Merry Christmas

Christmas Soiree

Wednesday 15th December me and baby bass spent the day in the theatre rehearsing for the show in the evening. Act after act trundled through to practise their performance for that evening.

The acts were of variable quality but all of them performed with gusto and the parents were equally enthusiastic so quality was not an issue. Maddy played her clarinet (it is now back in it’s case) and sang with her friends, I sat with the band and played bass.

Christmas Pageant

Friday 11th December 7:00 pm

The exciting part of going to an American Church is you never know when it’s going to be a bit over the top. This was one of those evenings!

The nativity story with singing, dancing (sort of), a donkey and 3 camels complete with 3 wise men. If you were looking for an accurate portrayal of the Christmas story, this was not the place to be. If you wanted a good night out at an amateur production then this was the place to be.

Oh and there was a real baby as well!

Joseph

Herod, Caesar and wife. The guy in the suit on the right is Mark Jaffrey, musical director for the church. I’m sure I recognise his name!

one camel

no Three camels complete with animal handlers. You got to sit on the camels outside afterwards if you wanted to. The paler the coat the better the quality of camel.

Shepherds and angels

Real baby!

72 hours in Dahab

Due to the school being close for the election we came to Dahab for the weekend. There were 6 of us on the ‘trip’, Hannah, who arranged everything for us – a mini bus from school and a cheap hotel in Dahab, and Amanda and her bloke. It takes 7 hours to get here by mini bus, for those of you with maps Dahab is on the right hand side of Sinai about halfway up the Gulf of Arabia coast line.We can see Saudi Arabia as we walk along the main tourist street by the sea.

There wasn’t a lot to see as we drove here, desert mainly and we drove under the Suez Canal. There are about 6 check points to drive through but we had no problems at any of them on the way here. The most memorable moment was the bathroom stop! See picture! I hadn’t taken my camera in with me so these are from my phone.

Dahab is a quiet resort by the sea aimed at divers. All the restaurants are open to the elements and some are even Bedouin in style in that you take your shoes off and sit on the floor round the tables. The tables are candle lit by placing sand in a cut down 2l water bottle and then sticking a candle in it!

We stayed bed and breakfast at the Dahab Plaza – the restaurant wasn’t at the hotel, we walked down to the sea front and ate at ‘Same Same’, which is owned by the same man (Emad). So we could watch the sea (and Saudi) while we ate. Maddy’s favourite meal of the weekend was a ‘thick shake’, basically a glass full of ice cream!

So what do you do here? There are a number of trips you can book onto, but haggle the price down with the locals. They will take you as far as Petra (Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail) or up Mount Sinai to see the sunrise and St Katherine’s Monastery (where the burning bush is). As it was our first trip we stuck to the simple tourist activities.Sitting in bars, snorkelling, a horse ride to the Blue Lagoon and some quad biking in the desert. Quite enough for 2 days! We spent our last morning chilling by the pool.

Elections

Egypt is electing a new set of MP’s so we get Sunday off school this week and next week (December 5th). There was a practise in school for students with individual pieces in the Christmas concert and as Maddy is playing and singing we went in.

The traffic was dreadful, it took almost an hour to get there, most of the time was spent getting to the ring road.

We spent 4 hours in school and then another 2 outside waiting for parents to collect their children. So outside there was a water buffalo, a donkey man, a man driving past with a gun, who was going to shoot the cat until Julie told him not to! (I didn’t get a picture of that)

Another Year Older

What an exciting week! First of all we got post from the UK and ST Helena! Mum sent me a birthday card, Steve and Maureen sent us Peter Johnson’s Joyce’s card got delivered to school, Mum’s and Maureen’s post get delivered to the bahweb (doorman kind of) and then he brought it up to the flat that evening.

Then I had a birthday with loads of presents, most of them practical, like a colour printer and some plastic wallets, but I got a great book with photos of Cairo in and a cute wooden guitar ornament. Geoff got me the most amazing birthday cake which I took to life group and forgot to photograph! Imagine this . . . circular sponge cake, 30cm diameter, 3 layers interspersed with Egyptian cream, an outside edge of cream with nuts and stacked on top with 8cm high with strawberries and black cherries YUM!

Friday was birthday treat day and we went to City Stars, 5 floors high, it is an enormous shopping mall with a cinema. So we shopped at Toys R Us, ate at Burger King, took an amazing picture on my phone, that I had to email to myself from my phone to get hold of it, and went to see Harry Potter. The Egyptian cinema experience was different – the film started exactly at the time stated 1 pm, so no adverts, just as well we were on time! Then half way through. the film stopped and people went to buy popcorn and drinks, after about 15 mins and the flashing of the cinema lights the film resumed and played to the end. We then wandered through the mall to see if Virgin was open. It was and Maddy finally got a cover for her Blackberry and I picked up a couple of puzzles for school.

Saturday was exciting too as there was a craft fair at the church, lots of the local crafts people were there and I bought Christmas decorations and a bible that Maddy asked me to get for her. It’s an NIV translation aimed at teenage girls, so it’s a bit pink for me!

We got a metal Christmas tree, lights and decorations as well, which, even though, it’s just the end of November, we’ve put up.

2 weeks in November

It seems such a long time since I updated anyone with tales of our adventures in Egypt, mainly because we haven’t done very much since Richard left! Over the last 2 weeks Geoff aged another year. we were a little stuck for presents for him so Maddison chose a cookbook of chicken recipes and I bought him some football socks (even though he doesn’t play here yet) and some stamps! He also had his own ice cream cake  which Maddy and I helped him eat.

The rest of my time seems to have been caught up with work. I attended a training course on Saturday 6th November at the British Council looking at feedback from this years A Level exams and one of the teachers there was looking for a psychology teacher! I gave him Geoff’s number and he phoned the same day, as soon as he got back from the course. Geoff went to the school for a general chat and showed the guy some stuff about distance learning but nothing else has come of it yet.

This week was an Eid, where the Muslims remember Abraham sacrificing Ishmael (not Isaac as the bible tells us). School shuts for the week and a lot of people go away and lots of the shops shut too. There were small flocks of sheep on the streets ready to be sacrificed and we had a cow living in the garage Monday night ready to be slaughtered Tuesday. As places were shut we did nothing special, I did a lot of school work and Thursday morning went for coffee with Geoff at Cafe Greco where we had arranged to meet Liz and Brian who run my ‘life group’.  

No prizes for guessing which one is which! Over Brian’s right shoulder is a cat delving into the rubbish. The cat kept coming over to try and sit on our knees but we rejected it politely.

At the Market

From the Pyramids we drove across town to the market where Jimmy dropped us off and left us too it. As far as I'm concerened it was the best bit of the day and I can't wait to go back there!

The kiosks were great, but as we went deeper the products got tackier and tackier. Lots of plastic toys and what I would call 'tat'. There were spices and jumpers and headscarves, some very cheap ladies underwear and stuff for tourists.

The men on the stalls haggled, in fact this was why Richard wanted to go. So we had an exciting time - it was actually good fun if you realise you will be ripped off whatever happens. Maddy got some hand blown perfume bottles foe 18 LE (£2) and Richard got a box and some trousers. I got a wallet for 15 LE that the money fits in.

One bunch of vendors were so funny, their opening line was "how can I take your money from you?" I nearly sold Maddy to one of them, he asked how many camels I wanted for her, when I suggested 10 he offered a million!

The downside of these cheerful vendors was it made me smile, which just attracted the other vendors and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was feeling genuinely happy! A must for anyone who visits us!

Pyramids at last

So on the Saturday we went for a BIG tourist day. Jimmy (our Taxi man) picked us up at 8 am and we headed for the Pyramids in Gizza. We booked jimmy for the day and he talked his way through the police at the site so he could chauffer us from site to site. The distance isn't that far but Egyptians don't seem to walk very far. Anyway it was a reasonable price to get in 60LE each the only downside was we couldn't go into a pyramid. Apparently there are 150 tickets at 100LE each that go on sale at 7:30 am, so you need to be keen to get them.

We wandered happily round the pyramids for about 2 hours and were fairly free from incidents with the tourist toutes. One caought us as we came out of a tomb, the no camera sign was down on the way in but up on the way out so Geoff gave him a handful of change. Then on the way round to the funneral boats a camel man got me! He offered to tie my scarf arab style then he wanted to take photos of me with his camel, then he wanted money and tried to give me a sob story baout his five children, I told him that was great I had four. Anyway, in the end I gave him 3LE and moved on. All good fun.

There are 3 intact pyramids and some 6m square bases, as well as some mounds of sand and small temple like structures. You read what you need from guide books, as there didn't appear to be any for sale on the site.

Medium sized and small pyramid

on the pyramid

Down at the sphinx there is a seating area for the light and sound show, there's a different performance times dependent on what language you speak. Another thing to add to out 'to do' list.