Touring Torat

Mostly I just stay inside all day. It’s hot and the thought of going anywhere with Rachel recently makes me more tired than I already am. So we usually only go out when Daddy’s home. People don’t stare as much when we go out with him, anyway, so I feel more comfortable.

It’s not that I never go anywhere by myself, like tomorrow there’s a Relief Society breakfast and I’m planning on going to that, it’s just that if I have to go somewhere I’d rather go with Andrew, especially if I have to take Rachel. She’s heavy and my hips have somehow been swallowed by my belly so there isn’t anywhere for her to sit.

Today I suggested, though, that we go for a family walk. We haven’t done that in a long time because Cairo isn’t really set up for casual strolling, not really. But I just thought it might calm Miriam down.

For exercise all we do is yoga and run around the apartment, Rachel and I. And I think that works for our current situation.

But seriously, I thought walking would put Miriam to sleep. It didn’t. But we did see some interesting things.

Andrew saw my walk suggestion and raised me an adventure-walk suggestion.

“Let’s go see what’s on the other side of Road 87,” he said.

Oddly enough we’ve never walked that way. Mostly it’s because there isn’t really anything there for “expats.” After crossing Road 87 there are a few more nice-looking apartment buildings. A friendly expat couple saw our little family walking and they hollered and waved to us from their balcony. They wanted Rachel to wave to them, but she wouldn’t. My guess is that they miss their own grandchildren…

Not too long past those nice-looking buildings, though, things begin to get squished by ramps leading to and from the autostrade. The overpass carrying the autostrade traffic acts almost like a portal to another dimension.

Once you cross that, you are no longer in Maadi. The expat world is a memory and you have entered “real” Cairo.

Truthfully, it’s quite friendly. It’s quieter than Maadi and seemed more like a neighbourhood than anything I’ve seen recently. Rachel spent the whole time on Andrew’s shoulders chanting “neighbourhood.” She likes to repeat new words.

Children were playing in the street with balls and kites. Little babies were running around being chased by unveiled girls (inevitably they were baby-borrowers) while the veiled women stood around and chatted. Older boys lounged around parked cars, probably dreaming of driving one day, while their fathers sat airing out on balconies, wearing nothing but their underclothes while smoking hubbly-bubbly and drinking tea.

The alleys between the buildings were unlandscaped. Trash was heaped up all along the side; youths used these areas as makeshift soccer fields, kicking empty soda pop bottles around.

Cars here actually drive cautiously, probably because if they hit someone it could very well be their own child or neighbour. They don’t seem to take the risks the taxis take in Maadi (or anywhere else in Cairo, for that matter).

Everyone looked so comfortable, relaxed, and happy that I almost wanted to look for a vacant apartment to rent. Almost, but not quite.

I had to remember that we have stray cat, stray dog, rat, cockroach, and ant problems in our neighbourhood and we don’t have trash insulating the first foot (or 5) of our apartment building. Sanitation is not a skill that Cairo has fine-tuned. Maadi is cleaner than Tora, but it was still nice to see regular, happy people out and about on a Friday evening.

Unfortunately we have no pictures from that part of our walk because I wasn’t brave enough to take out my camera. I’m a little camera-shy. People here eye me suspiciously, anyway, but when I have our big camera out they start to look really nervous and that makes me feel nervous, too. We’ve been asked more than once if we’re spies.

When we found a bridge going over the metro near the Torat al-Balad station, we got excited because we found the metro parking lot. I don’t know why we found that so exciting, but we did. Aren’t those usually at the end of the line, though? This one is kind of in the middle of the line, which we thought was weird.

Maybe the reason we actually got excited is because Andrew asked someone where we were and we finally learned we were in Tora.

While we were standing on the pedestrian bridge, admiring the view and the beginnings of a sunset, we heard the most beautiful adhan we had ever heard. The muezzin had the most beautiful voice and created a tantalizing melody that magically danced around the sky scrapers and made it to our ears unharrassed by either speaker-crackling or car-honking. It was so beautiful that Rachel hardly recognized it as a call to prayer at all.

When a raspy, grinding muezzin burst out chanting the adhan slowly and drowsily (and cutting off the other muezzin's beautiful voice) as if he were bored to tears, she immediately recognized it and folded her arms.

We finished crossing the bridge and continued wandering through Tora. The residential and commercial blended entirely. It was busier here than the quiet neighbourhood we had just passed, but families were still out socializing and working together.

We passed a few colorfully decorated shops. I saw more tea and shisha shops on this strip of road than I’ve possibly ever seen in my life.

We were happy to see many repair shops around. One of the tires on the jogging stroller is absolutely thrashed. We need a new one—this one is shredded the whole way around and can’t be patched—but haven’t been able to find a bicycle repair shop anywhere.

Tora has one.

They have car shops and bike shops and plumbing shops and tea shops and butchers galore. Need a new exhaust pipe? Visit Tora.

Our landlord actually just stopped by to pick up this month’s rent and Andrew asked him about our bathtub tap. It breaks like every month and is driving us crazy. We’ve had so many plumbers come in that it isn’t even funny.

Hatim looked at it and said it would be a simple fix, that the tap itself was stripped so we just needed a new one.

Andrew said we’d go to Road 9 tomorrow and get one.

“Do you know the neighbourhood Tora?” Hatim asked.

“Actually,” answered Andrew, “We do.”

Apparently Tora is the place to go for home improvement projects small and large. There are plumbing places on Road 9, but prices are much lower in Tora. Part of that might be because the cost of living is cheaper in Tora. How much can you really charge for someone to live or set up shop in a building that is visibly crumbling?

My guess is not very much. Buildings like that are occupied, but probably should be condemned. Here today, pile of rubble tomorrow…

Our apartment is pretty shoddy, truthfully, but it doesn’t look near as bad as the apartments in Tora or other places in the city—where apartment buildings that really do spontaneously collapse.

We were wondering, really, what possessed us to finish crossing that bridge and continue deeper into “real” Cairo, especially when Andrew was dressed in shorts. Perhaps it was a little inspiration because today is the first day anyone has ever asked us if we know the Tora district. We have also been praying to find a bike shop so we could finally fix our poor, beaten up stroller.

(We’re planning on going back tomorrow, but Andrew’s going to wear pants).

Our walk home was interesting since we didn’t really know where we were and only had a general idea of where we were going. We didn’t want to backtrack, so we just kept walking. Soon we found people popping out from behind a little wall. We decided to follow them to see if this was some secret passage back to Maadi (you never know).

There was a well-worn path behind the wall leading down into what I figure used to be a canal but is more of a garbage dump now.

We kept following people and came to a strange bridge. Everyone was walking under it, so we did, too.

When I looked up, I noticed train tracks. We didn’t even realize that we had crossed directly under the metro—and I mean we had to hunch over, we were so directly under it—until it started whizzing past us. It was a bit of a surprise; we were just happy that we had cleared the tracks before the train came or we would have been really shocked!

Lo and behold, after we had crossed under the bridge and walked up the embankment of the has-been canal, we found ourselves back in Maadi. The difference was plainly stark. Before we weren’t in Maadi. Now we obviously were.

Even Rachel knew we were back in Maadi. Maadi is kind of an oasis in Cairo.

“Ooh, Maadi!” she exclaimed when we came up on the other side.

We weren’t exactly sure where we were at first. My guess was Road 9, but Andrew didn’t agree with me…at first. Turns out I was right, which was exciting because I am so rarely right about these things. I think I’ve spent half my life being lost and wondering where I am.

It was nice to know for sure (for once). Even then I wasn’t 100% positive on our exact location until we came to the bus stop (where Andrew is in habit of getting hit) and saw the lights of the Sakanat al-Maadi mosque glowing a soft green and silhouetting bats diving gracefully after mosquitoes.

“Home!” said Rachel when she saw the mosque.

It was already past her bedtime and she kept nodding off and banging her face on Andrew’s head. She was ready to climb into the comfort of her own bed.

It’s almost funny to me that this mosque represents “almost home” to Rachel. I’ve had many “almost home” markers in my life. The “Happy Face Barn,” the Great Canadian Superstore, the canal before Nighthawk drive, Target, Costco, and many others…but never a mosque. Until now, I guess.

Sister Heiss?! Nooo!

Yesterday when Sam was giving me a hug goodbye (for the last time...sniff, sniff) he said,

"Goodbye, Sister Heiss!"

This was not unusual because that is what Sam calls me. It's what he's always called me. It's what his brother and sister call me and what every other child in primary calls me. It's been that way the whole time we've lived here.

Apparently this was the first time Rachel registered what he was saying. She looked up at me, shocked, and said,

"Sister Heiss?!"

She's been wondering about that ever since. She takes an incredulous tone, looks at me, and says, "Sister Heiss?! Nooo!"

I must admit that I am still getting used to hearing that refer to myself, myself.

Today at dinner Rachel was talking about the new baby (we talk about the baby a lot; Rachel has a lot of questions about the baby). She told us it was in my tummy and wondered if I was feeding the baby, too. She likes to make sure the baby gets enough to eat and drink and will sometimes put food or water on my stomach...for the baby.

She's taken to calling the baby "Baby Sis-sis," which will do until she can say Miriam (which might take a while; you should hear her try--it's quite hilarious).

"What is Baby Sis-sis's name?" we asked her because sometimes we just like to hear her try to say Miriam. Because it's hilarious.

She looked at us in silence, took a deep breath, and answered confidently, "Baby Heiss!"

Then she looked at me and laughed, "Sis-sis Heiss?! Noooo!"

Andrew tried explaining the whole "last name" concept to her. It went completely over her head, poor girl.

Flashback Friday: Twister

Way back in the day, when we lived in High River, before my sister lived next door, and before the Olsons had moved in, our next-door- neighbour friends were Hollis and Harley. (No really...those were their names. Didn't I ever tell you that I lived in a "Modern Town with a Western Tradition," whose population didn't hit 10,000 until 2005, and that I not-so-secretly think is the Canadian equivalent to Hicksville, USA? Well, I did.) I can never remember what their last name is; I always want to say it's Davidson, but I'm pretty positive that's not right.

They were fine neighbours, but they were boys. That meant that we ended up playing street hockey and other boyish activities lot which, as the only girl on my street, meant that I had to fight to be included in anything my brothers did after school.

Their parents were nice, too, but they weren't the type of people we had over for dinner and we weren't the type of people we had over for dinner. Apparently, because we never did. But they were good "fence neighbours" like Wilson on Home Improvement. Our moms would chat if they came home from work at the same time. Sometimes we'd knock on each other's door looking for stray children.

Their dad would sit outside on his "smoking chair" and smoke because he wasn't allowed to smoke in the house. He'd just sit outside and watch us play while getting his fix. Sometimes he really looked like he was enjoying himself, like when he'd come out to smoke during a beautiful late evening sunset in the summer. Other times he didn't look so comfortable, like when he'd go out to smoke during a beautiful early evening sunset in the dead of winter. Even we weren't outside playing then; we'd just peek out the windows and wonder if he really thought it was worth it. Apparently he did because he kept doing it.

Our yard was an interesting shape. My dad always described it as "pie shaped," but I never understood that. I suppose it could be considered "wedge-shaped," although that makes me think of triangles and our yard certainly wasn't a triangle, either. It was definitely narrower in the front than in the back, like how a triangle might look if you cut off one of the tips. Wouldn't that be called a trapezoid? I think so. Our yard was shaped like a trapezoid. It was a very long trapezoid and probably would have turned into a triangle soon after crossing the street, if we followed our property lines.

There was a time when we didn't have a fence, so the combined space of our neighbours' (Harley and Hollis, remember?) yard with ours made an excellent mini-field for games like tag and jackpot and catch. The backyard was big, but with the balcony, swing set, trampoline, and garden there were too many obstacles to avoid, so mostly we stuck to playing between our houses. Unless, of course, we were making use of the trampoline or swing set.

One summer afternoon, things got eerily quiet and the sky turned a dark purplish-grey color. We ended our game and went inside, unsure of what the weather had in store for us.

Southern Alberta is prone to rather surprising weather. Freak snowstorms and killer hailstorms in the summer; warm Chinook winds or blizzards in the winter. The weather is anything but constant. It can be -20 one day and +10 the next. You can go to bed in June, expecting to run in the sprinklers the next day, only to wake up to a few inches of snow. The weather just isn't something you can count on.

Wikipeida has this to say about the weather around Calgary (emphasis added):

General seasons (not well-defined in Calgary due to highly variable climate)

• Winter: mid-October to mid-April
• Spring: mid-April to May
• Summer: June to August
• Autumn: September to mid-October

After retiring indoors, we sat by our bay window to watch the storm clouds gather at an alarming rate. The sky was swirling, the wind was howling, thunder was crackling, and soon the yard was covered with hailstones. We thought it was a pretty good storm.

And then it got worse. The sound was deafening and the force amazing. My dad instructed us to close the windows and let out the drain pipes, so we quickly ran outside to let down the pipes to the gutters, and then ran back inside to close the windows. Our windows were hinged and swung open to the outside. To close them you had to crank a little handle. As hard as we cranked, no one could get the windows to close. The wind kept sucking them open.

The weather was absolutely raging.

Later, our neighbours' mom would describe it to the local newspaper. "It sounded like a train running between the houses," she said. Or at least, that's what I remember her saying. I didn't want to pay the $15 required to look up the article in the archives (lame!), but apparently a tornado went right between our house and next door. Our rooftop was featured in the local news because our neighbour had run outside to snap a picture of the funnel after it had passed.

I suppose it wasn't exactly a full-blown tornado when it was going between our houses, though. It had already touched down by the train tracks and ruined a few steel grain silos. It touched down again (or a second tornado from the same storm did) on Highway 2, after it had passed our house, and basically landed on a semi-truck, completely mangling it and the driver inside (who happened to be one of my mom's cousins). He was rescued by the jaws of life, and miraculously made a full recovery. His company, however, fired him for damaging company property, or something lame like that. I can't remember quite, but at a family gathering in Raymond, some of the grownups were talking about it and everyone was pretty upset about it.

We were lucky it didn't touch down by our house. I imagine would would have had some pretty hefty damage if it had. All it did was throw Patrick's little teeder todder across the yard and blow another neighbour's outside furniture around.

Still, it was the scariest storm I had ever witnessed and made me rethink the thrill of being a "storm chaser" (this was back in the mid-1990s and the movie Twister had either just come out or was about to). Oddly enough, I can't find any record of this happening (in the news (Calgary Herald only has online archives through 2004) or on wikipedia), although I know it did and I know it was reported about. I wonder if I'll ever find real documentation about this...

I don't remember this

I'm 21 weeks along today. Happily, that pushes me officially over the halfway point, very happily.

While everyone else who is approximately as pregnant as I am is talking about how wonderful and magical it is to feel the baby move, I have been reduced to tears on more than one occasion. Not the "oh-how-sweet" tears, either, but the "yikes-what-is-this-child-doing-to-me?!" tears.

This baby doesn't even weigh a pound yet and we already have limbs popping out of my stomach! Limbs, people!

The cute, squishy, swirly movements are still there (almost constantly, I might add), and I'm always appreciative of those because it reassures me that the baby is alive and well, but at least once a day I get absolutely pummeled.

I hate to allude to the Twilight series, but I seriously feel I could be Bella Swan right now (almost). To quote from some Twilight Lexicon fan site, "...The strength of the fetus left bruises on Bella’s abdomen..."

I don't have any bruising yet but, honestly, I find that surprising.

Usually the baby only starts doing her "martial arts" when her territory is being...squished...in some form or another. For example, if Rachel's elbow is resting on my stomach, Miriam goes wild, trying to reclaim her territory. If I am folding my arms, which then naturally fall down to my belly, Miriam gives them a wailing.

Such was the case tonight at dinner when I was saying the blessing on the food. She kicked so hard it felt like someone flicked my arm or poked me with a stick or something. I completely lost my train of thought and stumbled through the rest of the prayer.

It's not only external factors that drive her crazy, though. If I happen to eat (which I do several times throughout the day), Miriam starts to kick my stomach as if it's encroaching on her personal space or something. Granted, I have no idea where any of my internal organs are right now, but it certainly feels like she's kicking my stomach. It hurts and it makes me feel queasy.

Yesterday we had FHE right after dinner and Miriam was alternatively kicking my stomach and down by my lower back. I was in so much agony that I actually teared up. She moved so much that she spurred on some Braxton Hicks, which, thankfully, quieted her down a little.

I seriously don't know how I'm going to survive as she gets bigger and stronger. I don't remember it hurting this badly this early with Rachel, who was also a wriggly thing.

The Tetris Song

Last night Andrew and I were talking about "the future" and we got off on a little tangent. We are narrowing down the list of schools Andrew wants to apply for, one of which is Cornell, the school that the character Andy Bernard (from The Office) went to. Earlier that day, Andrew had been listening to 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," a segment by NPR that invites famous people on for interviews/to answer amazingly random questions, and Ed Helms, who plays Andy Bernard, was on.

Apparently he really does play the banjo and is pretty active on banjo forums and things like that. So he's apparently pretty musical.

One of the questions he was asked was about "The Tetris Song." And that's how we got onto our tangent.

"How does that song go?" Andrew asked me. "I can't think of the tune!"

I sang in the Russian Choir at BYU for a few years, which was a whole lot of fun. Ironically enough, the director of the choir was named David Layton and pretty much the whole choir thought we were married for quite some time. The fact that my maiden name is Layton didn't help quell any rumors nor did the fact that my brother's name is David and we were required to provide a black binder to hold our music and the only one that I could find at home had "DAVID LAYTON" written on the spine with permanent marker.

I didn't know that anyone thought we were married until a girl asked me, "So what are you going to do after David graduates? Are you going to move back to Alaska or head somewhere else?"

I looked at her, utterly confused, and said, "Alaska?"

"Yeah, of course Alaska. That's where your husband is from."

And then I looked at her even more confused and said, "Husband?"

"Oh, David's not your husband?"

Yeah, no. David's not my husband. And I wasn't even married at the time (I finished my degree before Andrew returned home from his mission). That conversation was plain awkward--more for her than for me, I'm sure.

Still, choir was a lot of fun and I still have a lot of the music tucked away in a black binder with "DAVID LAYTON" written on the spine. It's...somewhere. I still sing some songs occasionally because we sang some really fun songs, including "The Tetris Song."

But for some reason, "The Tetris Song" just wasn't coming to me last night. The first song I thought of was Katyusha (English or Russian). I started singing that.

"No, no, no!" Andrew said in agony, "That's not right! I almost had the tune and now it's gone!"

He started humming a tune. Gas Truck Theme Song #1 (also known as Lambada) popped into my head. That definitely wasn't right, either. I didn't start humming that one because I didn't want to throw Andrew off the trail.

Next I thought of Kalinka (English or Russian) but I also knew that one didn't go with Tetris.

"It's about a guy carrying a basket and his shoulders get tired so he sets it down...you know any songs like that?" Andrew would ask before closing his eyes and working through some more music in his head.

And then, after about a half hour of wracking our brains, Andrew spilled out a sequence of notes that finally sounded familiar.

"...Пожалей, моя зазнобушка, Молодецкого плеча!" I finished for him, "Korobushka!"

"That's it!" said Andrew.

I sang the bits that I could remember to him. I haven't sung that song in a long time, so I couldn't sing very much, but it was nice to know that we finally figured out what the song was. (Korobushka in English or Russian).

"You know," Andrew admitted, "I knew all along the song was called Korobushka. Would that have helped you figure out the tune?"

Oi! Polna, polna! D'ya think?!

Of course, my subconscious was on the right track all along. I seemed to be going through songs that start with the letter K: Kalinka, Katyusha...I don't know why Lambada popped in there but...I'm sure I would have thought of Korobushka eventually. I'm just glad we thought of the song before 2 o'clock in the morning.

We're both a little nerdy and once we think of a question need an answer. Wikipedia and Google have solved so many of our "disagreements." We were just about ready to race to our computers so that we could find out the answer. In this case, whoever found the answer first would have "won" because we weren't really disagreeing, we just couldn't think of the answer. That means Andrew would have "won" because his computer boots up way faster than mine.

Usually, though, we look things up because one of us says something and the other says, "No way!" and then we have to look it up to see who's right and who's wrong. It doesn't matter who finds the answer first, necessarily, but that whoever was right in the first place is vindicated.

You'd be surprised how many times we've gotten up out of bed to look things up in the dictionary or on wikipedia. Too many times, really.

We both won last night, though, because Ed Helms didn't know that "The Tetris Song" was Russian, and we both did. So, now we're smarter than Andy Bernard, right? And he went to Cornell, so Andrew could definitely get in, too, right?

Granted, Ed Helms isn't Andy Bernard, has no known ties to Russia, and plays the banjo, not the balalaika (although he did teach himself how to play the sitar, so maybe the balalaika will be next). So how could he be expected to know much about "The Tetris Song?" I don't think he even went to Cornell so this probably isn't going to up our chances of getting in any since they only accept 2 applicants per year. Still, Cornell is on our list of "top 5 schools to apply to."

Rachel stories

All day today, Rachel's been telling me about all the people who are coming to visit us.

"Bamba's tomin'! Naanii's tomin' too! Uncon Patwit tomin' too! Damma's tomin' too! Dosie's tomin' too! Uncon Jay-bop tomin' too! Bamba's tomin' too! Naanii's tomin' soon, soon, soon!"

Everyone's names keep evolving. Bamba is Grandpa, Patwit is Patrick, Jay-bop is Jacob...Rachel knows exactly who's coming, although her order is a little sketchy. She is very excited to have so many visitors. I just hope she realizes that "soon, soon, soon!" means 8 weeks away--that's when Naanii, our first visitor, arrives. That's a long time away still, but I'm sure she'll be excited then, too.

We told her Grandma will be coming when it's time for the baby to be born. I'm still not sure she understands that there actually is a baby coming to our house, but she'll understand soon enough. Last night at dinner we were talking about the baby and Rachel said that she was the baby.

"You're not a baby! You're our big girl!" I told her.

"Dacher--not big girl!" she objected.

"Then what are you if you're not a baby and you're not a big girl?" I asked.

"Dacher--little girl!"

I told her that was true; she is our little girl. And then I used the word "compromise" to explain the exchange we had just had, which she repeated almost fluently as "tom-pro-mise." Sometimes the things that come out of her mouth absolutely shock me, and not in a bad way.

Sure, there are the words that we wish she didn't know (nipple, wedgie, gas, among others) but mostly she shocks me with the good things she says. She already forms rather complex sentences that are usually not quite grammatically correct and she ends up sounding like the LOL cats. Still not bad for a 2-year-old.

"What should we have for lunch?" I asked aloud in the kitchen. Rachel was there to answer, of course, since she is my second (and much more painfully full-contact) shadow.

Rachel wandered around for a minute and then brought me a can of dinosaur spaghetti-o's.

"Maybe we can has dis!" she chirped happily, thrusting the can into my thigh instead of my hand.

It was all I could do to not crack up laughing. Not only was her sentence hilarious, but she said it with such emotion. Emotion that communicated quite clearly the underlying mesage of, "If you say yes, I will be the happiest child on the planet. Just a hint."

She has actually been an amazingly happy child recently, playing by herself for hours. All I did was give her a shoebox and told her it was a crib for her baby doll. She has been spending all day everyday taking care of her baby: feeding, bathing, napping, walking, etc. It has been great.

We put her down for a nap yesterday and she never took that nap, but played quietly by herself for a full hour in her bedroom. It was amazing. When I opened the door to tell her that she could come out (since she obviously wasn't going to go to sleep) she said,

"Dacher--not sleep. Playing. I wake up from playing!"

I'm not sure that's something you can really wake up from...but, whatever.

Her attention to detail is sometimes a bit taxing. We just drew a family picture together before I started writing this. She is still working on coloring it but just finished freaking out about something I forgot.

"Mommy! Glasses! On! Glasses! On! Glasses! On! Mooooooommmmmmy!"

I had forgotten to draw glasses on my self-portrait and this was very perplexing. She had tried to draw her own glasses using a purple crayon, but I guess wasn't satisfied with the results so requested my amazing crayon-weilding skills to draw a proper pair.

Other times she's amazingly ignorant of things, like how Daddy went to school today. He's been home so long, I guess she got used to having him around. So, even though she saw him leave, she insisted the whole morning that he was still home. He was just hiding, waiting to pop out from behind something to scare her. She tip-toed around the house all morning, poking her head cautiously around corners, and asking if I knew where he was.

When he didn't show up for lunch she finally realized that he really had gone for the day.

I should probably stop typing Rachel stories soon because she's currently prancing around the house with a basket, scattering toys like some sort of demented flower girl and singing, "Oh, no! Mess up! Oh, no! Mess up!"

And we just swept and mopped the whole house, too, so that's a little depressing and a little less-cute than other things that she does.

Or, you could wear a CTR ring

During sharing time a few weeks ago we made cards to give to all our friends and teachers that would shortly be moving away, and also for Sister Tueller, our chorister, who is back in the States for surgery/chemo. Our branch is rather transitory and dissolves at the start of summer; typically we gain several new members at the end of summer, or so I'm told.

The card-making involved lots of paper and scissors and Mr. Sketch felt pens. With 20 some-odd kids in primary, havoc reigned. Paper, scissors, and felt pens were being passed around pell-mell. I, myself, received a nasty paper cut, but there were no other serious casualties, for which I was grateful. I was having visions of someone's eye being poked out or a felt getting stuck up someone's nose or something equally grotesque.

Everyone was having fun creating their cards while chatting, and saying goodbye. I was wandering around the room, looking at the children's work, and occasionally helping someone spell a particularly tricky last name like "Tueller" or "Meservy."

We were running out of time and trying to wrap of the pandemonium, when I saw that Keji was harboring a blueberry scented felt pen (not the sky blue, blueberry slushie scented one (that indecently ended up getting Mr. Sketch banned from our house after my mom found Patrick, then about 2 years old, with a sky blue mouth (we weren't supposed to leave the felt pens where he could reach them)). No, not the sky blue felt, but the dark blue one). She looked from the pen to her arm and back at the pen. I knew what was coming.

She uncapped the felt pen and hastily drew a whoppingly ginormous cross on her arm.

"أنا مسيحى" she crooned, looking rather self-satisfied. "I'm a Christian!"

Obviously emulating the Copts (since many tattoo a Coptic Cross on their right arm) Keji felt like she was really professing her faith--only she did it on her left arm, since she is right handed, with a very water-soluble medium. Someone's got to get this girl a CTR ring!

Keji is one of two Sudanese children in our primary (her brother is Farayella) and they can be a challenge to teach since we all struggle communicating with them. Even those of us with a little knowledge of Arabic (or those of us with a firm grasp of Arabic, like Andrew, or the Egyptian members) struggle understanding this poor little family.

Most of our primary children with their cupcakes

(For the cupcake story, go here)

But they come faithfully, which I admire, because it is hard to not understand, to look different, to feel different.

Lucky for me, I'm not the odd-ball out in our branch here, but I've been the odd-ball out before. In Russia I sat through meetings grabbing words here and there, trying to piece them together, or, if I was lucky enough to sit by someone who could translate, straining to hear a whispered, halting translation until I understood enough to get by on my own.

In Jordan (in the al-Husn branch, the only soley Arabic-speaking branch of the church) I was shooed off to Relief Society, separated from all the other English-speaking girls, who should have been in Relief Society with me, but were invited to attend Young Women because they weren't yet married. I was given a manual and asked to follow along in Arabic. I was young, I was white, and I didn't speak any Arabic. I was very different from everyone else in the room. And that was scary.

So I really admire the courage of Keji and Farayella, how they come to church weekly and try their best to keep up with what's happening, how they try to learn the words to the songs, how they (usually) willingly go to their classes to sit with children they can hardly communicate with to listen to a lesson they don't fully understand.

I hope that Keji and Farayella understand that they are children of God. I hope that is the reason they come to church. That is the reason I go to church--because I am a child of God and He has a plan of happiness for me and I want to learn all I can about that plan. It doesn't matter if I don't fit in, if I struggle with a commandment here and there, or if I smell funny. I belong with Heavenly Father's children.

I'm not about to go and stamp that on my forehead, but I do wear a CTR ring. I've worn various CTR rings since I was first given one when graduated from Star B to CTR A,* but I've always wear one. It reminds me of who I am, what I believe, and what I stand for. It helps me remember that I am a child of God and that I can pray to him anytime, anywhere, even if I feel a little out of place. It helps me remember that we are all children of God and that I have that in common with everybody.

I guess, in a way, it's kind of like a cross or a tefillin or Dhikr beads. Still, someone ought to get that girl a CTR ring!

*Back when I went to primary we had Sunbeams, Star, CTR, Valiant, and even Blazers/Merrie Miss (though that was abolished by the time I entered and we were down to Sunbeams, CTR, and Valiant classes; Valiant 12 was such a letdown compared to Merrie Miss!).

Flashback Friday: School Clothes

Near the end of every summer while I was growing up my mom would take us school clothes shopping. It was definitely necessary because we outgrew our clothes every year for quite a few years in a row, and while we did abound in hand-me-downs, it was always nice to get a few new outfits.

Ideally, we'd change out of our new clothes and into "play clothes" after school so that our new outfits would stay nice-looking longer.

One year, I believe it was grade 2, I picked out a Little Mermaid outfit, complete with accessories. I had a Little Mermaid shirt, Little Mermaid shorts, socks, shoes, and a headband. And you'd better believe that I wore them all at the same time. I have a picture somewhere, but not here.

Another lovely little number I had was a troll doll sweatsuit. The front of my sweatshirt featured a humongous troll head, while the back was royal purple to match the sweatpants. I probably looked like a walking plum, but I thought I was pretty stylin'.

In grade four I picked out a Lion King t-shirt, but my favorite outfit was a blue skirt and vest combo.

In grade five I got a number of t-shirts and sweaters as well as a few pairs of jeans, but nothing with an overarching Disney or Mattel theme. I guess I got a little sick of being a walking billboard.

That's kind of when my clothes-shopping slowed down. Not only had I stopped growing as much, but I was finally fitting in my sister's rejected clothes better, and I was terrible to shop with. I never liked anything, would try a million different things on and never buy anything. My mom hated shopping with me; I don't blame her.

Back in the day when I was little and cute and still fit in the front seat of a shopping cart, I remember going clothes shopping with my mom. I'm sure some of my siblings were there, but I don't remember who. All I know is that we were going clothes shopping and I was sitting in the cart. That probably meant that I wasn't even school-aged yet, otherwise Patrick would have been sitting in the cart.

My mom was pushing the cart and every now and then would lean over and use my head to push her glasses up on her nose instead of letting go of the cart with one hand and pushing up her glasses herself. I found this very irritating. Somehow I found a way to bring it up.

"But you're my scratching post," my mom said.

"What's a scratching post?" I asked.

"Sometimes when cows are itchy they'll rub up against a fence post. That's a scratching post."

My mom grew up on a farm in Southern Alberta. Although I was born in a small town in Southern Alberta, most of my memories were centered around the bustling metropolis of Vancouver, British Columbia. The idea of seeing a cow scratch itself on a post was a little foreign.

"But you're not a cow and I'm not a fence," I pointed out, dismissing the analogy.

Children develop impressive reasoning skills at a very young age, I am learning from my daily conversations with Rachel. (I tried to get her to give up a crayon at church today by trading it with her toy tiger. She refused. Why? Because. "Two hands! Bof hands hold. One hand--cowor," she said, referring to the crayon she had a death grip on, "'Nover one--yion." She gets lions and tigers confused all the time, but this was a tiger and the crayon belonged to the church. I stopped trying to reason with her and just took the crayon. Rebekah and Jessa distracted her by taking her down to the kitchen for a cup of water).

My other memory is about our neighbours in High River. Trina was pregnant with their sixth child and they were about to move to Oklahoma so that Brad could go to grad school (to get his PhD in accounting, I think). Needless to say, they were kind of pinching pennies.

Trina had a big container of coins that they had collected throughout the year. Change from pockets, coins from couch cushions, money from any random source would go into this jar. In Andrew's world, this would be considered "free money" at this point since it was completely off the books. This was the fund for our neighbour's school clothes that coming year.

I spent a lot of time helping them get ready to move, since they moved when I was in middle school and was homeschool and therefore home all day everyday. One of the jobs she gave Tacy and I was to count all the money and roll the coins so that she could take them to the bank (because she didn't think paying with pennies would make the cashier happy for some reason).

We counted up a couple hundred dollars of loose change. I was amazed! I hadn't realized that you could collect that much money in coins in one year. Of course, I was like 13 and had $60 to my name, so yeah, a couple hundred dollars sounded pretty astronomical.

When I first recalled doing this, I thought, "Oh, boy! That's going to be us when Andrew's in his PhD program! Pinching pennies all the way through!"

Then I remembered that, while we'll definitely be pinching pennies, we'll only have two children when he starts his PhD program (if we ever get around to applying...it could happen...you never know) and that we have no hope of collecting that much money in coins. Society has become much more cashless in the last decade. I can't remember the last time I went searching under the couch cushions for money--why bother? I never have any coins in my pockets.

I still think it's nice to get something new to wear every once in a while. Wearing new things makes me feel spoiled and pretty. Unfortunately I haven't outgrown anything in years and it's really hard for me to get rid of things so I have become something of a clotheshorse. I definitely need to purge my wardrobe when we get back to the States.

Rachel's first day in Primary

It's started already, that inevitable sacrament meeting bickering. Rachel wanted to sit on my lap, which is fine, except that she has no choice but to share my lap with her baby sister. Miriam spent the entire meeting kicking Rachel.

If Rachel was cuddled on my left side, Miriam was there, too, kicking away. If Rachel moved to my right side, Miriam was not far behind. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick! I may as well get used to it because I have a feeling I'll be dealing with it for quite a few years to come.

After sacrament meeting Rachel and I headed upstairs for her first day of Primary.

One by one, all of her little nursery buddies have moved away. Robby & Lydia, Jacquie, Finn, Loei, and Sam. Now she's the only child left that is nursery-aged, but she's pretty mature for her age, so following the footsteps of her mother (that's me), she started attending Primary a year early.

I went to Sunbeams early because we moved from a huge nursery room with few children to a small nursery room with a lot of children (I can't remember where we moved from to where, but I think we ended up in Burnaby?) and I didn't like the new nursery so refused to go. I'm stubborn like that. But, like Rachel, I talked fairly well and knew how to sit still during church so they stuck me in Sunbeams and I loved it. I did Sunbeams two years in a row with the same teacher, and I still have memories of her classroom. I forget her name, though. (My mom remembers a lot more about this than I do, I'm sure).

Oh, the perks you enjoy when your mother is in the Primary Presidency!

My almost-two-year-old Sunbeam was a little shell shocked to be sitting in with the big kids. She spent the duration of opening exercises stone-faced and unemotional. She didn't sing. She didn't cry. She didn't smile. She didn't even really look at anything.

Phyllis declared her the "dice holder" (we were playing a game where the kids rolled a giant die to see which word strip we'd pull off for the song we were learning) and she'd hold it in between each turn and gladly give it up each time she was asked. But she still didn't smile. I'm not sure she even blinked.

When it was time to go to class, Rachel got a little clingy. She wanted Mommy. I walked her to her classroom and she asked where Sam was.

"He's gone. He won't be in church anymore, but Sarah's going to be your friend, okay?"

"Okay," she said and sat in the chair beside Sarah.

Sarah is almost 5, but she's really sweet with Rachel. All the House girls are.

I didn't hear a peep from Rachel all during class (which is only a half hour long). I went in at the end to tell her class it was time for closing exercises. Anne was trying to get Sarah to say the closing prayer, but Sarah wouldn't. So Rachel did.

Anne said that Rachel was well-behaved and listened intently the whole time and answered questions and everything. She asked if Rachel was always this calm. It was all I could do to keep from laughing, because she's not calm at all. She just loves learning about Jesus and knows when to be reverent. We really lucked out, I guess.

She was back to her happy self for closing exercises. She "sang" along with the songs, which meant that she sang her own tune and own words while everyone else sang the real song. She even tried to repeat the scripture. I was sitting too far away to hear her, but she was moving her mouth along with everyone else. It was kind of hard for me to watch her acting so grown up, but it was nice at the same time. Nice to see what a big girl she is, hard to know she was once my little baby.

After church Andrew (finally) got set apart for his calling in the Elder's Quorum and then he had a meeting after that. Rachel and I went in the backyard to play for a little while. Rachel almost fell down the stairs in the backyard, scaring us both half to death (they're stone!), but she caught herself in some yogic frog pose after falling headfirst two steps. I was impressed; there wasn't a scratch on her.

Now Andrew's home and Rachel's running around the house screaming, "Tickle me! Get me!" Andrew's obeying her every command and they aren't being reverent at all. See? She's not quiet and reverent all the time. My ears are ringing with all the screaming she's doing; I'm sure the neighbours really appreciate it. At least she knows how to sit nicely through church...of course, we cheat and are only there for two hours so that makes it a little easier.

Oh, the perks you enjoy when you're in an expat branch during the summertime!

Good day for a glucose screening

Egypt is lucky that this is only the second time I've "fasted" since moving here. I have only done one fast Friday since October 2006. That was in February this year and I was technically already pregnant, although we hadn't found out yet.

I actually enjoy fast Sunday/Friday, but can't participate fully when I'm playing the role of either incubator or milk cow, which is pretty much what I've been doing since October 2006 onwards.

Today I was "fasting" for my glucose test. I was hoping to sleep in a little, but instead I ended up getting up with Rachel at 6 o'clock in the morning. That meant that I was awake and dealing with her for 3 hours before I went in to the clinic and that I only got around 4 hours of sleep (there was a bug-incident last night and we had to hunt down a big, ugly bug instead of going to sleep) and that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet (since I was fasting).

Culture and language barriers are difficult to deal with under the best of circumstances and I'm usually pretty okay with things. But let's just say that I should not be unleashed when I'm tired, pregnant, and hungry.

Things went alright at the beginning. I left Rachel home with Andrew, since he still can't go on campus, and it was nice to leave the house unencumbered for a change. I hardly had to wait at all to get my blood drawn and the nurse/blood-drawer guy found my vein right away. It was nothing like the blood-draw of 2007.

When he handed me a cup for a urine sample is when things started turning sour. The washroom was occupied so I sat down to wait. There weren't any English magazines, but I found an Italian one. Good thing I took Italian in college so that I wouldn't have to sit idly by while waiting for the washroom to become available.

Finally, the woman who was in there came out. And then she stopped in the hallway, rifled through her backpack, and went back in. She was in for another 10 minutes doing who knows what. The water was on the whole time and I heard a lot of banging around.

Let me clarify that this "washroom" is really just a WC. Toilet, sink, garbage can. That's all that's in there. There isn't a whole lot to do.

She finally came out again and I went in. There was a large BM in the toilet and water splashed all over the toilet seat, the sink, the mirror, the floor.

What I thought: Why can't Arabs use the washroom? It's not hard!

What I did: flushed the toilet and sopped up some water so that I could stop gagging.

What I heard: KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

"Just a minute," I said.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! came the reply.

"I'm in here," I said.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

"I'll be done in a minute!"

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! Again with the knocking!

"I said just a minute!"

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! Accompanied by a wiggle of the handle.

"SOMEONE'S IN HERE!!" I half-yelled.

No response. I finished my business and left the bathroom, brushing past an impatient-looking man. I glared. He was Egyptian and really might not speak English, but does that even matter?

If the bathroom door is locked and the light is on and someone inside yells something, it's a pretty safe bet that they heard you knocking. What did he think? That I was yelling, "Come in!" Unlikely. I don't know what he was thinking. I only know what I was thinking and it wasn't very nice.

What I thought: I hope you slip in there. I almost did.

What I did: Dropped my sample off by my blood vial marked "Nasy Hiss" in bold, black letters.

I really, really hope they know that's my blood.

Then I left to walk home. While I was walking I got a bucket of water thrown on me by a car-washing bowab. I just about lost it when he held up his palms like he was helpless.

Right, maalaesh...all you did was throw a bucket of nasty, sudsy, dirty water on me. Some things just can't be helped.

Luckily, this glucose screening was the old fashioned kind where they send you home to eat breakfast, wait two hours, and then come back to have your blood drawn again, so I didn't have to drink that vile sugar stuff that I had to with Rachel. Instead I came home and had a yummy breakfast burrito and took a nap before returning to the clinic to get poked again.

I had to walk past that bowab, who was shaking car covers with his buddy. When I walked by he nodded his head in my direction and said something like,

"That's the woman I threw a bucket of water on this morning."

Then his friend laughed.

I'm not sure exactly what he said because all I understood was woman, water, and morning. I assumed that his little head jerk meant that I was the woman he was referring to.

"What?" I asked in Arabic.

"I'm not speaking Arabic to you, stupid American!" he replied rudely.

Of course I'm not sure that he actually called me stupid because I don't know how to say stupid in Arabic. But I know that he used some sort of mean-sounding adjective between "you" and "American."

"Whatever," I mumbled under my breath. Just because I don't speak Arabic fluently doesn't mean that I'm a complete idiot.

At least my experience at the clinic was more pleasant. I got called in after waiting for only a few minutes and after one poke and a few seconds to fill the vial, I was finished. This blood-drawing guy is amazing. Then I had to do another urine sample. Someone had cleaned up the WC, which was nice. That's not something I'd expect to happen often here, but I'm glad that it happens at the clinic, at least! They might not supply toilet paper, but at least they regularly clean their washroom and always have hand soap!

I walked home a different way so that I wouldn't have to walk past that rude bowab for a fourth time today. And things have been going pretty smoothly. And I don't think that I'll have any side-effects from this glucose test. No vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, or fainting for me this time around. I think I like things done the old-fashioned way!