This morning Rachel found some scarves and decided to play dress-ups with them. Since she’s the older sister, she enlisted Miriam into her game as well.
She put the scarf over Miriam’s head and announced that Miriam was a woman. Or, as she says, a “yiman.”
“Look, Miriam’s a yiman because she’s in a hijab! But she’s only a baby yiman. No! She’s a princess and I’m going to be the prince!”
Happy Sinai Liberation Day.
Egypt has holidays for just about everything. We recently had Taba Liberation Day, back in March. What’s ironic about that is that Taba is on the Sinai Peninsula…so basically they’re celebrating the same thing twice.
If that’s fair I think the States should have a separate holiday commemorating each time a state was admitted to the Union.
I don’t really mind that Egypt had a holiday today, truthfully. It meant that Andrew didn’t have class this evening so we spent a nice, quiet day together as a family. The city was deathly quiet. I have no idea where people go on holidays like this but the city was pretty much deserted. Actually, I do have some ideas—the zoo, for one, or the coast.
Personally, we tried to visit al-Manyal Palace. It’s Miriam 6 month birthday, see, and she was born on Manyal Island so we thought it was fitting.
This was the first Saturday in a long time that has actually felt like a Saturday. Andrew was home; we spent the morning cleaning and he even let me take a nap with Miriam. After lunch we decided to go on a walking tour of Cairo. A new one.
It’s from the National Geographic.
Since we didn’t want to totally bore the girls we thought we’d take the metro to Ramses and visit the train museum first and then do the walking tour backwards. Unfortunately the museum was closed because it’s Saturday and we ended up dragging the girls all over the station trying to find it. No one bothered to mention that it wasn’t even open. For future reference: it’s at platform one.
Miriam fell asleep and Rachel was hanging over Andrew’s shoulder in a stupor. Needless to say they didn’t have fun.
I’m not sure our walking tour worked out so well, either.
Our first stop was at al-Fath Mosque, which boasts the tallest minaret in Cairo and wasn’t mentioned on the walking tour at all.
Everyone always says my children look like Andrew. I guess that’s a good thing because he’s really cute. But I still assert that the girls look like both of us and MyHeritage.com totally backs me up.
Life was a little crazy this week. We thought that things would slow down after Andrew turned in his thesis but apparently we were being naive. On Wednesday the girls and I left the house at quarter to one to go swimming with the Schaefers, we planned on leaving straight from there to go tutoring, and from tutoring to join some friends on an evening felucca ride.
Hayley is leaving Cairo—in fact, she flew out this morning—so it was our final hurrah with her. Jaehee and Jill both came without their husbands (who were at school and home with the kids, respectively). The other guy in the picture is John. He is Hayley’s friend…and Andrew’s, too, in a way. Hayley and John were in the drum line when Andrew played clarinet in the BYU marching band.
Moths have taken a liking to our clothes lately.
The weird thing is that we never notice each other while I’m outside folding the laundry. How is it that I don’t notice these huge grey moths clinging to our clothes? How is it that they continue clinging to our clothes instead of flying away when I shake the wrinkles out?
I don’t know. All I know is that when I went to diaper Miriam the other day I almost diapered her up with one of those aforementioned huge grey moths. Seriously.
I’m not going to lie. This post is probably mostly going to be bragging about my girls and how amazing they are. We’ve had fun the past few days.
I taught nursery on Friday, which I was happy to do. I was even happier when it was over and am definitely happy it isn’t my calling. For the lesson we talked about the Plan of Salvation and made a little mobile from a pattern in the lesson manual. At least, those of us emotionally stable enough to complete the project…which was, you know, hardly anybody.
One of our books features a Chinese nursery rhyme. It’s been translated into English, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to read it, but it maintains the cutesy rhyme pattern and sing-song canter that makes a nursery rhyme a nursery rhyme. Rachel loves it.
It goes like this:
We push, we pull
To saw up the wood.
We pull, we push
We make a fine house.
We push, we pull
It has to be good
We pull, we push
To keep a sweet spouse.
Before Miriam, I thought this poem was a good poem. Now I am wondering if it holds any merit at all.
In my memory, Grandma Conrad wasn’t much of a games player. Grandpa certainly was—from Pit and Crokinole to shooting apples off people’s head—but Grandma seemed to view games more as a way of getting people out from underfoot so that she could get some work done. Grandma was always working.
But she was partial to Boggle.
I remember sitting around her kitchen table, eating Christmas with Grandma and David. Grandma wasn’t much of a candy-eater, but for some reason she couldn’t stay out of the jar of red, white, and green jelly beans a neighbour had dropped off. Every time she’d take one she’d remark on how horrid it was.
Then she’d take another, which was no better than the first. And then another—still no good. Just one more…
While we ate gingerbread and sugar cookies (and jelly beans, of course) we played Boggle.
Grandma didn’t actually have the game Boggle, but she had built a little tray out of an old Christmas card that we filled up at random with letters from Scrabble.
I don’t remember quite why David and I were there alone with my grandma or where everyone else was…but I do remember that my grandma is one mean word-finding machine!
