Now fully collapsible!

We were gifted a Kelty Ridgeline Framed Baby Carrier when our friends Sara and Kevan left for the States. That means we’ve had it for about a year now—and it’s been useful and we’re grateful for it. However, it’s bulky and no matter how we fiddled with it we couldn’t figure out how to collapse it or fold it or make it smaller in any way.

It doesn’t fit well in taxis. It doesn’t fit through metal detectors. It doesn’t fit through Hezekiah's Tunnel. It’s great when there’s a kid in it but not so great when there isn’t a kid in because it’s huge and doesn’t fit much of anywhere.

Amelioration

Sometimes Rachel likes to make her life easier. This doesn’t mean that she makes life easier for everyone else around. It simply means that she does things to make her own life easier.

For example, in the joy and confusion that having the Palmers live close by has brought into her young life, Rachel has had to make up a few nicknames. Her sister, Miriam, has it easy. She just gets called “my Meme.” Again, Rachel says this to rhyme with “theme.”

The other Miriam, though? She calls her “Bidmeam.” As in Big Meme.

Donkeys at Dar es-Salaam

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

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

Zagazig

I’m not going to lie: We originally opted to visit this city solely because of its name, hoping that there was something else cool enough about it to warrant a trip. Zagazig? Who wouldn’t want to go there? It’s like zigzag…only backwards. Granted, they don’t say zag-a-zig in Egypt. They drop the Gs so it comes out like za-a-zi, but still, it’s a cool name.

Zagazig is a bustling town in the Delta, with a population of around 279,000, according to Wikipedia. It claims the ruins of the ancient city Bubastis, or Tell Basta, named after the feline goddess Bastet, and is possibly the city Pi-beseth, mentioned in Ezekiel 30:17.

Kerdasa Bazaar

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

Ain Sokhna Finale

After church on Friday we headed out to Ain Sokhna for one last hurrah at the Red Sea. It was wonderful, of course. Rachel was so excited to start playing at the beach.

Bowling at Bounce

Our friends invited us to go bowling with them and we jumped at the chance. We actually like going bowling…we just haven’t been for a few years. We hadn’t realized that there was a bowling alley here, but there is. It’s called Bounce Sports Entertainment.

Bowling is not exactly a popular sport in the Middle East.

Mohammed and Ahmed were evidence of that. Those poor blokes were bowling their best and ended up not doing too well at all…not that I was checking out their score board or anything, but…their final scores were in the 30s and 50s, which is so, so sad.

Mo, who is five, scored higher than them.

No vegetables today

Last week we went to the Houses’ house for dinner. I made Andrew hold Miriam while we ate because I wanted, for once, to be able to eat without her sitting on my lap. She makes things tricky.

Half way through the meal Andrew got fed up with Miriam grabbing at everything and asked, “Are there any cucumbers left?”

Everyone at the table stopped eating to stare at him, jaws dropped, forks froze in midair, and silence reigned. We were all thinking the same thing—did he seriously just ask for cucumbers?

“For the baby,” he said, breaking our stunned silence. 

With that little misunderstanding cleared up we made sure to pass the cucumbers and then went back to clearing our plates.

Toy shelves

The girls have a new game where they pull toys off the bottom shelf until there is room for them to get on the shelf themselves.

Not as short as Daddy’s

Last night I convinced Rachel to let me cut her hair. She hasn’t wanted me to, insisting that she likes it long, but I just couldn’t take it any more. Every morning I have to fight her to let me brush her hair, to let me fix her hair. I have to fight her to let me shampoo her hair, rinse her hair, condition her hair, rinse her hair…

We battle over hair too many times a day.