drenched in the dilk. Basically we have no idea what message this shirt is trying to get across but it makes me want to steer clear of anything with random Chinese letters on it for the rest of my life. Aredienched in dix? What?

I took Amanda to Dar es-Salaam the other day so that she could see an authentic Egyptian market—as opposed to the Khan which is authentic and not at the same time.

We got to see some interesting things like donkey carts loaded with gas canisters…

…and garbage being burned in the street…

…and bloody handprints left over from eid al-adha.

We also had to stop to browse through the baby section. I am pretty sure that is my favourite section of any store—sometimes I have to plan my trips to Target so that I don’t get anywhere near the baby section. Of course, that’s when we live in the States. Here I am much better at passing up on things.

Here we have a shirt featuring Juicy Fresn Fruits…

…and a shirt explaining How Find SDecial Friend.

So that’s why we rarely go clothes shopping for the girls in Egypt. That and because we’ve been so abundantly blessed with hand-me-downs.

The top reason I don’t go clothes shopping for myself here is that I don’t like to label myself.

I don’t know if you can read that, but it says “Redneck Princess.” Not exactly something I would be bragging about…

Dashur and Abu Sir

The theory that my brain has been fried by the sun stands. Today was a super-pyramid day and I am basically exhausted. I don’t even know if I can be held accountable for my actions at this hour. Hopefully whatever I write will be in complete-ish sentences.

We left this morning to visit Dashur, a pyramid complex that opened to the public in 1996 and is on one of the roads less traveled by. So we like it a lot.

I went down inside the pyramid with Miriam strapped to my front since she hadn’t been down before. Josie and Amanda came with me. Andrew and Rachel sat at the top and chilled with the guards—as it turns out, Rachel is a bit of a pussy when it comes to dark, cramped crawlspaces. I wasn’t so sure about going inside again, myself, once I started reflecting on my previous experiences—pain, pain, and more pain—but Miriam hadn’t ever been inside a pyramid and I just wasn’t sure that she would ever forgive me for not taking her in one.

So today she went down inside the Red Pyramid with me and now she’ll be able to tell all her friends that she went down inside a pyramid. She just won’t be able to tell them about the burning sensations being that deep in a pyramid causes—burning in your nose, throat, and lungs from the ammonia hanging in the dead air and burning in your quads from squatting for so long.

But we did it, and we survived to tell the tale!

It isn’t really that much of a harrowing experience but it does make your legs feel like jelly for a while afterward and the farther inside you go the more intense the stench gets. But at least they’ve rigged the place with lights—what did they do back in 1836?

Graffiti in the dark? That’s got to be difficult.

We spent quite some time down there because we didn’t want to be going up the entrance shaft at the same time that other people were coming down. That meant that we got to see several people come down after us. One man was well over six feet tall—I almost want to say he was about seven feet tall—he was gigantic. He was literally crawling on his hands and knees through passageways for which we were only ducking a little. He was seriously so tall.

We had a good time and got thoroughly hot and sweaty, of course.

And when the coast was clear we made our way to the fresh desert air we had left behind, killing our thighs in the process. Oi, it’s a long way up!

Technically no photos are allowed inside the tomb, but the site isn’t very well maintained. Since the walls are covered in graffiti dating from hundreds of years ago to yesterday, I don’t feel too bad taking a few pictures to capture the moment. At least we didn’t write on the walls.

Walking down the stairs after having done all the work to make it up that ramp in the pyramid is like torture. I suppose it is nice of them to get us used to that since walking down any stairs will most likely be torturous for several days to come.

When we had all made it down the pyramid safely and hobbled to the car, we drove down to the Bent Pyramid.

Because the base of the pyramid is crumbling quicker than the top there is a nice, shady ring around the pyramid… and if you’re brave enough to join in an ancient game of Jenga you can sit and enjoy the shade while staring up at huge slabs of stones floating in midair, held in place by nothing other than the stones beside them.

 

Rachel was being a bit of a downer until she decided to “make a fire.” Then she ran around collecting rocks and building a huge fire that no one else could touch because it was “very dangerous and hot.”

 

We didn’t stay too long because we wanted to be sure to get to Abu Sir in time to do a healthy bit of exploring there. Trying to cram in all our sightseeing before 3 PM is rather difficult, but I suppose work is as equally important as play.

Abu Sir was amazing—the car ride over, alone, was insane. We were driving through the village at around noon, which happens to be right when school gets out, so the streets were thronging with school children. We passed several groups of girls who peered into the windows, noticed Miriam, and erupted into excited shrieks and giggles. Babies are so popular here.

I didn’t get many pictures because I was too busy people-watching to actively take photos. And because the camera was in my pocket and I had children on my lap, which makes pockets rather inaccessible. It was amazing, though.

We saw a man on a bicycle get hit by an auto rickshaw. I was pointing things out to Rachel, who kept demanding to be shown donkeys.

“I can’t magically make donkeys appear. I am not in charge of when donkeys are outside your window and when they aren’t. But, look, a herd of sheep!”

“I want to see a donkey! Show me a donkey!”

“Ummm…there’s a goat…”

“I WANT TO SEE A DONKEY!”

“Ooh, look a man on a bicycle!”

*CRASH!*

Just like that. The man on a bicycle (I’d call him a cyclist but that would make him sound professional. He wasn’t. He was wearing a galabia. He was just a man. On a bicycle.) decided, suddenly, to make a left-hand turn. It was a bad decision to make since the rickshaw clearly didn’t have time to stop.

We were in line right behind the rickshaw and almost didn’t have time to stop ourselves. And it wasn’t like we were even going all that fast considering how we were on a dirt road surrounded by animals, children, and vendors, flanked by the canal on one side and storefronts on the other. We were crawling through the village.

Somehow, though, this man managed to get knocked off his bicycle and stopped traffic just like that. The driver of the rickshaw jumped out of his vehicle to help the man up. He didn’t seem to be injured too badly, if at all.

Later we saw a kid on a bike get pounced on by several other children and pummeled. I think he got hurt worse than the man in the other bicycle incident.

We also saw a mother carrying a large tub of some kind of root vegetable on her head in a big, metal tub. Three of her daughters followed behind her, each of them veiled and carrying a similar, but proportionally smaller, load on their heads. It was like a matryoshka doll come to life. At the very end of the line a little toddler tripped along behind his sisters. He was trying desperately to balance a pot of nothing on his head but was failing quite miserably at it. Finally he took both hands, pressed the pot to his forehead, and ran to catch up with his mother and siblings. It was probably one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

I was a little sad when we pulled up to the ticket booth—I wanted to drive around the village longer. technically Abu Sir is closed to the public, but it hasn’t always been that way. It isn’t very difficult to get in, but it does involve bribery and a bit of petty rule-breaking.

Andrew had already been to Abu Sir once with the local Scout Troop, back in February 2009, so we figured that if the Scouts could do some petty rule-breaking we could, too. And it was well worth it.

Abu Sir is amazing!

Part of the charm, though, I think, was that we were exploring it by ourselves, and only with grudging permission.

We made our way up the causeway to the Temple of Sahure while our “guide” made small talk. Our guide turned out to be pretty cool in the end, although he insisted on a large tip for his services.

There are some amazing things at this site—I understand why they are trying to make it more tourist-friendly before reopening it, but it’s a real shame that so many people are missing out on it. Of course, I also like that it wasn’t swarming with tourists…so maybe I just don’t know what I want.

There are fourteen pyramids at this site, although we only counted four of them. In total, and including the pyramids as Dashur, Saqqara, and Giza, we saw upwards of a dozen pyramids today. The other pyramids at Abu Sir must be either covered with sand or crumbled beyond recognition because we couldn’t locate them.

Most of the pyramids here were built with local stone instead of imported granite from Aswan which might indicate a less wealthy dynasty and also explains why the pyramids are in such a state of disrepair.

We went inside this pyramid, which I think was the Pyramid of Sahure. The ramp leading into the pyramid isn’t very long so we even convinced Rachel to go inside somehow.

It was quite different inside this pyramid than it is in the Red Pyramid at Dashur. The air was nice and cool and it didn’t smell at all. I wonder if the difference is that this pyramid has been pretty much left alone, whereas the other one was abused when it was part of the army base.

A friend of mine suggested that the smell in the Red Pyramid is from bat urine. However, I am almost certain now that the stench is from human urine because this pyramid didn’t smell at all and was just as likely to house bats as the Red Pyramid. I’m quite sure the Red Pyramid played the role of urinal during its interim on the base.

I’m not sure they will ever get rid of that smell.

Rachel was still very happy to leave the inside of the pyramid. She was screaming the whole way up the ramp. “I’m going to slip! I’m going to slip! I’m going to slip!”

But she was brave and walked up the whole way while holding her Daddy’s hand. She did end up slipping, but not until she was at the last step and only because she was freaking out while trying to run into my arms.

Somehow we managed to get her to go down another shaft in a temple of sorts. We told her that it was a slide and that it would be fun—it didn’t have any steps on it, so we really did slide down. She had to hold my hand while going down because Daddy let her fall.

During dinner tonight Amanda said “I wish we could slide in temples on a regular basis.” It was funny.

There was an open sarcophagus in the room we slid into, so we had to use it, of course. Our guide was heckling us to, and how could we not after hearing the story of how Zahi Hawwas took Senator Joe Lieberman to the bottom of one of the pyramids at Giza and when they got to the bottom told Lieberman to be quiet. Hawwas pointed to a pair of shoes sticking out of a sarcophagus and admitted to taking a bribe to allow someone to take a nap down there.

That’s all hearsay, of course, but bribery is alive and well here so I almost wouldn’t doubt it.

Josie did a good job pretending to be a mummy.

I, on the other hand, always look far too satisfied to actually be dead.

And my “scary mummy” face is far too cheerful. If this is anything like my Mommy-means-business face it’s no wonder my children don’t take me seriously. I’m the happiest zombie I’ve ever seen.

Andrew was so excited to show us everything that he had explored before. He reminded me of how his dad acts when he takes people to Grover—so excited to be helping other people have a good time.

Going back up the slide was far more difficult than coming down, which isn’t something I thought about when I slid down with both our baby girls. Andrew ended up helping Rachel while I lugged Miriam up. And you would think that we would have learned our lesson from that but instead we went climbing over temple walls with them.

There were some neat hieroglyphics inside the temple, which I’m glad Josie got to see since we won’t be taking her down to Luxor.

A lot of the hieroglyphics were a greenish colour. Our guide said that was because they were plated with bronze, which makes sense.

We had to run after visiting that last temple, which was unfortunate because there were a lot of other things we could have visited but I barely had time to shower and eat lunch before leaving for tutoring as it was. You can see Maadi in the distance in this picture—all the high rises past the trees? That’s Maadi.

Tomorrow we’re headed to Alexandria for the day and we do not have to be back by 3 PM so we shouldn’t feel rushed for once!