August 27, 2005

Today was our big school outing to Ain Sokhna (literally "warm eye"). We got a late start, took the long way, and got lost, so we arrived a bit late. The other teachers had already been at the beach for a couple of hours. It was very nice, though, to get out of the city. The teacher that invited us has a villa in a little "community." A short walk and you're at the beach.

I think the beaches in Egypt may have ruined me forever. They are perfect. The sand was white and pure. It was very shallow today, so we walked for 5-10 minutes to reach a depth where we could stand and be covered by water. The water was perfect, like a warm bath. You could see your feet below you as you stood. It was sunny and beautiful. The Red Sea is super salty, so you can float along without too much trouble. The only problem is when you get the salt water in your mouth, eyes, or nose.

Our administration, including our head boss, joined us today, so that was nice to have them along. They don't always join us on social outings. A lot of the Egyptian teachers don't join us either. The funny thing is that at most social gatherings we end up forming two circles anyway. The English speakers/foreigners hang together and the Egyptians stick together. We like doing things in different ways too. For example, the foreigners went straight to the beach, but the Egyptians were not as interested in swimming. They preferred to sit in the air conditioned house, socializing.

We did get our Egyptian director to play a game of Catch Phrase with us today. (We finally got to put that wedding gift to use! We knew the other Americans would appreciate a game as we sat around waiting to eat today.) She did pretty well considering how many of the words are American centered.

We ended up staying way later than we were supposed to. We always have to remember that we are on Egyptian time. We were supposed to get back by 5:00. We got back at 9:30, so by Egyptian standards we were right on time. We didn't mind, though. We got to go down to the beach twice, so it was a good day.

August 25, 2005

It's been a somewhat quiet week. We've been putting in our hours at work. Not much going on, just planning for the next year and sitting around with the other teachers. We've moved to our brand new school building. The school is huge now. There are several buildings that are a part of our campus. It's like a small compound out in the middle of the desert.

We've also been doing a little apartment shopping. Joe and I have never been so indecisive before. We can't make up our mind if we should change apartments or maybe move to a different section of town. We went around to about five different apartments with a real estate agent, but the prices seemed so expensive and the places weren't much better than ours.

Last night, we decided to walk around our neighborhood and just scope out apartment buildings. We asked at one apartment, and before we knew it, we had a "simsaar" (in other words, a doorman who wanted to make some extra money) at our disposal. We walked to another apartment and picked up another man. Then, we walked around to another apartment where no one came to the door. Then, we walked to another place and picked up another man. By the end of it, I think we had four doormen type guys walking around with us. We never did see an apartment, though.

Today, we met up with them again. We saw only one apartment which was pretty nice, but they wanted 200 pounds a day, which would end up being $1000 a month. They're crazy. The apartment was just not that nice!

The funny/good thing about the whole experience is that now that Joe and I know a little Arabic, they aren't so quick to try to scam us. I caught them telling each other that Joe speaks a little Arabic. Today, they were walking in front of us and they would talk and turn around to see if we understood them. It's nice to keep them on their toes! Score one for us. It's nice when they can't get away with ripping us off too much.

We're going with the school to Ain Sokhna this weekend for a little beach time. Hopefully, it will be relaxing since next week we finally will have students.

And, I forgot to mention a few blogs ago - a felucca ride is an Egyptian sailboat ride. You just walk up to the Corniche (boardwalk) and you'll have lots of guys offering to take you sailing on the Nile. We've found a really great peaceful place further down the Nile where you can sail among the reeds and farming islands.

Thursday, August 18

Joe and I have made a new friend. We have a little neighborhood boy named Islam who just happens to love our dog. He meets us in the street and talks and talks and talks...He knows we don't speak Arabic, but he just keeps trying. He's just about the only person in Egypt who will walk up to our dog and pet her with no fear. Leia seems to like him too. We just find it so amusing because he'll leave the neighborhood pack of kids and follow us to the park to talk. He's sweet, really.

We went on a second felucca ride tonight with some of the teachers from school. They're really a nice group of people. We found it interesting today because we were chatting with one of our fellow teachers about Cedar Falls. He went to UNI. We were talking about North Cedar, the Brown Bottle, etc. It's weird to be halfway across the world and have people who know exactly where you grew up. Another teacher that works here is also from Cedar Falls. She lived on 12th and Hudson. Weird. Joe and I figured out that 16% of our teaching staff is from Iowa. We're everywhere! We always find a bit of home wherever we go.

Wednesday, August 17

We've started school. It's back to work. We still aren't sleeping through the night, though, so that's been a little bit difficult. Hopefully, we'll get adjusted before the students show up. We've spent the last few days sitting around in meetings, a lot like any U.S. school. This is very different from last year, where we all sat alone in the teachers' lounge with nothing to do. It's a postitive sign for the year.

We found out what we'll be teaching this year. I'm teaching language and literature as usual. I think I mentioned, though, that Joe is adding literature to his teaching. The director only hired social studies teachers, so they're all stuck teaching English. I feel sorry for the new teachers who are teaching all English or P.E. when they're certified for American history and government. Go figure. It should be entertaining.

Egypt is the same as always. We are debating moving to a different area of town called Maadi since our lease is up on Oct. 1. All of the new teachers moved there. There are more expatriates living in the area which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. Right now we're just going to look because we're not sure if the school is going to make all of those teachers ride the students bus. I don't think I could take it, mainly because it takes like 2 hours to get home when you ride the student bus.

It sounds like we're going to have lots of vacation time spread throughout the year. Not a lot more than last year, but for some reason it seems more lumped together. Maybe we'll get some traveling in. Right now, we're waiting for the Egyptian government to decide when it wants to have its nationwide two-week school holiday. It could be sometime in January or February. Whenever they feel like it really. I guess they don't understand the concept of publishing a school calender, so they're not too concerned with deciding about the vacation. It keeps us on our toes.

I wish I had some interesting info for you, but it's life in general.

Thursday, August 11

Just a quick blog to say we are back. After a long trip with a couple of hours just spent sitting on planes on runways, we finally got back to Egypt. It almost feels as if we never left. I have to say that coming back this time was much easier. We were just thinking about when we arrived here last year, how foreign this place was to us and how difficult it was to find our way around. Now, we have our apartment, our neighbors, the grocery store...it's much easier! We're having terrible jet lag, though. We were up to 5 am last night, and didn't wake up until almost 2 in the afternoon. Pretty bad. We feel really out of it. We'll have to see if we can do better today.