We now have television

Our only connection to the outside world for the past six months has been the internet, and that has been shoddy, at best, although it’s been a little better lately. We had television for the first month, or so, until it died one day. That wasn’t really a problem for us since we don’t watch television. The only show we regularly watch is The Office and we do that through iTunes because The Office doesn’t show in Egypt.

The first time we wished we had television was for the elections in November. And then the inauguration. And several other important national and world events that we didn’t watch.

Our landlord tried to fix our television so that we could watch the election. He thought it would be important to us to see who won. So he showed up to our apartment at around 10 PM on November 4th, took our television up to the roof, and had us feed some random wires through our open window.

He was up there for hours while we stood guard by our open window, watching out for Templeton (our rat, who has since disappeared) to make sure he didn’t come inside.

We didn’t get to watch the elections; and our landlord didn’t bother trying to fix our television ever again. Although Egyptians live and die by their television screens—and even cardboard houses and squatters in the City of the Dead have satellite dishes—we had to pay our full rent and not have a working television.

Again, it’s basically a non-issue since we don’t really watch television (obviously, since we haven’t had it since we moved to Egypt, basically), but it’s supposed to be included in our rent and sometimes—like when there is a bombing in Cairo—we want to be able to turn on the news so that we know what is going on.

Hatim, our landlord, eventually gave us the number for the satellite guy and left the key to the roof so that we could let the guy up there to fix it. Andrew called him a couple of times, but he never called back. Finally, last Sunday, we got a call from the satellite guy saying that he was on his way. Good thing he made an appointment.

Rachel and I were both napping when the satellite guy arrived and Andrew took him up on the roof. When I woke up, Andrew was still on the roof so I had no idea where he was. The television had been moved, though, so I figured out where he was and decided to make dinner instead of bothering them. I had just put a pot of water on the stove to boil when Andrew came back inside. He was yelling Arabic at someone on the roof, and that man was shouting instructions back at Andrew.

They were throwing wires down from the roof and feeding them through our window, again. At least we didn’t have to worry about Templeton this time, but there were other worries…like the fact that the ends of the wires were completely exposed and had no plug on them. I wondered how we were going to plug in the cord. But I didn’t need to wonder for long. Once Andrew caught the cord he marched over to the outlet and jammed the wires into the socket.

“Do you have power?” he yelled in Arabic and then, having received a positive response, turned to me. “Do you want to just hold these for a minute?”

Of course I do. Of course I want to hold live wires into an electrical socket while our 1.5 year old baby is watching me. It’s setting the perfect example for her, don’t you think?

That “minute” turned into “a few minutes,” which turned into a “where-the-heck-is-he?” I didn’t mind it too much until Rachel announced that she had to go potty and I turned to look at her, which jostled the wires, which caused them to start sparking, which caused me to freak out.

I eventually convinced Rachel that, since she didn’t have any pants on (thank goodness), she could go to the potty by herself, despite all the tugging on me and her many pleas of “Hep me!” and “Mama go!”

She went by herself in the correct place (thank goodness) and then I spent the rest of my time as a “plug” trying to get Rachel to stay away from the sparks, while managing, miraculously, not to get electrocuted, myself.

Our old dish

Meanwhile, back on the roof, Andrew was having his first lesson in masonry. Apparently our old satellite was so ancient and rusty and bent that it wouldn’t work anymore, so the satellite guy went out to get a new one.

Our roof is so full of construction materials (bricks, window panes, etc.) and other satellite dishes that it took them a while to decide where to put the new one. The satellite man decided to put it in a spot that looks like will one day end up being someone’s new kitchen. Andrew asked him if that was going to be a problem.

“Oh, no,” he assured Andrew, “This floor won’t be finished for years!”

That is probably true. If you’ve seen the way construction works here, it’s very easy to believe that it could take several years to build a new storey onto a building, as is the case with our building.

We don’t have an elevator so everything is carried up the stairs by a few workers. Bricks are usually delivered between 11 PM and 1 AM, (which is the perfect bedtime lullaby, let me tell you) and then sit there, in front of our main entrance, until around 6 AM when the workers show up to carry them up the stairs. They load piles of brick on old cardboard boxes, heft those onto their shoulders, and trudge up the stairs. The same thing happens with bags up cement mix and piles of sand.

It’s a pretty slow process. Granted, these men carry in one trip what would take me 5 or 6 (or more). But still…it’s a long and slow process. They’ve been doing it the whole time we’ve lived here, and probably before that, too, and there’s not really much to speak of up on the roof that’s been built up.

So it’s probably okay that our new satellite is in someone’s future kitchen. Our old one was in their living room and our neighbours each have one as well. In short, the whole roof is full of satellite dishes. I don’t know what they’re going to do when the time comes to actually finish the little renovation project they have going on.

Anyway, the satellite guy wanted Andrew’s help installing the new satellite. They mixed cement using a bag of cement the satellite guy brought with him (and some other random ingredients from the construction hud on the roof) and made a big pile of it, and then they stuck the satellite dish in the middle. Unfortunately, there was too much satellite and not enough cement. Fortunately, the satellite guy is a quick thinker and he thought to put some bricks around the base of the dish to help prop it up.

I think they did a great job. It looks very classy.

All the other dishes have nice, smoothly shaped cones of cement holding theirs up. Our stand is more 20th century impressionist stand. It really sets us apart from our neighbours. I think they’ll all be jealous.

When I asked Andrew how much this cost he prefaced his answer by telling me that Hatim was going to reimburse us and then said it was 200 LE for the dish and 150 LE for labour (about 62 USD, total).

That’s really not very expensive, I don’t think, but, all things considered, shouldn’t we have gotten at least half of the labour money? After all, I spent the evening holding wires into an electrical socket and Andrew learned how to mix cement. Exactly what did the satellite guy do?

New site up, finally…

I’ve been working on updating my formerly lame personal website for a while now. I wanted to get it up and live during the Christmas break. Yeah, right. Then I wanted to get it up before school started in February. Yeah, right, again.

I just never had time to get around to it, until this weekend. We’ve all been sick and haven’t gone anywhere. So, it’s up now.

It’s not done, but it’s good enough for now.

It’s a blog now, so I’ll post non-family, nerdy posts over there. Subscribe to its RSS feed to get updates, if you want.

So, back to the regularly scheduled Heissatopia posts…

Today’s forecast: Hot & Windy with Chance of Sand

Yesterday was a beautiful day. It was 32 degrees Celsius, which I thought felt just nice. I like things warm. We noticed that the breeze was heating things up instead of cooling things off, like normal breezes do, and we couldn’t help but wonder if this was the beginning of the khamsin.

The khamsin, I suppose, is kind of the equivalent of the monsoon season in India, only instead of rain we get sand because we’re lucky enough to live in the middle of the desert.

Last night things were still rather warm at 1 AM—too warm for a sweater. I know this because we went to the Mason’s last night for cookies and cinnamon bears and to play Settlers of Catan. We ended up staying later than we originally thought we would, which was fine (right, Melissa?) and didn’t get home until around 1 AM.

It was still hot and windy when we were walking home. Quite unseasonably warm for March, really, not that I would know what a seasonable March is like considering this is our first one here, but the change from less-warm to more-warm was quite sudden and drastic.

This very well may mark the beginning of the khamsin, because here is our weather forecast for this evening:

Winds of 26 km/h may not seem very blustery, but consider that the real windstorm happened this morning; this is just the aftermath of the storm.

It was pretty windy when we went out early this afternoon and hot sand was blasting everywhere. We could hardly see the buildings beyond the flyover (from around Metro Market). Rachel kept putting her hands on her hair and yelling,

“Win! Win! Win! Head! Hair! My! Mine! Win! Win! No! No! Myyyyy!”

She really doesn’t like when the wind “gets” her hair. I’m not really sure why because she doesn’t care if it’s messy or not. It’s the principle of the thing, I suppose. It’s her hair, not the wind’s.

Things are supposed to cool off (and settle down) again in the next couple of days, which will be nice. Even though I said that I enjoyed the warm weather, which I did, I’m not sure that I’m completely ready for 90 degree weather in the beginning of March. Because if the weather is 90 degrees in March, what are its plans for April through August?

Flashback Friday: Mayonnaise Pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was her turn to act embarrassed.

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

Spider Prank

Every night before bed, Rachel asks if she can color, without fail. Sometimes she screams it as we're dragging her off to bed like it's some kind of plea for help and we're really dragging her off to the gallows.

"Col-col!" she screams, "Col-col! Col-col!" *

Sometimes we let her stay up and color for a few more minutes, and sometimes we don't. We have a timer that we used to use. It worked for a while. I'd set the timer and say,

"Alright, we can color until the timer goes off and then it's time for bed."

The first few times we used it things went just fine, but then she started throwing the most wild temper tantrums when it went off that we stopped using it altogether.

We started bedtime a little later than usual tonight. We went swimming at Maadi House and then our home teachers came and we didn't even eat dinner until 8:30 PM. It was well past 9:30 when we told Rachel it was time to start getting ready for bed. She, of course, panicked and started whining about this and that.

Somehow we managed to wrestle her into her pyjamas and brush her teeth, despite all her protesting. It wasn't until we announced that it was time for scriptures that she really lost it.

"Col-col!" she demanded, racing over to her drawing table.

We explained that it was late and that she couldn't color right now. She was equally as insistant that she should be able to color right then. So, while Andrew was distracting her, I went and got a big, hairy spider from her toy box and put it on top of her coloring supplies.

She has a love-hate relationship with that spider. She cowers from it and screams whenever it comes near her; sometimes, though, she'll bring it to us and ask us to wiggle it in front of her face. Every now and then when things aren't exciting enough around our household, she needs an adrenaline rush, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if she took up skydiving or bungee jumping one day for the same reason.

To her credit, it's a pretty scary spider. And it jumps. So that makes it even more scary.

After I had demoniacally placed the spider, I told her that she could have her own way. Am I mean?

"Fine, go ahead and color," I suggested.

"Yeah," she sniffed indignantly and began the short march to her coloring table.

She had already reached her arm out and was only a pace or two away from reaching her destination when she stopped short.

"Ahhhh!" she screamed and flapped her arms wildly in the air, signifying that something was very, very wrong.

"What's wrong?" I asked innocently.

"Ahhhhhh!" she screamed again and pointed at the spider, still flapping her arms, obviously too perplexed to bother with signing "spider."

"Oh, that's too bad. The mean ol' spider is sitting on your stuff. We'll just have to go to bed without coloring, I guess."

"Nooooo!"

"Do you want me to make the spider get off?"

"Yeah!"

"Alright, spider, get off! Oh, dear. The spider won't listen to me. Maybe if you move the spider then you can color."

She took a step closer and then gave up.

"Ahhhh!" she screamed before running over to me so she could cuddle safely in my lap, far, far away from that awful spider.

Am I mean?

* Linguistic note: she doesn't actually say the el. She says co-co, but with such a strong lateral coloring on the o that it sounds like she's almost saying the el. But she's not.

Four’s the number

We’ve been working on numbers recently. Part of the reason for that is because Rachel discovered, at the bottom of her book bin, a book called Numbers. I don’t want to give away the storyline or anything, but basically it starts with 1. Then you count different animals on each page…2, 3, 4…and so on until you get to 10. The ending has a bit of a twist to it though, because you might think that the story will just end on 10, but it doesn’t. The very last page has a picture very similar to what is on the front cover (it very well may be identical) and the last thing you count is “many.” Total unexpected, complete surprise ending.

Sorry if I spoiled anything for you.

Because the story line can get a little dull when Rachel wants to read the book 20 times in a row, I switch things up for us and count in different languages. Just to keep things interesting. We do Russian, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and, of course, Arabic. Perhaps even a few others that I can’t think of right now.

Not that I’m bragging. Counting in foreign languages does not entail fluency. As my older sister, Abra, said to my mom when she was about four years old, “Mom, what does ‘eins-zwei-drei-vier-fünf-sechs-sieben-acht-neun-zehn’ mean?”

She completely missed the boat on that one. Sorry, Abra. (She knows now, by the way.) Learning to understand different languages is difficult. Trust me. Arabic makes me want to cry sometimes.

Rachel really likes Arabic, though; she reacts well to it. I suppose that’s because she hears it everyday. She totally knows if someone is speaking Arabic or English. If she’s around English speakers she’ll speak English. If she’s around Arabic speakers she’ll say, “أربعة” (arbah) over and over and over again. Apparently 4 is her favorite number. In Arabic. (In English it is 2).

One of the games we play while we practice our numbers is a throwing game. We emptied out one of her toy baskets and got out her blocks. Then we’d throw them into the bin one by one while counting. Rachel, in her zest for the number four, said أربعة each time I said a number, so we ended up counting like this: 1, 4, 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6, 4, and so on. It was pretty funny.

I got a video of it, but only after she had decided that she was finished playing that game and wanted to climb in the basket herself, which is why she’s so desperately trying to empty it of blocks. (Please ignore my horrible accent and stuffy nose.)

This is really quite amazing to me, from a linguistic point of view.

If I am even just practicing phonemes that I struggle with (like emphatics and glottals) that we don’t have in English, Rachel will start singing أربعة. She knows that those phonemes belong to Arabic, not English.

If she wants to read read any of her Arabic books, she knows they’re Arabic and will bring the book over to me saying أربعة. One of her favorite books right now is First Thousand Words in Arabic. I think it is because there are pictures of so many things. And because it’s so long. It’s often her first choice for a bedtime story, but I always tell her to put it back and choose a shorter book.

She also enjoys My Arabic Word Book, which is an alphabet book, not a counting book. It starts with alif, which is the first letter of the alphabet, equivalent to A. There is a picture of a rabbit on that page because rabbit, in Arabic, is أرنب (arnab), which begins with alif.

Rachel has this amazing talent of using the same word and/or phoneme to mean several others. For example, “wawa” could mean any of the following: water, wallet, or koala. “Wa” means either wall or walk. So, “walking on a wall under water with a koala carrying a wallet” could be condensed into “wa wa wawa wawa wawa.”

The same thing happens in Arabic. Not only does أربعة (arbah) mean four (and general Arabesque-ness), it is also how she says rabbit.

They’re close, arnab and arbah, so I can see how she would use the same word for both of them. Of course, everything she says in Arabic comes out as arbah right now, but there’s something particular about the way she says ‘four’ and ‘rabbit’ that makes me think she knows she’s doing it right.

Watching her learn how to talk is thrilling.

Big Sister in the Making

Disclaimer: This is only a funny story, not an announcement.

We had a game night at the Williamsons on Friday. Jaehee, Lindsey, and Daphne had made a huge feast with pancakes, fruit salad, yogurt, hash browns, almond pudding, chicken in a basket, peanut butter and jelly cookies, and a few other goodies. It was more like a feast than anything else.

The Masons were there with Finn as well. Finn is about 6 months younger than Rachel, so he's a bit shorter and isn't as quick on his feet yet. He loves electronics, though. He seems to be magnetized in some way or another and can find electronics from a mile away. He's just drawn to them.

No one was surprized, then, when he found the remote for the television. He was such a happy boy when he found it and showed it to Rachel, thinking, perhaps, that she'd be proud. That was a mistake.

Rachel marched over to Finn, yanked the remote out of his hands, and put it on top of the television, which is where we keep our remote in order to keep it out of her reach.

Then she clapped her hands and gave a celabratory, "Yaaay!"

She's pretty bossy. And she's great at enforcing rules...on people other than herself. She'll make a great big sister, don't you think?

Don't do Dido's

My mom wrote a blog post about our favorite Italian restaurant back home, Gloria's Little Italy. That got us craving some good home-baked Italian food but it was already so close to dinner time that we were already starving and neither one of us felt like making dinner. We had an appointment later on in the evening and thought we'd splurge a little and try out the new Italian restaurant that opened up on Road 9. Dido's al Dente, it's called.

We went up to the restaurant (it's on the second floor) and found it filled with locals. Completely filled. The place is tiny. They found room for us, though, and we ordered our food. Since we were starving we ordered some garlic bread for an appetizer.

When we saw the waiter approaching with our bread we got all excited. Garlic bread can do that to you.

But then he sat it down in front of us. It was green. Little pieces of toast smeared with an unappetizing paste of green.

Andrew and I looked at each other, swallowed uneasily, and picked up a piece of bread. You have to try everything once, right? And the restaurant comes recommended, so it was probably good, right?

We each took a bite, chewed slowly, and swallowed.

"This? Isn't right." I concluded.

"I'm pretty sure it's basil," Andrew said optimistically.

"No," I disagreed immediately, "It's not basil. It tastes more like seaweed than basil but I can't quite place it."

I sat, contemplating the flavor in my mouth.

"It's parsley! It's pureed parsley. This is pureed-parsley bread, not garlic bread."

I'm pretty sure that you are never supposed to puree parsley and use it as a spread. Ever.

Unfortunately, a quick Google search has proved me wrong. However, my opinion still stands firm. Parsley was not meant to be pureed. Would you puree a Caesar salad? Would you? I prefer my leafy greens leafy. That's why they're called leafy greens.

While I was busy sulking about the pathetic state of our "garlic" bread, Andrew was resourcefully using his butter knife to scrape the parsley spread off the bread. Genius.

"It's much better without it on there," he noted.

Rachel wouldn't take another bite after she had her first, but Andrew and I managed to polish off (read: stomach) the bread somehow. It was a good 45 minutes after the bread fiasco that our meal came out.

At first, when I stared at my painfully barren plate, I wondered how it could take them so long to cook up such a tiny portion but, when I stuck my fork in it and my lasagna basically dissolved before my eyes, I realized it was because they had cooked my noodles to death. My food came partially digested. It was disintegrating before it even made it into my stomach.

Rachel was excited that we had more food for her to sample.

I, however, was less excited. My lasagna was green, too. I have nothing against the color green. In fact, I even like broccoli. I can even handle Brussels sprouts. (Just not ground up, and put on toast.) My lack of enthusiasm was dulled by hunger pains and the cheese on top of my lasagna did look mighty good, but I couldn't shake the description I had read in the menu. Nothing could dull that.

Lasagna. With mice meat.

Egypt, Egypt, Egypt! Mince meat does not sound appetizing when you don't have a typo that turns it into mice. Everything here is mince meat. The word "ground" is descriptive enough, but at least it doesn't give me the heebeejeebees. And it still allows for categorization so you actually can rest assured, when you purchase your meat, what exactly it is you're eating.

"Is that ground beef or ground turkey?"

"Actually, this is just meat. Mince meat. Don't know what. Could be anything. Mice, maybe. They could have just stuck the en in there by accident. Whoever heard of mince, really?"

I probably shouldn't have gotten the lasagna, but nothing else on the menu looked very appetizing, either. So I ordered the lasagna and that's what was brought out to me. I think.

My first bite wasn't bad, but it wasn't the lasagna I had been hoping for. Rachel was just about crawling across the table to get at my plate so I gave her a bite, too. That was the only bite she asked for the entire time we were in the restaurant.

She spent the rest of the evening playing by the window. The second storey window. That was open. From floor to ceiling. And had no screen.

I made sure Andrew blocked her way to the open window and made her play on the window sill by the closed portion, which she was not happy about. It was like the glass was blocking her view or something.

Meanwhile, Andrew and I continued to try to choke down our meal. I was hardly chewing, primarily because my lasagna had turned into mush while I was trying to convince Rachel to not throw herself out the window (the restaurant wasn't that bad), but also because there were chunks of unchewable gristle and hard bone-like pieces that I just couldn't handle. And it tasted rather gamey to me.

"This? Isn't beef." I concluded.

"Sh-sh-sure it is," Andrew choked out, successfully not gagging up his meal.

"I'm pretty sure it's actually water buffalo. And probably the cheapest one they could buy, too." I suggested.

Not that I have anything against eating water buffalo. I've eaten it several times here (probably more often than I've known). Only the wild ones are endangered. Not the ones they have here that they work to death before slaughtering. Those things are so skinny and worn out there is not a whole lot of meat on their bones, which is probably why you get so much other...stuff...with it.

When I buy meat here, which I haven't done since September, I choose a cut of meat labeled "cow" or "beef" and ask the butchers to grind that. Then I know for sure that no other...stuff...accidentally got mixed in with my mince meat. I never buy the prepackaged mince meat because that usually is water buffalo. Not that I have anything against eating water buffalo, but...I just don't like "stuff" in my meat.

We finished everything on our plate because we did have to pay for it, but we definitely were not happy with our meal. It wasn't my worst dining experience. Definitely a bad one, but not the worst.

I mean, I didn't cry or anything. And I have cried over meals before.

Like the time I accidentally ordered a whole chicken (what?!) in Jordan and when they brought it to me it was bleeding still. Dripping all over my plate.

Or the time I found a chicken heart on my pizza in Russia. A whole chicken heart comfortably nestled under some innocuous-looking cheese. A whole heart.

Or when I showed up at our school in Voronezh for breakfast before teaching all day long (and I swear the lunch ladies stole our food) and all they gave us was one hardboiled egg each and some flower tea. And I was starving that day because my host mom had served mystery meat patties the night before and they were red inside still so I could hardly take a bite. And all I got for breakfast was an egg.

No, this was not a meal worth crying over but I certainly wouldn't recommend Dido's to anyone. Not even my worst enemy.

Well, maybe my worst enemy.

A conversation from the bathroom

I was busy q-tipping my ears when Andrew walked into the bathroom so I thought I'd make conversation.

"You know what? A few days ago I picked up a q-tip and put it in my ear and it didn't have a tip on it. That hurt." I said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, but don't worry. This one has a tip."

"You know what?" Andrew said guiltily, "A few weeks ago I picked up a q-tip and an extra tip popped out of the container and fell on the ground so I picked it up and threw it away. I've been checking all my q-tips ever since. I guess I forgot to warn you."

"Did I mention that it hurt?" I asked.

Next time you think about using a q-tip, make sure to check both ends before sticking it in your ear. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Luxor: Day 2, The West Bank, Part II (January 4)

Our last stop for the day was Madinat Habu, and was definitely the crème de la crème of what we saw on the West Bank. The Lonely Planted touts it as “one of the most underrated sites on the West Bank,” but we couldn’t decide between it and another place nearby. We asked our driver which was was cooler.

“They are both very interesting places,” he answered, although the likelihood of him having ever been inside either is rather slim. Most Egyptians aren’t up for tourism, even though the cost for a local to get inside any tourist site is amazingly inexpensive.

Our friend Patrick said that some of his undergrad Egyptian students don’t even know where Dashur is, and it’s just outside of Cairo. They’ve neither been to it or heard of it.

So we doubted that our driver had been to either place, especially because he gave such a laissez-faire answer.

“But if you only had time to visit one place, where would you go?” Andrew pressed further.

“Definitely Madinat Habu,” our driver answered quickly, “Definitely.”

He answered with such passion that we simply had to take his advice. Plus, he was driving. And that’s where he was currently going.

We stopped at a ticket booth in a small, sleepy town, that sold tickets to all the surrounding sites. They didn’t have any tickets left for Madinat Habu, but gave us a ticket for another destination and wrote a note on the back explaining that we actually wanted to go to Madinat Habu. They said it would work out fine because the cost of the two sites was the same so we paid a fair price.

The minute we got to Madinat Habu we were all in awe. And it was only the outside!

Andrew had to explain to the guards, dressed casually in galabias, why we didn’t have the right tickets and got stuck conversing about why we were in Egypt, the weather, and Rachel. The guard left us exclaiming that he “wish[es] that [Andrew] should be a professor, a mighty professor, and a wonderful professor.”

I happen to wish that, too. So long as it comes with a steady paycheck.

Madinat Habu not only is remarkably well preserved, it also is remarkably unpopulated by tourists. In fact the place was virtually empty which meant that we had a lot of fun. Not that you can’t have fun when there are a lot of people around, just that sometimes it’s easier to take your time and enjoy things without a crowd jostling around you.

It also means that the tourism police aren’t nearly as involved as they are in a place like, say, Karnak. Instead of actually doing their jobs they’re off smoking their hubbly bubbly so we can put Rachel in ancient tombs and do other things that we wouldn’t get away with in a more visited area.

Rachel’s enthusiasm for the ancient world didn’t last long, however, and she soon retired from running around and popping out from behind ancient pillars to cuddling in my arms.

It’s really rather unfortunate because there were so many neat things to see. She won’t remember it, anyway, but it still would have been neater for her if she had been awake.

The ceilings of many of the pylons are still intact so the paint on both the ceiling and walls is still very vibrant, and there is so much of it!

The hieroglyphics are very well preserved and were all over the place. They seriously covered almost every visible surface in the whole complex. It was amazing to see. I can’t imagine how much work it took to construct something like this!

Unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of time at Madinat Habu because we had only rented our van until 2:00 and had to get back to the hotel. We would have liked to spend more time there. At the same time, we were dog tired and wanted to get back to the hotel to relax. We’d been tramping around ancient tombs and temples since 7:00 AM and we were wiped.

Next time we go to Luxor we will be sure to go to Madinat Habu earlier in our trip so we’re not so exhausted when we get there. I that since we found Madinat Habu so impressive even after being to several other impressive sites is further evidence of how amazing Madinat Habu really is.

Even Carolee, whose “history-span” is very delicate and short enjoyed herself immensely at Madinat Habu. And she was not on board when we initially decided to visit one more thing before heading back to the hotel.

Rachel, having napped all while we were at Madinat Habu and in the van, was all napped out by the time we got to the hotel, so while everyone else relaxed in their rooms, we decided to try out the pool on the roof.

There were three little boys playing in the pool making the water look rather inviting, but when I stuck my toe in to test the temperature I began to wonder if the boys weren’t crazy. The pool was freezing cold.

“Come on! Get in!” they cheered me on in their beautiful little accents, “It’s not cold once you get in!”

“It feels really cold,” I said.

“But once you’re all the way in it’s not!” they insisted.

I sat on the deck and put my legs in the pool. They agreed with my big toe. The water was cold.

“Hi!” said a little boy, coming up to Rachel and me.

“Hello,” I said.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“America.” I said.

“I thought so,” he said.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Ireland!” he chirruped.

“I thought so,” I said.

“Are you going to get in?” he asked again.

I’m a sucker for accents, I guess, because I ended up in the pool. But only for a few minutes.

Andrew watched, laughing, while Rachel and I tried our very best to “get used to the water,” something that was only supposed to take “a few minutes.” We gave it our very best shot but ended up shivering with goose bumps, so we got out.

“Cold?” Andrew asked.

“Very.” I answered.

He had come up to the roof with us, in his swimsuit, but suggested that he take some pictures of the view while we tried out the water. Isn’t he chivalrous?

We ended up moving our pool party inside to a steaming hot bath, leaving the little Irish boys with the icy cold pool all to themselves. Rachel and I found it a little squishy, but much more pleasant!

The day really wore her out, though, so even though she wasn’t ready for a nap when we got back to the hotel she fell asleep long before we expected her to at bedtime.

It’s hard to enforce bedtime when you’re on vacation. Sometimes we’d leave her alone in the dark (because that’s how she’s used to falling asleep) while we hung out in the Schilling’s room next door. Sometimes we’d turn off as many lights as we could do without and would sit quietly on the other side of the bed, hiding from her. And other times we’d put her in her crib with some toys and tell her to play until she wanted to go to sleep and then to just lie down.

This particular evening she conked out mid-imaginary-phone call. She’s too cute.