An Elf in Egypt

Forgot...

2010-06-18T12:20:00.003+03:00

I nearly forgot probably the saddest thing about leaving. No more of this beauty:

(at top of Mt Moses/Sinai)

Best Bev, best traveller, best hottieface in the world.

Over and Out.

2010-06-18T12:09:00.002+03:00

End of blog. Going home to England today. Terribly excited, and terrified at the same time. No useful microbuses. Have to wait for traffic lights. No juice shops. No baklava shops. No cherries on EVERY street corner. No souqs and bartering. Bafflement.

We went back to Alexandria for a few days to pick up some things we'd left behind, so say hello to Faten, to see some things we'd never managed to see. It was bizarre, having a holiday in "our" city and people we like not being there. But it was still jolly nice and we were really sad to leave all over again.

And back to Cairo. Urgh. We don't want to be here and it's awfully hot and sticky and crowded. And the cats are scrawny ugly little things - not the nice fluffy ones that you get in Syria. And I'm terrified of getting ill (Cairo is cursed, I tell you).

So, bye bye blog. Bye bye Egypt. Bye bye lovely lovely lovely Syria (I WILL see you again soon).

Oh, and Happy birthday (belatedly) to mummy and daddy. You'll probably get the real hugs before you read this which is cool.

All love, xxxxxxxx

Alep of Po

2010-06-02T20:15:00.002+03:00

HOW can a country just keep getting better and better? Seriously. Syria is starting to be annoying in that it is taking all the cool creds away from all other countries. It's really rather selfish. But I shall not complain because we are having FUN.
Currently in Aleppo. Finally. I am too excited for words. It's brilliant. Less frenetic than Damascus but with all the same charm - if a little more. The souq - oh my word is is beautiful or what. Little shafts of light, donkeys, CHERRIES everwhere, barely a tourist in sigh. And the loveliest of shop owners who don't give a damn if they sell you something or not, but are jolly happy sitting talking about Armenian carpet design, oud music and Bristol in a mixture of different languages - mainly mixing a teeny bit of Arabic with French and English. Jolly pleasing.

Oh, and POMEGRANATES in the baba ghanouh. Incredible.

We were in Homs a few days ago - bizarre city but necessary for us to get to Crac de Chevaliers which is like a fairy tale castle (says Lonely Planet, but actually true). We leapt about pretending to be crusaders and mamluks and debated torture techniques and banqueting etiquette whilst creeping through pitch black passages.

Not so happy about this Israel malarky, people generally rather FED.UP and angry. Not so happy about demonstrations in Amman either. What good timing we have though, hey? Oh well. We are keeping an eye on news (albeit Syrian news) so no fears.

Downside of Aleppo is that the internet is bloody expensive so must dash. All love and kisses xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Happy Birthday Jordan

2010-05-28T21:24:00.002+03:00

The other day, it was Jordan's birthday. Every single car had at least 10 flags attached to it,and every child or adult that walked the street carried one. On this greatest of national holidays, we decided it would be perfect timing to go to the dead sea. Something every man and his dog were also doing (in our defense, we did only realise it was a public holiday half way there, previously only thinking that Jordanians were incredibly patriotic people). We ended up being taken to Amman beach which was surprisingly uncrowded (probably due to it only accepting foreigners - mainly Saudis and Syrians on holiday with their families).
Oh my goodness, the Dead Sea. You can't even describe how amazingly awesome it is. We walked in and it felt a bit odd, but not that different to an ordinary sea (except that it was really, really oily and you could feel your skin going all nice and healthily soft). But then, around thigh deep, when you flop into the water and normally feel your knees scrape the bottom, you find your legs flipping up in front of you and suddenly you are literally lying on the surface of the water. So we bobbed about and giggled about how brilliant it was. And then coated ourselves in thick tar-like mud. We literally snothered ourselves in the stuff, taking pride in the fact that we were brave enough to put it on our faces (error) and then walked about pretending to be monsters. The mud was full of healthy skin foods but it proceeded to dye our skin orange so that we looked like oompa loompas for the next few days. Brilliant.
As for NOW. Well, we're in Syria. Sorry, that should be Soria (the accent here is very very adorable). Damascus = AMAZING. It's like a bohemian version of Berlin. I thought it would be horribly pretentious but it was genuinely lovely. Amazing architecture that made me squeal, food that cried out to be gobbled and pretty things that made Bev and I cry they were so wonderful. I could very, very happily live in Syria. Syria knows how its done. As does Jordan actually. Egypt is just a bit behind. And this very second, I am in the middle of a real and proper desert sand storm (cool, right?!) in Palmyra, where the big people once were. You know, ruins and things. We haven't got so far as to understand what everything is, but we'll do that tomorrow. Drinking flower tea and eating aubergine has been at the forefront of our day today. Yum.
Because of this storm, the internet is insanely slow, so photos will have to wait again. Gr. But I'll put some dead sea floating things up asap.

Lots of sandy love, K xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The city of pink stone and the promised land.

2010-05-24T21:03:00.004+03:00

So, it seems that the last post was pretty much all about transport and not very much was about the nice things we've seen and done. So here's to remedying that.
Jordan is lovely. The monarchy is amazing and Bev and I have taken to oogling at images of the King and Queen everytime we see them (that's pretty much every shop you walk past). The king is very cool and there are amazing pictures of him in full military gear, bedouin outfits, regal banquet outfits, politican outfits, and normal dad outfits everywhere. People on the whole are lovely (despite official buses scamming us in all directions) and I have never drunk so much free tea in my whole entire life.
We spent a few days in Petra which was amazing. I remember it from when we went years ago - the orange rock of the Treasury, the Siq, the coloured sand. I was worried that going again would ruin all of those images, as so often happens when you visit places which you have childhood memories of. But it didn't. It was beautiful. We had a 2 day ticket so spent 2 days exploring every inch of the place. There are amazing walks up and down the mountains so you can look out across the whole area, or gaze down at the treasury away from all the tourists, and wadis that you can walk through with the entire place to yourself. After two days of climbing, hiking, scrambling, tripping over, sitting in sand which dyed our clothes orange (white tops no longer so white), we were absolutely dead. Project fitness should probably commence as of now, because we were quite a poor show.
After Petra we made our way to Karak - big crusader castle from where they used to throw people to their deaths with their heads in wooden boxes (yum). The town was really nice and we made friends with a cafe owner who took pity on the grubby students he found sitting in the shade and who gave us mountains of free tea, bottles of water and mezze. And in return we had to tell him all about Alexandria, in arabic, which obviously didn't go very far.
And finally, Amman. Which is AMAZING. It's like two different cities stuck together. The east (downtown) is busy and noisy and full of winding roads and hidden souqs and delicious looking fruit stalls (cherries are in season!). And to the west is "high-class" Amman, with Tiffany shops and mansions and gigantic 4x4s (you thought the ones in Hampstead were big..!). We went out to Madaba where there are hundreds of beautiful mosaics (inc. map of the Promised Land which Bev and I sqealed over for about an hour)and Mt Nebo, the high point from where you can look out over Palestine. It was totally brilliant. We could see where Bethlehem and Jericho are!Slight problem in that we got a bit stuck there with no means of transport back to Madaba or Amman. Yes, idiots. However again, we were taken pity on and two police officers gave us their chairs in the shade whilst they attempted to sort out transport, and who then decided they would drive us home personally. They were jolly friendly and gave us a minitour en route to the hotel - they took us past the Royal Palace which was SO exciting because the King was totally in that building as we drove past (never seen so many military officers in my life) and we saw his car! The police officers are now our Amman friends apparently.
Anyway, enough waffle about all what we've seen, done, eaten etc etc.Hope you are all well, can't wait for big hugs in June. All love, K xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Transport fail.

2010-05-19T15:31:00.004+03:00

We are in Petra. Actually I should probably say Betra. It's been a bit of an adventure getting here, with what can only be described as considerable fails en route. We left Luxor merrily, clambering aboard a busy train to Cairo. We had been told you cannot book tickets beforehand, and instead you simply buy them on the train. We found the last empty seats an flopped down into them, ready to commence slumber. Just as the train pulled out of the station, 2 faces suddenly peered down at us and declared that we were in their seats. There as shouting. We got kicked out of the carriage and found that all other seats were also taken. So we wandered into "club car" and asked about 1st class. The man looked us up and down and replied simply "no, not for you. Very expensive". The train stopped at Qena - apparently a huge transport hub from where we could easily get ourselves seats on another train. But they lied. All seats were taken. Apart from two suspicious seats for 165 guineas (extortionate!) which we began to barter for (with Bev constantly throwing into the proceedings that we didn't want a beautiful train, we wanted an ugly train and couldnt they give us friendly discount). By now the police had arrived to oversee the matter. We asked them if there were buses. No. So we consulted the guide book. Qena, it seems, is not a tourist friendly town. Indeed, tourists are not allowed out of the station unless they have police escort, and police don't want to escort anything but the most important mission - going to the bank. Lots of people arrived to try to help. They seemed to think that 20 men shouting "what you want?" would solve things. We ended up finding seats on a tourist train which were were not terribly happy about, but the air conditioning was nice.
Cairo. All we need to do is get a bus to Nuweiba and hey presto. Mission accomplished. But we'd missed the bus. And there were no more. At 10AM. We asked if going to Suez and changing there would work and the ticket man nodded happily saying "lots of buses Suez. very nice". So we went to Suez. And apparently we'd missed the last bus to Nuweiba. So a friendly taxi driver drove us to a random petrol station and chucked us and our belongings into a teeny tiny microbus, Nuweiba bound. Hottest journey of my life (literally sitting in a red tin can through the desert with 15 sweaty men for company...). But then we got to Nuweiba and we were happy mice.
And then we swam, slept in a hut 10 metres from the sea, faffed around Nuweiba port attempting to barter ourselves the Egyptian price for the ferry, slept on a ferry deck, spoke to a Syrian family, faffed about Jordanian immigration, went to Aqaba, ate AMAZING honey cakes and jelly and fruit juice for breakfast, and got a bus to Wadi Mu'sa. We will explore Petra proper tomorrow, which is massively exciting as we are going to take a picnic and try to find some friendly Bedouins to talk to.

Lots of love, xxxxxxxxxxx

Swimming in the Nile and other things.

2010-05-15T16:53:00.005+03:00

We have successfully visited Luxor. And only with a medium level of tourist rage. And we genuinely enjoyed it, despite fears of permanent CLAW and rage issues. So, Luxor. Well, its busier and uglier than Aswan. But its got lots of big things to see like temples and tombs. And you feel like an explorer when you wander around them. Which is pretty fun really. Luxor Temple, right in the middle of town, was especially yummy as we visited it at night. All nicely lit up from the ground, hardly any tourists, and much cooler than in the daytime (although saying that, by "cool" i mean about the temperature of a southern French summer afternoon... Ek.)Naturally my camera died just as we arrived there. But trust me, it put every Roman ruin to shame (there is an amazing boulevard of sphinxes which used to stretch 3km all the way to Karnak, and the current man in charge of the city is mid digging them all up again).

And our last day in Aswan. Half brilliant. Half FAIL. We went to the Aswan dam which you have to pay an extortionate amount of money to get onto, and which fails to meet my images of it from GCSE geography. And all the other tourists were looking a bit baffled as to why they had been taken there. And security guards were convinced we all wanted to blow up the dam and so insisted on checking every bag when you crossed the road. It creates a pretty epic Lake Nasser (HUGE!) but is not the beautiful construction I hoped it to be. There's a nice soviet memorial next to it though which had Russian things all over it so that was nice. We spent the rest of the morning on the BobMarleyFeluccaMachine. Don't ask. Feluccas are aces. They are beautiful, and peaceful, and slow and not scary. We had two rather overly friendly captains who sailed us out of the town to the music of Mr Marley, Mr Monir (Nubian pop singer) and their own lovely dulcet tones. We leapt into the river and swim about for a bit. We didn't have our swimming costumes, and so had to jump in in jeans and tshirts (imogen in a HUGE billowy skirt which ballooned around her). The captains insisted we had to experience the genuine Aswan sand massage to get rid of our rheumatism, but we feel this was just an excuse for them to get rather too close to us for our liking. And we don't have rheumatism anyway.

Enough touristy wittering from me. A couple of photos (internet is dreadfully slow at uploading so literally will have to just be a few)

At the Monastery of St Simeon, Aswan.

Aga Khan Mausoleum above the Nile in Aswan. We swam just here.

The Bev. At Temple of Hatshepsut

All love, K xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Welcome in Aswan.

2010-05-13T22:03:00.002+03:00

So, we got to Aswan. Despite Imogen not starting her packing until an hour before we were supposed to leave and her discovery that ALL her clothes were still wet from the washing line. And despite taking a 16 hour train which was freezing cold, as brightly lit as an airport runway, full of screaming children, and the victim of a rock attack in Cairo which smashed up some of the windows of our carriage.

Anyway, Aswan is lovely. Boiling hot as expected - but managable temperatures in the morning so we've been using the early hours for the first time in our lives to "be busy". We visted an island and pottered about some multi-coloured Nubian villages. We paddled in the Nile (there are NO crocodiles, sad face). We rode camels to the Monastery of St Simeon right in the middle of the desert. We sang Nubian village songs with Osama and Mohammed, our camel people, and drank tea in their village house. We threw rocks at mango trees to we could eat ripe mangoes. We drank 3 glassses of Mandarine Juice each in a row because it was the most amazing thing we have EVER tasted. We have swum on the top of our hostel. I say "swam" but actually, it was more of a paddle (The pool is a glorified paddling pool). We have shouted at a LOT of hassling egyptians trying to sell us felucca rides and horse rides and indigo powder and kitchen utensils. THey are so hassley here, people working outside public toilets pretty much hassle you to go in.

Anyway, internet time is running out. Off to Luxor tomorrow, will email y'all properly soon. Love to everyone, missing you!

xxxxxxxx

Aujourd'hui

2010-05-11T07:37:00.002+03:00

Today is the day we leave. We have a 5pm train to catch to Aswan (which something ridiculous like 16 hours long). It is currently 7.38am. So far, not a single belonging is packed. Not a single room tidied. Not a single sheet washed. Not a single plate where it should be. So really, I don't know why I am writing this as I should be being BUSY.

So, bye from Alexandria, and see you ins Aswan (45 degrees heat?! Phoar)

Love to all, XxxxxX

How about kidnapping Adam?

2010-05-07T16:52:00.006+03:00

Had last visit to Adam's today. Heba (his mum) cried. Grandma cried. Sister cried. I very nearly cried. And Adam bounced around with his new animals singing "high fives Katrine" at the top of his voice. He LOVED the animals, Mum, and he was obsessed with the alphabet book and "Tiger who came to tea", Bec. He spent the whole time piling them up, putting the animals on top, counting them, putting them back in the bag, then pulling them out again. I don't think I've ever come so close to kidnapping someone in my whole life. He's the most brilliant Egyptian I have met.

Anyway, some photos, finally.

Tiger who came to tea!

High Fives.

Yeah, that family is amazing.

Xxxxxxxxxx

Long Goodbye

2010-05-06T20:04:00.005+03:00

Today was my last day of teaching at the university. I was with first General (the most adorable two classes ever) and they were lovely and awesome as was expected. The second class had a minor pandemonium when two swallows flew into the room and flapped around under one of the big old lights - only for us to look up and realise that there was a nest IN the light. They kept swooping into the room through one window, taking food to the nest, and swooping out of another window all lesson. Amazing!

Anyway, it was SAD finishing the last lesson. They gave me a round of applause and queued for the obligatory camera-phone photos. Farewells. Countless questions about if I would come back next term for another year. (Mother, don't worry, I repeatedly explained that I needed to stay put in the UK for a while.). Despite the fact that some of the classes drove me CRAZY, I'll really miss teaching them. They always come up with the most hysterical comments and never shy away from giving ridiculous presentations, singing to the class, acting death scenes, generally being entertaining. (One girl, skipping around the front of the classroom, hosted a quiz show today. It was incredible!)

Anyway, a couple of photos of some of them lovely peoples.

Lots love xxxxxxxxxxx

The last week.

2010-05-05T13:16:00.004+03:00

So, Salmonella, Tonsilitus, Sharm el Sheikh International Hopsital. I am broke, dead-like and so flipping excited about leaving Alexandria it's INSANE. Don't get me wrong. I love this place. But the last few weeks have been less than pleasant and I'm getting a little stir crazy. There's an end of term feel around these days. Teaching is grinding to a halt as we prepare to start (finally!) our 6 weeks of travelling. And I couldn't be more excited.

We're hoping to hop down to Aswan next week, so we can dutifully visit Egypt's key sites and dangle our legs in the Nile. Whilst most people are telling us to avoid these places - it is tourist central after all - we couldn't leave Egypt without seeing them. Next will be Jordan, Syria, maybe Lebanon, maybe south-east Turkey, maybe even Armenia. 6 weeks isn't long, but we'll see where the wind takes us and enjoy it all accordingly. Whilst we thought it would be fun to have a bit of a "Gap Yah" trip, you know, visiting places that make you "aware" - Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Gaza Strip, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan - we decided that might be a little too "risque" (Yes, Bev actually said this) and that we should leave "War-Zone-Travels" for another occasion (maybe once we've invested in bullet-proof vests).

Anyhow, all my love for you all. I'll let you know how Bev and I cope in our travels and hopefully re-assure you that we haven't been sold into underground slavery networks.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

The curse of immodesty

2010-04-21T11:42:00.002+02:00

First of all, you need to read this (if you haven't already): Cleric blames earthquakes on immodesty

Amazing. I feel that because I bared my knees to the outside world briefly last week, I should probably be blaming myself for both the earthquake in China and the Volcanic eruption in Iceland. Just that one bit of flesh being exposed to men. Golly, they really need to teach this to us in the UK. Maybe then cars wouldn't crash, houses wouldn't burn down and snow would not be so powdery that the Eurostar has to close down.

Xxxxxxxx

What's for lunch?

2010-04-14T12:02:00.003+02:00

Bev teaches in Damanhour. She teaches introductory English to some students from the Faculty of Arts who specialise in Latin and Ancient Greek. So you would have thought they were clever. Well, they probably are. But they find it difficult to convey their intelligence in English. If they were responsible for her lunch today, she would be eating:

Macarone with strewcorn, brouch - no, make that crunabate - and some lecter on the side. And then maybe some wintermelon with baskewts for pudding.

I think this makes her love them even more than normal.

Xxxxx

How to be Immoral: an Introduction

2010-04-13T21:46:00.003+02:00

Teaching in the English Department is according to the mantra that whatever is said in class, stays in class. So we can talk about anything that we like. And no-one will get cross. The students still get nervous about all of this, obviously. I mean, we’re forcing them to talk about things that they are not supposed to mention in Arabic, ever. But this is British culture. And that’s what they’re studying. So tant pis, you know?

Today this mantra really got put to the test. 2nd Basic were holding a debate about whether the internet is a positive asset. And we’d gotten past the information, communication, facebook parts and moved onto the presence of “immoral sites”. “What do you mean by immoral sites?” I prodded (error!). “Oh, sites with bad music, and people drinking, and gambling, and pornography”. The rest of the class looked baffled at the last of these. The girl who had said this turned pink and started apologising to referring to such a thing. The class started asking what it means. The girl refused to explain. So they asked me. And the idea of explaining it to about 70 students of mixed-gender kind of didn’t seem so cool. So I replied “oh you know, immoral things”. “Ah yes, yes I see” they murmured. Do you? Do you really see?! Wacko.

In 2nd G we were talking about gesturing in English. We were thinking of different kinds of gestures and their meanings. They giggled over most of them. And then one girl said “I saw in a film, the one you do with your mouth to attract boys”. “Ah, pouting?” “Yes! But I don’t know what that means”. So I asked the class. “Do any of you know what pouting is?”. Silence. I am refusing to act this out. Please. Someone. Know what pouting is. Complete silence. So I attempt to pout at them. And they laugh hysterically. “That would not attract boys!” they giggled. “Er, well, yeah it’s an English thing”. Help.Me. I was reaching the stage of wanting the floor to gobble me up. And then I somehow found myself teaching them how to swear with your two first fingers (don’t worry - I turned it into a bit of a history lesson at the same time). They had no idea that it was rude. They thought it meant something was cool. So, whilst I feel guilty for teaching them this, it is also reassuring to think that this group of girls at least will not be promenading around Alex unwittingly swearing in their photos and at random passers by.

So, they probably think I am totally immoral and I will probably burn in hell. But they did say it was “inspirational” (yeah, term-grades are released soon...). So that’s all alright then.

Lots of love xxxxx

Comrades in illness and in health....

2010-04-08T18:31:00.003+02:00

This week has witnessed two considerable FAILS. On Easter Sunday we failed to produce Lamb for the dinner table. In fact, the only thing we managed to provide typical of Belvezet Easter Food was mushroom sauce for potatoes. We trailed round Carrefour at midday having dashed back to Alex from Cairo that morning (Sarah and Katie having left that same morning) and failed to find anything useful except:

Mushrooms
Cinnamon
Chocolate
Cream
Face Wash

Carrefour is rubbish. It was a bit of an Easter Day Fail to be honest.

The second fail of the week. Imogen got sick. Then I got sick. And we stayed sick. And we are still sick, four days later. We think it’s probably some bug we caught from Cairo (probably from the scabby hotel we stayed in) because food poisoning shouldn’t last this long. We have spent the last few days lying in bed, drinking flat bebsi, fighting over the last of the anti-deadness pills, and complaining about how ill we are. We have watched 11.5 films (A Walk to Remember, Bourne Identity, Down To You, Get Over It, She’s All That, Slumdog Millionaire, Dirty Dancing, Dirty Dancing 2, Election, Painted Veil and half of Casablanca). Serious films were just too much for our sore heads.

Being sick is boring. But at least we’ve got company to keep us entertained. Even if the company is just someone prodding you with a lazy finger telling you to pass the water, it’s better than nothing. Oh, and obviously the entertainment that is students on facebook.

In conclusion, the week of the 4th April has generally been a fail of week.

Xxxxxxxxxxx

Future Actors.

2010-03-25T13:53:00.003+02:00

A quick note to say that I LOVE my first year students. When they do debates, they start accusing each other of espionage, bribery and nepotism, and they spend the whole time either yelling out their objections or raising their hands and politely asking if they might be able to express their opinion please?

And when they have to write a script for homework, ready to be acted out in class, they do it, with humongous enthusiasm. Today, they acted in front of big groups of people whole plays that they had made up (using their imagination!) or adapted from other plays/books. A group of shebab re-wrote and acted out a scene from Hamlet (when Hamlet meets the ghost of his father). They had brought a soundtrack along to accompany the play (rather oriental sounding, but adorable) and they spent the whole time gazing into the distance, holding out their hand, and reciting pretty darn good speeches. Then a group of girls wrote their own scene from Cinderella which they acted out amazingly - the ugly step sisters were hilarious - two girls pretty much rivalled Mitchell and Webb, a group acted out the beginning of Oliver Twist, the end of Dorian Gray, the Merchant of Venice (the boy playing Shylock was absolutely loving playing a hated Jewish man).... They were loving it. Some were filming it (one girl explained she wanted to show it to her mum) and inviting friends from other years or departments to come and watch re-runs after the lesson was over. It was brillianto.

Off to Siwa ce soir. We are meeting Smeb, Katie S and Sarah-Louise there tomorrow morning, and I am incredibly excited about seeing them (in Siwa of all places!). Only hoping that the bus does not be all ridiculous and give two chairs to a box and use our floor space for another box like last time we were on ze night bus (idiots).

XxxxxxxxxX

Fire, in the Faculty of Education.

2010-03-19T13:02:00.004+02:00

I was always going to write a rant about ‘safety’ in Egypt. Everyone knows safety here is pretty low on most peoples lists. If something happens to you, well, it’s the will of Allah, and that’s about it. But lately, it’s been getting a bit ridiculous. Smeb commented a few weeks ago about how many crashes she and others have seen on Port Said, the road which runs straight from the library and the university campus to Sporting roundabout where we habite. In fact, she’s pretty much stopped taking taxis along this road because there are so many crashes, it freaked her out a bit. Then one of the TAFL teachers was killed in a mashrooha (microbus) accident a few days ago. Lemba wrote about it here. So now Smeb and I have got pretty freaked about taking these: I take the tram now as it’s cheap, slow and safe as long as you don’t try to jump on or jump off. Its a sturdy old creature (and the old 1 pound ones are incredibly cute).

But it’s not just traffic. It’s buildings. You’re not safe on the roads? Well you’re not safe inside either. So the American’s flat had a mini-fire when an electrical heater sort of, combusted last term. And then Tammam’s flat caught fire (with Tamman inside it) because of electrical faults. And buildings collapse. And people drop things on your heads. And cats leap at your face (Michael had a bad experience apparently...). I know everywhere has dangers, and everywhere has fires and problems like this (come on, a brief trip to Greece turned into an Animals of Farthing Wood esque fire crisis), but not in the same quantity as here.

Anyway, I didn’t think, well at least I hoped, that I would have to write from personal experience on the whole health and safety issue out here. I mean, I’ve done the hospitals, and I’ve done the courts and that’s enough for me thanks. But horray! Those fate people have decided that life out here was getting a bit boring and some more excitement/drama would be nice. So voila, they presented me with: the Faculty of Education catching fire. Whilst I was in it. Gas explosions gutted the student cafeteria. No.Jokes.

So. Two days ago I had morning classes in the basement of the Faculty of Education with one of my jolly 2nd basic groups. It was going swimmingly. They were managing to enjoy theory (seriously, this is amazing as theory is the dullest subject ever and should.be.banned). It was about 8.25am. Suddenly the lights went off. As we were in the basement we were pretty much in the pitch black, except for some light from a window opening onto a brick wall over on the other side of the room. No matter. These things happen fairly frequently. So let’s tell ghost stories with phones under our chins. We were maybe hanging around waiting for the lights to come back on for about 10 minutes. No one was around to ask what was going on, and we presumed they were doing some quick (or not so quick) maintenance. But then there was the sound of running and about 10 dark figures went sprinting past the open door of the room. One girl went to ask if they could please, please turn the lights back on, but wandered back in saying “there is a fire in our building” and then sat back down. Silence. “Well let’s go then!” I snapped. They sort of sat there “yes please. May we leave?” they replied. “Yes! Go! Get out of here!”. And they kind of exploded into a manic rush down the corridor (although refusing to let me forget to take my boardpen and exam papers). What the hell? Since when do you need to ask permission to leave a potentially burning building? And since when is remembering to take your board pen important?! To leave the basement, we had to go through the car park and its tunnel type entrance which brings you out to the side of the main entrance of the faculty. At the head of the tunnel were a group of the third general students in tears, and as we approached them the air grew thick with pretty nasty smelling smoke. The class panicked and dashed around the corner to see what was going on. Black smoke was billowing from one side of the main entrance - the cafeteria. The third general girls were trying to explain that the cafeteria was on fire and that the staff were in there, and all the other girls around started crying and trying to see what was happening. There were literally hundreds of them acting like this. One standing on her own in a corner suddenly buckled and was on the floor - girls doused her in water and dragged her to a bench; another near the main entrance followed swiftly falling onto the people in front of her. Opposite us, the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Commerce had people hanging out of all the windows gaping at the scene. There was not a single teacher in sight - most of them were stuck inside the building due to the crowd who had gathered on the entrance steps to watch, cry and frantically call their friends. It was total bedlam.

It took ages for the fire brigade to get there. And even longer for the ambulances. Students had been dismantling the fencing around the entrance to the cafeteria before any of the emergency services were there just so that someone could get the people out. And then one group had to use a material banner as a stretcher until the ambulance got there. Totally and utterly flipping mental. And it was weird. As soon as the ambulance arrived, and the fire was being put out, there was just this eery silence as everyone watched people being carried away.

After I’d left, we heard that 8 people died in the fire. Luckily that doesn’t appear to be so accurate. Mohammed greeted me on the stairs yesterday morning with the newspaper pointing to the article about it. Apparently 10 were severely injured and were taken to the student hospital. Whilst it’s hard to decide whether being severely burnt is better than being killed, it’s still a relief for everyone. None of those 10 were students - but one girl from my 3rd general group apparently got some pretty nasty burns to her legs. Luckily it was early in the morning so there weren’t that many students in the room at the time.

The entire thing is kind of unbelievable. It doesn’t feel real, and I know it doesn’t sound real. It sort of leaves your head spinning. To be honest, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought the whole thing is some over-dramatised piece of nonsense. I almost feel that way. Now, what I think I find strangest about the entire thing, is that within a couple of hours, classes had resumed as usual. Well, not as usual - the power wasn’t turned back on so classes were in the dark (!) for most of the day. The third generalers were the most shaken, as they’d actually been in there and in addition to the girl I already mentioned, a few had minor injuries. But they were being told to stay by some teachers for classes even though they’d seen things no-one would want to see. And people were trying to suggest that the students had been blowing things out of proportion. Which is outrageous. Because 10 people were seriously seriously injured by that fire. And that is far from OK. In Europe or the USA, schools would probably close for a couple of days as respect for those injured, to sort everything out, and let all the students calm down and de-stress and there would probably be counseling for those third generalers. But here it’s a case of business as normal. So in I pottered again yesterday morning at 8. Burnt clothes, literally in tatters, were heaped by the entrance to the faculty. Students stopped and gawped. It was horrible.

I suppose what makes me even more frustrated and disappointed is that in the entire faculty, there was no fire alarm and barely any fire extinguishers. The building is 10 or so storeys high, and holds thousands of students. Even when the basement catches fire with proper black smoke all over the place, no-one is told what’s going on, half the classes don’t leave the rooms, teachers have no idea what to do and students have even less of an idea. There is no drill for emergencies. It’s total and utter chaos. I was talking to three girls about it yesterday, and they explained how they had been upstairs and suddenly someone yelled the building was on fire and people were running in all directions panicking and shouting because the stairs were getting blocked. So they just looked and watched it all from a window...!

They think everything is in Allah’s hands. That whatever happens to you, it is his will, so you shouldn’t really waste time meddling with that. (This, and the fact that the rich don’t want to spend their dosh on safety equipment when it could afford them a chauffeur driven car.) No-one believes that anything will actually happen to them. So they carry on driving like maniacs, and living in what can only be described as death traps. But is there not something called health and safety and good old damage control? I don’t understand how life can be taken as lightly as it is out here. Surely you should do everything you can to ensure maximum levels of safety in public, and private, spaces? Why on earth should you even risk letting someone injure themselves, when it could be avoided? I know we always get sick of the whole H&S drill in the UK, but to be honest, it’s worth it. Life IS valuable and you should do everything you can to preserve it. Whilst this does sound mushy and a bit “here, have a new moral”, it IS an insane way of life here. And to be honest, this country is pretty terrifying. Just going over to Delta to grab yoghurts, bread and juice, Bev and I will come back with some ridiculous story or another: “the Donkey outside the paper shop tried to kill me!” “a Taxi rolled into my leg!” “some shebab tried to run me over!” “the men on the building site didn’t see me and continued dropping bricks around me!” “my taxi driver was drinking tea whilst driving in the fast lane!” “my taxi driver tried to do a three-point turn in the middle of the corniche!” (yes, in the middle of corniche, right in the way of 5 lanes of oncoming, zooming traffic). I honestly cannot comprehend it. Forget terrorism. That’s nothing here. The Middle East is NOT dangerous because of Islamic fundamentalists attempting to blow your guts out. It’s dangerous because everyone lives dangerous lives here, risking their necks on a daily basis just because of their faith in God and their inertia in terms of change.

It’s frustrating. It’s enraging. It’s terrifying. And it’s disappointing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more disappointed in Egypt than I did on Wednesday (and I don’t think I’ve ever craved strong alcohol so early in the morning before). Which blows.

Fingers crossed those 10 people make speedy recoveries.

Big, big love xxxxxxxxxxxx

Lacking an Imagination

2010-03-15T19:08:00.000+02:00

John cooked some of his awesome oriental noodle/chicken thing a few nights ago. We obviously scavenged some because ratatouille is getting boring. Anyway, we were talking about something Imi and I had been ranting about to each other for the last couple of weeks. The use of the imagination in Egypt.

Imogen met with her supervisor last week to run a placement exam past him. One of the sections was creative writing. “But what is this?” he asked her, puzzled by a question which asked the students to write about an imaginary scenario. “Creative writing. When you use your imagination to make up a story?”. “But we do not do this in Egypt!”. It seems the idea of creative writing is a foreign oddity that they cannot approve of. Flippant, pointless, non-sensical fluff. And it’s true, as asking the students to make up stories to act out or imagine their own film scenarios leaves them totally flummoxed. Most will mutter something about social films, portraying real lives, mundane situations, perhaps some domestic abuse if you’re ‘lucky’, or maybe some anti-Israeli issues thrown in. “You are fans of realism?” I ask. “Yes, it is good to be realistic”. They are not taught to create things. They are taught to mimic. They are taught to memorise and repeat, to observe and note. Never are they taught or allowed to imagine unrealistic scenarios, and never are they encouraged to express their own genuine opinions. “What’s the point in that?” they ask. “Why waste your time dreaming when the real world is speeding on past you”. It’s the Flaubert frame of mind. And it’s depressing.

And from our experience, it’s worse in girls than boys. Boys are allowed to piss about. Girls are not. They have to study hard and not allow themselves to be distracted by anything else. Absolutely nothing. Not even their own mind. You ask them for their opinion, and generally they are genuinely surprised. “What I think?!” 5 out of 50 will say something impressive. 10 will repeat something written on the board. The rest will blush, remain silent, and maybe turn the question back on us - “well what do you think?”.

It makes Bev and I totally mad, especially for those impressive 5 who you can literally see are stuck studying in a system which has no space for them. They are all just being herded through a small door marked “destiny”, far, far away from any of their actual passions. They don’t even get a choice in what they study at university. It depends purely on what grade they get. So if you get, say, 90% for your overall grade. Whoosh. Off you go to the Faculty of Arts. If you get 80%. Off you are sent to Education. (Stratification, much?!) Sod the whole being better at one subject than another. So for the ones in Education (where I am), even if you advance to fluency by the time you graduate, you’re still being herded into the teaching profession, because, well, you’ve spent 4 years learning to be a teacher. The English translators have all been trained elsewhere. And the English journalists somewhere else. All because of some exams you took when you were 17. There is no room for maneuver. Their paths are already laid out. They have to go out and teach snotty little brats in some International School. The whole system is a strictly regimented machine. The only way to get out is to get the British Council to fund you to quit Egypt and study abroad (which several students are indeed in the process of arranging). University shouldn’t restrict you and your decisions. It should open them. But it doesn’t seem to be achieving that yet.

Now, I’m slightly nervous that this comes across as one of those dreadful “look how bad they have it. My oh my does this make me feel privileged”. Ew. That would be sickening. (And yucky discourse analyst's would have a field day.) It’s just one of those things that is hidden. And to be honest, it’s just weird to see how structured their lives really are. Half of them like it. And good for them. There are certainly times when I wish my life was structured and that I were just told what job to do/what to study. Seriously, “life decisions” can suck. But imagine being able to really, really see your whole life ahead of you. Every single minute detail of it. You would never, genuinely, live in the moment because you are always thinking about what is next. And I think that’s what annoys the other half of the students. They hate knowing what is going to happen to them. They want mystery, suspense, excitement and choice. In other words, they want those things they are never taught to think or write about. The things they see in films but don’t believe can ever be real. Perhaps these are the “rebels” so to speak. Perhaps not. I don’t know. But they seem to be trapped in a stagnant system. Sure, it’s better than when their parents were young, but everything is changing too slowly in comparison to what they are being exposed to. The West scares one half, and teases the other. And it’s just annoying seeing them in that situation.

Anyway, apologies for the rant. But its a strange situation to be in the middle of...

And also. A quick note: clearly not all of the student’s English is good. I just read this: “the main topic is about the steak taste”. This student will be teaching sixth formers English next year. Help.

Xxxxxxxx

J.O.P

2010-03-14T22:48:00.002+02:00

Just re-found this blog. I'm ever so glad that to see that it appears he has a bit of a larger readership than he used to. And I'm even more glad to see that he is still getting excited about being referenced - albeit in undergraduate research theses.

Brilliant.

xxxxx

Perles du BAC: II

2010-03-13T18:34:00.006+02:00

A few more gorgeous things we’ve heard/read this past week

“What do you like, and what do you dislike?”
“I like freedom and justice. I dislike Bebsi”.

Who is the author of this extract (Great Expectations): “The authority of the tombston”

“The cat is hiding up the table”

"Mary the bloody was a bad Queen because she killed people and was very ugly."

Imagine and write the next paragraph of this story (Great Expectations): “Pip got married to a woman called Sarah and worked in Petroleum company. He has 2 children. Son is a player and daughter is doctor”.

Does anyone know what this country is (Wales)? “Finland!”

Does anyone know what this land mass is called (UK?) “Europe!”

What country would you most like to visit? “I don’t know”. Try to think of somewhere. “Ok. Finland.” Why Finland? “Because it is near Sweden.” Why don’t you just want to visit Sweden instead? “Because I don’t like Sweden”. But then why do you want to go to Finland? “Because it is NEAR Sweden”.

How much is this? “4 pounds, if God wills”.

Write the time that this clock shows: (8.30) “Eight and mini hour”.

For a 5 mark question: "Question seeking answer"

"The main topic of the conversation is about people who have a meal and each one says his opinion about it, especially the steak."

"In this conversation, they are talking about slices of stick"

It's never too late for life lessons.

2010-03-08T21:17:00.003+02:00

You know those childhood songs which teach you massively useful life lessons, like “never smile at a crocodile”, “never play cards with a cheater” and “never shake hands with an octupus”? Well, there should be another one. It would go as follows. “Never decide to skip the dry cleaners and wash a blanket in your showerroom, that’s my advice to you. Your feet will get dyed, you will flood your flat and the blanket will become so waterlogged that you can’t pick it up off the floor, and you’ll probably break your washing line trying to hang it up” (to the nice happy bouncy tune of Pookie Doodle Puppy). Why were we not told this when we were children? It would have saved a lot of hassle.

Kisses xxxxxxxx

How to feel patronised.

2010-03-07T12:19:00.007+02:00

Last night, we saw My Name is Khan. We hadn’t intended to, but Alice in Wonderland wasn’t out yet, so given that we’d trailed all the way to Green Blaza, it was probably worth seeing something else. The poster looked bad and I wasn’t particularly convinced, but we’d seen a trailer which didn’t look too awful, and we were told it had good reviews.

Reviewers, what were you thinking? Where has your sense of criticism gone? The film is dreadful. It revolves around Rizvan Khan, an Indian muslim who moves to the US, land of hopes and freedom and justice. Starting as a sickening San Fransisco fairytale love story, it morphs into something which is trying rather too hard to address controversial issues relating to 9/11. Racism, terrorism, stereotyping. The norm. But the film itself is full to bursting with trite stereotypes, so it’s all rather hypocritical. It spends the whole time trying to teach “us” to appreciate difference, but spends the entire time boxing everyone and everything into categories. And it seems to want to make the white viewer feel a sense of guilt, using Bush versus Obama to illustrate the white man as the stupid, racist enemy (didn’t feel that comfortable at times in an Egyptian dominated cinema...).

And then suddenly it seems to flip into being a Roland Emmerich blockbuster. Hurricanes in Georgia. Church the only place not destroyed. Influx of volunteers to help save the town by rebuilding things (with the storm still in full force around them). Big load of nonsense. The Egyptians in the cinema were lapping it up, but that’s because it’s pretty much a racial/religious Titanic. We strike disaster, we’re going down with the ship, but we can overcome it with love in our hearts and strength in our minds. And the music is of about the same standard. Heaps of choral surges accompanying tacky panning views. I know its Bollywood and that music is used as one of the key modes of articulation, but I just can’t take that much simplification. It’s patronising and unnecessary.

The only interesting thing is that the main actor was, rather ironically, detained by US officials on entering the country for the promotion of the film. His surname, also Khan, aroused suspicion and so he was dragged into the back rooms for questioning. India not pleased, obviously. Clearly the subject matter is worth tackling on film, but maybe they should put a bit more welly into it next time, instead of dousing it in blurryness, slow-motion shots and synths.

* *

Anyway, on a more important note, Tom (brother) has probably made my entire year. He has kindly informed me that a previously non re-published Nancy Mitford is totally being released onto the bookshelves of England (it’s Nazi jokes previously considered tactless, but we’re open minded now, so it’s fine). Union Jackshirts replace Blackshirts, et al. Excitement.

Big love, and don’t, whatever you do, waste your money on seeing that silly film. Sentimental twaddle. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Henry VIII, he had six wives....

2010-03-04T18:25:00.002+02:00

This semester, my nice third and fourth years don’t have conversation classes (they have to study the ethics of education and linguistic theory for 3 months...) so I’m now teaching all of the second year - Basic and General (a mere 200 of them). The teachers all warned me that “their IQ is very poor”, “they are not clever”, “their English is very bad” so I was mighty terrified about the first classes. The idea of teaching a bunch of 50 moody adolescent girls who have no idea what I’m saying was not particularly cool. But when classes resumed last week, I realised, to my delight, that not only is their English pretty damn good, but they are just as much fun as the classes last term, and about 100 times better behaved. Some are so eager that they come to both the A and B sections - i.e., they come to the same lesson twice - just to improve their pronunciation and listening skills. Adorableness.

Anyway, the topic of this weeks classes was the English Monarchy. They barely knew any of the kings and Queens - some believed that England used to be ruled by King Frank and Queen Carol. So we went through a few of them, and then got to Henry VIII. They literally loved him. The idea of 6 wives got them squeaking. His penchant for beheading women got them yelping. His splitting with the papacy so he could have a divorce forced them into fits of giggles. But then I had to explain why he wanted to get rid of his wives, and the idea of flirting arose. A sea of blank faces. “To flirt? What is, to flirt? It is means be friends?”. I explained it involved fluttering your eyelashes, talking with romantic intentions, etc etc. When I was forced to act it out, the girls giggled awkwardly whilst the boys rolled about laughing. I guess it doesn’t really translate to their lives very well. Whilst horribly embarrassing, they should really accept that not everyone plays the dating game the Egyptian way. Cultural lesson, it was.

* * *

On another note - England thrashed Egypt last night in the football (not that you wouldn't know this already). We couldn't find the right channel on the Americans' TV for ages - so missed Egypt's goal. Khalid kindly texted Bev informing her that Egypt were winning, at which point we freaked out, threw insults about the English team around the room, and sulked. But as soon as the English had won, we wished the Egyptians had. They play a prettier game of football, they are not the ugly brutes that the English are, and they kiss the floor and pray and cry as soon as they win (far more adorable). What is it with always wanting the losers to win? Anyway, despite the question of our loyalties, it still felt pretty nice being all patriotic (during the match, at least). Rule Britannia.

Lots love, xxxxxxxxxx

Barbecued Chicken

2010-02-25T18:00:00.002+02:00

There are stalkers, and then there are stalkers. There are those who follow you along the corniche, saying the few words they know in English before getting bored and taking to throwing rocks at fishermen instead. There are those who dial random numbers hoping to find female voices on the other end who they can ask crude questions before having the females a) hang up, b) yell, c) find a male to yell. There are stalkers who text you day and night, who drop call you just so you know they are thinking about you and who send texts comparing you to the moon, the rain, the sea, the stars, the sun.

And then there is the Dominoes Pizza man, who saves your number once you've ordered pizza from him, and who rings for a chat when he's bored at work, checking that you're ok and that the pizza you ordered from 2 weeks ago was good....

Xxxxxx

A shout out

2010-02-20T19:02:00.001+02:00

Our landlady just appeared in the flat, checking that the ‘strange man with red hat’ at our door (Tom upstairs’ flagship friend who has got Imogen a job) was not trying to steal our house.

She is amazing.

E I E I O

2010-02-20T14:09:00.003+02:00

A few days ago, the Bev and I spent a bizarre few hours on a farm, in between Alex and Cairo, somewhere near Tanta. The farm belongs the family of Khalid - an incredibly friendly student of Imogen’s who is past the annoying shebab stage of life and head over heals in love with London (very, very endearingly so). He invited us out for the day so we could see his house, see his farm and meet his family. The farmland was mainly wheat, but also some crops that animals eat (his friend, jokingly referred to as horsan, told me the name but naturally I’ve forgotten it). And then there is an incredibly adorable donkey called donkey who potters around (n.b: SO much harder than riding a horse, it just trots away with you on its back, refusing to stop), and a boat which sits so low in the water that the river would probably sink it in about 10 minutes. Despite the boys thinking I was a “captain” - rowing doesn’t translate that well over here - I point blank refused to take the thing into the water having witnessed Khalid fall off the back. Hilarity, yes.

Anyway, it seems Egyptians really do quite like meeting foreigners. His mother was all beams, continually giving us hugs, kisses and patting our backs. His little brother, Ibrahim, walked around with us all day, occasionally trying out some of his English, and laughing hysterically at our feeble attempts at conversing in Arabic. And then the aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbours, friends of family and friends of neighbours would appear - greeting us over fences, following us through the fields, inviting us for tea. The boys attempted to translate everything they said, but we think most of it was slightly exaggerated on their behalf “she says you are the light of the world” “he says you bring joy and light to his house” etc etc. It was fun meeting them all, but I must admit, we did feel a bit like those dreadful celebrities who visit villages, parle with leaders about depressing topics, play with the small children and then have heart to hearts with the camera about how their life has changed and they will never see England in the same way again (that is, until they are photographed leaving Boujis all schwasted and stuff when they’ve clearly forgotten about their small African village). So I won’t go on about how I now see Egypt in a different way, but instead, just say that it was a jolly fun day, and that I’d quite like a pet donkey thankyou very much.

Loves xxxx

PS: Oh yeah, and we rode a motorbike. Mother, be afraid.

Superscammed.....The Art of Being a Tourist

2010-02-15T11:10:00.006+02:00

Having successfully marked 120 exam papers, and with four days break until the next load arrive, Bev and I decided to head for the Sinai this past weekend for some sun, sports and pancakes. Despite my somewhat critical attitude towards it last time, we went back to Dahab for some more floor cushion, shisha smoking, find yourself holiday-ness. However this time, instead of the world traveller hippy type, Dahab was full of families and Valentines day minibreakers. But we spent a very happy couple of days galloping along the beach on hot blooded Arab horses (the fastest gallop of my life, I swear), snorkeling (successfully this time, and far more tropical fish to be seen), reading about Northey’s Parisian escapades (she rescues lobsters from Embassy dinners, I actually love this girl) and suffering from severe tourist rage at St Catherine’s (took us an embarrassingly long time to work out which was Mt Sinai). Nestled between rugged Sinai mountains, the monastery was worth the 2 hour microbus journey for the views alone. Monastery itself? Burning bush, church, pretty little alleyways - all rather lovely except for the hundreds of thousands of middle aged tourists who pushed, shoved and shouted their way around the interior whilst loudly saying “oh George, isn’t this just wonderful? Take a picture of me here, will you darling? And here too. And can we just stand right here so no-one else can move or breathe?” So Bev and I escaped the confines of the outer walls and clambered up rocks until you couldn’t hear the tour guides shouting for their lost sheep and instead we could laugh at their silly matching hats, tshirts and white trainers whilst debating the possibility of megaphones in Moses’ days.

Pictures for your perusal.

Now, 4 days in the Sinai really tests your nerves and patience. It takes a lot to stop yourself yelling at every shop vendor who uses so many lines on you that you just want to shoot them. It also takes a lot when confronted with all those white linen trouser clad holidaymakers who refuse even to say thankyou in Arabic. Tourist rage central. It takes even more when hotel owners scam you out of your money, when taxi drivers put their grubby little hands into our wallets and steal a week’s worth of hard earned moneys, and when bus companies habitually lie through their teeth. When push comes to shove, you just lose it. Venting? Sure as. Apologies, but let me just get this out. There we are, happily waiting in Sharm for our bus. But apparently we are at the wrong bus station. The other is 7 or 8km away. No, too far to walk, they say. You must take a taxi. They ask for 50. We decline and parter down to 10. Taxi takes us around the back of the bus station, only for us to see that the other bus station lies directly behind the first. 8 km? 8 metres more like. And they still wanted 10 pounds for this. We yell. Taxi driver yells. Some other taxi drivers arrive on the scene and offer us a ride. We yell. They yell. A security guard arrives and starts yelling. We hand over 2 pounds and they all yell even more. We leg it. The yells continue. And then we were coaxed onto a bus home with tales of its superspeed. Direct to Alex in just 7 hours! VIP bus my sisters. Very nice. Nice quality. Very fast. Nice. Codswollop. Superslow. Superscabby. Superscammed. 11 hours (sans headlights, may I just add) and we didn’t get back to Alex until 2. Compensation? A mini bottle of tourist water with Tutankhamun’s face plastered all over it and a carton of grape juice. And to add the creme anglaise we foolishly leap into a shebab’s taxi who wants to steal all our money and who throws around insults at us because we refuse to pay him more. What a vagrant.

Our traumatic journey lost us our money, our patience and our souls. Worst Valentine’s day, like, ever.

Anger.

Passport Office

2010-02-09T11:47:00.003+02:00

Visa extension days are probably the worst days you could ever have in Egypt. Last time I went, I was fuming for days afterwards. The rough guide gave some vague instructions about where to go to, which desk to go to, bla bla bla. Rough was the operative word - queued at desk 8 for an age. The woman behind the desk was not the slightest bit interested in my passport and remained focused on her own affairs all the way through my addressing her and tapping loudly on the window. And then when she decided to look up, she yelled that it was the wrong desk and desk 1 would deal with my trivial affairs. And then I was told off for sitting on the wrong chair in the wrong part of the room, and then they pretty much tried to accuse me of attempting to bring down the entire system for not bringing my own scissors to cut up the passport photos. Apparently there was not a single pair of scissors in the whole entire passport and immigration building. So the photos were ripped in half and that was wrong because the lines were not straight. Etcetera. Etcetera.

So this time, Bev and I went knowing exactly what to do. Which desk. Which form. Which chair. We presented ourselves at desk 1 and smiled sweetly. The woman looked at us baffled "visa extension is desk 8!". Bugger. So we go to desk 8, and needless to say the dreadful woman is still there, busying around with pieces of paper and refusing to notice us. And when she does, she too looks baffled at us "visa extension? desk 5!". Desk 5 is marked "Palestinians" so we are not quite sure it is the right one, but low and behold it is. It seems that "Palestinian" really means visa extension and "visa extension" really means Palestinian. Makes perfect sense.

We parted on sour terms. She charged 3 gunieas and 10 piastres for the whole esercise. But who on earth has 10 piatres? So you pass over 25. I demanded my change just to annoy her - I could do with those 15 piatres, that's over half a tram ride. She looked like I'd just insulted her entire family. Change? Change? How dare you. So she came to an agreement with Bev that the 25 piastres would cover both of our 10 piastres. She gestured wildly and refused to look at me. I made a point that we were still owed 5 piastres (apparently I am a bad person). She waved us off. And we never got those 5 piastres back.

XxxxxxxxX

Perles du BAC (A.U.F.o.E Style)

2010-02-07T22:57:00.004+02:00

For your amusement.

- "Nice dress!" "Do you think? The colour burnt my face"
- "Shut your blood mouth" "I will not shut my blood mouth"
- Example of Compliment/Response: "Doctor, my knee hurts" "do not fear, it will soon be sure"
- "Your eyes are beautiful. Can I have them?" "Yes sure, here you are"
- Example of Challenge/Rejection: "Don't do that or I will cut off your hand" "yes cut off my hand"
- "Stop crying or I will kill you" - er, please never have children anonymous X

To be continued

They should get the wooden spoon awards. I actually LOVE them. Kudos, smarties and brownies.

X

Sigh, silent sigh.

2010-02-06T22:31:00.002+02:00

Badly drawn boy, anyone?

Drowning. Drowning. Drowning in essays and definitions and pages and pages and pages and pages of indecipherable words.

And the Oscar de la Renta website should be banned. It just makes girls cry.

But we have a new favourite song in flat 8. Mix of Sean Kingston/Ben E. King/Snow Patrol/Alice Deejay/Beverley Hills 90210 opening theme/Puff Daddy feat Faith Evans & 112. Oooh yes, some nice Norwegian Recycling. Merci buckets, Dobface.

Will get back to you when I have a life. Not anytime soon, I fear. xxxxxxxxxx

Exploitation

2010-02-03T14:48:00.002+02:00

Today I went and collected exam papers for Third Year General from the Dean's office. It's an enourmous pile tied up in brown string. There are 120 exams to mark. Each exam has 2 essays and 6 questions. One of the essays is baffling: Explain the difference between cohesion and interaction in conversation. Erm.

Gah. Does this count as exploitation?

كوابيس (right?).

Xxxxxxxx

Football and the curse of friend crushes.

2010-02-02T18:53:00.004+02:00

OK, so as I’m sure you are well aware, good old Egypt went and kicked the ball in the net and won the African Cup of Nations. Beating Ghana 1-0, that made them the most frequent winners of the cup ever. Seven titles, three of which were all in a row I’ll have you know. We watched the game from a rather aptly named ahwa on the corniche (“half time”) amongst lots of excitable men and about 2 other women. Hundreds of chairs squished into a very small area in front of a fuzzy old television, shisha smoke nearly choking you to death. You could totally feel the tension in the air during the entire match. And it wasn’t just the Egyptians who were stressing. Celia and I were properly nervous - butterflies et al. That is, until about 10 minutes from the end when suddenly everyone was on their feet yelling and jumping and hugging each other because Gedo had gone and become a saviour again. Nice little sneaky kick. Victory. Cheering echoed across the city.

Our hero that is Gedo

We wandered out on the corniche where cars were speeding down the road with small children hanging out of windows, men sitting atop the vehicles, boys sitting in open boots, all waving their flags and yelling at us foreigners. “Egypt won Africa cup!”. Mabrouk my friends, mabrouk. Fireworks were exploding in all directions. Flamethrowers appeared. The corniche became blocked as all the revelers poured out into the road forming enormous crowds who danced and sang and yelped and took photos of each other and made bonfires. Occasional cars came and performed spins for the crowds. And then they saw us pale white people, and descended on us. Not to grope us this time. Nope. Instead, to get us to join in with their celebrations (and maybe have some token photos with us too). It was all pretty exciting and rather lovely seeing all the Egyptians so excited about it (especially after the awful Egypt-Algeria world cup qualifier match). Whatever people say about football and its curses, it all seemed worthwhile that night. If it gets people being excited and patriotic, what’s wrong in that? It’s nice to support your country. It also totally made me reminisce about Euro ’96 (probably the most exciting thing for 8 year olds that summer) and Lightning Seeds’ Three Lions worked its way back onto the current playlist, again. Some PPNA would be quite good right now.

Now, aside of this, some unfortunate news from the Delta. It appears friend crushes (copyright Clare Finney) are not translating well to the Middle East. Friend crushes (friend projects if you’re a Clueless buff/ the spotting of people you think will make good friends if you’re just totally plain ignorant) were staple for the residents of Ooty Square and it was assumed that they would succeed out here too. Our experiences so far, however, would indicate otherwise. We have so far only managed to unmask crazy stalkers who were so intense that we made up a scale of craziness dedicated to them (word of advice: don’t accept sweets from strangers, kids). Yesterday Bev had her first experience of the failure of Egyptian friend crushes. Not want to scribble rude things about strangers on this blog, I shall simply go so far as to say it was disastrous - there is only so much we want to know about Syrian Sand Particles, and the crushes were oblivious to our attempts to get them out of the flat (word of advice 2: always meet friend crushes on neutral territory so you can leg it if need be). It’s the sad truth, dear friends, but probably worth knowing.

So there you go, some good news and some bad news. All for now.

All love xxxxx

PS: HOW have I never seen Hitchcock’s Rebecca? How how how? Is AMAZING. Jean Fontaine wears such beautiful clothes (LOVE her Monte Carlo outfits), and Laurence Olivier is as dashing as ever. Ah, happiness.

A Homage to Spitfires

2010-01-31T14:27:00.004+02:00

A tragic event has occurred. An event which has shocked the student expats and old french drunks in this city of the Mediterranean. Alexandria's most wonderful, sacred and valued drinking hole has been closed down. The Spitfire is no longer in business. No more can we spend a night under old maritime propaganda and faces/scribblings of TAFLers past. Now, we can only go to the nadi younani where we will be forced to drink dreadful replica beer with only cheesy greek posters of Zakinthos surrounding us, or the Cap D'or which charges 25 guineas for a small glass of rose. It was Amr who broke the news to me yesterday. He said it had been closed for the last 6 days, and would continue to remain closed for the foreseeable future. Something about wanting to sell it. I honestly almost cried on the phone. Alexandria seriously will not be the same sans Le Spitfire. The sun has set on the city. The wind has changed. The dark dust clouds have arrived.

Seriously, could you have a better named bar, like, ever? The beautiful Spitfire. Saviour of the British Isles. 1940s Tour de Force extraordinaire. Victory, beauty, patriotism. Polish fighter pilots. SO much better than Hawker Hurricanes or Liberators or Flying Fortresses or any of that other nonsense. Glory of the skies. Hero of the 20th century. Cool Britannia.

At least we have t-shirts to remember it by in the coming days, weeks and months of miserable spitfire-less nights. A tiny bit of consolation perhaps. That, and Nancy Mitford who makes the world seem right again. And Cecily Mountford, who would probably be more concerned about hippos than anything else.....

All for now.

Xxxxxxx

"Selling the body for cake"

2010-01-24T12:00:00.003+02:00

Cooking in Egypt is not an easy matter. For one, buying uncooked, unprepared food is about 5 times more expensive than grabbing halloumi sandwiches from Abou Rabir. Then we don't we have a working oven. And we don't really have many pans either. And spices are baffling. And all our last efforts have ended in something being burnt. It's embarrassing really. Especially given that the Americans have somehow turned into masterchefs over winter break. Whilst Bev and I stare glumly into a fridge filled solely with cheddar, strawberry juice and burnt stewed apples, their table is covered in noveau Asian cuisine, Egyptian-American hybrid creations and peanut butter sandwiches. Is it bad, as a female, to feel guilty for not being a culinary genius?Surely this sense of guilt is just reinforcing all those lovely gender divisions which we've been talking about so much in class with the fourth years.

Well, anyway, Bev and I set to rectify our poor image re.cooking last week. It was Sbem's birthday, which obviously called for a Cake. The loyal cake. The faithful cake. Quick and easy to make. Can't go wrong, positively can't go wrong. We skipped off to Metro in Smouha where we could find all the ingredients, then skipped around the American flat to the Beatles, whisking eggs and folding flour and various other clever things. However, there was a serious lack of scales. And cooking by cups is totally foreign to the two of us, so we just guessed the quantities according to how they looked to our eyes. Too much sugar? Let's add some more eggs! Too sloppy? Let's add more flour! Doesn't look quite right? Add some sprinkles to spruce it up a bit!

We pushed the boat out when it came to the decoration of the cake - stealing a Hummingbird Bakery recipe for that amazing vanilla icing. However Bev misread 25ml of milk as 250ml, and a lack of beaters resulted in it being a rather liquidy crunchy buttery thing.

Final result? Poor. We did not do our gender justice.

Whilst we may not be able to make a business out of our cooking, I was propositioned two days ago for a new form of business. I politely declined then legged it. Yep, a crazy scary toothless Egyptian man waved 100 guineas in my face on the way home from work whilst grabbing at me. And I thought Said had been our fair share of harassment out here. What a joke. Some of the men here are flipping mental and seriously need a good beating or something. I don't understand how they think it is acceptable to do this kind of thing. Golly, it makes you angry.

I only have three things to tell you.

2010-01-21T17:04:00.005+02:00

To be entirely honest, not much is going on over here right now. It's exams so classes are cancelled and instead I get to hold oral exams for each student which is surprisingly hilarious - "yes, my favourite film is toilet....no i mean twilight". So all the lovely spare time is being spent learning to play the guitar (Ali can verify), learning That Mitchell and Webb Look off by heart and learning the art of sleep. We're getting rather good at the last of these. Aside of this, there are three important things to report to you, my loved ones.

1) Washing machines. Ours flooded the kitchen just now. Water everywhere. Didn't really know what to do because all of our towels were in the wash responsible for causing havoc in the kitchen. Pas de mop, either. So we sort of just brushed water around the place not knowing what to do with it, but in doing so drenched the entire kitchen. Then decided it would be sensible to sweep it all into the shower room. Sweeping water and trying to get it to go around a corner was baffling. And water went everywhere. And then faten got mad because we hadn't been sitting watching the machine whilst it was washing the towels, because according to her, that's what you should do. (Also according to her, carpets on the floor get rid of gastro bugs...I wasn't sure it was really the required cure Sbem needed). BBAL.

2) Mud. It's everywhere. Ibrahimiyya was like a mud bath. Red shoes are now brown. Black trousers are now brown.

3) Scream. Adam's mum revealed Adam's favourite film to me today. Apparently it's 'Scream'. Yes, Scream. And he's 3 years old. And he watches it every day. Semi-freaked.

All loves xxxxxx

The illness of Smeb.

2010-01-19T13:55:00.002+02:00

Last night Sarah was ill. Sarah is never ill. She is the robust, undefeatable one. So that freaked me out.

Now she is having to take yummy Egyptian medicines. One of which (smartened up Vit. C) is called Retard. We found that kind of funny.

Xxxxx

Welcome to our humble abode, Mr Cameron.

2010-01-17T21:41:00.003+02:00

Today, Bev and I decided we should buy a fish. It was a very spur of the moment kind of a thing. We were strolling down Port Said with the intention of slipping into the off license and sneaking some whiskey back to the flat. However, on passing the fish shop (stress PET, not food shop), we decided it might be nice to have a look. And inside the fish shop, we decided it might be nice to buy a fish. So we did. And now he is swimming merrily around in his little bowl on the table, dancing to Dvorak and Iggy Pop. He is a bit of a runt of a fish - the smallest in the tank by far, and the man selling them looked at us all strange for picking the one clearly losing at life. However he is ever so friendly (he seriously took a liking to Ali on skype) and lively, and it’s nice having a man in the flat, delving out wisdom and rationality.

Name? That’s controversial. If we told you, we’d actually have to kill you, so let’s just call him Cameron from now on. Bev and Smeb massively dislike this name - they have an unfounded hatred for lovely David - but that’s by the by. Size? Small. Colour? Orange and a hint of green. Favourite food? Halloumi. I’m just taking a guess at the last of these, but I bet if he had a nibble of it he’d never put up with fish granules ever again.

He was a rather stressed little fish when we got him home. And his first hours here were not exactly idyllic. Poured him into a tank of tap water. Apparently that is wrong. Apparently tap water is bad. Apparently tap water is full of chlorine which kills fish. Poured him and tap water into a saucepan. Poured bottled water into the tank. But bottled water was straight from the fridge, so was rather chilly. Apparently fish are sensitive to temperature change. Apparently Cameron would die if he went into that. So bev attempted to heat the water by placing the bowl on her lap and wrapping her arms around it. Apparently it would have been a better idea to just put the water on the stove and heat it a little. But we didn’t have a saucepan as Cameron was in our only saucepan. So Cameron was decanted into a small plastic bowl which overflowed and Cameron nearly fell out, and water was placed on the stove. But it got too hot. And apparently hot water will kill fish too. So we had to wait for it to cool down. And then we could use the sieve to transfer Cameron to his new abode. And apparently he likes it.

After all this stress, we’ve been playing him classical music to calm his nerves. If classical music is good for babies and plants, then it’s blatantly good for fish in bowls. And he is now merrily swimming away, forgetting about his ordeal entirely. And we think he will be very happy here.

Fish are far more complex than you expect.

Fishy kisses xxxxxxx

Aujourd'hui I bought some fruits.

2010-01-16T14:40:00.002+02:00

I didn't. But someone said that on the radio and I thought it fairly adorable. YES. BBC radio works here, even though rubbish iPlayer does not. Radio 4 at breakfast. Radio 1 at lunch/dinner. Radio 3 before bed. Awesomeness. Note the lack of Radio 2. Despite its "easy listening" description, it's too baffling for words.

Had an arabic lesson today. I had forgotten everything. Not only could I not conjugate verbs, but I couldn't remember the verbs in the first place. Yikes. I should study, or something similarly useful and improving. Whilst the Life of miss Manning is probably improving, I highly doubt its use out here.

Time to buy some juice with my well-earned 20 guineas from Adam et al. Yippee.

xxx

The Return

2010-01-13T21:09:00.004+02:00

Back in Egypt. Back in Alex. Back in Crazy Town. Trying to remind myself why it was such a good idea to return here whilst normality prevails in the UK (well, I say that, but SNOW CRISIS continues...). Was REALLY having to remind myself when I stepped through the security gates at Heathrow, when nasty aeroplane bounced through the sky, when Bev and I were sat on the bus to Alex from the airport which took 5 hours instead of 3 because the driver thought it was fun to stop here, there and everywhere throughout Cairo, giving us a lovely tour of grotty backstreets. I need to take a breath.

But we walked the Corniche, ate pancakes, bought orange and strawberry juice, ate halloumi sandwiches, pottered around Mansheya and classes were called off (of sorts). And that old familiar rhythm is slowly starting up again. And the Egyptian normality is quickly returning. Homesick still? Of course. Pulls on your tummy and your eyes (missing people seriously takes it out of you). Plans? More halloumi, more juice, and a dose of British sticoms for the evening. Bev agress that this will make us feel right at home - even though we don't really watch many British sitcoms at home. Apart from Outnumbered, but that belongs to a category of its own.

All possible love for all - please send my love to Granny and Papous for me. And please turn on skype! Xxxxxxx

And also..

2010-01-10T20:53:00.002+02:00

Saw this :

Mathew Bourne's Swan Lake. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Second time around, just as wonderful as the first. The Prince was brilliant. Liked a LOT.

Sadness

2010-01-10T14:25:00.003+02:00

The press always has it in for Gaddafi. WHY?! He sleeps in tents and writes green books and wears medals!

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1926053,00.html

Is it because he doesn't like Switzerland? Well, what's wrong with that? Every country has its enemies. Like America. America doesn't like France. Tant pis. We're not being rude about that, are we press people? And anyway, the Swiss arrested Gaddafi's son (Hannibal, his name is). Most people would be cross if the Swiss arrested their son, wouldn't they?! Yes, his son does sound slightly terrifying and pretty insane (repeatedly attacking his wife in hotel rooms around the globe) but that's a separate matter. I still want to meet Muammar al-Gaddafi, and the press is NOT going to change that.

Kisses xxxxx

Ice Man Cometh.

2010-01-07T14:56:00.003+02:00

It's The Day After Tomorrow going on over here right now. BBC 24 was going crazy with it last night - reports on animal shelters running out of animal foods, postmen having difficulties delivering their post, gritters running out of grit, and best of all, reports about the emergency provisions we need to keep on us (inc. sleeping bag, portable gas stoves, etc etc). I know there is a LOT of snow here at the moment, and that it is icy icy (the sea froze over in Poole Harbour! Amazingness) but seriously. Let's not freak out too much, Britain. There's no need for Dennis Quaid to come and rescue us just yet...

I am waiting for the Thames to freeze, that would be awesome. We could have a frost fair like they did in 1683/4. Ice skates at the ready...

Xxxx

Dictatorial literature

2010-01-06T15:52:00.003+02:00

Been in the bed for the last couple of days with a jolly lovely bout of post-christmas/nye flu. Or maybe it was just a cold. But it was a mean cold. Whiled away the hours listening to Rubber Soul (totally the best Beatles album), watching that new film Brothers and episodes of Outnumbered, and reading christmas presents: history of the Arabs (but that got a bit too much for a snuffling welsford), Nancy Mitford's Don't Tell Alfred, and what I WILL refer to as improvement literature - Gaddafi's Green Book and Turkmenbashy's Rukhnama. Brilliantness. The improvement literature is incredibly entertaining, and incredibly addictive. Perfect for times of illness. Turkmenbashy was like a Vogue contributor: "Wear clean and decent clothes, because good clean clothes improve the external appearance and make people look good. Choose clothes that suit you". Yes, that IS TOTALLY written in Turkmenistan's national book. I also liked "Turkmen land has been made of pearls, diamonds and gold!". That's nice, isn't it? They're a lucky nation.

Back to Alexandria next week - so long as Heathrow doesn't ground all its flights what with all the blizzards here at the moment. SO much snow last night! Squeak! And another blizzard just started this very second. Not sure how excited I am about returning to Egypt. But then again, this time next week, Bev and I will be living in the Middle East together, and thats just quite cool. Scary (family do not trust us together) but cool.

Love, xxx

PS, speaking of Improvement Literature - Dobs, you left your copy of the Marxist Manifesto at my house...

Resolutions and more chaos.

2010-01-02T13:25:00.005+02:00

Welcome to 2010, world. I have been trying to work out some New year resolutions. The following have so far made my list.

1) Use WWII RAF slang in conversation every day.
2) Learn morse code.
3) Learn to remember that the sausages in tins are not of the Cumberland variety. TINNED DELUSIONS
4) Watch Enchanted once a week, and dance along.
5) Meet Gadaffi
6) Wear my NEW VELVET DRESS (yes!) once a month and jump about in it
7) Set up a direct debit for a RAF veteran support charity
8) Own something by Mr Kane
9) Vote for the lovely Cameron and go on the first legalised hunt
10) Learn to accept that Sbem will always stay a ginger, and cannot change that

Quite a few were scrapped and missed the final 10 because they were utterly unfeasable. e.g., Resist Dobson temptation, walk from England to Mongolia (to see Dobs), try to be less obsessed with haloumi and wispas.

*------------------*

Its been crazy busy since christmas time. Langford avec famille - Tom and I made superb winter drink consisting of sweet sherry and lemon, heated up using a poker from the fire, icy walk at Sherborne, Poker with cousins, two more christmas dinners. Then headed back to London on the 30th for Wallyface's 21st. Everyone flocked to Maison Welsford to get ready before heading out to Northwood for the night. We got stuck at Kings Cross, not thinking to change at Baker St. So we were an hour late which was hugely embarassing, as the 8 of us had to be picked up at the station by a Porsche driving Carl (the bouncer, we think) so we could throw ourselves into the house so that speeches could be made, and food eaten. Yes, massvely embarassing. Wallace's party was a-maze-ing. We had NO idea it would be SO HUGE - enormous marquee with those sparkly lights in the ceiling, chess-board dance floor, two cocktail bars. The marquee had incorporated parts of the garden into it, so every so often you would find a tree poking up into the room. There was a pond with sparkly lights, which Dobson excitedly thought was an added extra just for the evening. Idiot. We had every intention of being sophisticated, elegant fourth years/graduates. But we failed, massively. Unsurprisingly. Let's not go into it though.

Lorny, Dobs and I crept into Finsters house to sleep, but got woken up at 8.30 by the others (RUTH HORWITZ!) who wanted to come home and sleep in proper beds. We dragged ourselves up, threw clothes at ourselves and stumbled to the train station, only to be called up by the others saying they'd gone back to bed and would be back later. We were NOT IMPRESSED. So instead, Lorn and I had to spend an hour on the tube with an idiotic Dobson swaying in the middle of the train carriage, spilling Coke all over everyone whilst muttering nonsense about aliens and how you should spend NYE sitting in the dark holding our hands like old men before leaping up at midnight to eat, drink, then probably die.

Strangely enough, we did NOT spend New Year's as Dob hoped. Instead, we spent most of the day moaning about not having had enough sleep, then transforming the house into a themed mess. Cellar was turned into an Egyptian shisha den - we hung blankets and sheets and throws and things on all the walls, threw cushions in all the corners, set up some atmospheric mood lighting and placed the beautiful shisha pipe in the centre (managed to set it up properly! Smarties!). Turned kitchen into huge eating room (America) and turned the sitting room into Scotand (was home to a massively chaotic ceilidh in which Finster and I got squished in a mass of spinning people and nearly died) with Australia in the corner in the form of Bondi Beach (an umbrella wth sunloungers underneith, and a rather tactically placed lamp acting as the sun). And then we drank eggnog and champagne and held a private rave in the Venice sitting room. Counted down to midnight watching the fireworks and letting off explosives with Philps frantically pouring out cava for everyone to swig. And then we played the annual game of charades in which Ross had to act out Emma, and did so by pretending to ride a horse/play the piano, and Finney leapt up in excitment as she was given a film to do. Thinking it was ELF she yelped "I LOVE that film" and acted out our favourite thing in the world, only to discover a rather baffled Roo had actually said BEOWULF. And I fell fast asleep.

It was fun. And nice. And we enjoyed seeing all the favourite peoples. And SBEM was there with her fringe and exciting gossips and lots of snuggly hugs. And SLEVY and SUNDERLAND were there reminiscing about 6th Form. And OOTY SQUARE were there squeaking. And Elves leapt. And Number 15 NS bounced. And poor Philps was the only boy amid 15 girls. But he totally loved it.

Beeootiful

Family Photo

Elveses

Terrifying Idiots

*---------------------------*

I have wittered enough. Dobson and I are now flopped on a sofa in Philps' lovely house and are about to go out and do something to mark the start of a new decade: Either a) get a new ear piercing or b)go to the Covent Garden smile pod (glorified dentists...thus I am NOT supporting the latter).

Right, walkety walk and all that, HAPPY 2010 from Moi xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chaos.

2009-12-26T20:08:00.005+02:00

Aside of all the christmas traditions such as driving home from Hampstead without stopping at red lights whilst singing "ding a ling dong" en famille, this years christmas saw some new traditions brought to the celebrations. Namely: prawn cocktail extravaganzas and halloumi. Yes, managed to get halloumi into christmas day lunch. Kudos. Stage I of christmas is now complete. Just. Three humungous meals (despite one being referred to as a "light lunch" - 4 courses later we were not so sure) and we're about to explode. We tried to take some photos, but we all had turkey chins so they went straight to the bin. And demain, it is time for Stage II - Langford Catling Familial times. Excellent excellent. Mud, log fires, more enourmous meals and hopefully none of Papous' collapsed mince pies.

The quotes below are just to give you a sense of the Welsford Christmas.

"We sit around. We talk about issues, like Anthony Blunt and Terry Wogan" - Granny Welsford
When asked what was playing on the television "Oh, that's number 10. That's Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown!" In fact it was David Tennant mid the to be or not to be speech. I think Mr Brown would be rather flattered by this slip up.
"He's wonderful. He's a real asset to the pew at church" - Becca commenting on Philpety.
"You look like a bag lady from Kings Cross"
"They changed the setting. They went and changed the Eucharist setting." Becca. On a rant which was on a par with her anger with the Post Office last year.
"I made these biscuits this morning. But they're meant to be left to mature for a week, and the icing isn't right". Excellent.
And then Bevan, ringing up mid tea: "Do I fly Air Maroc or Egypt Air? AIR MAROC OR EGYPT AIR?". She manages to add to every occasion, regardless of how far away from it she is.

And all of this to a background of Carols from King's, Amr Diab, 60's hits, Radio 4 christmas schedule and Alexandra Burke (father's choice) and with father pottering around in his tuxedo with prosecco in hand.

Chaos.

Flipping brilliant.

XxXx

ELFELFELFELF!!

2009-12-24T14:47:00.004+02:00

HOW DID I FORGET THIS ONE.

THIS FILM BEATS ALL OTHER CHRISTMAS FILMS HANDS DOWN.

Elf is literally all the elf spinsters combined into one person. Probably the most fantastic person in the world. He = IDOL. "I thought maybe we could make ginger bread houses, and eat cookie dough, and go ice skating, and maybe even hold hands". Sounds familiar - in fact, Alex nearly choked when he heard that line: "this sounds like something you, Dobs or Finney would say to each other". Yeah. True, true words. Many an elf day has been spent in a scarily similar manner. Especially the holding hands bit. But with some added leaping.

"Discover your inner elf". YES. This should be everyone's motto. Go for it, don't be afraid. They're a nice bunch.

Seriously now, have a jolly christmas. xxxxxxxx

Nativity

2009-12-24T11:18:00.005+02:00

Saw this with Slevy and Sunderland.

Nativity!

Best christmas film ever. Apart from Love Actually. And the Box of Delights. But is brilliant. Even family liked it. And it had Pam Ferris - of Darling Buds of May and Matilda fame - and Martin Freeman. So that makes it great.

Happy Christmas Eve. xxx

Snow. Part II.

2009-12-21T22:16:00.006+02:00

More snow. Snow on Snow. Snow on Ice. Snow on non-gritted streets. Twisted ankles galore. Probably queues coming out of the hospitals. Anger at Islington Council for being rubbishly inept at spreading grit. Took me 35 minutes to get home from the station when it normally takes 7 because the pavements were so terrifyingly icy. Should probably get my boots re-soled. They were LETHAL. Tubes delayed because of snow on other lines (?!). Buses sliding in all directions. Sybil is scared of the snow (she freaks out when her paws get at all wet) so has spent the day cat napping in all the warm spots of the house. Currently she is fast asleep on my feet. We've got a symbiotic relationship going on these days.

And poor old Dobface stuck in Brussels thanks to Eurostar messing up again. Seriously, cancelling services because the snow is "too fluffy"? Now that's hysterical. I haven't heard of anything so ridiculous since Boris J was talking about broken society and broken fridges in the same sentence.

I don't get how snow can keep causing these problems each year. It's not like it's some new substance falling from the sky, baffling those science fellows. It happens every winter, mate, and each time transport grinds to a halt. And it's not just England. 40% of France's trains were cancelled today. In the 1940s (best decade, and obviously should always be used for comparisons) there was probably about 3 times as much snow as there is today, and yet 1940s style trains coped happily, and continued chugging away throughout the winter months. Why is Europe so bad at this? I suppose that's the eternal question that Eurostar/ TFL / National Express will never be able to answer. But I BET you that if GNER were still around, we wouldn't be having any of these problems. They should come back and provide us with their trusty services (and better coloured seating) once more. We're in the dark ages here, GNER. Please come back and save us.

Just thought: Imagine what would happen if it snowed in Egypt. That would be hilarious.

xxxx

I want, don't get

2009-12-19T21:24:00.009+02:00

WHY is it, that when you go shopping with a mental list of what you want to find, you can NEVER find what you want? Christmas shopping is the most tedious thing in the world - I have learnt that you must never go without knowing what you want to get people in advance as otherwise you act foolishly and buy strange random things which swiftly make their way to car boot sales/the back of closets. But when you do go with a list of what you want to find, you can never find it. It's like the shop God has seen into your mind and quickly hidden everything you seek. Maybe it's a test to see how much effort you will go to to find ultimate christmas gifts for the familials. It's a catch 22. It's a loop, circle, dot and a dash. It's massively rubbish.

And it's not just christmas shopping. This year is totally the year of the velvet (I know! Finally!)- I am craving a velvet dress a la Mr Kane, Mr Jacobs and Mr Armani (alas, not at this price level). Velvet should be a must for every christmastime - it's SO festive, it makes you feel like you've just stepped out of the nutcracker, and it's toasty warm. But when you want a perfect velvet dress, you can't find it for love nor money. And the rare few you do stumble across are nasty synthetic static things which look like they've just found their way out of CATS or something - boring plain things which lack that desired "whoosh!". Turned down multiple beautiful alternatives because they are NOT VELVET and thus they LOSE. Perhaps it's snooty turning down alternatives just because they are made of inferior fabrics, but once you've got a goal in your head, it's hard to deviate from that. I guess I shall just have to dream about this dress that seems to be evading me. Sadness.

Jacobs' bee-oo-tiful-ness. But 1,850 squids? I think not.

Velvetty Kisses xxxx

Snow

2009-12-18T11:55:00.004+02:00

It snowed last night. Not much, but it snowed. In London. And that's rare. And it's going to snow more again today. So Mum and I are going to dash into town now to do bits and pieces (namely, visit this new "floaty-hipster" shop on Regent Street which we're fairly excited about) before all the tubes and buses grind to a slow and painful halt because of a small dusting of snow. London's ridiculous like that.

Ghost of Canonbury....ek. You can kind of see the snow - but taking photos in the dark on a baffling camera with too much reflection going on isn't easy.

Snowy kisses xxx

Today

2009-12-16T14:36:00.004+02:00

Today is another exciting day.

We get the train to London this afternoon - Dobs will do her sewing and old women will comment and I will laugh.

And then, we will meet FINSTER.

And the world will be happy, the birds will sing, and we will break out with some Enchanted songs whilst skipping down Upper Street.

Xxxxx

Late night halloumi

2009-12-16T02:45:00.004+02:00

It's halloumi time. Am currently perched on the bed of Dob, it's rather nice.

DOB: I think 'perched' implies we're more sober than actual fact. NOT that I would say that we are drunk; more that we are merry, in a festive sense, you know?

um...no.

WELS: Up in Drum - went to festive Carol service where we grinned rather too much at the sound of christmas carols. All in our lovely christmas frocks and heels (SO exciting) although meant that Dob and I were towering over Kayles

DOB: went and ate in a nice place. It was nice. But we had carbonara. and felt quite sick. so after champagne retreated to Parks' lovely cosy bed. Then rose. Went out and joined jollity in Chad's.
Have now returned to bed. A different bed. but MUST go I'm afraid...the halloumi's calling you see...

WELS: indeed. Halloumi time awaits. ANd then we shall retire to bed. again. Although this time we hope Pomme and Soph don't cover our faces in "we heart you" labels.

Drum is A lOOOOONG way from Alexandria. But it's aces really.

Love from Dob and Wels...aka, THE ELVES. REUNITED. xxxxx

Said Dob: "I'm just going to make pitta with butter and a little honey. It's terribly settling you know". Loser

The return of the elf

2009-12-13T13:48:00.002+02:00

So, I just want to say that I'm in England. Yeeeaaaahh. It's pretty aces really. Was greeted at the airport by Mum, Dad and Ali in in their Big Woollen Coats. And coloured tights (mum only). And festive jumpers. And a heated car. It was amazing.

Off for a walk on Hampstead Heath. Want to see some greenery.

London love xxxx

A Warning.

2009-12-10T15:54:00.006+02:00

Just so that you are all warned, I'm actually going to kill that darling brother of mine.

"Chalks, could you just bring back a small book for me from Egypt in your luggage? It would be wonderful if you could"
"Sure, of course, happily, would love to"

What a FOOL I was. This is Tom. He doesn't bring back small books. He brings back entire bookcases of books in his beaten up backpack and his oversized blazer pockets.

Turns out it's not one book. But eight. And they're hard-backed. And HEAVY. And set me back 350LE. And I don't even know for sure that they're what he wanted. And now I have to somehow get them back to England. So family, Tom will probably not be present at the christmas celebrations this year. I think I'll be killing him the minute I set eyes on him next week. And Tom, if you're reading this. Good. You're hereby warned.

Theory, trees and junior Eurovision

2009-12-09T08:30:00.006+02:00

So, the last few days have been a horrible blur of grading orals, data-inputting and studying the theory of English conversation. Apparently it is vitally important to teach the students that some clever chap noticed that conversation is made up of sequences whereby one person speaks, and another responds. Golly, totally going for it, weren’t we Mr? Pushing the boundaries; sailing the boat; really exerting yourself there. Of interest however is my purchasing of a beee-oo-tiful shisha pipe from Attarine, the finding of some new friends in the vegetable seller down the street, a jolly nice fellow who grinds coffee in Mansheya and another who saved me from being smashed to tiny gory pieces by an on-coming taxi on Port Said. I also walked into a tree. And in doing so, ripped my beautiful festive jumper to shreds. All to the delight of a taxi driver who beeped at me in fits of hysterics. Tears.

End-of-term-work-fuelled-procrastination has resulted in the finding of some delightful youtube entertainment in the form of junior Eurovision. Tom, the Eurovision obsessive, sneered at this. But it’s fantastic Eurotrash. SO many kudos and Smarties. Yodelling and people singing in funny languages. Weirdest by far was Sweden’s entry – the kid came out with some kind of Kate Ryan/Meck&Dino production (so wrong). "Uh oh uh". Hmm, catchy. Apparently it was written by Robyn’s (and Britney Spears’) Alexandrer Kronlund. What the hell is he doing in the junior Eurovision circles?! He plummets, he plummets (if that is at all possible).

Bizzz xxxxxxxxx

Change

2009-12-07T16:46:00.002+02:00

It don’t have to come through the barrel of a gun, Mr Mao.

Winter is FINALLY here. I am one happy cat.

It’s cold. It’s windy. It’s rainy. The shutters are slamming, the skies are grey and brooding, and the mirror in the bathroom now fogs up when we have showers in the morning. It justifies blankets, candles, socks and baked potatoes. It also goes quite well with the French pop I've been listening to lately (and the Clint Mansell/Mogwai collaboration, obviously).

This is my kind of December. Fingers crossed it decides to hang around until January.

Going for a 1940s swim

2009-12-06T14:52:00.005+02:00

The scar is small and rather adorable. The muscles are healthy again. So sod the doctors, I’m doing sport....

Hence...

Two days ago, we headed off to the Nadi Sporting– completing another of our goals rather nicely. We live right opposite the club and walk past it virtually every day, and even though we have been saying to one another how much we wanted to go, had never quite made it. One of us would oversleep. One of us would have work. One of us would be ill (generally, me). We would forget. We would waste our time faffing about watching True Blood or drinking coffee and generally talking nonsense (probably about cheese, nutella or Stephen Moyer). But yesterday, we finally made it. Apart from wanting to check another thing off the list, I was pretty keen on going to Sporting because Papous did his legendry dive there on VE day, what, 64 years ago? It’s one of his only stories about Alexandria (that, and something about a wren....?!) so I HAD to go before I see him at Christmas. There’s still a diving board, and it looked so decrepit it may well be the one he leapt off, but apart from that I doubt he’d recognise much there. It’s a warren of cafes, car parks, leisure studios, unidentifiable sports pitches and bloody expensive shops. It’s a bizarre place. Like, the Sobell Centre mixed with the Metrocentre. Smart Egyptians escort their children to one activity or another and then sit in expensive cafes admiring their sprogs attempt to swim lengths or throw balls. Some take pictures to show their friends: “this is Mohamed jumping!” “this is Noha running!”.

We went to use the pool. There are two. We had NO idea which one to go to. We asked a deaf old man what we should do. He yelled something about speaking up, and then a kindly man came to help us out. We could use the empty one because we’re over 18 – so no fighting for space with beastly little maggots attempting to swim butterfly. Oh, that would set us back another 10Le first though. And, oh! You need to wear those stupid ugly swimming hats that make you look like ridiculous egg-heads “ for safety’s sake”. And by the way, that will cost 2LE please. We argued that we didn’t need to wear hats, that we are perfectly able swimmers and our hair was not going to make us drown. “No, but for safety”. There was no persuading them. Totally ridiculous. So there we found ourselves, in a huge empty pool swimming lengths in ridiculous 1940s style bathing caps, with people sitting under umbrellas sipping their iced drinks brought to the them on trays by suited waiters. It was seriously like being in the 40s. Which is cool. Obviously. Floating on your back, it was strange because you could see all the buildings of our neighbourhood towering over the club, and you could hear the call of the mosques echoing across the city. It really is such an enclave. Dear and Flusty should use it as their next case study (I never thought I’d see the day when I referred to these lovely LA geographers in ordinary life). It’s totally separated from the rest of the city, what with its big white walls which surround it like some sort of prison, and is home only to the rich, and the foreign. Apparently, we get discounted entrance fee because we’re white. Yeah, weird. But I guess I’m not complaining because we got a good swim out of it, met some friendly Egyptians and did some much-needed exercise.

We’re well proud.

Schkisses for you all on this lovely Sunday afternoon xxxxx

Ai...

2009-12-04T14:28:00.002+02:00

...I LIKE this city

"Hanging"

2009-12-04T14:09:00.002+02:00

Went to party in Smouha last night. Was nice. Saw nice people. Ate some damn good cake. Nice.

We really, really want to go to Deja Vu where we’ll probably be groped by scary Egyptian men, but that’s a risk we’re willing to take. Why? Because if we go to Deja Vu, then Sbem and I can cross off one of the goals which we want to achieve by this time next week. Simply for satisfaction, kicks and brownie points. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Our goals are mainly pretty pointless things such as learning to play backgammon (so we can be like the Egyptian men whiling away their time in dusty little ahwas), going swimming in Sporting (and avoiding catching Swine Flu from the infected waters) and making friends with Egyptians. I guess you could say that we’ve achieved the last of these goals. Sarah and I have been mixing with Egyptian students recently – some occasions being rather more fun than others (I went to a pretty epic feast with a student, her two friends and her whole entire family on Sunday for Eid.). It’s strange hanging out with Egyptian kids our own age because there doesn’t seem to be much equality between us. I mean, we find ourselves feeling massively older than them even though they too are kids of the 90s. They want to talk about Hollywood boys, Miley Cirus, Amr Diab and Celine Dion – so it’s like going back to when we were 14 or 15 when we thought it was cool to oogle at Orlando Bloom whilst listening to Texas. Seriously, there’s only so much discussing of Enrique Iglesias being ‘so beautiful’ that I can handle. It’s scary how little independence the girls get. Sitting by the sea is a monumental night out for some of them. They have to stay in contact with their mothers, they have to be home by 9, they can’t leave Alexandria to visit friends in Cairo on their own, some can’t even go to the cinema without being accompanied by male relatives. They’re all so shocked that Sarah and I are living away from our families; that we went to university away from the family home; that we don’t have curfews; that our parents do not have the power to veto who we chose to date. They’re 22. It’s actually kind of terrifying.

What’s possibly even stranger is that they want this to continue. They’re not at all resentful. They’re not pushing to leave the nest. They genuinely think our lives in England are crazy weird and would never want it for themselves. They see it all the time on all the American series that they avidly watch but they still don’t want change. It’s just kind of baffling. There’s more of a void between us than I realised, and that makes me feel kind of sad, but I guess that’s just cultural difference in action.

Been listening to an awesome playlist of John Lennon, JLS, Timbaland, Duran Duran and Arvo Pärt today whilst reading Anna Karenina in my big warm blanket (it IS a Friday after all, and I’m well bored of data-inputting). WHAT a combination.

Home this time next week! Ek!

All love, xxxxxx

Being Bad at Life

2009-12-03T15:50:00.002+02:00

Today has been one of those days....

Spent flipping ages trying to create a beautiful sweetcorn-noodle concoction for lunch. Went to buy a tin of sweetcorn. Couldn’t open it. Got John to open it. Didn’t know what to do with the sweetcorn. Rang Sbem. She didn’t answer. Found El Dob on Googleymail and pestered her to explain. She laughed. So I googled it. Couldn’t understand the silly American ‘can’ slang. Then El Dob decided to be kind and pity the loser who couldn’t comprehend tinned sweetcorn. She explained. Cooked the sweetcorn. About to eat, tripped, spilt sweetcorn-lunch all over the floor. Ants descended.

I don’t even like sweetcorn anyway. What a waste of time.

So, as you can see it’s a clottishness day, when you can’t seem to do anything successfully. Even walking down a corridor ends in colliding with doors/walls/stairs/people. It is as if you’re drunk. There are just some days when you are not very good at life; when you should probably just stay in a padded room with a plate of food occasionally shoved under the door, just so humanity doesn’t have to be embarrassed by you. . Sbem thinks this is overreacting. She says I’m being dramatic. What rubbish. She has NO idea. (Or maybe she understands too well?) This is a serious issue, and I am plagued by it far too often. Someone who has to check that they’ve got shoes on before they leave the house is NOT an ordinary human-being. P.L.M should be quarantined during days like these, and only be released back into society when they can look after themselves without causing serious bodily injury/large-scale destruction.(I acknowledge that the majority of mankind do not suffer from this malfunction, but just the small few of us.) Does this sound draconian? Let’s hope so, it’s such a jolly word and I’m well chuffed to get it into this blog.

On a more positive and less Alduous Huxley-esque note, the SportingFlatofBeauty is now beginning to look Christmassy. Admittedly it has nothing on Ooty last year, but it is nevertheless starting to spread festive spirit. We bought a 2 foot plastic tree at the Alfa Market in Green Blaza (what a weird place) for a mere 6 guineas (~60p!!!), covered it in ribbons and earrings (the latter make surprisingly good ‘on the cheap’ ball-balls), and strung paper chain across mirrors. The paper chain is particularly lovely because it is made from Times Style magazines and a poster of Madonna (not THE Madonna, but close enough I suppose). Jolly Christmas tunes now fill the air, and they are visibly infecting Amr Abdou – he totally has a festive grin across his face these days. The lovely Christmas atmosphere is not making prepping the “theory of English Conversation” much easier (yes, I do have to teach this to 350 3rd and 4th years next week) but then again, I doubt anything could make this subject any more interesting. Bah Humbug.

Apologies for humiliating y’all.

“Platonic love” (don’t ask....) Xxxxx

Bridging the divide

2009-12-02T09:34:00.006+02:00

Last night, Sarah and I tackled the ‘Egyptian Advent Blues’/serious mood issues/boredom through a pretty epic combined ‘attack of the wardrobe’. It was a dress up night, uniting our two mismatched cupboards with a flurry of belts, ribbons, leggings, fringes and hoops. The results were pretty spectacular. I probably should have taken photos. Vogue Egypt Edition would have learnt A LOT. No nasty neon, no ridiculous overworked denim and no diamante encrusted t-shirts in sight. Instead, a delightful F/W 09/10 collection which embraced both Egyptian and British fashion history, and which will help bridge the cultural divides from which these two societies seem to suffer....Siwan wedding dresses paired with big silver hoops and rope -ties, 1930s colonial-esque dresses with sailor Burberry belts, mother’s 1990s monsoon silk tops with Bedouin scarves. Who says fashion is dead out here? What an utter load of nonsense. Sure, it’s no Camden Passage or anything, but there is definitely space in Egypt to create identity through ridiculous clothes. Current favourites? Spitfire t-shirt twinned with Sbem’s leopard print skirt, leggings and converse/ Smee’s combination of Barcelona trousers with pirate top and her big white woollen cardigan thing (absolutely aces). We get looks when we stumble down the road to find bananas and chocolate spread, but at least it’s not because we’re white.

We’re really carving out new fashion here. It’s inspirational. It really is.

xxxxx

England-sick

2009-12-01T12:19:00.003+02:00

Today seems to be turning into a weird England-sick day. I don’t really know why, but I think it’s something to do with the fact that I started listening to THE Christmas playlist, and it just doesn’t work out here. It doesn’t make you feel festive. It just makes you feel like you’re a long away from home. And to think that this time last year we were probably bouncing round the beautiful Ooty Square hanging obscene amounts of ribbon, paper-chain, tinsel, ball balls, gold chains and tree branches whilst listening to Mariah Carey and Andy Williams...

And it’s hot again. What is this? December should NOT be warm, it should be cold and frosty. We should be having Hide Christmas meals, singing carols along the Bailey,throwing snowballs at builders, watching Stardust, drinking whiskey on the roof, dressing up as elf-ninjas, going for frosty runs along the Wear, and getting excited about mulled wine competitions and making Mince Pies. When you think like this, Egypt seems like a pretty poor place to live.

Being nostalgic is a Waste.Of.Time.

L'argent

2009-12-01T00:22:00.001+02:00

Today, I received my argent for teaching small-boy Adam. It was my first ever paycheque. I used it to buy an immensely strong ahwa, because tutoring a three year old kid seriously takes it out of you. The number of times I had to repeat ‘snake’ and ‘rabbit’ got quite ridiculous. And then I had to spend about 10 minutes trying to get him to understand what ‘red’ means, and that 16 doesn’t come after 10. Tough, tough times lie ahead, I fear. I suppose it’s worth it for the coffee I got out of it, although it’s pretty pathetic how excited I got about being paid given that it’s only about UK£2 for an hour’s work...

I'm dead tired tonight. I'm not even going to attempt to write more. It will not make sense.

Bonne nuit,

Schkisses xxxx

PS: Oh my goodness, it's December. Happy Advent. Bring out the Ice Storm et al...!

Smeb and I...

2009-11-27T16:42:00.006+02:00

...are like butter and honey, peas and carrots, scones and jam...

Oh, and please read her latest blog entry. It's fantastic.

xxxx

PS, I know I'm slow on the uptake, but what on earth is this about Luella going into administration?

Adam

2009-11-26T10:54:00.003+02:00

Last night I met my new student. He’s amazing. I actually think I’m going to fall in love with him. He’s called Adam. He likes zebra and cars. He has brown curly hair and is about 2”5. He’s three years old, and his parents want me to speak English with him so that he grows up speaking in an English, rather than Egyptian, accent. He’s absolutely wonderful – we played with his cars, met his gorilla mask and looked at Winnie the pooh stickers. His favourite word is flower.

“What’s this Adam?” (pointing at a bird)
“Flower”
“No, Adam that’s a bird”
“No, flower”
“It’s a bird”
“Bird”
“Yes! Good! What’s this?” (pointing at another bird)
“Flower”

He can count to ten pretty well, but kept missing out number 7. He had the biggest grin when I started clapping when he got it right. And then we practised high fives – he was somewhat reluctant to do it, but when John (who was there with me) had a go, Adam eagerly high fived us both. I think it’s pretty much glorified baby-sitting, but I get to play games with him, read him stories in English, imitate elephants, and maybe learn some Arabic whilst I’m doing it. He did keep babbling in Arabic at me, at which point his mother would tell him off and he would giggle, but at times I could just about understand what he was getting at – he mainly kept repeating the fact that there were lots of sheep in the street and that their throats were soon going to be slit (he was very eager to show me the actions...) I’ll be seeing him once or twice a week, perhaps more and I literally cannot wait.

Thanksgiving today. Need to think about what I’m thankful for. Probably Sbem.

xxxxx

Cleaning, sheep and a son called Ibrahim

2009-11-25T17:55:00.010+02:00

My 10 day break started last night. I’ve celebrated today by buying a winter jumper (rather festive woollen thing, kind of Bridget Jones esque, totally awesome), mourning the absence of Smeb (she managed to get stranded at St Catherine's and won't be home until tomorrow) and cleaning the flat. It was smelling kind of musty this morning, so I decided it would be a great idea to have an Egyptian Housewife Day (EHD). It consisted of beating all the carpets, sweeping all the rooms (although managed to get Michael to do most of that) scrubbing the floors and so on. We don’t have any cleaning products, and I wasn’t in favour of walking down the road to find any, so I thought it would be a nice idea to use shower gel instead. Now all the rooms smell of ‘peaches and cream’. Nice. I realise that being a housewife probably is not my calling (charity flower shows on the other hand...!). Whilst I strangely adore EHDs, it’s strenuous stuff. My arms are seriously killing after all the carpet bashing and I have major sneeze issues thanks to all the dust going everywhere. Golly, it’s a hard life.

The flat still smells sort of weird, but I realise it’s not our low levels of cleanliness or anything, but the air in Alexandria in general. The city is currently full to bursting with sheep because of the upcoming Eid al-Adha, when Muslims sacrifice them in commemoration of the ram which Abraham sacrificed in place of his son. They’re everywhere – tied up outside shops, in gardens (there’s a whole load of them just behind our flat) and in makeshift sheep shelters. The problem is that it rained this morning, so they all got wet and soggy, and are subsequently giving Alexandria a rather nasty sheepy smell. It’s not terribly pleasant, so incense has been burning all day to try to stop the flat from smelling like a farm. Totally not working...

Some rather exciting news is that I practised my arabic today with a very friendly taxi driver. It was going quite well - I managed to say I was living in Alexandria for a year, that Alexandria is beautiful, that I'm a teacher from England. But I think I then lead him to believe that I am married to an Egyptian and that we have a 1 year old son called Ibrahim. Oops.

My oh my has it been a productive day.

Schkisses xxxxxx

In the Sinai wilderness, pigs might just fly..

2009-11-24T14:25:00.006+02:00

I’ve just got back from Dahab, where Sarah and I went with some of the TAFL lot to find commandments and fish. Well, Sarah was after the fish. I, clearly, was not. Dahab is right on the Gulf of Aqaba, north of the russified Sharm el Sheikh and directly opposite the mountainous coastline of Saudi Arabia. The town is right on the edge of the St Catherine Procterorate, so has fantastic views of the mountains which lie directly behind it. The town itself is an odd place. It’s just like Varkala (Kerala, where Henry, Gorsk and I got stranded for a week last summer) – the whole palm tree cafes serving banana pancakes by the sea, and really ‘chilled out’ hippie types sitting cross legged on cushions reading ‘finding yourself’ literature. It really could be just about anywhere in the world, and its consequent lack of identity sort of freaks me out (Profs. Rigg and Anderson would be so proud to hear the Durham graduate say this). It’s a space, not a place, man. Thailand of the Middle East? Thailand IN the Middle East more like. The shops sell all those beaded goodies and smelly wooden bracelets you find around Asia, and the gallebeyahs read ‘made in China’ inside.

But this is not to say that Dahab isn’t great. Because it is. We had an amazing time there. It’s one of Egypt’s main diving and snorkelling hubs, so foreigners flock there in their white 4x4s and tshirts which read “i dived Tahiti ‘06” or something similar. We snorkelled around the infamous ‘blue hole’ where we saw loads of fishes, corals and the likes. Turns out snorkelling is SO not an easy task. I spent the whole time faffing around trying to keep my flippers on, adjusting my mask, and remembering to breath, and so kept on crashing into coral/the others (very battered legs now). But once the basics were mastered, it was amazing. Chased schools of tiny electric blue fish. Stalked purple and orange things which flittered around bright red coral. Realised not all fish are scary after all. Of course, the ones with bulgy eyes and ugly faces were creepy, but there weren’t so many of them, so I was a happy Welsford.
The best thing about Dahab though is that it’s just a hop, skip and a jump from the Sinai wilderness. And trust me, is it is wilderness. Sarah and I have realised that what makes us most happy out here are spaces like these where you feel tiny in comparison to everything around you, and you can just bounce around squeaking about all the sand. Whilst we couldn’t climb Sinai and fetch a commandment or two (my lack-of-appendix, and Sarah’s poorly leg muscles) we could leap into a minibus and spend an afternoon in the middle of the Protectorate. Celia, Sarah and I went with 2 guides who took us through some valleys to a tiny oasis nestled in a small depression at the edge of the White Canyon. No road reaches the oasis, and so the only way to get there is to march through the desert until you reach a vertical rock face which you stumble down. Difficult in the daytime, a million times harder in the dark. We felt like Lawrence of Arabia. Or Indiana Jones (thankfully lacking the Nazi pursuers). The village itself was tiny – just 5 or 6 families live there. There was barely any light, so we used our phones to guide us as we pottered around the village practising our Arabic. My Arabic is poor, so I simply repeated my favourite expression ‘nagoum gamila’ [meaning ‘beautiful stars’] whilst strictly avoiding making the mistake of enthusiastically declaring ‘bukra fee mish mish’ [essentially meaning, ‘pigs might fly’ and not ‘hopefully tomorrow’ which I thought it did] which I had accidentally declared the previous evening to a very friendly shopkeeper who was asking Sarah to practise English with him. We ate in the village, so had to return to the car in the dark. Not a walk in the park, I tell you. Bashed my feet clambering up the rock face and continuously tripped in the sand because I was looking elsewhere. All in all, acted like a bit of a clutz. I believe I fulfilled Sarah’s criteria for ‘tourist-ing’. Now I’m back in Alex (after a mammoth 15 hour bus journey which revolved around stopping at army patrol posts so soldiers could point their machine guns at us, inspect our passports and declare our tickets fake – they tried to kick me off the bus for this). It’s nice to be back, but flat is cold and empty what with Sbem still swanning around the Bible lands. Will keep myself busy by learning some Arabic pronouns.

Love et al, xxxx

Egypt v Algeria

2009-11-19T12:53:00.001+02:00

So, last night was the Egypt – Algeria showdown. People had been selling Egyptian flags along the Corniche all week in preparation for the match. I wanted to get one, but thought I’d look a bit dumb walking into classes dragging a huge flag on a stick. Classes were cancelled entirely or finished early, and people just drove round beeping their horns as loudly as possible. First leg was last Saturday, when Egypt won a respectable 2-0. We were in Siwa for the match, and hadn’t really been aware of it. But then the goals happened, and the whole of Siwa erupted into manic celebrations. Everyone who owned a motorbike was zooming through the marketplace to reach a small roundabout where all the men had gathered to whirl fire through the air, yell about their victory and dance Siwan style. It was crazy. And this was only Siwa! Imagine the celebrations (which were actually nearing riot status) in Cairo and Alex...

We thought that Egypt only had to prevent Algeria from scoring, or to remain at least 2 goals up. But turns out the winner of the second leg would be the team sent through to the World Cup. (Far too complex, so I’m not going to go into the specifics. ) We were going to go and watch the match with some Egyptians who invited us, but it was way out in Sidi Bishr and we didn’t like our chances of managing to get home before sunrise. Probably reassuring for the parents, given that riot warnings had been imposed again... So instead Sarah and I wandered a deserted Corniche for a while, peering into the ahwas where teems of men sat with their shishas facing a distant television. The roads were totally deserted. Walking down Sharia Delta was bizarre – not a single taxi attempting to mow us down. We happened to come across our internet man (we still don’t remember his name...Mohammed maybe?) who painted flags on our hands – much to the excitement of his young daughter – and let us buy one of his Egypt flags off him. Spent about half an hour trying to hang it, and in doing so, missed most of the match. Probably a good thing though. Algeria totally kicked Egypt in the ... And afterwards? A pitiful silence, broken only by the occasional mournful car horn.

Third year general

2009-11-18T08:50:00.000+02:00

Classes yesterday were great. I have halved the Third General classes in two, so am now teaching four classes instead of two, but each only for 45 minutes. With the exception of the usual talkative ones, so many of the students are incredibly shy speaking in front of the class. It seems slightly tough that the marking system revolves so much around class participation here. If this had been the case for history A-level, I would still be retaking it to this day. The pressure on them is just huge. Last week one poor girl resorted to tears when I tried to pick on her to speak. I felt like the cruellest person in the world. And the thing is, I know exactly where they’re coming from. All those faces staring at you as you um and ah your way through a presentation which you really don’t understand... Anyway, the smaller classes has done a lot of good. It has reduced the Arabic talking, and massively increased the amount of student participation, as well as giving the quieter ones more confidence to speak. We joked our way through the classes, and even had time to play some English ‘car games’ to get their questioning skills a little more up to scratch. Most pretended to be small animals or American actors who belong to the 90s. One boy however had the entire class totally and utterly stumped as he pretended to be David Hume.

Third general is a great year – they’re tougher to teach as there are just SO MANY of them (120 or so in the space of three hours, jeez), but they’re incredibly funny, smiley, eager and talkative. Marking their vocab tests was literally hell – but provided me with constant amusement (examples below are copied word for word from their sheets)

“To recruit: means to seduce someone into joining army” Sarah found this particularly hilarious
“Social Darwinism: means humans are monkies”
“Aerial Bombardment: fighting with the metal poles on top of buildings to attract signals” – my favourite
"Aerial bombomard: the rockes that dropped from the plan on the earth"

Yesterday’s class discussion was on ‘my greatest passion’ for which they had all prepared 2 minute speeches. A few delved into their artistic abilities or obsessions with Amr Diab/Celine Dion (kill me now), but they were few and far between. Instead, the vast majority spoke of their mothers, fathers, siblings or fiancés. This made me feel really rather ashamed. Whilst dawdling along the corniche to class, the only thing that came to my mind on this subject was spitfires. Or maybe holoumi.

Egyptian Schkisses xxxxx

Love....

2009-11-17T14:06:00.000+02:00

Forgot something massively important...to send HUGE elvine schkisses to these three:

Losers.

xxxxx

Three bedouin nomads...

2009-11-17T09:42:00.000+02:00

This weekend, Sarah, John (American upstairs) and I took ourselves off to Siwa, right on the Libyan border, between the Qattara Depression and the Great Sand Sea. It's really nice to get out of the city sometimes. Whilst I adore Alexandria, it is chaotic, and so I did feel in need of some Durham-esque big open spaces. We took the bus through the night, so by 6am we had arrived in a freezing Siwa. I don't think I'd really thought about how cold it would be in the desert when the sun's down at this time of year - a couple of pairs of socks and a thick woolly jumper did nothing to keep the cold from seeping right through to the bones. Probably why I've now got a Siwan cold. My bad.

Siwa itself is a bizarre place. It feels more North African than Egyptian - they don't even speak the same dialect as the rest of Egypt, everyone natters in a Berber dialect - and it's one of those towns where you can imagine very strange happenings. The women look like ring-wraiths, as they wear these big blue shawls (tarfottet) and a long black chiffon veil which covers the front of their bodies. Five year old boys drive donkey taxis using huge wooden planks to beat the animals with and men zoom around on motorbikes in their gallebeyahs and headscarves. They listen to CDs of Siwan 'pop' music - the lyrics of which are "siwa siwa siwa siwa siwa" (I kid not) - whilst sitting on the floor drinking Siwan tea and discussing Egyptian football. It's a total mixture of old and new. I kind of love it.

We hired rusty old bikes so that we could explore the area a bit - Sarah provided us with hilarity as she crashed into John and I, stationary motorbikes and small children. Sarah was fine, but we're not so sure about the little boy she collided with... We leapt into numerous hot and cold springs (Siwa is full to bursting with them). The most magical was a hot spring on the edge of the dunes which we drove to late at night with Waleed, the owner of a cafe out by Cleopatra's spring and budding Siwan gardener who we happened to befriend. There were no lights there, so the stars were brighter than I've ever seen. We attempted to find some of the constellations, but couldn't get much further that Orion and the Plough. I really wanted Pomme there - she would have been in her element. And then we planted trees on Waleed's garden to act as wind-breakers, clambered around Roman graveyards and abandoned olive presses (learnt the arabic for olive oil) which are dotted around the edge of the vast salt lakes which lie to the edge of Siwa. And yes, Sarah and I can verify that they are indeed salt lakes as we tasted the water. Not a pleasant experience, I might add.

The desert itself was beyond beautiful. It's hard for words to do it justice. Miles and miles of untouched sand, knife-edged dunes and huge rocky outcrops...it honestly looked like another planet. I'd seen it before when I went with Alex a few weeks ago, and I knew what we were about to see, yet I was still absolutely awed by its beauty. From here in Alexandria, it's impossible to believe it's still there. It seems to be a figment of imagination, or something. It's unreal. And the sunset? The entire landscape turned pink for about 20 minutes as the horizon became bright orange and red. We perched at the top of a huge dune and looked out across Libya (this excited me yet more), feeling the air get colder and colder and watching the desert disappear into the darkness.

This is what we came to Egypt for....

Schkisses xxxxxx

I'm not very good at this.....

2009-11-16T18:27:00.000+02:00

So, after extensive amounts of pressure, I've given in and created my first blog. Bear with me as I find my feet in this bizarre online world. It all makes very little sense, and Sarah is getting frustrated with my squeaks of bafflement from next door, but we'll get there. I hope.

Anyway, I is missing the other elves and spinsters in England, but am nevertheless having fun here in Egypt. It's not a particularly elf-friendly environment - the weather is either too hot (or right now, too cold), there is a definite lack of bacon, avocadoes and proper holoumi, the fashion is dire, the music leaves a lot to be desired and there is a serious lack of good mojitos - but I've adjusted. And in adjusting - I've fallen for it completely. Perhaps my discovery of a local Polos stockist has helped matters. Classes are great - if completely exhausting - the students are extremely friendly and (generally) eager to please, I'm starting to conquer (albeit extremely slowly and laboriously) the arabic alphabet, and we've had some pretty memorable weekends exploring the north/north west.

So, the time has flown past. It's absolutely terrifying. Hence my anticipated return after New Year. Three months is definitely not long enough - especially as most of the first few weeks out here were spent to-ing and fro-ing to the glorious Abou Ir hospital.

And right now? Sbem and I are having a romantic evening working together in a candlelit and incense-filled room, listening to the lovely Carla Bruni and every so often squealing about the desert. It's got chilly this past weekend - November is really kicking in - so lots of blankets and sweaters are now the items du-jour. Sarah's got exams on thursday, and I've got 200 painful vocabulary tests to mark, so we're trying really, really hard to concentrate. I guess it's not working so well because Sbem is now doing yoga on my bed. An interesting study ethic she has going on...

Lots love, and schkisses from Egypt x