Sunday, October 15

The VB teams both finished 3rd out of 4 teams. There is quite a disparity in size of the schools. The winning school from Doha has nearly 1,300 students while we are the smallest with 230 students. It was interesting to watch the teams play. It becomes a marathon as they play 3 games each on all 3 days. Both the Doha boys and girls won the tournament, Amman finished second in both, we were third in both and the British International School of Cairo finished 4th. It was interesting talking to the staff from the other schools. We reached the conclusion that we have a pretty good situation here. No one else is taken care of the way we are.

Yesterday and today we had real weather oddities – it rained both days!! We had showers for probably 15 minutes each day and then the sun came out and dried everything off. The locals tell us this is the first sign of winter. They think it is getting pretty cold in the evening. I guess they might be right as the temperature only reached a high of 79 today and is dropping quickly into the high 60’s this evening. I may have to give up my shorts in another month or so.

Tonight we played cards with a couple that will be going back to the states after this year. They have been here for 4 years and really know Alex, Cairo and the whole travel scene very well. We rely a lot on them for suggestions and tips on where to go, what to see, etc. They have accumulated a great deal of items during their stay here – many are unique one-of-a-kind. When they move back and decorate their home back in the states it will no doubt be worth seeing. By the way, the men came through again and beat the ladies handily.



Don’t know if we mentioned it or not, but the residents (the foreign hire staff) all chipped in and bought a very nice pool table. It ended up costing approximately $300 – you couldn’t touch a table like this in the states for less than $1000. Pat has become quite a pool hustler. I think she is sneaking down at night after I go to bed and practicing