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.
So I didn’t finish off whatever else I was saying because we came back to Egypt and were without internet for almost 2 weeks. It took the landlord phoning them to sort everything out.
We came back to 2 air con units not working, the washing machine dead, no internet and the fridge turning itself off for no good reason. One of the air cons was in Maddy’s room so she spent several nights sleeping on her mattress on the living room floor. Things are looking up now; Maddy is back in her own room, we have internet and there is a new washing machine busy in the kitchen. The rest we wait for. . . .
Food wise we are all stocked up although all our UK chocolate has been eaten and there was a deficit of onions in the shop one week, it kind of reminded me of St. Helena! Maddison will replenish the chocolate when she visits the school with the drama department during October half term and onions are now available. Some food stuff is seasonal here so it is mango season at the moment and at 60p a kilo they are high on my list of things to eat, last week I even made chicken and mango curry.
We are all back at school and everything is going along in the same Egyptian manner, the American film and the attack on the embassy has caused some concerns in the expat community, but not a lot of impact directly on our lives. Lack of good information seems to be the root of some of the trouble.
http://www.skipwithstation.com/
This is where we have spent the last 4 days – it was an awesome place to stay. There are 2 other carriages converted as self catering holiday homes, chickens roam around and butterflies sunbath in the adjacent corn fields. York is only 20 minutes away and Selby is even closer in the opposite direction. Obviously, we didn’t just drive there and then sit around admiring the jacuzzi in our bathroom, we drove off the beaten track and visited an astounding number of historic sites and places of outstanding natural beauty. As is our, habit fridge magnets were collected along the route, Geoff was disappointed at some of the spots as they didn’t have any shops but even so Ivy’s fridge is almost covered now! If we were stopping a couple more weeks it would be full.
We actually went looking for 2 sites after church and before our roast dinner. The first, Hill House, is a private property that only opens on a Wednesday afternoon, so we were out of luck there (it had looked really good in the book)! Geoff managed a nice drive down some splendid country lanes with lots of missed turns so we headed back to the M25 and back towards Ivy’s. Waltham Abbey was easier to find but when we got there it was actually part of a park. The English heritage part was minimal, just a bridge and the gate. The gate was positioned next to a stream and bridge and Geoff spent some time throwing stones at a fish that just didn’t move. Waltham cathedral is still in use so we wandered round there as well, another splendid ceiling. Also in the grounds was a mosaic where the meridian line passes through the grounds.
Another country show! This one was a lot closer than the show at Bedford, only 8 miles from Hatfield, just up the A1. No one else had the energy to join us so just Geoff, Maddy and myself went for the 11am start. As we walked in we came across a parrot show with rescued birds, From here we could see the main arena, beagles, ferrets, craft stalls, all the usual things and then there was the knights corner! Not jousting this time just sword play and hitting each other very hard. Oh and archery . . . .
Then we headed to Knebworth hall gardens as they were included in the entrance fee, a maze, a dinosaur park, rose garden, walled garden, herb garden and for an extra £2.50 you could tour the hall, which has been used in films such as Harry Potter and St. Trinians (the David Tennant version). Maddy waited outside – bored already.
