The American University in Cairo was founded in 1919 by some American evangelical missionaries and was added to a long string of other foreign-based universities (American Universities of Beirut, Paris, and Rome all exist – there are probably more too…I don’t have Google right now). They eventually dropped the religious aspect of their educational goals and became plain ol’ American universities abroad.
The founders of AUC leased/purchased an old Ottoman palace right in downtown Cairo, off of Midan Tahrir (across from the Egyptian Museum), intending to establish a temporary campus until they could set up a permanent base elsewhere in the city. That was in 1919. It’s 2008. Not very temporary...
In the meantime AUC bought several other buildings in the area. The old AUC campus is spread across the neighborhood in three general sections: the main campus, the Greek campus, and the Falaki campus. To get to the library from the administrative building you have to walk 3ish blocks. Some offices are even in totally separate buildings; the Arabic Language Institute offices are above a Cilantro café across from the main campus.
From what I’ve seen in my past week of orientation and general errand running on the old campus, AUC outgrew its facilities like 20 years ago. A normal, single person sized office has 6-7 offices crammed inside. The student visa office is an addition on the roof of the administrative building; the only way to get there is to go up a fire escape stairwell. Also up on the roof, across from the big A/C spinny thingies, is the department of international purchasing, faculty housing, and risk management (ironic that they’re only accessible via fire escape).
So, 89 years after AUC was started, the founders’ dream can finally be realized. For the past ten years AUC has been building a brand new $400 million campus on a huge 260 acre piece of land in a suburb of Cairo named Qatamiyya, nicknamed New Cairo. Well, it’s kind of a suburb. It takes 30 minutes to drive there from Maadi and there is absolutely nothing out there. It’s really truly in the middle of the desert. They don’t even get cell phone coverage out there in New Cairo (and our cell phones had full bars at Petra!)
According to a speech given to the faculty by the AUC president in June, the new campus was 99% complete and would be completely ready for school to start in September. At orientation last week the president again said that the new campus was 99% complete. Neat how the percentage hadn’t changed in 3 months...
Orientation was originally scheduled to be held entirely at the new campus but they changed their minds at the last minute and moved everything to the old campus. All department and faculty offices are currently stuck in transition to the new campus. This made orientation very exciting. I couldn’t really get anything done because all the offices I needed to see didn’t really exist; they weren’t at the old campus anymore and they weren’t at the new campus yet. They were stuck in the realm of office limbo.
Since New Cairo is so far out there, AUC has set up a complicated bus system with perfectly timed private bus routes scattered through the main neighborhoods of Cairo. In order to ride the busses you have to sign up for a bus pass and choose your route and scheduled time. Everything is set up on a nicely designed website and in theory the entire bus system should work flawlessly. However, this is still the Middle East; they don’t believe in schedules here. At all. Even better, though, is the fact that in order to get the physical bus pass I have to visit an office. Guess where that office is? In office limbo! Yep. Once the office is set up on the new campus I somehow have to take a bus out there to get my bus pass.
Classes start on Sunday at the new campus. My Arabic class starts at 8 AM. I have to take the first bus to run from Maadi to Qatamiyya in the history of AUC. I don’t even know where exactly to get on the bus. This will be awesome!
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Mara Taniya, Mauritana!
Sometimes I forget how embarrassing it can be to learn a language—other than a first language, that is. Rachel doesn’t seem to ever get embarrassed and so far everything she knows is somewhat embarrassing.
She knows several animal noises. Snakes say “Ssss!” while dogs, owls, and monkeys say a variation of “Oo! Oo!” Lions, tigers, bears, and anything that looks like it could eat a person say “Arrrwwwrr!”
She can say the first sound of book and ball. I often confuse what she wants that way.
“Buh!”
“Book? Do you want to read a story?”
Temper tantrum ensues. “Buh! Buh! Buh!”
“Alright then…ball? Do you want throw some balls?”
Temper tantrum ceases. “Buh, buh, *sniff, nod* buh!”
Most of what she says are 1 syllable of whatever it is she wants to say, often with hand gestures thrown in.
“Dada!” said while pounding on the door and screaming means “Why did Dada go outside without me? Come back, Dada!”
“Dada!” said while clapping hands and running to the door means “Did I just hear the key in the door? I think Dada is home. Maybe he will take me outside!”
“Dada!” said while shrugging her shoulders and putting her hands up in the air means “Where is Dada, anyway?”
She’ll act out anything she understands, too. Poke, jump, yawn, head, eye, ear, nose, etc. Sometimes we use these words on purpose just to see, for example, how many times she’ll poke herself in the eye or how long she can keep jumping. Other times we spell words to avoid having her pull out her h-a-i-r.
Aside from those little breaks in our strictly non-communicative relationship, Rachel’s main method of communicating involves screaming (sometimes with hand gestures). This is the embarrassing part.
“Ahhhhh!” while clutching at her diaper means “You’d better put me on the potty, and now!” That, or, “Ooops! I just went!”
“Ahhhhh!” while pulling my shirt up or down means “I’m starving here!”
“Ahhhh!” while rolling around on the floor and banging her head can mean just about anything, but it’s still just as embarrassing as the two previously mentioned situations, if not more.
Recently she’s started repeating things that I say. Usually she’ll catch either the beginning or the end of a word or sentence and she’ll repeat it. Most often it’s when we’re having a “learning moment” and I say something like,
“It’s not okay to scream when you want to _________. You need to use your words, ok?”
She’ll nod and repeat, “Ok!”
I think she does that because she knows that if she does I’ll let her go. I wonder if she knows that I take her word as a binding contract.
Alas, when I’m learning a new language screaming and rolling around on the ground simply is not an option. I have to plow on through sticky situations and pretend that I understand things when I don’t. Like finding my way through Zamalek.
Me: How do I get to Um Kalthum?
Arab (with hand gestures): Gibberish globbity gibberish. Mashi!
Translation: Something I totally didn’t understand. Keep going!
Me (repeating directional hand gestures): Okay, thanks!
My favorite part about being me right now is that I’ve reached the stage where I’ve started hearing words, remembering them, and repeating them (to myself and aloud). I did it while learning Russian and would walk around the library muttering “двоюроднaя сестра” or “четыре” to myself. Rachel is in that same stage right now. She walks around muttering "good" and "ok" and things like that. I walk around muttering things all the time and then I will ask Andrew about them over dinner.
“You said a word today,” I will say to Andrew.
“I said lots of words,” he will respond.
“Yeah, but you said this one several times today and so did the guy you were talking to and I don’t know what it means.”
“What word was it?” he will ask.
The problem is that by the time I get a chance to ask him what a certain word means I’ve repeated it to myself so many times that it mutates. Yes, I play the telephone game with myself.
Today’s word was مرة ثانية. Andrew said it so many times in the taxi and I just couldn’t figure out what was going on. The conversation moved from Rachel to where we’re from to why we’re here to if we like President Bush to if we’re Muslim or Christian to a sight-seeing tour of Cairo where the taxi cab driver pointed out several synagogues to us.
Through all of these subjects, Andrew mentioned Mauritania several times.
I’m in the backseat chanting to myself, “Mauritania, Mauritania, Mauritania…” hoping that I will remember it long enough to ask Andrew what the deal is with Mauritania and what Mauritania has to do with Bush, our family, and synagogues.
By the time we got home, had dinner, and put a screaming Rachel to bed, I had forgotten the word. But I knew it started with an em. Now I really sounded like a lunatic. I have a series of questions that I ask Andrew when I think I remember a word. It goes like this:
“What does _________ mean?”
“That’s not a word.”
“Okay, then is ______ a word?”
“No,”
“Well, does it sound like any words?”
He’ll then try to list whatever word it is I’m trying to think of. Sometimes we’ll find the right word. Sometimes we won’t. Tonight we didn’t.
“You said a word and it started with em and you used it when you were talking about Bush. What was it?”
“Mushkilgi?” he offered, “Problem-maker?”
“No, I basically understood that one. It was a different word.”
Enter Nancy the monkey (if Rachel was saying this she’d say “Ooo! Oo!”).
“Ma… Ma… Mu… Moo… Mo… Mau… Mauritania!”
“Oh, Mauritania,” said Andrew knowingly.
“Yeah, it’s all over the place. It’s on TV all the time. On the news…and even in cartoons, which doesn’t make sense. And everyone talks about it all the time. Either, either Mauritania is really important (which it isn’t) or it means something I don’t know…”
“Mara taniya,” corrected Andrew, “Mara means time and taniya means…”
“Two…”
“Right. Time two… It means again or repeat that or…”
“Can it also mean ‘Later’ or ‘not now?’ ‘Cuz I think I’ve heard it used that way, too…”
Awesome. So it turns out this is a common problem among Arabic students. The best part, however, is when Andrew said,
“So, have you been confused about this since Jordan?”
“No. I don’t think I even knew Mauritania was a country when we lived in Jordan.” That proves that I’m geologically challenged. I seriously had no clue where or what Mauritania was before Andrew came home from school and said that he had a job offer in Mauritania. We seriously considered moving there instead of here.
“But come to think of it, I think I remember hearing mara taniya before,” I continued.
“So basically,” he concluded, “You knew mara taniya meant again, but when you learned that Mauritania was a country you completely replaced mara taniya with Mauritania and have now just learned mara taniya again.”
That pretty much sums it up. I have a memory glitch. Maybe one day Mauritania will hold its own on the news but until then, Mauritania, mara taniya!
She knows several animal noises. Snakes say “Ssss!” while dogs, owls, and monkeys say a variation of “Oo! Oo!” Lions, tigers, bears, and anything that looks like it could eat a person say “Arrrwwwrr!”
She can say the first sound of book and ball. I often confuse what she wants that way.
“Buh!”
“Book? Do you want to read a story?”
Temper tantrum ensues. “Buh! Buh! Buh!”
“Alright then…ball? Do you want throw some balls?”
Temper tantrum ceases. “Buh, buh, *sniff, nod* buh!”
Most of what she says are 1 syllable of whatever it is she wants to say, often with hand gestures thrown in.
“Dada!” said while pounding on the door and screaming means “Why did Dada go outside without me? Come back, Dada!”
“Dada!” said while clapping hands and running to the door means “Did I just hear the key in the door? I think Dada is home. Maybe he will take me outside!”
“Dada!” said while shrugging her shoulders and putting her hands up in the air means “Where is Dada, anyway?”
She’ll act out anything she understands, too. Poke, jump, yawn, head, eye, ear, nose, etc. Sometimes we use these words on purpose just to see, for example, how many times she’ll poke herself in the eye or how long she can keep jumping. Other times we spell words to avoid having her pull out her h-a-i-r.
Aside from those little breaks in our strictly non-communicative relationship, Rachel’s main method of communicating involves screaming (sometimes with hand gestures). This is the embarrassing part.
“Ahhhhh!” while clutching at her diaper means “You’d better put me on the potty, and now!” That, or, “Ooops! I just went!”
“Ahhhhh!” while pulling my shirt up or down means “I’m starving here!”
“Ahhhh!” while rolling around on the floor and banging her head can mean just about anything, but it’s still just as embarrassing as the two previously mentioned situations, if not more.
Recently she’s started repeating things that I say. Usually she’ll catch either the beginning or the end of a word or sentence and she’ll repeat it. Most often it’s when we’re having a “learning moment” and I say something like,
“It’s not okay to scream when you want to _________. You need to use your words, ok?”
She’ll nod and repeat, “Ok!”
I think she does that because she knows that if she does I’ll let her go. I wonder if she knows that I take her word as a binding contract.
Alas, when I’m learning a new language screaming and rolling around on the ground simply is not an option. I have to plow on through sticky situations and pretend that I understand things when I don’t. Like finding my way through Zamalek.
Me: How do I get to Um Kalthum?
Arab (with hand gestures): Gibberish globbity gibberish. Mashi!
Translation: Something I totally didn’t understand. Keep going!
Me (repeating directional hand gestures): Okay, thanks!
My favorite part about being me right now is that I’ve reached the stage where I’ve started hearing words, remembering them, and repeating them (to myself and aloud). I did it while learning Russian and would walk around the library muttering “двоюроднaя сестра” or “четыре” to myself. Rachel is in that same stage right now. She walks around muttering "good" and "ok" and things like that. I walk around muttering things all the time and then I will ask Andrew about them over dinner.
“You said a word today,” I will say to Andrew.
“I said lots of words,” he will respond.
“Yeah, but you said this one several times today and so did the guy you were talking to and I don’t know what it means.”
“What word was it?” he will ask.
The problem is that by the time I get a chance to ask him what a certain word means I’ve repeated it to myself so many times that it mutates. Yes, I play the telephone game with myself.
Today’s word was مرة ثانية. Andrew said it so many times in the taxi and I just couldn’t figure out what was going on. The conversation moved from Rachel to where we’re from to why we’re here to if we like President Bush to if we’re Muslim or Christian to a sight-seeing tour of Cairo where the taxi cab driver pointed out several synagogues to us.
Through all of these subjects, Andrew mentioned Mauritania several times.
I’m in the backseat chanting to myself, “Mauritania, Mauritania, Mauritania…” hoping that I will remember it long enough to ask Andrew what the deal is with Mauritania and what Mauritania has to do with Bush, our family, and synagogues.
By the time we got home, had dinner, and put a screaming Rachel to bed, I had forgotten the word. But I knew it started with an em. Now I really sounded like a lunatic. I have a series of questions that I ask Andrew when I think I remember a word. It goes like this:
“What does _________ mean?”
“That’s not a word.”
“Okay, then is ______ a word?”
“No,”
“Well, does it sound like any words?”
He’ll then try to list whatever word it is I’m trying to think of. Sometimes we’ll find the right word. Sometimes we won’t. Tonight we didn’t.
“You said a word and it started with em and you used it when you were talking about Bush. What was it?”
“Mushkilgi?” he offered, “Problem-maker?”
“No, I basically understood that one. It was a different word.”
Enter Nancy the monkey (if Rachel was saying this she’d say “Ooo! Oo!”).
“Ma… Ma… Mu… Moo… Mo… Mau… Mauritania!”
“Oh, Mauritania,” said Andrew knowingly.
“Yeah, it’s all over the place. It’s on TV all the time. On the news…and even in cartoons, which doesn’t make sense. And everyone talks about it all the time. Either, either Mauritania is really important (which it isn’t) or it means something I don’t know…”
“Mara taniya,” corrected Andrew, “Mara means time and taniya means…”
“Two…”
“Right. Time two… It means again or repeat that or…”
“Can it also mean ‘Later’ or ‘not now?’ ‘Cuz I think I’ve heard it used that way, too…”
Awesome. So it turns out this is a common problem among Arabic students. The best part, however, is when Andrew said,
“So, have you been confused about this since Jordan?”
“No. I don’t think I even knew Mauritania was a country when we lived in Jordan.” That proves that I’m geologically challenged. I seriously had no clue where or what Mauritania was before Andrew came home from school and said that he had a job offer in Mauritania. We seriously considered moving there instead of here.
“But come to think of it, I think I remember hearing mara taniya before,” I continued.
“So basically,” he concluded, “You knew mara taniya meant again, but when you learned that Mauritania was a country you completely replaced mara taniya with Mauritania and have now just learned mara taniya again.”
That pretty much sums it up. I have a memory glitch. Maybe one day Mauritania will hold its own on the news but until then, Mauritania, mara taniya!
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Ramadan and the Khan
On the first night of Ramadan we went out walking. The city was dead quiet. It would have been eerie had I not know that everyone was just inside with their families eating. We saw almost no one. We went right into downtown Maadi and could walk up and down Road 9 at our leisure. There was no traffic.
Rachel is going to get spoiled this month. We let her get down and run around in the street—something she hasn’t been allowed to do since we left the States. She walked all the way home from McDonald’s the other day. (On a side note, we don’t eat at McDonald’s all the time…it’s more of a landmark).
She doesn’t really understand the whole fasting thing, not that we expect her to yet. We took the metro to Khan al Khalili today and, to postpone a temper tantrum, we gave her a poo cookie.*
She kept offering it to everyone on our car. She’d take a nibble and then hold it out to the man sitting beside me. He’d shake his head and she’d laugh, take a nibble, and offer it to the man standing in front of me. He’d shake his head and she’d laugh.
It was rather embarrassing for us because we knew that everyone was fasting, but everyone was really nice about it. No one expects her to fast because she’s too young and it’s fairly obvious (from the looks of her parents) that she’s not a Muslim.
Khan al Khalili was fun. We like to go to the very end of the street where more locals than tourists shop. We walk past all the vendors until we are the only foreigners around and the shopkeepers can’t carry a conversation in English. Then we’ll start looking for what we want to buy.
Our goal for today was to find some new sandals for me. I left my beloved sandals at home in the States. Really they were fit for the trash. I picked them up at Khan al Khalili 2 years ago and didn’t really expect them to last for more than a week. I think I spent 10 LE on them, or something like that. They just jumped out at me and I instantly fell in love. We’ve been constant companions ever since. Needless to say, I took quite the toll on them. They’re totally falling apart, which is sadder than sad because they are the most comfortable sandals in the world.
I looked at a lot of sandals today. Not one pair even came close to the perfection of my last pair of Khan al Khalili sandals. And then I spotted them: the exact pair of sandals I have sitting in a box in my mother-in-law’s basement waiting to be tossed when I unpack them and see how ratty they truly are. Only this pair was new…and far, far too big. Andrew asked the shoe-man if he had anything smaller. The smallest he scrounged up was size 39, which, unfortunately, was still too big.
I suppose I could branch out and try a different pair of sandals, but part of me wants to hold out for another pair of MY sandals. It would give us a reason to visit Khan al Khalili and practice our bartering skills (we’re both a little rusty).
We might have to wait to return until Ramadan is over, though. Things were a little crazy at the firework booths. People were lighting firecrackers in the streets, which I think is a little dangerous, especially when the streets are full of people. Andrew got hit in the ear by a piece of something hot and fiery…and they kept going off right above our heads. It was rather cacophonous with the firecrackers, and the call to prayer, and the vendors yelling about their wares.
Andrew has a friend in his program who lives by Khan al Khalili. According to him downtown Cairo also goes deathly silent for the iftar. It’s almost hard to imagine Cairo being that quiet.
As for the grumpiness, Bridget, we’ve yet to experience that. Of course, we’re only on day 3…so we have a long way to go. And although the vendors at the Khan didn’t seem quite as chipper as usual—sleeping all over their hud and not caring about whether or not they made a sale--they didn't really seem crabby.
The guys at our fruit stand are still happy as well. We went to buy some fruit yesterday (this would make a better story if I could remember the guy’s name. Let’s call him Halid) and Halid (whose real name I can’t remember) went to get Rachel a banana. He peeled it for her and started giving her bites. Andrew got all our fruit and then we acted like we were going to go because in America we would have.
Halid insisted that we stay, though, because he was feeding Rachel a banana. (I keep typing bandana). We talked with him about Ramadan while he fed Rachel her banana.
“I’m so jealous of her…she can eat, and I can’t.”
He was just kidding, of course.
Another upside of Ramadan is the fasting. They fast from eating, drinking, and even smoking. We really have enjoyed the lack of smoking. It’s nice to walk down the street and not feel like I’m going to die of lung cancer after walking two blocks…
*The word "poo" is used to describe the cheapest variety of anything (cookies, milk, bread, etc.); usually they are chock full of preservatives and taste less than real.
Rachel is going to get spoiled this month. We let her get down and run around in the street—something she hasn’t been allowed to do since we left the States. She walked all the way home from McDonald’s the other day. (On a side note, we don’t eat at McDonald’s all the time…it’s more of a landmark).
She doesn’t really understand the whole fasting thing, not that we expect her to yet. We took the metro to Khan al Khalili today and, to postpone a temper tantrum, we gave her a poo cookie.*
She kept offering it to everyone on our car. She’d take a nibble and then hold it out to the man sitting beside me. He’d shake his head and she’d laugh, take a nibble, and offer it to the man standing in front of me. He’d shake his head and she’d laugh.
It was rather embarrassing for us because we knew that everyone was fasting, but everyone was really nice about it. No one expects her to fast because she’s too young and it’s fairly obvious (from the looks of her parents) that she’s not a Muslim.
Khan al Khalili was fun. We like to go to the very end of the street where more locals than tourists shop. We walk past all the vendors until we are the only foreigners around and the shopkeepers can’t carry a conversation in English. Then we’ll start looking for what we want to buy.
Our goal for today was to find some new sandals for me. I left my beloved sandals at home in the States. Really they were fit for the trash. I picked them up at Khan al Khalili 2 years ago and didn’t really expect them to last for more than a week. I think I spent 10 LE on them, or something like that. They just jumped out at me and I instantly fell in love. We’ve been constant companions ever since. Needless to say, I took quite the toll on them. They’re totally falling apart, which is sadder than sad because they are the most comfortable sandals in the world.
I looked at a lot of sandals today. Not one pair even came close to the perfection of my last pair of Khan al Khalili sandals. And then I spotted them: the exact pair of sandals I have sitting in a box in my mother-in-law’s basement waiting to be tossed when I unpack them and see how ratty they truly are. Only this pair was new…and far, far too big. Andrew asked the shoe-man if he had anything smaller. The smallest he scrounged up was size 39, which, unfortunately, was still too big.
I suppose I could branch out and try a different pair of sandals, but part of me wants to hold out for another pair of MY sandals. It would give us a reason to visit Khan al Khalili and practice our bartering skills (we’re both a little rusty).
We might have to wait to return until Ramadan is over, though. Things were a little crazy at the firework booths. People were lighting firecrackers in the streets, which I think is a little dangerous, especially when the streets are full of people. Andrew got hit in the ear by a piece of something hot and fiery…and they kept going off right above our heads. It was rather cacophonous with the firecrackers, and the call to prayer, and the vendors yelling about their wares.
Andrew has a friend in his program who lives by Khan al Khalili. According to him downtown Cairo also goes deathly silent for the iftar. It’s almost hard to imagine Cairo being that quiet.
As for the grumpiness, Bridget, we’ve yet to experience that. Of course, we’re only on day 3…so we have a long way to go. And although the vendors at the Khan didn’t seem quite as chipper as usual—sleeping all over their hud and not caring about whether or not they made a sale--they didn't really seem crabby.
The guys at our fruit stand are still happy as well. We went to buy some fruit yesterday (this would make a better story if I could remember the guy’s name. Let’s call him Halid) and Halid (whose real name I can’t remember) went to get Rachel a banana. He peeled it for her and started giving her bites. Andrew got all our fruit and then we acted like we were going to go because in America we would have.
Halid insisted that we stay, though, because he was feeding Rachel a banana. (I keep typing bandana). We talked with him about Ramadan while he fed Rachel her banana.
“I’m so jealous of her…she can eat, and I can’t.”
He was just kidding, of course.
Another upside of Ramadan is the fasting. They fast from eating, drinking, and even smoking. We really have enjoyed the lack of smoking. It’s nice to walk down the street and not feel like I’m going to die of lung cancer after walking two blocks…
*The word "poo" is used to describe the cheapest variety of anything (cookies, milk, bread, etc.); usually they are chock full of preservatives and taste less than real.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Fans
We've purchased a few fans recently. We have a little meter in our house that counts our electricity usage and when we run the AC the wheel ominously zooms by. We're not sure our student budget will allow for that.
At first we bought one fan and it seemed to cool things off nicely...as long as you were sitting right in front of it...so we decided to buy two more so that we could each carry our personal fan around the house to keep ourselves cool.
So far it's been working. We haven't used the AC at all in the past few days.
And as an added benefit, they've provided Rachel with some nice new toys.
Can you guess what happened about two seconds after we snapped this photo?
At first we bought one fan and it seemed to cool things off nicely...as long as you were sitting right in front of it...so we decided to buy two more so that we could each carry our personal fan around the house to keep ourselves cool.
So far it's been working. We haven't used the AC at all in the past few days.
And as an added benefit, they've provided Rachel with some nice new toys.
Can you guess what happened about two seconds after we snapped this photo?
Ramadan Kareem
It's Ramadan here in Egypt. Since it's only the first day of Ramadan and since it's my first Ramadan, I'm not really sure what it entails. All I know is that there are pretty lanterns everywhere, Andrew's school schedule will be all messed up for the first few weeks of classes, we're not suppose to eat/drink in public during the day, and shopping the night before Ramadan is a little crazy.
I'm sure we'll learn a lot more as Ramadan continues.
Last night after putting Rachel to bed we went outside to take a picture of our apartment building's Ramadan lamp. We had our tripod, our camera, and our baby monitor. Everyone walking by looked at us like we were crazy. I'm not sure if it was because we stood there taking picture after picture of a lamp, or if it was because I was holding a baby monitor blaring Italian Primary songs...
Just our own little way of bringing in the Ramadan season. Happy Ramadan!
I'm sure we'll learn a lot more as Ramadan continues.
Last night after putting Rachel to bed we went outside to take a picture of our apartment building's Ramadan lamp. We had our tripod, our camera, and our baby monitor. Everyone walking by looked at us like we were crazy. I'm not sure if it was because we stood there taking picture after picture of a lamp, or if it was because I was holding a baby monitor blaring Italian Primary songs...
Just our own little way of bringing in the Ramadan season. Happy Ramadan!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sobri and Moudy's shops
The felucca ride we had planned on going on yesterday ended up being rather inconvenient for everyone involved. One by one, everyone we had invited bailed out on us, so we eventually decided to cancel. There’s a cold of sorts going around, people are battling Pharaoh’s Revenge, it was a school night…need I go on? We’ll have to try another time.
Not knowing what to do, we decided to follow the example of the Sharps and clean our apartment. We’re still not completely unpacked and moved in yet—we’re doing it slowly, as we clean things. Our kitchen is taking a long time because of the roach infestation. Sara got some Borax for us, so we put some of that around, and then, while we were cleaning last night Sister Barton brought by some “Combat” roach traps as a housewarming gift.
That’s one of the benefits of living in a branch, I suppose. You tell one or two people about a problem and the next thing you know, everyone’s taking care of you!
After Sister Barton left, we decided to take a trip downtown. We’d put up most of the pictures we’d brought, but we needed frames for a few more pictures. Even with all our little bits of “home” up on our walls they were still unbearably naked. We decided to find Sobri, a man who sells copies of the facsimiles from the Book of Abraham.
We had a rough idea of where his store is—the Spencers left a map for us with a number of stores circled and his was one of them—and we needed a few more household items (like a laundry basket because no matter how hard I try I always drop an article of clothing or two on the ground while I’m putting the wash out to dry and then they get all covered in dust and have to be washed again) so we set out for Road 9. Yet again.
We ran into a little pack of dogs that really freaked me out. They were barking at everyone and running around the street. I panicked, jumped behind Andrew, and grabbed onto his shirt. I knew the only way I’d keep walking was if he was pulling me along. (Have I mentioned that I can’t stand dogs? Rachel can’t, either. She cries when we’re inside and she hears them barking outside).
A nice Egyptian man on a bicycle saw my embarrassing display of cowardice and yelled at the dogs.
“Halas!” he yelled at them.
Somehow he was able to get control of them and he waved us on, holding the dogs off. I thought it was very nice of him to notice how terrified I was and to do something about it.
Our first stop was our favorite store—Moudy’s. They have everything there. We got a laundry basket, some hand towels and a few other essentials. We forgot a vegetable peeler. Yet again.
Then we set out to find Sobri’s. We had no idea what his store was called, but there’s a little trinket store across from Moudy’s. I suggested that this was Sobri’s store, but Andrew said it was too far down Road 9. After wandering around for a while and seeing nothing we ended up back at Moudy’s.
I convinced Andrew to ask the man at the trinket shop if he knew where Sobri was. He had some papyrus on display in his window so chances were that he’d know other papyrus sellers.
“I’m looking for a man called Sobri.” Andrew told the man (in Arabic), “Do you know him?”
“I’m so sorry,” replied the man, “I knew him. He was my friend. But he died.”
“God rest his soul,” Andrew said solemnly.
Much to his surprise, the man burst out laughing.
“Just kidding! I am Sobri! Do you want the ‘3 in 1’ or the ‘1 in 3’?’”
He took Andrew back to some drawers and pulled out the facsimiles. Aside from the fact that Andrew was wearing a BYU t-shirt, I’m not sure how Sobri knew we were LDS or that we were looking for the facsimiles. We ended up getting the “1 in 3” (three separate sheets of papyrus, each with one facsimile on it), all three for 50 LE (the “3 in 1” sells for the 35 LE). That’s a much better bargain than the papyrus we bought down in Luxor a couple of years ago.
I suppose Sobri’s shop is less of a tourist trap than the shop we visited, and Sobri has a pretty steady stream of customers looking for the facsimiles. He definitely found himself a lucrative business niche.
So, now we’re 50 LE poorer, but our walls look a little less lonely. And we still had plenty of time left in the evening to keep working on our kitchen. We set up the cockroach traps, cleaned out another set of cupboards so that we get our dishes off our couch, and even managed to play a stellar game of Scrabble before calling it a night. I kicked Andrew’s trash (yet again).
Friday, August 29, 2008
Adventures in Zamalek
Campus has been “open” to Andrew for a week and he’s been going in everyday to get some administrative detail taken care of. It’s all been very confusing, actually. He’ll go and stand in line for hours only to be told that he doesn’t have this form or that form or that they’re only serving undergraduates that day. We have most everything taken care of now, though.
Rachel and I joined Andrew yesterday morning on his way to school. We took off a little late because we’ve developed a slight case of Pharaoh’s Revenge so we weren’t feeling too well, but we decided to brave the city anyway. We stayed with Andrew on the Metro until Sadat and then continued on to Opera, by ourselves. I couldn’t find the women’s car so I just joined a group of women and pushed onto one of the public cars with them. We only had to go one stop, so it really wasn’t bad.
And then we were off to explore Zamalek by ourselves. Getting directions in Cairo can be difficult. We typically take a poll and will ask several people before taking their directional advice because, often, people will tell you which way to go, even when they have no idea. We have a pretty intense mathematical equation for getting an answer. Basically we take the most popular answer and ignore all the rest.
I, of course, was lost the minute I stepped off the Metro and started asking for directions immediately. I was pointed in a number of ways: across the street, down this street, up that street. A few people even said that they didn’t know. I couldn’t get an “average” answer, so I just guessed and started walking.
I guessed wrong. Rachel and I ended up walking up Al Gezera street, up into Zamalek, and all around the island. My Arabic is lacking, to say the least, so this is how I’d ask for directions:
“Please, where is Ulm Kathom?”
Laugh all you want. I couldn’t find the main street of the Island. I suppose what’s even more laughable was that no one could really help me find the main street, either. The best directions I received were when I was too far away from the Metro to matter, but they were good directions, and I found Ulm Kathoom Street.
We were looking for a place recommended as a “child-friendly activity.” Always on the same place on the map, it hides under a number of names but usually is known as “Fish Garden.” Sometimes they tack the word “aquarium” on the end of it. So I was, naturally, expecting an aquarium of sorts.
When we found the park, which, by the way, is incredibly easy to find if you head off in the right direction from the Metro, it wasn’t an aquarium at all. It was more like an arboretum, similar to the beautiful Palmen Gartens that my mom and I visited in Germany, but much less nice. Still, it cost us only a pound to enter (and a pound for the privilege of taking my camera in) and it had some nice patches of grass to play on.
There were children everywhere, playing soccer and lounging on the grass. Rachel and I stopped on one of the lawns dedicated to lounging so that I could check her diaper. I started unloading the diaper bag (a blanket for her to lie down on, a diaper, wipes, a plastic bag to carry the diaper home in) when Rachel saw the water bottle I’d been lugging around. It was a hot day and she wanted a drink, so I gave her a sip and then put the bottle down beside the diaper bag and continued to get Rachel ready for a bum change.
A teenage girl walked up to us, picked up our water bottle, opened it up, took a swig, thanked us, and walked away.
I had completely forgotten that anything left in the open is public property.
It was upsetting to me that this complete stranger had used our water bottle, especially because there was no place to buy water inside the park, but I couldn’t really berate the girl. After all, I’m here in her world so I can’t expect her to live by my idiom. Still, I wish she would have chosen someone else’s water bottle.
Rachel and I left that spot and began wandering around the park. We’d only looked at a few trees and flowers before Rachel lost all interest and began a wonderful temper tantrum. She wanted the crackers she had seen in the diaper bag, so I pulled those out and gave her one.
While she ate that we wandered around for a bit, trying to figure out why it was called “Fish Garden and Aquarium.” We found some fish, but we never did find the aquarium.
I think that like 50 years ago the park was a nice, pretty park with fountains and beautiful statues. Now, though, the statues are covered with the same layer of grime that covers the rest of downtown Cairo and the fountains are all dry.
We gave up our wandering when we got too hot to walk around anymore. We found a park bench, sat down and pulled out our water, only to remember that a random person had taken a drink out of it. I discreetly pulled out the hand sanitizer and a baby wipe and gave it a little wipe down before offering Rachel a drink. She happily guzzled it down.
A little boy walked up to us while we were enjoying our cracker rations. I no longer was drinking the water, since it had about equal parts cracker after Rachel’s last sip. He was bigger than Rachel and a little aggressive—he walked right up to her, tried to take her cracker, and then pushed her.
His mom rushed up. I thought she was Arab at first because she was veiled but she got after him in Russian instead of Arabic.
“Nilzya!” she told him.
“You speak Russian?” I asked her in Russian.
She did. Turns out she’s from Moscow. We sat on a bench together and talked together while her boy, Daniel, picked on Rachel. He’s 1 and a half years old. She gave me wonderfully elusive answers to my questions, as Russians are prone to do (from my experience, anyway). Basically, she lives on Zamalek. She’s been here for 5 months. She doesn’t work, but stays home with her baby. Her husband is either back in Russia or she doesn’t have one. She was extra-elusive about that so I didn’t press.
When I asked her why she was here she answered that she is here “to live.” Upon further questioning she said that the climate is nice, whereas Moscow’s climate is horrible. Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but I suppose if I had the choice between Cairo and Moscow, I’d choose Cairo (at least for the winter).
Yup, that’s about all she told me. Oh, and her name is Sofia. And she’s 25.
We spoke mostly in Russian, which was nice. Usually people will switch to English for me because they assume, because I’m American, that my Russian/Arabic/whathaveyou is less understandable than their English.
Our landlord does that. He’ll speak in Arabic and Andrew will understand what he says, but sometimes, like if Andrew tries to clarify anything, he’ll switch to English. It comes out kind of like this.
“Phone garden cut. Bad. I bring engineer. Good.”
That means, I’m guessing, that our phone line was cut outside of the building for some reason. Obviously that's bad. So the landlord brought a phone-dude (engineer, I suppose) to fix it, which is good.
How nice that Sofia found my Russian to be sufficient and let me speak it. I haven’t spoken Russian to anybody in so long! It was fun.
Soon, though, she decided it was time to go so I followed her out of the park because I had no idea how to find the entrance gate again. She took off with Daniel in one direction and Rachel and I headed back to the Metro in the other direction, following Ulm Kathoom (a much easier way than the way we took before). Rachel threw a fit and screamed almost the whole way there (45 minutes). She and I had a midair wrestling match, which I found exhausting.
People kept staring and giving me advice. Cover her head, give her some water, blah, blah, blah. I ignored most of it (except I did give her water, frequently) until we met Daddy at the Metro. Then I thrust her into his arms and said I was finished.
She continued to scream the whole way home, except for when she was happy, but those moments were fleeting. She did play on the rings for a while, which she thought was exceptionally fun, and she played some games with a man (he kept trying to grab her hand with a book he was holding), which she thought was exceptionally funny.
Other than that she screamed the whole way. People kept giving us advice. Mostly just to give her water, which we were trying to do, but Rachel kept rejecting the warm, cracker infested water.
As soon as we got off the Metro we rushed to a kiosk and bought a nice, cold bottle of water. Rachel drank veraciously. We were both so exhausted when we got home that we fell asleep for a nice nap, covered in soot and grime and sweat.
I’ve been sneezing ever since getting back from Zamalek. I am so glad we don’t live there. It isn’t exactly unpolluted in Maadi, but compared to Zamalek it is cleaner than clean here. Seriously, the chain link fences in Zamalek are covered in a layer of grossness about a centimeter thick. It was so dirty. My face was so dirty just from walking around for a few hours that I had clean streaks from sweat running down. Gross, yes…
Rachel and I joined Andrew yesterday morning on his way to school. We took off a little late because we’ve developed a slight case of Pharaoh’s Revenge so we weren’t feeling too well, but we decided to brave the city anyway. We stayed with Andrew on the Metro until Sadat and then continued on to Opera, by ourselves. I couldn’t find the women’s car so I just joined a group of women and pushed onto one of the public cars with them. We only had to go one stop, so it really wasn’t bad.
And then we were off to explore Zamalek by ourselves. Getting directions in Cairo can be difficult. We typically take a poll and will ask several people before taking their directional advice because, often, people will tell you which way to go, even when they have no idea. We have a pretty intense mathematical equation for getting an answer. Basically we take the most popular answer and ignore all the rest.
I, of course, was lost the minute I stepped off the Metro and started asking for directions immediately. I was pointed in a number of ways: across the street, down this street, up that street. A few people even said that they didn’t know. I couldn’t get an “average” answer, so I just guessed and started walking.
I guessed wrong. Rachel and I ended up walking up Al Gezera street, up into Zamalek, and all around the island. My Arabic is lacking, to say the least, so this is how I’d ask for directions:
“Please, where is Ulm Kathom?”
Laugh all you want. I couldn’t find the main street of the Island. I suppose what’s even more laughable was that no one could really help me find the main street, either. The best directions I received were when I was too far away from the Metro to matter, but they were good directions, and I found Ulm Kathoom Street.
We were looking for a place recommended as a “child-friendly activity.” Always on the same place on the map, it hides under a number of names but usually is known as “Fish Garden.” Sometimes they tack the word “aquarium” on the end of it. So I was, naturally, expecting an aquarium of sorts.
When we found the park, which, by the way, is incredibly easy to find if you head off in the right direction from the Metro, it wasn’t an aquarium at all. It was more like an arboretum, similar to the beautiful Palmen Gartens that my mom and I visited in Germany, but much less nice. Still, it cost us only a pound to enter (and a pound for the privilege of taking my camera in) and it had some nice patches of grass to play on.
There were children everywhere, playing soccer and lounging on the grass. Rachel and I stopped on one of the lawns dedicated to lounging so that I could check her diaper. I started unloading the diaper bag (a blanket for her to lie down on, a diaper, wipes, a plastic bag to carry the diaper home in) when Rachel saw the water bottle I’d been lugging around. It was a hot day and she wanted a drink, so I gave her a sip and then put the bottle down beside the diaper bag and continued to get Rachel ready for a bum change.
A teenage girl walked up to us, picked up our water bottle, opened it up, took a swig, thanked us, and walked away.
I had completely forgotten that anything left in the open is public property.
It was upsetting to me that this complete stranger had used our water bottle, especially because there was no place to buy water inside the park, but I couldn’t really berate the girl. After all, I’m here in her world so I can’t expect her to live by my idiom. Still, I wish she would have chosen someone else’s water bottle.
Rachel and I left that spot and began wandering around the park. We’d only looked at a few trees and flowers before Rachel lost all interest and began a wonderful temper tantrum. She wanted the crackers she had seen in the diaper bag, so I pulled those out and gave her one.
While she ate that we wandered around for a bit, trying to figure out why it was called “Fish Garden and Aquarium.” We found some fish, but we never did find the aquarium.
I think that like 50 years ago the park was a nice, pretty park with fountains and beautiful statues. Now, though, the statues are covered with the same layer of grime that covers the rest of downtown Cairo and the fountains are all dry.
Rachel and a fish statueWe gave up our wandering when we got too hot to walk around anymore. We found a park bench, sat down and pulled out our water, only to remember that a random person had taken a drink out of it. I discreetly pulled out the hand sanitizer and a baby wipe and gave it a little wipe down before offering Rachel a drink. She happily guzzled it down.
A little boy walked up to us while we were enjoying our cracker rations. I no longer was drinking the water, since it had about equal parts cracker after Rachel’s last sip. He was bigger than Rachel and a little aggressive—he walked right up to her, tried to take her cracker, and then pushed her.
Rachel, Daniel, and SofiaHis mom rushed up. I thought she was Arab at first because she was veiled but she got after him in Russian instead of Arabic.
“Nilzya!” she told him.
“You speak Russian?” I asked her in Russian.
She did. Turns out she’s from Moscow. We sat on a bench together and talked together while her boy, Daniel, picked on Rachel. He’s 1 and a half years old. She gave me wonderfully elusive answers to my questions, as Russians are prone to do (from my experience, anyway). Basically, she lives on Zamalek. She’s been here for 5 months. She doesn’t work, but stays home with her baby. Her husband is either back in Russia or she doesn’t have one. She was extra-elusive about that so I didn’t press.
When I asked her why she was here she answered that she is here “to live.” Upon further questioning she said that the climate is nice, whereas Moscow’s climate is horrible. Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but I suppose if I had the choice between Cairo and Moscow, I’d choose Cairo (at least for the winter).
Yup, that’s about all she told me. Oh, and her name is Sofia. And she’s 25.
We spoke mostly in Russian, which was nice. Usually people will switch to English for me because they assume, because I’m American, that my Russian/Arabic/whathaveyou is less understandable than their English.
Our landlord does that. He’ll speak in Arabic and Andrew will understand what he says, but sometimes, like if Andrew tries to clarify anything, he’ll switch to English. It comes out kind of like this.
“Phone garden cut. Bad. I bring engineer. Good.”
That means, I’m guessing, that our phone line was cut outside of the building for some reason. Obviously that's bad. So the landlord brought a phone-dude (engineer, I suppose) to fix it, which is good.
How nice that Sofia found my Russian to be sufficient and let me speak it. I haven’t spoken Russian to anybody in so long! It was fun.
Soon, though, she decided it was time to go so I followed her out of the park because I had no idea how to find the entrance gate again. She took off with Daniel in one direction and Rachel and I headed back to the Metro in the other direction, following Ulm Kathoom (a much easier way than the way we took before). Rachel threw a fit and screamed almost the whole way there (45 minutes). She and I had a midair wrestling match, which I found exhausting.
People kept staring and giving me advice. Cover her head, give her some water, blah, blah, blah. I ignored most of it (except I did give her water, frequently) until we met Daddy at the Metro. Then I thrust her into his arms and said I was finished.
She continued to scream the whole way home, except for when she was happy, but those moments were fleeting. She did play on the rings for a while, which she thought was exceptionally fun, and she played some games with a man (he kept trying to grab her hand with a book he was holding), which she thought was exceptionally funny.
Hanging on the ringsOther than that she screamed the whole way. People kept giving us advice. Mostly just to give her water, which we were trying to do, but Rachel kept rejecting the warm, cracker infested water.
As soon as we got off the Metro we rushed to a kiosk and bought a nice, cold bottle of water. Rachel drank veraciously. We were both so exhausted when we got home that we fell asleep for a nice nap, covered in soot and grime and sweat.
I’ve been sneezing ever since getting back from Zamalek. I am so glad we don’t live there. It isn’t exactly unpolluted in Maadi, but compared to Zamalek it is cleaner than clean here. Seriously, the chain link fences in Zamalek are covered in a layer of grossness about a centimeter thick. It was so dirty. My face was so dirty just from walking around for a few hours that I had clean streaks from sweat running down. Gross, yes…
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Out in Maadi
The first time I venture outside alone in a new situation is always something I consider to be a great accomplishment. Three such moments stand out in my mind. There was the first time I went outside in Al-Husn and had a wonderful time in the Arab countryside. Then there was the first time I went outside in Amman and took a taxi by myself, speaking Arabic to the driver. Lastly, there was the first time I went outside after Rachel was born. We walked all the way to the mailbox and back and it just about killed me.
All three occasions took a good amount of bravery on my part, I think. I was terrified of living in the Middle East on the first two occasions, and so even thinking about going outside without Andrew was traumatic. And after Rachel was born, I was so sore I could hardly sit down, let around walk, so braving the stairs was difficult.
Well, today, Rachel and I went for a little discovery walk while Andrew was at school. It didn’t take nearly as much guts as going outside in Amman did—perhaps because I can hide behind Rachel here. I know people are staring, but I can pretend that they’re just staring at her (which they probably are).
Yesterday night I made wonderful plans to take the Metro into downtown with Andrew in the morning and walk Rachel to the aquarium…however, Rachel decided to wake up at 2 AM and scream for an eternity, so instead we ended up sleeping in and lazing about all morning. And I do mean all morning.
Instead of that grand adventure—which would have required riding the Metro alone—we just went for a little walk to Road 9. Rachel’s been a little bored lately and I just figured out that it’s probably because we left the majority of her toys at home. She has a little set of blocks from Ikea, a stacking tower, finger puppets, books, books, books, and several random little things that we could fit in the suitcase. But there’s nothing “task-oriented” to take up her time.
So we went on a little shopping spree to that little store we like. I should probably learn the name of it someday so that I can tell you what it is. On the way Rachel played on some newly manicured lawns, and we stopped at some interesting trees.
We looked at a lot of toys at the store. Rachel wanted to buy a game of UNO, but I told her to put it back because it wasn’t a baby toy. This made for a lovely temper tantrum. Quite an embarrassing one, really, because all the workers in the store—all of them male—ran over and crooned to Rachel about this and that, trying to make her happy. I have no idea what they were saying, but it didn’t work and Rachel continued to scream and make a fool of herself on the floor while I rolled my eyes and tried to maintain my patience.
Finally, her temper subsided and we were able to choose one puzzle with zoo animals and a push train. Hopefully these will help to keep Rachel entertained a little better.
We met up with Daddy on his way home from school, and he was able to fill me in on all the latest gossip. He’s been checking my email for me…
So congratulations to Michelle and Andy on baby boy Robinson. You should name him Robby. Just kidding…but if you still haven’t named him by the time I get to a computer with internet, I’ll try to give some real suggestions. And congratulations to Marquita and Daniel for having #2 on the way!
PS. Esther, Robby is a fine name. I just think Robby Robinson would be a silly name.
All three occasions took a good amount of bravery on my part, I think. I was terrified of living in the Middle East on the first two occasions, and so even thinking about going outside without Andrew was traumatic. And after Rachel was born, I was so sore I could hardly sit down, let around walk, so braving the stairs was difficult.
Well, today, Rachel and I went for a little discovery walk while Andrew was at school. It didn’t take nearly as much guts as going outside in Amman did—perhaps because I can hide behind Rachel here. I know people are staring, but I can pretend that they’re just staring at her (which they probably are).
Yesterday night I made wonderful plans to take the Metro into downtown with Andrew in the morning and walk Rachel to the aquarium…however, Rachel decided to wake up at 2 AM and scream for an eternity, so instead we ended up sleeping in and lazing about all morning. And I do mean all morning.
Instead of that grand adventure—which would have required riding the Metro alone—we just went for a little walk to Road 9. Rachel’s been a little bored lately and I just figured out that it’s probably because we left the majority of her toys at home. She has a little set of blocks from Ikea, a stacking tower, finger puppets, books, books, books, and several random little things that we could fit in the suitcase. But there’s nothing “task-oriented” to take up her time.
Rachel's hairdo for the daySo we went on a little shopping spree to that little store we like. I should probably learn the name of it someday so that I can tell you what it is. On the way Rachel played on some newly manicured lawns, and we stopped at some interesting trees.
We looked at a lot of toys at the store. Rachel wanted to buy a game of UNO, but I told her to put it back because it wasn’t a baby toy. This made for a lovely temper tantrum. Quite an embarrassing one, really, because all the workers in the store—all of them male—ran over and crooned to Rachel about this and that, trying to make her happy. I have no idea what they were saying, but it didn’t work and Rachel continued to scream and make a fool of herself on the floor while I rolled my eyes and tried to maintain my patience.
Finally, her temper subsided and we were able to choose one puzzle with zoo animals and a push train. Hopefully these will help to keep Rachel entertained a little better.
We met up with Daddy on his way home from school, and he was able to fill me in on all the latest gossip. He’s been checking my email for me…
So congratulations to Michelle and Andy on baby boy Robinson. You should name him Robby. Just kidding…but if you still haven’t named him by the time I get to a computer with internet, I’ll try to give some real suggestions. And congratulations to Marquita and Daniel for having #2 on the way!
PS. Esther, Robby is a fine name. I just think Robby Robinson would be a silly name.
Walk to the Nile
Yesterday we took a walk to the Nile. Andrew was home in the morning and he looked at me flirtatiously and said,
“Would you like to take a stroll to the Nile, my dear?”
I think he’s been wanting to say that for quite a while now. At least since December. With all the time he’s had to run through the line in his mind, you’d think it would come out sounding a lot cooler and a little less lame than it did. But that’s the way it came out, so I accepted the invitation. After all, it was better than asking me about my scripture marking system.
So, we set off walking. The nice thing about rivers is that they’re relatively easy to find. All we had to do was cross the Metro tracks. Having already passed by the obvious staircase, we hunted around for another one. According to one of our maps, there was a staircase right beside a little shop we frequent. When we got there, however, there wasn’t any sign of a staircase.
Andrew was ready to keep walking on our side of the tracks, so I decided to be the brave, exploratory person of the relationship. We like to flip flop our roles. When I’m not brave, Andrew is. When he’s not, I can be. I kept walking, carrying Rachel. Andrew stayed put.
Just behind the store was a little alleyway and…a set of stairs. I waved at Andrew to follow. He called me his “brave, little wife,” which isn’t much in the way of a compliment, but I have to remember that I’m married to Andrew, so I take what I can get.
The other side of the tracks seemed wild and crazy to me at first, but I think that’s just because I hadn’t been there before. When we first arrived in Maadi the traffic scared me and I could barely cross a street without panicking. Now I’m fairly comfortable in our neighborhood, but still get antsy when we go somewhere unfamiliar, like the other side of the tracks.
We came to a traffic circle with like 5 lanes of cars, at least, all trying to push around the circle and Andrew tried to make me cross the street there. I refused and made him cross the street a little further up where the traffic had thinned out.
After walking for a while longer, we caught our first glimpse of the Nile. It was beautiful, as always. There were a bunch of restaurants hogging the good view, so we walked farther down the shore, passing several felucca docks and getting a beautiful view of the Nile.
It was there that we met Hanni—the Captain of the Paris—who wanted us to take a felucca ride right then. We talked with him for a little while, and in the end convinced him that we’d come back later. Andrew had to go to school in a few hours, and we’d feel silly being a big felucca with only our small little family. Besides, we weren’t in a haggling mood that morning, as evidenced by the .5 L water bottle that Andrew purchased for 1.5 LE.
Who’d have thought that we’d ever live within walking distance of the Nile? It’s only about a 20 minute walk out our front door. There’s a nice-ish walkway along stretches of the Nile not taken up by hotels and restaurants, where you can look out across the massive river. Rachel wanted to jump right in and swim and was very upset when we didn’t let her. So upset, actually, that she screamed halfway home.
I think we’re entering the “terrible twos” a little early. Rachel has started these terrific tantrums where she screams so long that she doesn’t know what she’s screaming about and, if she happens to be standing up, will throw herself on the ground dramatically and roll around kicking her legs and flailing her arms. It’s great.
And to think she thinks that if she does that she’ll get her own way. Fat chance.
“Oh, yes, Rachel, by all means, throw yourself into the Nile. Since you screamed so politely…”
“Would you like to take a stroll to the Nile, my dear?”
I think he’s been wanting to say that for quite a while now. At least since December. With all the time he’s had to run through the line in his mind, you’d think it would come out sounding a lot cooler and a little less lame than it did. But that’s the way it came out, so I accepted the invitation. After all, it was better than asking me about my scripture marking system.
So, we set off walking. The nice thing about rivers is that they’re relatively easy to find. All we had to do was cross the Metro tracks. Having already passed by the obvious staircase, we hunted around for another one. According to one of our maps, there was a staircase right beside a little shop we frequent. When we got there, however, there wasn’t any sign of a staircase.
Andrew was ready to keep walking on our side of the tracks, so I decided to be the brave, exploratory person of the relationship. We like to flip flop our roles. When I’m not brave, Andrew is. When he’s not, I can be. I kept walking, carrying Rachel. Andrew stayed put.
Just behind the store was a little alleyway and…a set of stairs. I waved at Andrew to follow. He called me his “brave, little wife,” which isn’t much in the way of a compliment, but I have to remember that I’m married to Andrew, so I take what I can get.
The other side of the tracks seemed wild and crazy to me at first, but I think that’s just because I hadn’t been there before. When we first arrived in Maadi the traffic scared me and I could barely cross a street without panicking. Now I’m fairly comfortable in our neighborhood, but still get antsy when we go somewhere unfamiliar, like the other side of the tracks.
We came to a traffic circle with like 5 lanes of cars, at least, all trying to push around the circle and Andrew tried to make me cross the street there. I refused and made him cross the street a little further up where the traffic had thinned out.
After walking for a while longer, we caught our first glimpse of the Nile. It was beautiful, as always. There were a bunch of restaurants hogging the good view, so we walked farther down the shore, passing several felucca docks and getting a beautiful view of the Nile.
It was there that we met Hanni—the Captain of the Paris—who wanted us to take a felucca ride right then. We talked with him for a little while, and in the end convinced him that we’d come back later. Andrew had to go to school in a few hours, and we’d feel silly being a big felucca with only our small little family. Besides, we weren’t in a haggling mood that morning, as evidenced by the .5 L water bottle that Andrew purchased for 1.5 LE.
Who’d have thought that we’d ever live within walking distance of the Nile? It’s only about a 20 minute walk out our front door. There’s a nice-ish walkway along stretches of the Nile not taken up by hotels and restaurants, where you can look out across the massive river. Rachel wanted to jump right in and swim and was very upset when we didn’t let her. So upset, actually, that she screamed halfway home.
I think we’re entering the “terrible twos” a little early. Rachel has started these terrific tantrums where she screams so long that she doesn’t know what she’s screaming about and, if she happens to be standing up, will throw herself on the ground dramatically and roll around kicking her legs and flailing her arms. It’s great.
And to think she thinks that if she does that she’ll get her own way. Fat chance.
“Oh, yes, Rachel, by all means, throw yourself into the Nile. Since you screamed so politely…”
We're still alive
Sorry for the long delay between posts and the utter silence from our end in the comments. Right now we're internet gypsies, borrowing the internet at the Cannons, Sharps, and Lewises (Thanks guys!), using McDonalds' free wireless, and using random, spyware infected computers at AUC (what I'm doing right now. Thank goodness for Portable Firefox!)
We're still alive and well here in Egypt. We should have internet soon . . . maybe. Our phone line is still cut, so we still have to get our landlord to fix that before we can start the process of getting DSL.
We still have no idea what's going on with our bawwab. I haven't seen the new guy for a couple days now. Hmm...
We walked along the Nile yesterday. Big river.
Our ants have all but disappeared. Cockroaches have replaced them. We're trying to find boric acid, but they use it as medicine here - it comes as a lotion for irritated eyes. When I explain that I want it in powder form to kill cockroaches, I'm laughed out of the pharmacy. Anyone know where to find boric acid as powder in Cairo?
Orientation and bureaucracy continue at AUC. I've spent the past 3 days trying to get a campus e-mail address, pay tuition with my fellowship, get my ID card, register for classes, and do everything else I need. So far I've only gotten an e-mail address and it only partially works. I'm sitting in line (for the second time this week) for my ID card. Ugh.
So, that's a quick update from the Heisses in Egypt. Thanks for all your comments and questions - keep them coming and we'll try to get them answered, most likely from McDonalds :)
We're still alive and well here in Egypt. We should have internet soon . . . maybe. Our phone line is still cut, so we still have to get our landlord to fix that before we can start the process of getting DSL.
We still have no idea what's going on with our bawwab. I haven't seen the new guy for a couple days now. Hmm...
We walked along the Nile yesterday. Big river.
Our ants have all but disappeared. Cockroaches have replaced them. We're trying to find boric acid, but they use it as medicine here - it comes as a lotion for irritated eyes. When I explain that I want it in powder form to kill cockroaches, I'm laughed out of the pharmacy. Anyone know where to find boric acid as powder in Cairo?
Orientation and bureaucracy continue at AUC. I've spent the past 3 days trying to get a campus e-mail address, pay tuition with my fellowship, get my ID card, register for classes, and do everything else I need. So far I've only gotten an e-mail address and it only partially works. I'm sitting in line (for the second time this week) for my ID card. Ugh.
So, that's a quick update from the Heisses in Egypt. Thanks for all your comments and questions - keep them coming and we'll try to get them answered, most likely from McDonalds :)
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