Flashback Friday: I don't even know where to begin

I am suffering from writer's block, I fear. The longer I sit here the longer I think of nothing to say. That is...rare...because although it's not uncommon for me to run out of things to say it's quite uncommon for me to run out of things to write. But continuing my academic theme, I'll share a story about my English 314 class at BYU, Writing about Literature.

The class started out alright. We were going to be reading Persuasion by Jane Austen. I had never read any of Austen's books before and I haven't read any since. Don't hate me. Hate my teacher. She ruined Jane Austen for me. What could have been a perfectly wonderful introduction into the world of sappy classics turned into complete drudgery. I read Persuasion nine times that semester. I wrote ten papers on it, I think. It was dreadful. I wanted to burn that book at the end of the semester. It's been 5 and a half years (can that be?) yet I still have it and every time I see it I shudder...and have to fight the urge to throw it across the room.

I took it in Fall 2003, which was an awkward stage in my academic career. I should have been a Freshman but I had already been going to college for a year and had nearly finished my associates degree, so I was technically a junior. I was prepared for the class academically, but I still felt out of place. I was one of the few in the class not majoring in English; I also felt rather juvenille, compared to everyone else in the class.

Near the beginning of the semester, probably within the first few weeks, we were assigned to bring in a draft of our first paper to trade with someone in the class. Then we'd do a peer review, a "constructive criticism," if you will.

I was assigned to be partners with a girl (who shall remain anonymous simply because I can't remember her name), who was probably about 10 years older than me. She had 4 kids, and had been published, more than once, in a magazine. I know this because our teacher, Penny Byrd, wanted us all to be good friends and gave us a few minutes to introduce ourselves before we traded papers. This girl liked to write fiction, mostly, I think I remember. And she had already completed a few novels. Yet to be published. And she was hoping to graduate next year.

When it was my turn to introduce myself I was like, "Oh, hi, [insert name]. Nice to meet you. I'm Nancy. I'm, uh, 18. And I have never been published. But lots of teachers say they like my stuff. And I like to use semi-colons every now and then."

I never know how to introduce myself. Besides, she had already intimidated me with her introduction and I hadn't even read her draft yet.

We traded papers. At least, we tried to trade papers. Mostly I just gave her my draft and she gave me the first paragraph of her paper because that was all she had written. Naturally, I finished reading her draft first since it was only one paragraph long. I jotted some things down so that I could remember what to say to her and then waited for her to finish reading my paper.

When it was time to exchange feedback, I went first. I learned how to give constructive criticism in Canada and did my best to follow the protocol: Say something nice. Hint at maybe suggesting improvement. Say something else nice. Finish off with a big smile.

"This was a really good paragraph. I think the rest of your paper is going to be really interesting. You missed a comma here. I didn't really understand this part, but it was great, overall." Big smile.

She yanked her paper out of my hands and glared at me.

"This?" she said, like some sort of a Jane Austen connoisseur, dangling my paper in front of my face disdainfully, "Was awful. I don't even know where to begin."

She returned my paper by dropping in on my desk, suggesting, as it fell, that I drop the class and try a freshman course.

While everyone else chatted about their papers, the book, the upcoming weekend, wedding plans and so on, I spent the remainder of the class staring at the front page of my paper, doing my best not to cry. I have no idea what what's-her-name did. I couldn't look at her.

I ended up staying in the class and ended up getting an A- (which isn't bad, although I probably cried about that, too).

Sometimes I wish I was braver back then. If I could have spoken my mind to her would I have been able to resesitate some of the self-esteem she crushed?

Would it have been so hard to say, "Well, at least I finished my draft. And speaking of finishing something, you didn't have to be in this class with me. You could have finished your bachelor's degree years ago!"

Sometimes, though, it is best to say nothing at all, especially when you don't have anything nice to say.

Perhaps she was having a bad day. Perhaps her kids had been up the whole night with the stomach flu. Perhaps she never learned how to give constructive criticism and really didn't know where to begin. Perhaps she was intimidated by the sheer awesomeness of my paper. Perhaps she never watched Bambi and so never heard Thumper say, "If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all."

I don't know what made her say what she said, and as much as I wish she hadn't said it sometimes I'm glad she did. It makes me think twice about what I say to others. I don't ever want to be a "what's-her-name" to somebody else.

Swimming and sliding

Since Rachel and I aren't getting along so well this morning--I'm not being very patient with her and she's already peed her pants twice and thrown several temper tantrums over everything and anything and bit my face during one of her temper tantrums--I thought I'd write about yesterday, since I haven't yet and yesterday was pretty fun.

Andrew ended up coming home from campus rather early (gotta love the first week of the semester) and since we didn't have playgroup today and it's so incredibly warm here already, we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to go swimming. Rachel has been feeling housebound recently. I think our trip to Spain and Morocco didn't help things any because she was so used to waking up and going outside right away. We didn't spend any mornings harbored up in our hotel rooms. So now that we're home she thinks that we need to be going places all the time.

It's kind of nice to have her reminding me to "GO!" so often. We do tend to stay inside a lot since there isn't really anywhere to just go and play here. Except on Wednesdays, which are free days at the Maadi House.

So we phoned Sara and she agreed to sign us in at the Maadi House because she's nice like that. (Thanks, Sara!)

Rachel was so excited to go swimming and the water was, in my opinion, perfect. The pool is heated, so it's far too warm to swim laps or anything, but it's great for taking a baby swimming in. It felt like a bathtub, nice and warm.

We haven't gone swimming since December sometime, so it had been a while and Rachel was a little shy of the "wawa" (water) at first. Soon, though, she remembered that she loves swimming and started being really brave again.

She usually will kick her legs on command, but yesterday when I told her to "swim" she would do this super rigid prone float, sticking her legs straight behind her and reaching above her head with her hands making a perfect rocket pose. If she had pushed off of me instead of just flipping onto her tummy she probably would have glided across the whole pool!

She would only kick her legs if Daddy was chasing her. He kept swimming under the water and tickling her feet and she kept kicking her legs at him and grabbing his hair and "pushing" him back under the water. They were so funny to watch.

Rachel wanted to go to the "wa" (wall) a lot. She loves playing on the wall because she can go where she wants to go without being carried. She likes to inch her way, hand over hand, across the pool while blowing bubbles in the gutter. She also likes to climb out and jump in. She almost jumped in all by herself, but chickened out at the last minute and made a grab for my hands.

She is not afraid of the water at all, though. The first time I dunked her she was a little upset but when I asked her if she wanted to go under the water again she got all serious and thought about it for a mintue before smiling and saying, "Yeah!"

After we dunked her a few times, she got so brave and started letting go of us and trying to swim to the wall. She can make it, too, if we're about a foot away. She'll just let go of my hands, jump off my knees, and reach for the wall. She keeps her eyes open and kicks her legs until she grabs it and then pulls herself up. She's always so proud when she makes it. She even tried turning around from the wall to try to come back to me by herself, but that was a little too tricky for her.

We also spent a lot of time playing on the stairs. She can sit on the first stair and stand on the second, but the third one goes up to her nose. She kept climbing down onto the third stair and then doing jumping bobs to the other side of the stair until she got to the railing. It was crazy to watch her do this! She's so comfortable in the water!

After swimming for an hour, Rachel decided it was time to go, so Daddy took her out to get her dressed and to use the potty. Then they played at the playground for a while while I, dressed and ready to go, waited for them to come back and find me. I figured, after I had waited for a few minutes that maybe they weren't finished getting dressed yet, so I went to find them and saw Rachel going down the huge slide at the Maadi House playground all by herself.

This child is crazy!

Now she's in her room, singing along to Primary songs. At least she's not screaming anymore. I just hope she falls asleep soon and wakes up happy. We still have the whole afternoon to go. The afternoon may include finding somewhere to get all her little wiggles out.

Book Crisis

Sometimes when Rachel goes potty I read her stories to keep her entertained until she's finished her business, otherwise her short attention span takes over and she does wild and crazy things like standing up midstream. Stories are an excellent diversion.

While Rachel was working on some hefty business early this evening I was sitting with her and absentmindedly began reciting Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?.*

I know that book so well I can read it without looking at it. I even know the "dibble" to "dopp" ratio that the sound of the rain makes. I'm that good.

"Oh, the wonderful sounds Mr. Brown can do," I began, "He can sound like a cow. He can go..."

"MOO! MOO!" Rachel chimed in.

"He can sound like a bee! Mr. Brown can..."

"NO!" Rachel said, "Moo Moo Boo! Boo, mama."

"Alright, I'll go get the book. You just sit here. Don't move. I'll be right back."

And off I went to find the "Moo Moo Boo."

Usually our books are in the book bin because that's where they go. But "Moo Moo Boo" wasn't there. I checked the couches next. Often when books aren't in the book bin it's because they were being read on one of our many couches and chairs. I checked all eleven of the couches and chairs in our living areas. I found a lot of other books, but no "Moo Moo Boo." I figured it was just somewhere else and I'd find it later.

"I can't find Mr. Brown Can Moo," I told Rachel, "We'll read it later."

"No." Rachel said, "Moo Moo Boo!"

"Yeah, well, that's too bad because I can't find it. So we'll read it later. Finish up going potty and we'll choose a different story."

"Moo Moo Boo," Rachel insisted, starting to get off the potty in an I'll-just-do-it-myself fashion.

"No, no! Sit down. I'll go look again. You stay here and finish. Don't move."

I went out to look again. The last logical place to check is the diaper bag. Sometimes things get packed for an excursion and never get unpacked.

I went to the diaper bag, unzipped it, and looked inside. It was virtually empty: baby wipes, a pair of underwear, a pair of pants, and a belly dancing scarf (because you never know when you'll need one of those).

I began to panic.

"Where's Mr. Brown Can Moo!?" I asked Andrew. He could tell I was on the verge of hysteria so instead of saying something like, "I don't know. We'll find it later," he jumped up and started helping me find it.

He checked all the logical places I had just looked and then started helping me think of the illogical places it could be. Dropped inside the AC unit in the playroom, in one of Rachel's drawers, in the toy box. We looked everywhere. It was no where.

I was almost crying now.

"We can buy a new copy," Andrew said when I tried to explain to him how important, how vital that book is to my existence as a mother.

"Oh, when?" I countered, "IN TWO YEARS!!? I can't go for two years without that book! I need that book!"

Yes, we are stuck in the Middle East where the postal system is severely sub par. And we lost our toddler's favorite book. Ordering a new copy and getting that new copy here would be like finding a million dollars. Not going to happen.

"Okay, think!" I demanded, "Where were we the last time we had the book...we were at the...doctor's office! Oh, great! We're doomed, I tell you! Doomed, doomed, doomed!"

Perhaps I was overreacting. However, when I realized that the last place we had Mr. Brown Can Moo! was at the doctor's office I realized that we had also brought I Love Trains along. And I couldn't find that, either.

I Love Trains is Rachel's other favorite book (which, incidentally, I can also recite by heart). So if we can't find "Moo Moo Boo" we pull out "Choo Choo Boo" and everything is still okay because they're both favorites. And now we had neither.

It was 8:00 PM and I thought the chances of the doctor's office being open were pretty slim, but I phoned the doctor's office, anyway. Luckily we live in the Middle East and the clinic was still open at 8:00 PM because Arabs never sleep so I was able to talk to someone who informed me that she hadn't seen anything like that.

I was praying, almost begging, that the books would appear out of thin air right in front of my face. Just one small miracle...please! Oh, please, oh, please help me find that book!

And then, it hit me. They were in the old diaper bag. We had switched diaper bags when we came home from the doctor's office because it was there we realized that our old diaper bag was falling apart so badly it was embarassing.

I ran over to the "closet," threw open the doors, and yanked the diaper bag out. There inside, almost glowing with heavenly light, were "Moo Moo Boo" and "Choo Choo Boo." Thank you, thank you, thank you! Alhamdullah! I sighed a big sigh of relief and ran into the bathroom, where Andrew was trying to entertain Rachel, who was still on the potty but whose mind was entirely too much on why I wasn't bringing her the "Moo Moo Boo."

"LOOK!" I said and held up Mr. Brown Can Moo.

"MOO! MOO!" squealed Rachel, at once greedily and lovingly reaching her arms out to take it.

I held up I Love Trains.

"Choo! Choo!" she shrieked, twice as happy as before.

And that is why I can't live without those books. They are crucial to my existence as a mother. They stop tempers mid-tantrum. They block boredom from setting in. Sometimes they even take naps with Rachel. I need those books. I'm so glad I have them!

*Our book is shorter than this! We don't have "sizzle, sizzle" or the goldfish kiss. We may be investing in the longer version in the future.

A Return to Virtue

The Young Women theme has changed, again. I remember when the theme first changed, that is, when it first changed for me. Before that point I thought YW was kind of a static program. You know, that my mom did it and that her mom did it and that her mom did it, and so forth. In reality it changes constantly to adapt to the needs of the YW today. Go figure. But I didn't learn that until I started working at the HBLL and got to go through every church manual for decades.

I had memorized the theme back in April or May of 1997--I was so excited to go to YW that I memorized the theme before I even turned 12, which isn't very surprizing because I had actually wanted to go to YW for my whole life. I was always so jealous of my older sisters who got to go to weekly activities and make crafts and go camping and do fun things like that. My sister Abra and I shared a room for a while and the YW theme hung on our wall. I wanted so badly to turn 12 before she turned 18, but as luck would have it we didn't magically get closer in age and she "graduated" from YW before I "graduated" into YW.

So I had been reading the theme for several years, dreaming of what it would be like to get to stand in a circle and hold hands with my sisters in Zion and repeat the theme together (as was customary in our ward), before I actually sat down one day to memorize it. Because there was this one time in my life that I vaugely remember, before I entered the haze of motherhood, when I actually could sit down and memorize something in one day.

I had it memorized absolutely flawlessly for a good 5 years. Then, in 2002, they changed it on me, right before I was due to "graduate" from YW. I had it memorized so perfectly that I could almost say it backwards. And I can't even say the alphabet backwards without thinking too hard, so that tells you something right there.

They added the words "strengthen home and family," to the end of the theme so that it read,

We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values, we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the ordinances of the temple, and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.

I began to stammer when I recited the theme, being so worried the whole way through that I would forget to say "strengthen home and family." It was a wonderful reminder to me, as a young woman, that families are important. Every time I worried about whether or not I would say "strengthen home and family" I would worry a little about if I was strengthening my home and family.

After a few months I had fully ingrained this little phrase into my mind and was able to say the theme again without tripping over my words. And then I left Young Women and entered the beautiful world of Relief Society, leaving the YW theme behind me.

I liked it when the young women would join the Relief Society for opening exercises and we would all stand to repeat the YW them together. I kind of reveled in my youth, pleased that I was one of the few "old" sisters that could say the YW theme right because I had been in YW when they changed it. I was young and I could prove it because I could say "strengthen home and family" without stuttering.

Well, I just got old, I guess, because I really don't know what I'm going to do now that they've added the eighth value of "virtue" to the YW theme, so that it reads:

We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him. We will 'stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places' (Mosiah 18:9) as we strive to live the Young Women values, which are:

Faith
Divine Nature
Individual Worth
Knowledge
Choice and Accountability
Good Works
Integrity
Virtue

We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values, we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the ordinances of the temple, and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.

"Good Works and Integrity" rolls off my tongue like "peanut butter and jelly." Saying "Integrity and Virtue" will be like saying "peanut butter and peanut butter." It sticks to the roof of my mouth.

However, what a wonderful reminder it is to me, as a less-young woman, that families are important, that virtue is important, and that integrity, good works, choice and accountablity, knowlege, individual worth, divine nature, and faith are important.

In 1995 I didn't think The Family: A Proclamation to the World would ever be such a prophetic, true document. But it is.

I am often surprised, when I get reacquainted with people I knew growing up, how many people I know who have no desire to get married or to have children and/or who blatantly misuse the God-given commandment to multiply and replenish the earth. I think it is an issue that we can't take casually. I am glad that the YW today will be learning more about virtue and that all the YW I know become virtuous women.

I'm thrilled for Rosie to be starting YW, even though that means that I'm old enough to be an aunt to a young woman, and I'm so happy that Josie is still in YW, because that means that I'm young enough to still have a sister in YW. I hope that you both know that, as virtuous young women, your price is far above rubies. I love you both. Have fun tripping over "virtue" for the next little while.

Sometimes I am rude

The doorbell rang this morning, or maybe early this afternoon. All I know is that I hadn’t gotten out of my pyjamas yet. I don’t like answering the door in my pyjamas because, even though my pyjamas are modest (a t-shirt and yoga pants), they aren’t modest enough. Not here, anyway.

I was worried that it might be Carolee, though. She said she wanted to come do laundry today. I peeked through the door. It wasn’t Carolee, but it kind of looked like the gas man.

The gas man comes around to look at our meter every month. If we aren’t home when he comes around to collect our 3 pounds there is a danger our gas will be shut off. So I opened the door, just a little bit so I could take a closer look.

It looked like the gas man. He had a messenger bag of sorts, the kind the gas men can be seen carrying, and he was holding a paper, which he held out to me.

For some reason I took it thinking that it was the gas bill, even though the gas man hands me the bill after he looks at our meter and not before, naturally. I guess it was a reflex or something.

“Oh, he’s handing me something. I should take it.” I thought.

So I stuck out my hand and took it. Oh, dopey me.

It wasn’t a gas bill.

It was an identification card of sorts. His identification card, to be precise.

I couldn’t figure out why that had ended up in my hands, so I looked at the paper under it. It was a leaflet about the deaf and mute population in Cairo, at least I think that’s what it was. It was all in Arabic so I couldn’t read much of it.

I tried to hand it back to the man.

He put his palms up in the air and took a step backwards, refusing the return of papers. Then he held his hand out for money.

“Laa,” I said, and tried to give him the papers again, failing once more.

He pointed to his ears and then to his cupped palm, asking for money again.

“Laa,” I repeated, shaking my head just in case he really couldn’t lip read the word “no.”

Again he pointed to his palm, demanding money.

I was in my pyjamas and wasn’t about to invite him in while I went to go find my wallet. Besides, I had already purchased that same leaflet from another deaf man who was equally adamant that I pay for something he shoved in my hand while I was walking past him, even though I can’t read it well enough to have it be of any use to me.

So instead I tried to give it back to him once more, while still trying to stay mostly behind the door so that he couldn’t see I was in shorts.

“Laa, laa, laa!” I said, jabbing the air between us with the papers each time I said “laa” to let him know, through body language, that I really didn’t want the paper.

In return he jabbed his palm three times.

I had had enough.

I dropped the papers in the hall and closed the door.

Unfortunately, the only way to close our warped door is to slam it, hard, so it probably seemed a little ruder than I intended it to be.

I must say, this is one of my least favorite marketing approaches, but people do it all the time, especially on the metro. You’ll just be sitting there and someone will walk by and drop a chocolate bar or a tube of super glue in your lap. Then they’ll make a round asking for money or whatever they gave you back. It’s terrible when I ride with Rachel because they always try to give her whatever it is they want to sell and then she wants to keep it. It’s just a horrible marketing strategy. Sometimes the metro stops before they can collect all their money and people start filing off, either dropping the product or taking it with them.

Most locals are amazingly good at ignoring these “salesmen” and will let the item fall wherever it lands and just sit there with chocolate and super glue on their laps, shoulders, and hats, until the “salesman” comes to pick it up again. They don’t even seem to notice when the object is plucked off their person again.

If only I could be that stoic.

Rachel’s sky

I’ve been working on some papers for primary recently and since I’m a perfectionist they are taking a while. Curse those print layout classes we took in college! I kind of miss the days when I would just throw things together sloppily in Word.

Anyway, while I was working, Jaehee and Rachel were coloring. It’s been great to have Jaehee around during the day. Rachel loves her and is quickly progressing from “Juh” to “JayJay.” Soon she’ll be saying Jaehee as clear as a bell.

They were coloring a beautiful nature scene. Well, Jaehee was. Rachel was mostly scribbling circles, which she loves to do. She picked up a blue pencil crayon and drew a lovely blue blob.

“Oh! That’s pretty!” said Jaehee, “What is it?”

Rachel smiled a big smile and point up high, as high as her little arm would reach, almost falling over backwards in the process.

“Is it the sky?” Jaehee asked.

“Ye-ah!” Rachel screamed somewhat giddily.

There, in the lower right hand corner, is Rachel’s little bit of sky. The brown was added later. I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps a tornado or dust storm. Rachel isn’t too familiar with either of those yet, but she knows the word “city” so maybe she also knows “tornado” and just hasn’t shared her knowledge with me yet.

Jaehee was wearing a shirt with a cityscape on it today. Rachel pointed at it and said, “CITY!” as clear as a bell. I was a little shocked, not because she hadn’t done that before but because she had. I thought the first time was a fluke—she pointed at a poster in Spain that had a bunch of buildings on it and said, “City!” I was like, “Whatever, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” Apparently, though, she does.

Rachel also says “bocca,” which is Italian for mouth. She learned that from Quanti Colori. And today she asked me to give her doll a “bussa,” which is Egyptian colloquial for kiss. She learned that from the million people a day who want to give her bussas.

Locked in

We stayed with the McCallisters while we were getting settled in Cairo, and now we’re paying back the favor. Jaehee and Aden are staying with us while they are getting settled.

Rachel loves Jaehee. She calls her “Juh."

This morning the Relief Society met for breakfast at Lucille’s (that’s a restaurant, by the way, not one of the sisters). That meant that Jaehee and I got up early to get ready to go, letting our husbands sleep in.

Jaehee got up the earliest of all of us. My plan was to roll out of bed, get dressed, and go. Jaehee took a shower. Now that’s dedication.

I woke up about 10 minutes before my alarm clock went off to the sound of someone knocking at a door. I couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from.

At first I thought it was Rachel. She will get out of bed sometimes and knock on her door to let us know that she’s awake and wants to come out. But, seriously, she had gone to bed so late that she should still be sleeping. And the knocking was pretty loud.

“Perhaps it’s the front door,” I thought as I rolled out of bed and stumbled sleepily out of my room.

But it wasn’t the front door. It was coming from inside our apartment. I quickly surveyed the scene, which was difficult in the dusky morning light without my glasses on, and noticed that the bathroom door was closed and the light was on.

Uh-oh.

I heard the knocking again. It was coming from behind the bathroom door.

“Jaehee?” I asked.

“I just closed the door!” she said, “And now I can’t open it!”

“The handle fell off on this side,” I said.

It was inevitably going to happen sometime. Our bathroom door is even trashier than our front door, which is warped so badly it belongs in an M.C. Escher drawing. It just should not be able to swing open or closed.

The bathroom door isn’t warped, but the handle is…not connected, apparently.

Jaehee and I did our best to get the door open, but we failed, so I went to wake up Andrew.

“The handle fell off the bathroom door,” I said after I had woken him up sufficiently to be a little coherent.

“Good,” he mumbled.

“No, not good. I can’t get the door open.”

“I’ll fix it later.”

“Jaehee is inside.”

After a series of moans and dramatic tosses, Andrew got out of bed.

He tried putting the handle back on. He tried turning the inside workings of the knob with pliers. Finally he just slammed the door with his shoulder a couple of times and it popped open.

Brute strength and brains? I married well.

“Sorry to wake you,” said Jaehee, “But I couldn’t really do anything besides knock.”

Andrew mumbled something about going back to bed and was back asleep within 5 minutes. I got out the duct tape and taped the latch inside the door so that it could be closed all the way without ever latching. Hopefully Jaehee will be the only one lucky enough to spend the morning locked in our bathroom.

Just another normal day in Cairo, what can I say?

Flashback Friday: Vindicated

I’m late with this again, I know. Maybe Saturdays are the new Fridays? I was just so busy yesterday, what with all the church-going, napping, and firesiding that I did I was plum wiped out by the time Rachel went to bed at 11:30 PM.

Sometimes she doesn’t want to go to bed. And she’s a very busy baby, so my spare time is very limited, indeed. That’s why it took me like 3 weeks, or something, to read Wuthering Heights.

The only reason I can write this right now is because:

A) Rachel really wants to “GO!” so she’s currently sitting in her stroller and singing a song about babies and “book-a-bonks” and “glu-glu-ma-ma-mas” interspersed with an inspiring chorus of “Go! Go! Go!” and “No! No! No!” Those last two are her favorite words lately.

and B) I’m using Windows Live Writer which lets me blog completely offline. Andrew’s trying to rewire our phone. We’ll see how that goes. When (and if) the internet starts working again I’ll post this.

Anyway, I finished Wuthering Heights while we were somewhere in Morocco and because I was bored and we were sitting on a train and Andrew was coloring so nicely with Rachel, I kept on reading through the “Reader’s Supplement.”

I earned myself a few more minutes of freedom from Rachel’s craziness as well as a bit of vindication.

When I was in grade 5 I always did my spelling tests with my friend Kaley. We often played together after school and her mom would make us study our spelling words before we were allowed to play. Our spelling tests were a little ridiculous, I thought.

Instead of getting a standard list of words our teacher would go through our work and pick out misspelled words. It wasn’t even just our polished work where we’d used the dictionary, either. It was from “free writing” time in our journals where we were assigned a specific amount of time to just write away, without getting out of our seats—for anything, even to look at the dictionary. That’s the kind of writing she took our words from, the hurried, sloppy writing from our journals.

We each had our own individual list of words that we couldn’t spell.

In theory this was a good system, but in reality it backfired. Kids started purposely misspelling easy words and/or only using words that they knew how to spell. Their spelling tests were easy as pie.

I was a little bit of an overachiever and/or incredibly slow at catching on and kept using big words that I wasn’t really sure how to spell. I remember having words like curious, nervous, florescent, vanilla, and subsequent on my list. That might not sound bad until you saw my peers’ lists: shirt, ask, hand, foot. Come on!

My teacher, Mrs. Bienert, aka “The Homework Queen,” was a little clueless, herself. I had more homework than my sister and brother combined—they were in high school and junior high. I was in grade five and working on homework until 10 PM, or later. Every night. Hours after my older siblings had closed their books I was still plugging away.

When my mom brought this to Mrs. Bienert’s attention, she said, “I never expected anyone to actually complete all the homework I assign. Most of these kids don’t have a life after school and would just watch television if they didn’t have homework.”

“Well, my daughter has a life,” my mom said.

I had gymnastics on Fridays, Achievement Days one night a week, FHE on Mondays and swimming in the spring. I also participated in the school musical and an afterschool jazzercise program (did I really just admit that? It was the nineties, okay). And I helped babysit my younger siblings until our parents got home from work. Oh, and I did homework. Plenty of that. There was almost no TV watching in our house.

So the homework thing was a little ridiculous, especially for a perfectionist like me who had to complete everything, and get full marks, or it was the end of the world.

Just because I’m a perfectionist, though, doesn’t mean I’m good at everything. For example, I can’t spell very well. In any language. I love spell checker. It’s probably the best invention ever because I know way more words than I can actually spell.

I’m forever forgetting “i before e” rules and things like that. Spelling is like math. It’s just tricky. I can’t remember any formulas about triangles or anything like that, and I can’t remember any decimal in pi further than 3.14. And I can’t spell. So I’m not a genius, just a perfectionist, or as my cousin Elizabeth likes to say, a precisionist.

In order to help prepare us for our tests, Kaley and I would make up stories about our words, a method sanctioned by both of our mothers as a valid way of learning how to spell.

For example, in grade three I had the word “together” and my mom helped me make up the story “We went together to get her.” I knew how to spell to, get, and her. Putting them together in that order made “together” and presto! I never spelled together wrong ever again.

Beautiful is another tricky word. There are simply too many vowels in it. Kaley and I would say, “You look B-E-A-U-tiful today!” But since spelling out half the word would have been cheating we made up the sentence “Be an understanding beauty” or something like that so that we could remember the order of the vowels.

Vanilla was pretty simple, too. See, Mr. Illa drove a van and sold vanilla ice cream. You can sing that to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy. We had a whole song for vanilla.

And that’s how we’d memorize our spelling words every week.

Since every pupil had a different list, Mrs. Bienert couldn’t give a “test” to every student, so instead we partnered up and tested each other. Kaley and I were always partners and we would always use the sentences that we’d made up, or similar sentences.

One day Mrs. Bienert called us into an unused classroom to talk to us in private. Someone in the class had told Mrs. Bienert that we were cheating. She wanted to ask us about it.

I believe it was the week Kaley had the word “sword” on her list and we made up a sentence something like, “Don’t use the s-word or I’ll use my sword on you.”

So we told Mrs. Bienert about how we learned our words and used sentences to help us remember how to spell them.

Mrs. Bienert told us that was unfair because other students weren’t doing that. She tore up our spelling tests from that week and banned us from being spelling partners while expressing her disappointment.

I never told my parents. I don’t know if Mrs. Bienert ever did.

Part of me was too ashamed to because I was a “cheater” and part of me was mad because my mom had taught me to “cheat.” Part of me was livid because other children were cheating by purposely spelling easy words wrong and got away with it simply because Mrs. Bienert thought they were white trash.

I finished off the year taking every spelling test by myself. I memorized the words on the list and how to spell them and sat by myself and wrote everything down from memory. Still, I made up stories to do this, and felt a little guilty all year because I was “cheating.” But I couldn’t think of any other way to learn my words.

I’ve spent more than half of my life feeling guilty about this. When I had to memorize all the states and their capitols in one week after moving to the states, my mom helped me. We made up crazy stories about pigs with wings, flying through the sky carrying grapes in their mouths to remember that he capitol of New Hampshire was Concord; or my cousin Lance swimming across Lake Michigan while singing to remember that the capitol of Michigan was Lansing.

I got 100% on that test. And I felt like a cheater. Because I had made up those stories. And no one else had. Which gave me an advantage.

I make up stories to learn vocabulary words in foreign languages. I wrote a whole paper for my Historical/Comparative Linguistics class about creating “folk etymologies” as a learning strategy.

I learned in my TESOL classes that creating analogies and things like that is a perfectly valid tool for learning.

All this time I still felt like a cheater, because I had been accused of cheating in grade 5 for doing the exact same thing.

So it’s a good thing I read the “Reader’s Supplement” at the end of Wuthering Heights because, after reading that, I don’t feel guilty anymore. In the “Spelling Exercises” on page 30, it says,

Write the word so that the difficult part for you (the part you misspelled) stands out…Now compose a bond, some association or clue that reminds you of the difficult part, or use a spelling rule (if a good one exists) as your bond. All this helps you THINK THE WORD! The sillier the bond is, the better.

Even a ROSE makes him moROSE.

Granted, it then suggests practicing the word enough that spelling it becomes habitual, which I’ve done by now. My spelling has improved immensely since grade 5, even with the crutch of the blessed spell checker. Do you really think I spell “together” or “vanilla” wrong anymore? Spelling vanilla with two els is pretty habitual for me by this point in my life.

Realy. It is.

Back to normal life

Obtaining normalcy in Cairo is a bit of a stretch. Such a stretch, really, that "normalcy in Cairo" is basically an oxymoron. But here we are, back to normal life in Cairo.

We went grocery shopping today. That's a pretty normal thing to do after getting home from a long trip abroad. See? Normal.

We walked there because we don't have a car. Walking when you don't have a car is pretty normal, but I'm guessing that most of you have cars. You probably don't walk to the grocery store. But we do so, for us, that's normal.

We put normal things like spaghetti noodles and frozen vegetables in our cart.

Rachel grabbed a pad of butter and bit through the foil wrapping and got a big chunk of butter in her mouth, which she enjoyed thoroughly. While it's not normal for her to do that with butter, it's not unusual for her to do that with cookies. I will leave it up to you whether or not it is normal to enjoy a mouthful of plain butter.

We went up to the cashier and paid for our groceries, including the mangled butter, which is also pretty normal. We even used a credit card, which is so beyond normal here that you can't even begin to imagine. Cairo is not a cashless society, but we are American and America is a cashless society so every once in a while we like to use some plastic, which is normal.

We then loaded up our groceries in the jogging stroller, which isn't exactly normal, unless, like us, you happen to not have a car and instead have a jogging stroller, in which case, it's normal, and then we started on our way home.

The roads in Maadi are lined with trees that form a canopy above the road, giving you the illusion that Cairo is greener than it really is. Don't be fooled. It really is located in the middle of a big desert. But the greenery is nice and we enjoy the shade. It's pretty normal to enjoy shade outside when it's hot, I think.

So, there we were walking down the usual street we walk down when we go home from the grocery store and everything was normal.

And then we see this huge semi-truck coming down the street.

That's not normal because huge semi-trucks don't really fit under the canopy of trees that so nicely shade our streets. It was a noisy, messy affair; the branches were scraping against the side of the trailer and then sproinging* back into place. The less adaptable branches simply snapped under the pressure. The truck sounded kind of like this while breaking its way through the trees: CRASH! SNAP! SPROING! LURCH! THWAK! VAROOM! SCREECH! THUD!

It was dreadful, to say the least, and certainly not normal.

We lugged the stroller between some parked cars to wait in safety for the road to clear, which is a fairly normal thing to do...here, at least, where they try to keep usable sidewalks to a bare minimum.

It so happened that there was a tree very close to where we were standing. Its branches were adding to the canopy of branches the semi was belaboring against, and unfortunately they were of the less adaptable, less bendy kind.

When the semi truck reached our tree and began pulling against its branches we didn't hear any thwacking** or sproinging. Instead we heard snapping, which isn't something you want to hear when you are standing underneath a big tree. At least, if you're normal it's not something you want to hear.

Small twigs and leaves started showering down on us, which for some reason (normal or otherwise) made me want to look up to see if we were lucky. Maybe, just maybe, that loud snapping noise was a couple of insignificant twigs and the tree had nothing else to send down to us on the ground. Nope. There was definitely something else.

A decent-sized branch had also broken off the tree and was on its way to bash me on the head even as I was looking up at it.

Oh, great... I thought.

There wasn't really anywhere to go. We were trapped pretty snuggly between the semi-truck, two cars, and some shrubbery. All we could do was sheild ourselves a little, and maybe try to deflect the branch onto one of the cars.

I was still staring up at the branch torpedoing towards me and trying to decide where best to fling the groceries I was carrying so that I could call upon some superhuman strength within me to save our little family from being crushed to death by falling debris when the branch stopped midair. It levitated there for a few minutes before lurching forward with the semi. Each time the truck lurched forward the branch lurched forward, too.

It had landed between the truck and the trailer, right where they hook up, just a few feet above our heads. Miraculous.

So much for having a normal day in Cairo.

*Technically not a word.
**Now this is a word.

She found the golden ticket!

We had a games night at our house tonight. A new couple just moved here and we wanted to meet them/welcome them into the branch/socialize, that kind of thing. Since they've only been here for like 2 days and have been staying downtown, Rachel and I went out to the metro station so that we could walk them back to our apartment.

I explained to Rachel, several times actually, that we weren't going to take the metro, that we were just there to wait for some new friends.

She didn't quite get the concept.

"Go! Go!" she'd say, grasping my hand and tugging me towards the door.

After failing to convince her that we weren't going to ride the metro I started trying to convince her that we couldn't ride the metro.

"We can't go," I'd say, "We don't have a ticket."

Nothing was going to dissuade her from having her metro ride. As soon as those last words escaped my lips, Rachel was off like a rocket. At first I wasn't sure what she was doing, but it was obvious she had a purpose.

Finally she ran up to me, absolutely beaming.

"Ah! Titit!" she exclaimed, thrusting a discarded, ratty metro ticket into my hand. She pointed valiantly to the entrance and commanded me to "GO!"

Then I had to explain to her that, although we now had a ticket we still couldn't use the ticket because it wasn't valid anymore, having already been used. That was tricky. Pretty much impossible, really.

She didn't see the problem. We had a ticket. Why was I being so unreasonable?

We were on the very cusp of a terrific meltdown when our new friends arrived. Rachel couldn't really understand why I was calling them "friends" before we'd even met them, but she took to Jaehee right away. I think it's pretty safe to say that we're friends now. Even Rachel likes them!