News at last

Finally we have some news from the Teaching Council! They have checked and I can come teach New Zealand, now all I need is the official documentation to support this to arrive and then we are off for our visas at last. To fill in the time we went to Stanborough Park for fish and ice cream this afternoon.
Geoff caught a fish with his hands and brought it over fo Maddy and me to take a look at :).

You can just see it here, then he put it back in the water to swim away.

One week of waiting

We have been out of Egypt for a whole week now and things have changed rapidly since we left. Here in the sunny UK we are waiting for the last piece of paper from the teaching council in New Zealand before we can apply for our visas. Geoff thinks we should phone and just make sure they really need it as we would like to leave ASAP.
This weekend we went North to visit Mum, Dad, Stephen, Helen and David! The news is I will be a Grandma around December 29th, Dad has replaced the bath with a smart looking shower and Mum's legs are full of fluid!

At the Marriott

We have moved out of our flat today, people have been visiting over the past few days to collect the bits and pieces they needed. Today was the final push so we gave a second load to the church, the tv went to an orphanage and my Matron Tara from school came and took all she could towards her daughters wedding. With an Egyptian wedding the woman buys all the household items and the man the electricals. Mohamed the Bahweeb got quite a few items as well so the house was empty by the time the landlord turned up.
To be closer to the airport and avoid the demonstrations we are at the J W Marriott. I made a small mistake of sorts with the booking and we are in an executive room with access to the executive lounge. Here they provide us with free drinks and snacks. The term snacks should be applied quite loosely as there is a continual buffet all day and a complimentary breakfast included so we had dinner in there and found the patisserie to top up with.
Outside there are the obligatory swimming pools and a beach area and a golf course. People can pay 150 le to stay for the day and use facilities.

Cave Church

The cave church is next to garbage city and has grown over the last 40 years to a weekly congregation of 5000.

Garbage City, is a slum settlement at the base of Mokattam Hill on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. Its economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city's garbage. Although the area has streets, shops, and apartments as other areas of the city, it lacks infrastructure and often has no running water, sewage, or electricity. 

Coptic Christians were originally the predominant inhabitants of Garbage City, though in recent decades the area's Muslim population has grown. The Christians were well known for herding swine within the city, which were fed edible pieces of garbage and marketed across Cairo to Coptic Christian establishments. However in the spring of 2009 the Egyptian government, in response to the worldwide threat of swine flu, embarked on a massive program to cull the herds of pigs so now they have none.^[1]

The Cave Cathedral or St Sama'ans Church, used by the Coptic Christians in Garbage City, is the largest church in the Middle East, with seating for 15,000 people

The carvings in the wall were started 20 years age by a man from Poland.

Moving On

It is nearly time to leave and move onto fields anew, with leaving comes the round of goodbyes.
On Thursday evening we went on a felluca ride at sunset with Pritti ans Marsis, who are going to Cambodia, and Lisa, who is staying, and Terez.

Today we went to Lisa's flat for a goodbye lunch with some of our friends from church, good food and good company I will miss them.

My life

Maddy found this on the internet, kind of fits!

Next Job

The original idea was to go back to the UK for Maddison to take her A levels and qualify for the student loan by having 3 years residence. We applied for a lot of jobs in the UK over the past few months and found that, although we have the experience they wanted, going to interviews was costly and disappointing. So we decided not to apply for anything else until June so we could interview when we got back. In the meantime here were a couple of jobs that looked interesting that we did apply for, one in New Zealand as we’ve always fancied going there and a couple in the UK. As chance would have it Geoff got the interviews for the UK jobs and I got the interview for the New Zealand job and after 458 hours of agonising consideration we took the New Zealand job which starts on July 29th!

At the moment we are working our way through police checks, medicals and the final form. Being here means everything is not going smoothly and causing the occasional headache, added to that I am stage manager and in charge of costumes for the school production of Hairspray which opens for 3 nights only on May 27th and the kids don’t know their lines yet!

If you want to Google my new school it is in Reporoa in the Bay of Plenty, halfway between Mount Doom (Tapua) and Hobbiton (Matamata).