Boxing Day

Today we had a lay in in, emerging for breakfast at a reasonable 9am after which Maddison went back to the room to rest, her feet are sore after all the walking yesterday, she probably had on the wrong type of socks! Geoff and I wandered off to find some presents to take back with us. Vein aims seem to work to the same times as Egyptians so there were more shops open on the way back than on the way there.
The afternoon was taken up with a boat trip to the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello the iPad pictures for which seem to appear on yesterday's blog! I must be feeling a bit confused. Anyway, Murano is famous for its glass so we visited a glass factory and saw a man blowing a vase and making a horse, which took him all of 5 minutes. Maddison was quite taken with the horse so we bought one and then wandered down the street to look in the other shops. Torcello used to have 25,000 people living there and now there are 10, so we looked at the old church.
Burano is a fishing village where they have to keep the houses the traditional colours, they also make lace there so we were shown into a shop where a lady was demonstrating needlepoint lace making. It can take up to 9 ladies to make one item as they each specialise in one particular stitch. So many beautiful things . . . . .
Then back to Venice to eat and sleep.

Christmas Day 2012

We were able to book a photography tour today, the only drawback was it started at 9:30 on the opposite side on Venice so we had to be up for 7 am and down to breakfast for half past. The breakfast staff were very surprised to see us!

The tour was with Mario Mazziol www.schoolofseeing.com who took us wandering for about 3 hours around Arsenele. As he was born there he knew a lot of out of the way spots with hidden wells and backstreet shrines, along the way he gave me various hints about how to improve my technique and what to do with the pictures afterwards. There was a small problem with the camera over exposing that we couldn't see why but I did get some non tourist shots that I will upload when we get back to Cairo. We returned to the hotel to sleep and then out for Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant.

Christmas 2012

So what do you do do if you want to do something different, well we decided to not just book it but to Thomas Cook it with one of their winter breaks. Not London or Paris, we chose Venice and Rome! The flight to Venice left Cairo at 4:55 on Christmas eve and a good friend took us to the airport at 2am, which wasn't so good, so by 10 am we were leaving bags at the hotel to wander the streets.


The flight was with Alitalia and was via Rome which has a surprisingly large airport, more like a shopping centre with planes leaving down various aisles surrounded by Designer shops than anything else. We managed the change in the end but had to walk briskly through the airport to get there. Then 45 minutes later we arrived at Marco Polo airport, where Maddison's name was bodily displayed at the tourist desk we needed to get our Water Taxi across to Venice from. It did make her smile seeing her name like that. By 10 am bags were deposited at the hotel and we were free to wander. So off we went map in hand. Venice is not just canals there are a whole selection of narrow back streets full of craft shops to wander as well. The closer you get to St. Marks the more expensive the goods become, one Designer clothes shop had a window item costing in excess of 7,000 euros. Lunch was a restaurant amongst the bustling shoppers where Maddison discovered fresh pasta, how I will ever get her to eat the normal dry shop stuff again is a problem. She was so impressed she was even open to the idea of a pasta machine of her own, obviously she has no idea that it takes a little work to make pasta.
By 2pm we had mask, glass Christmas trees, fridge magnets and other goodies ready to deposit so we headed back to the hotel for a well deserved nap.
We wandered off for food around 8pm and found a very friendly restaurant just around the corner, then after dropping Maddison off at the hotel Geoff and I headed for the 10:30 pm service at the Basislica. As we wandered across various church bells were ringing out across the city. We arrived at St. Marks square only to find the service was an hour later this year, so rather than queue we wandered off to try and take night shots without a tripod returning later to join the queue and find our seats. The service was in Italian with incense and a translation in the service book. The Basilica is magnificent, gold leaf everywhere, a real statement to mans achievements. We lasted until 1am and then joined the surprising large number of people who were leaving at various points in the service to return to the hotel. What a time to loose your way, the wrong turning at one bridge and whew ended up in just the wrong place and had to work our way through back streets to reach our side of the island getting back to the hotel for 1:30am!
There are hundreds of photos on my camera but no way to transfer them to the blog until we get back to Cairo so I have taken the iPad out and this was the result. The snow is not real but the result of a Christmas app I found.

6th December More Snow!

 

I was phoned last night at 11pm to let me now that Thursday was a snow day! Excellent! I got to spend 11 hours auditing reports which wasn’t much fun. Maddison got up at 6am but Geoff sent her back to bed. He is starting to call us part timers as the school seems to close at the slightest reason while he manfully carries on regardless.

Snow day 27th November

 

Well really it’s another revolution day! Once again the school is closed in the face of more disruptions in light of the declaration Mursi made on Thursday. Many of the international schools and all of the Egyptian schools are closed today due to the protests that are taking place in Tahrir square, Geoff, stalwart chap that he is, went to work and taught, the majority of his students made it in.

The main protests are due to start at 5pm but already there are youths in the square detracting from the message the protestors want to express by throwing rocks and stones at the police. The police are responding with tear gas and already one protestor has died due to its effects.

The Muslim brotherhood announced they would not be marching today to avoid clashes with protestors but the Alexandria branch have decided to march anyway, so that could be disruptive.

If you didn’t see the declaration there is an English translation here, but he basically said that until the constitution is drafted (about 2/3 more months) he is in charge and what he says goes, which has upset a large number of the population. They are drawing parallels with the stance he has taken and the regime under Mubarak.

Hopefully all will go calmly and when we go out for the bus tomorrow it will be there!

14th November Birthday Month

 

We bought Maddy presents while we were in the UK sorting out the money from the sale of the house, we did buy a Lamborghini for her but it was only a remote controlled version! When we got back Maddy had her presents one month late on November 2nd, some silly things like Dr Who tinned pasta and some boring things like school trousers  – she is now sweet 16.

Five days later it was Geoff’s turn, I had got to school before i even remembered so I sent a quick text. Maddy and I made him a roast chicken dinner with pear crumble and custard when we got home. She had bought him a poster in the UK and I bought us a trip to Venice and Rome over Christmas, hopefully the weather will improve and the flooding will go down or it will be a memorable trip for the wrong reasons.

 

Later this month it will be my turn and about 3 others in our life group so we are all getting together here.

10th October

We are still here and still teaching :) .

Get up (5:45) , go to school (6:40), do school stuff, come home (3:30), eat, do washing, do school work, sleep and start again! After school activities include Ruby, prayer group and church.

This week was fun as it was the annual photography club trip to the Khan so here are my contributions. Obviously these are not all the pictures I took, just a small selection of them.

		Khan el khalili VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL