Una palabra

We finished reading The Book of Mormon on the last day of November and then worked our way through a book of Christmas devotionals (finishing that on Christmas Eve), so for the past couple of days we've been working on memorizing The Articles of Faith together. Rachel and Miriam pretty much have them memorized, I think, but the younger kids still have quite a bit of work to do before they can "pass" them off.

When I was growing up, my mom would sometimes have us play a game to help us memorize things, where we'd sit or stand in a circle and each person would take a turn saying one word of each article of faith. I thought my kids would enjoy that, too, so I explained the rules to them, throwing in a bit of Spanish, as one does.

"We're going to go around in a circle," I said. "And when I point to you, you'll say una palabra and then I'll point to the next person and they'll say una palabra until we're finished. Get it?"

Everyone nodded. 

Now, I knew that not everyone got it. I do, after all, have a three-year-old in the house. But I figured most people got it, so I began by pointing to myself, figuring everyone else would catch on. "We..."

I pointed to Miriam: "Believe."

I pointed to Benjamin.

 "Una parabola?" he said. 

Not quite, buddy. 

Rachel's last math unit before we started our Christmas break was on parabolas, so his confusion is understandable. And now I can't even remember if I managed to say palabra, or if I was doing some combination of palabra (Spanish) and parola (Italian). I certainly didn't confuse it with the French word mot, though I could have confused it with French for "to speak," which is parle (parla in Italian and hablar in Spanish), or the word parable in English. 

They all come from the same Greek roots para- meaning "alongside" and bole meaning "a throw," or a comparison, a juxtaposition, a metaphor, and...somehow or other...a word.

The kids all understand the game now so I can explain it in whatever mishmash of languages I want!

Winter weather, Spanish, and spiders

This winter has been decent, I suppose. It hasn't been terribly cold but it hasn't been wonderfully warm, either. It looks inviting enough outside that I want to go out but once I go out I want to go back in. In a couple of a weeks I have a suspicion (or at least a hope) that we'll officially enter sweater weather and we can return to the park. I hardly know what to do indoors anymore.

We checked a book out of the library a couple of weeks ago called My Mom Hates Me in January (by Judy Delton). I thought it was hilarious and am rather sad that it's out of print (and costs more than $100 to get a used copy on Amazon...no thanks) because I think it's one that needs to be in our permanent collection so that I can read it to my children every year.

Basically, the story is about a mom being driven insane by being cooped up all day and about a boy being driven insane because of it. Popcorn is too messy. No play dough in the living room. That's too noisy. And so forth.

His mother eventually sends him outside and he talks about how he went sledding and built a snowman and made snow angels until he was freezing cold and soaked through to his skin. But when he comes home his mother said, "You're back already?! You just went outside!"

At the very end of the book it starts to turn into spring and his mother gets all excited and calls him to look at the birds and then makes popcorn and breaks out the play dough and they have a wonderful afternoon together. The boy concludes that, perhaps, his mother doesn't hate him after all. Perhaps, he thinks...she just hates January.

And that is just like me, except that as a general rule I also hate November and December and February as well. And sometimes October and March, too. It all depends.

Like I said, this year hasn't been terrible at all but we're still feeling a little cooped up.

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…

Light Bulbs and Train Tracks

Just so you know…I’m not usually the kind of person who waltzes into a grocery store to steal price tags from the aisles. But the other day I took one, anyway. I didn’t have my camera on me, see, and the hilarity of it had to be preserved. Forgive me.

I can now totally understand why I can rarely find the price tag for the items I want to purchase. People steal them because they are too darn funny not to. I will try not to complain about this in the future since I, myself, recently contributed to the lack of signage in Egyptian grocery stores…and all the chaos and confusion that entails.

It’s not like this sign was really helping anyone, anyway:

Them’s fighting words

Even after fixing our satellite a year ago, our television viewing experience has not been improved much. We don’t watch television much but occasionally there are things that we’d like to watch like, say, the Olympics. We didn’t get to watch those this year since our satellite isn’t working again and our internet connection is too slow.

Our landlord finally stopped by to see if he could fix the problem for us. He’s one of few people with access to the roof, which is sealed off by a locked door, which is weird because usually the roofs of buildings are open-access or private oases for penthouse residents.

Ours isn’t either of those things, although I suppose we could go up there if we wished since the door is only haphazardly framed by a pony wall of stacked bricks, dusted with mortar. With the aid of a stool we could scale the wall and see about the connection ourselves, but we are lazy.

Also, sometimes there are dogs on the roof.

Our path room got plumped

For the longest time we’ve only had one functioning bathroom. Technically our apartment has two and so technically they both should work since technically rent is higher for apartments with two bathrooms rather than just one.

When we first moved in we naively made a list of everything “wrong” with the apartment so that our landlord could either fix it or at least not charge us for it when we move out.

We told him about the leaky toilet and sink in the spare bathroom—and not leaky in the annoying, but common, drip-drip-drip way. No, our toilet and sink leaked onto the floor and when you flushed the toilet water literally sprayed across the room. So we turned off the water to the toilet because we were tired of having our floors be wet all the time…and we asked our landlord to fix it.

His solution: You are only two people. You don’t need two bathrooms; one will do.

Cairo Zoo

“What are we going to do today, Mommy?” Rachel asked while climbing onto our bed. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

It’s not like we do something thrilling everyday. Sometimes we don’t even leave the house. I don’t know what she was expecting, really.

“Why don’t we go to the Z-O-O today?” Andrew spelled.

“I guess we could do that,” I said, “We’ve been meaning to take her for a while. She’d probably like that. And you know that when you spell Z-O-O it doesn’t do much to disguise the word. I don’t think she even knows what a zoo is, anyway.”

“Yeah! I do! Zoos has lions and ‘nakes!” Rachel said defensively.

Andrew reminded me that there is a 5-minute zoo show on her Little People DVD. I forgot. Oops.

And that is how we decided to go to the zoo.

Funny Foods

Sometimes we see things at the store and they just beg to have their picture taken.

Today we have Demy’s salad dressing which is “As good as it takes.”

Also, Spicy Trade’s “Onion Bowder.” Yum, yum, yum.

I always just wonder how difficult it would be for these companies to run their ideas past a native English speaker before marketing them. There are plenty of English speakers available around here. Ones that know that powder is spelled with a ‘p’ and that “as good as it takes” doesn’t really make sense.

I will admit that “as good as it takes” almost sounds catchy. That’s the problem, though: it only almost sounds catchy. After you think about it for a minute you realize you have no idea what they are trying to say.

As good as it gets? As good as it tastes?

They’re as good as it takes, so they aren’t interested in being the best? They want to get by with the least amount of effort required? Only as much as it takes and nothing more?

Sign me up for that salad dressing! They’re going for mediocrity.

Truthfully we usually make our own salad dressings because Demy’s is the only reasonably priced stuff out there—we tried it, and it’s not great. Everything else is imported and costs and arm and a leg, but you can buy olive oil and vinegar for relatively cheap, so when we need salad dressing that’s usually what we do.

Flashback Friday: Mayonnaise Pizza

We like pizza in our family. It’s a meal that Andrew and I can both agree on and it’s easy to make so that we both like it. My side will usually have some combination of green peppers, tomatoes, onions, pineapple, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni, and cheese. I like a lot of topping on my pizza and really am not too picky. Andrew’s side of the pizza will be void of mostly everything. His favorite kind of pizza is margarita, which is just a fancy way of saying cheese pizza. Plain.

There have been some pizzas that I haven’t been too fond of, however. Most of them I had while I was living in Russia in 2004. They don’t do good pizza in Russia.

My friend Tiffany (who, by the way, recently got engaged) and I went to an enrichment activity shortly after we moved to Russia. Since neither Tiffany or I spoke much Russian at the time we felt a little ostracized.

Eventually one of the sisters noticed that we were feeling a little out of place, huddled together in our own little corner, and she looked right at me and said…something.

I thought she asked what our names were. That would be have been a logical first question to ask, right? After all, she didn’t know our names. And I swear I heard her ask for our names. So I answered her.

“Меня зовут Нэнси, и eе зовут Тиффани,” I managed to get out in my 101 level Russian. “My name is Nancy, and her name is Tiffany.”

The whole room cracked up laughing. Tiffany and I shrunk farther into our corner while the ladies continued to laugh and talk about us. It was not cool. Especially because I understood some of what they were saying and not all of it was very kind.

Tiffany and I got to have the last laugh, however, because that night for enrichment we were making American-style pizza. A sister had brought a recipe that she had found on the internet. I have no idea where.

The dough was pretty standard and Tiffany and I were getting excited for some good pizza. The last pizza we had was in the head teacher’s apartment the first couple of weeks we were in Russia. It came on crust as thin as a tortilla, with a couple of slices of cheese melted on top, one whole olive, and random herb leaves sprinkled on top, also whole. It was not satisfying so we were thrilled about some good home-cooked American pizza, and things were looking promising.

When the dough had finished rising and we had it ready to go in the pan, they brought out a huge jar of mayonnaise. Tiffany and I looked at each other quizzically. We didn’t realize what the mayonnaise was for until it was too late.

The mayo-loving Russians had already popped the jar open and dumped it onto the delicious-looking crust. They spread it all over, just the way I do with my tomato sauce. Nice and thick.

Then they brought out the toppings: tomatoes, corn, pickles, bologna and cheese. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it?

It wasn’t. Tiffany and I were each given a big slice, which we politely accepted, and then tried to inconspicuously choke it down. It was awful.

Warm, gooey mayonnaise was dripping all over the place and mingling with the taste of cheap bologna, pickles, and corn. Our Russian sisters were clearly enjoying theirs. We were merely exercising our gag reflex.

The only thing that could have made the pizza more Russian was if they had put beets on it as well. It was the most un-American thing my American palate had ever tasted. And it was nasty.

“Just like home, да?” the same sister who had laughed in my face earlier asked me in the cloak room while we were getting bundled up to go home, “American pizza.”

I don’t know what got into me—perhaps it was the embarrassment I had suffered earlier or perhaps it was just too much mayonnaise—but somehow I forgot my manners.

“Нет,” I assured her, “Это не пицца!” No, this was not pizza.

It was her turn to act embarrassed.

I still feel badly for saying that to her when she was basically in charge of the activity. That said, it’s probably best if her recipe was never again duplicated.

Luxor: Day 1, Felucca Ride (January 3)

It was such a nice day that, although very tired, we decided we shouldn’t remain shut up in our hotel room all night. Instead we set an alarm in order to wake up in time to take a felucca ride on the Nile, hoping to catch the sunset while on the river.

Bargaining down the price for a felucca ride is always a bit of a joke, even in Cairo. In Luxor, though, it was downright ridiculous. They lies they tell to jack up their prices are unbelievable at best, and downright outrageous at worst. We finally agreed on a price with the boat vendor: 40 LE for the whole boat for an hour.

That’s about what we would pay in Cairo, so it sounded fair to us. We followed a little boy onto the bank of the Nile, going under the boardwalk and into some muck. We used a plank to get from the bank to the felucca. It was a little scary for me since I was holding Rachel and she tends to throw my balance off a bit. We all made it on the boat without falling into the murky water, though.

Once we were on the boat we sat and sat and sat and sat some more. We didn’t know what we were waiting for until a Japanese couple followed the same little boy over to our boat. They started arguing with him but ended up getting on the boat with us.

Sensing that both parties were a little disgruntled the “captain” said that since we both wanted to ride at the same time and they didn’t have enough staff, we would share the boat and split the cost: 20 LE for us and 20 LE for the Japanese couple.

This seemed like a good deal to us, and that’s how it works in Cairo—you rent the whole boat—so we made friends with the Japanese couple and sailed on down the Nile.

Sailing on the Nile in Cairo is one thing. Sailing on the Nile in Luxor is a completely different experience. It’s still a little trashy, but really, it’s not half as badly polluted as it is downstream in Cairo, and the air is much more clean and fresh. The sun, instead of disappearing suddenly into a thick cloud of haze and smog, actually sets and there is usually a brilliant display of color. In Cairo you usually just get a dusty orange that quickly dissolves into grey twilight and the sunset is over. It was definitely nice to have a little vacation from all the pollution.

When our ride was over, the Japanese couple hopped out of the boat, shoved 20 LE into the captain’s hand, and took off. We were a little bit slower going. We had to gather up all our hud—babies use a lot of stuff—and work our way off the boat. The Japanese couple was long gone by the time all of us were on the shore.

Andrew gave the captain 20 LE and we all started walking away. The captain followed us yelling about needing another 20 LE for the other couple (the Schillings) and 10 LE for David (since he was half a couple). We ended up having a huge argument with the captain because his “boss” had told us that we could have the whole boat for 40 LE. We shared it with another couple, who paid half of the 40 LE, so we only owed them 20 LE.

And even if we were to pay him the full 40 LE that we had originally agreed upon, before we knew we were sharing the boat (and were told we’d be splitting the cost) with the other couple, we would be paying less than 10 LE per person.

I hate having to barter for everything here. I prefer posted signs with the cost clearly labeled so that I know exactly what I’m getting.

We went out to dinner that night at the Luxor Hotel Hamees Restaurant-bar-Coffee, mostly because their menu was hilarious.

Most of us got pizza, and we were sure to order it exactly as it appeared on the menu. I had Chicken Pizza (also available as Chiecken and Cchicken) with green paper and hushrooms.

The restaurant is right across from the Luxor Temple so we stopped by to get some night time pictures before heading back to our hotel to put Rachel to bed and watch Wall-E.

What's the blobject?

We've been spelling things more and more since Rachel has started reacting strongly to some words that we say. So if we don't want her to get overly emotional about something, whether it be happy or sad, we just spell the word. Lately she's been a little picky about when she puts her coat on. She seems to understand the concept that coats keep us warm, she just doesn't like to wear it all the time.

When we were getting off the train the other day I said to Andrew,

"Will you grab her C-O-A-T and P-U-T I-T O-N her?"

Andrew stared at me.

"C-O-A-T," I spelled again.

"Yeah, I got that part," said Andrew, "But putition?"

"Put. It. On." I said.

Putition,* though, could be an interesting word. We've already started using it semi-regularly. For example, Andrew putitioned Rachel's socks this morning while I putitioned a clip in her hair.

With parents like us, it's a wonder Rachel even attempts to say anything. Despite all our grammatical and syntactical downfalls, Rachel is miraculously learning how to talk.

*pronounced "pew-ti-shun."

I was lamenting today how little blog reading I've done recently. Almost none. (I don't hate you. I'm just on vacation).

"Google Reader," Andrew said, tauntingly.

I'm not 100% converted to Google Reader yet so in response I just stuck my tongue out at him.

"Can you say 'Google,' Rachel?" Andrew asked.

"Google!" Rachel squealed, "Goo! Gool! Goo! Gool! Goo! Gool!"

We spent the next few minutes trying to teach her to say, "Google it!" in response to any question, because wouldn't that be hilarious?

I think so.

The closest Rachel got was "Googool ih," which was pretty good but isn't nearly comprehensible as we'd like it to be.

But I suppose the poor girl has too many languages running through her head right now to worry about whether or not she's understood. She may very well have given up trying to learn to talk today.

We ate dinner at a Turkish Doner shop. The owners are actually Syrian and were speaking Arabic when we walked in, but of course they have to run their shop under the guise of Turkey because Syria is full of "terrorists" and few Westerners would ever dream of eating at a Syrian restaurant.

Anyway, we went in and started chatting with the owners. We ordered our shwerma, which you can't get in Egypt, but apparently you can get in Spain, and had just begun to eat when a Chinese couple walked in.

We watched them trying to order their food in English from a Spanish menu to Syrian nationals. There were so many variables for a linguistic mess but they got the food they wanted and everyone seemed happy.

And lastly, I'm trying to understand this sign we saw on one of our walks. Blobject?

Perhaps a good caption would be easier than an actual explanation of why "Blobject" was written on the sidewalk in big block letters because, frankly, I have no clue. But I can think of several captions.

Blobjects in motion tend to stay in motion...

You are the direct blobject of my affections.

Blobjection, your honor!

Anything else I'm missing? Any theories about this mystery sign?

I'm the barber of Seville

On Monday we ventured out of Cordoba to spend the day in Seville. We took an early morning train, which didn't jive well with Miss Rachel's schedule. She just is not a morning person. She was grumpy when we got on the train and we knew we would have to work hard to keep her happy; we just didn't know how hard. Halfway through the ride Rachel, for some reason or another, decided that she wanted to see a horse, and she wanted to see that horse right then.

"Neigh! Neigh! Neigh!" she screamed, shrugging her shoulders and putting her palms in the air to signify a question.

"Shhh, shhh! I don't see any horses. Just oranges," I shushed her.

"Neigh! Neigh! Neigh!" she screamed, even more adamantly than before.

"Shhhh! Rachel, shhhh! You can't see the horses if you're screaming. Look out the window and see what you can see. I'm sure you'll see a lot of oranges but I can't guarantee you'll see a horse. Come here, look out the window. Shhhh, stop screaming. There are no horses, but look! Look what I see!"

The horse dilemma carried on for the next half hour or so. Every time I thought I had things under control she'd start screaming "Neigh!" again. I don't know how she got it into her mind that she should be seeing a horse, but it's the only thing she really wanted. I was glad, once more, to reach the station and be able to get off the train and away from the people staring at my screaming child.

This time we were able to find the tourist office right away. They gave us a map and told us which bus would take us to downtown.

Our first stop was the Cathedral of St. Mary, one of the largest cathedrals in the world. The giralda was once a minaret but over time was converted by Christians into a bell tower. Instead of stairs, this minaret/bell tower uses ramps so that the muezzin/bell ringer could ride their horse to the top. We thought this was a little wimpy of them until we started walking up it ourselves.

We knew it was tall but we had no idea how tall it really was. It went on forever! 34 turns of forever! No wonder they wanted to ride their horses to the top. There were little balconies/windows all along the way giving us a beautiful view of the city.

Rachel is a little daredevil and loved being up so high. She kept wanting to look over the edge at the streets far, far below her.

Eventually the wind got to us and we decided to go back inside. I don't think Rachel would have followed us except that there was another family with a "baby" and that "baby" also went inside. She was a little upset because this "baby" happened to be about 4 years old and its parents allowed it to run down the ramp. Rachel thought that running down the ramp looked like a lot of fun. All I could see was Rachel face planting, so she had to be carried, which she fussed about, but only until the other "baby" got back in its stroller after face planting royally. (Mommy is always right. Remember that.)

The inside of the cathedral was stunning. And huge. We were glad to get a little pamphlet explaining in minimal detail what everything was.

Andrew put me in charge of the pamphlet-reading, though, which was a mistake. I'm terrible with maps and directions and things like that so by the time I had figured out where we were we had already passed the sepulcher of Christopher Columbus.

We just walked on by, snapped a picture, and casually remarked,

"Looks like someone famous."

We went back to take some more pictures. Hopefully this will be Columbus' final resting place. I've never known of anyone to travel so much after their death!

Besides the sepulcher of Columbus, the cathedral houses some of Columbus' gold. There was a lot of gold to be had in the Americas, I guess, and that is what was brought back to Spain.

The ceiling and walls were very ornate, of course. They had a cool mirror in the middle of the floor that magnified the ceiling so that you could see things in more detail. We got a good look at the organ, the ceiling, and ourselves. I think this is the only picture that we have of us together on this trip!

The organ was amazing! I thought of my mom when I saw it. How would you feel about playing this organ, mom?

And that's only half of it! It was so amazingly huge! I would have loved to hear it be played!

We probably spent a good hour and a half inside the cathedral, and we only did one side of it! There was still so much more to see, but with Rachel we sometimes have to cut our visits a little short. She saw a statue of a horse right when we were walking out the doors and that just about made her day, though!

She was hungry and tired and needed an aseo, so we had to move on. We found a little baguetteria and bought a little hot pocket type-thing for Rachel. She was much happier after she had some warm food in her tummy.

It so happened that we ate our lunch in a little square right by the "Archivo General de Indias." Being the Special Collection nerds that we are, we had to investigate, so we went inside.

Security was pretty intense. We put our bags through the x-ray machine and the guards actually left it in long enough to look at everything inside, I'm sure, because there was actually a guard at the computer scrutinizing the screen.

We were surprised to find out, after going through such tough security, that the exhibit was free. Since we are on a student budget, though, it was a good surprise. (When is free not good?)

The exhibit was really pretty neat. It was about the first explorers and settlers in America, and was right in the middle of the archives. Everything smelled like old paper. I almost felt like I had gone back to work!

We read a treaty written by George Washington and stared at his signature. It was so neat! There was so much good stuff on display. If only more of it had been in English--everything was in Spanish, which was fine. It just meant that it took us much longer to understand the explanations than it would have otherwise.

Andrew was just about in heaven. He was lagging behind just soaking the history in. I was farther ahead with Rachel, avoiding meltdowns, where possible, and trying to keep her from pulling any archival boxes off the shelves. I finally couldn't take it anymore and told Andrew we had to get a move on it before she threw a serious temper tantrum. He was a little disappointed, but complied anyway.

We tried to go to the Alcazar, but it is closed on Mondays, so instead we just wandered around for a little bit. We found La Torre de Oro...

...And the Fabrica Real de Tabacos, in which the opera Carmen is set, and which now houses part of the University of Seville.

We also saw some other cool things while we were wandering around, before we took a moment to reorient ourselves and use the bathroom at McDonald's. We use those bathrooms so often that Rachel doesn't even associate the golden arches with food. Instead we walk into McDonald's and she says, "Potty!" It's kind of funny...

...And so is this sticker.

...And so is this car.

...And so is my cute husband.

Andrew is most often found behind the map. Without him we would have been terribly, terribly lost. He's so good at getting his bearings straight and recognizing landmarks. It takes me weeks to get comfortable in a new area. It takes Andrew 5 minutes.

He got us all around the city without any problems. We never felt lost. It was great!

Our last few hours in Seville were spent at the Plaza de Espana, which is amazingly colorful. There is a little niche for each province, with a map and pictures about the area.

There were bridges leading from the building to a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. Rachel had a blast going up and down the stairs and over the bridges.

When we were all burned out of stairs and fountains, we packed up again and headed to the Plaza de America, which we heard was cool. It was a beautiful walk through a beautiful park with statues and fountains and gazebos and ponds. I wish we had more parks like that in America. While we were walking we saw some bright green birds--parrots of some sort, maybe? They flew away before we could get a good picture of them. They almost made me want to take up bird-watching. Almost.

When we first got to the Plaza de America we thought it was a dud because, although grand, it did not even compare to the grandiosity of the Plaza de Espana.

But then...we noticed the pigeons. They were everywhere!

Apparently Rachel's fear of animals does not extend to pigeons. Likewise, the fear that pigeons usually show towards people was not exhibited here. They did not fly away when Rachel chased them and she played happily with them, running around saying "Hi!" to each one.

They were all cooing, constantly. It was like being in a pet store, it was so loud. Rachel somehow figured that they should be saying, "Squawk!" instead of "Coo!" and she started squawking at them while she ran around waving. Even with her yelling and running, the birds remained perfectly calm.

Then all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, they all started flying around us at once. It was like a scene from The Birds. We all screamed in surprise and Rachel ran over and clung to my leg.

I expected that the whole ordeal would be traumatizing for Rachel since she isn't too fond of animals, but as soon as the flock had landed again Rachel went right back to playing. She was only a little more timid than before.

Soon after she started playing again she tripped and got her hands covered in a bird poop. That was our cue to go.

We used the fountain to rinse off her hands and then sanitized with a baby wipe. With the number of birds around it's amazing that's the only poop we got on us, besides our shoes, which were completely covered, I'm sure, but a quick tromp through the grass remedied that quickly enough.

We meandered our way through the park one last time, as I was reluctant to give it up, and caught the bus back to the train station. Rachel was a much better passenger this time around. I suppose that if something needs to be done early with Rachel that it ought to be done in the early evening, and not the early morning.

Play with the Letters Board

I got Andrew and Rachel a puzzle of the Arabic alphabet to share for Christmas. It's highly educational. There's a blurb on the back of the puzzle explaining so:

Play With The Letters Board This Game Helps Child To Know The Correct Order To Letters During His Play And Put The Letter In The Correct Place When he Takes Of The letters From The Board appear Under every Letter (Drawing Shape) The name Of This Shape Begin with The Take Of letter For Example In Arabic Letters The (B) Letter When The Child Take Of Will Find Under the letter Becture In a Duck Shape And in English The(D) Letter When We Take Of We Will Find Under The Letter a (Dog) Shape ....Etc

Rachel finds the puzzle entertaining and Andrew and I couldn't stop laughing after reading the back of the puzzle. So all in all I pretty much think it was a great gift!