It has been a busy week here in paradise. We say paradise because our neighbor, Denny, across the hall calls Alex “paradise.” The weather here sure makes it seem that way. Here it is early November and we are still are in short sleeves. It is the end of the quarter and grades are due on Sunday. Everyone was hurrying around grading tests and projects. To make it more hectic for me, the electricity decided to play games on us and one day it went out six times in a 30 minute period. This caused some corruption on our file server and it took two long days to get it straightened out. Fortunately we have a company where several parents and key ex-pats work at that have close ties to Schutz and they sent over some IT experts to help me out. We have been having problems with our switches as well – they are older ones and aren’t able to handle the load that we now are placing on them – the company is going to bring in some more updated ones for us to try. Hopefully this will solve the problems we have been having.
On Thursday, the 3rd grade presented a play to the elementary school on respect. Pat was the chief costume designer and was very busy making costumes for all of the students. She is finding new found skills in a variety of areas that she didn’t know she had. Tuesday was Halloween but the kids and school really didn’t observe it until the 1st and 2nd of November. Decorations weren’t put up until Wednesday and the students had their party on Thursday. It certainly is a new chapter in Pat’s life.
On a very sad note, one of our local teachers (and a good friend of ours) lost her husband this week. He was a very prominent physician, not only in Alex, but Egypt as well. Pat and I, along with several other staff, attended a memorial service on Tuesday evening. The service was held at a well-known mosque in Alex. Services are a bit different here. The women gather in one area and the men in the other. The males in our group did go over to briefly pay our respects to the wife and her daughters and then went across the street to pay our respects to the male members of the family. The female members of our group were only able to pay their respects to the female family members. The Koran is read throughout the services. Typically people stay 15 to 30 minutes and then leave in order to give room for more. It is very sad for the family as he was a very charismatic and generous man.
Today we went out to Carrefour on a little shopping excursion. Carrefour is a major shopping center on the southeastern edge of Alex on the way to Cairo. We took a taxi out and back. The rides were very different. Our first driver took us at a leisurely pace – maybe because he knew the stores didn’t open until 1:00 pm and we left at 11:00 am for a 20 minute ride! The second driver was auditioning for the Daytona 500. He was weaving in and out of traffic – often straddling two lanes in case he saw an opening. He loved to use his horn, as most drivers do. A car may be stopped waiting to make a turn and ten cars behind will all start honking as if that is going to cause the on-coming traffic to stop to left him turn. Well over 1/3 of the cars on the streets are taxis and they all look the same – black and yellow little jobs that look 20 to 40 years old with various dents and dings and personalized for the drivers (some with fleece dashboards, objects hanging from the mirror, many mirrors, stickers, decals, red and blues lights, and hopefully a backseat and doors with working handles) It is no doubt where many drivers spend most of their time so they want to be comfortable.
Carrefour is a nice modern mall with a large food court (including a “Cinnebon” which Pat just adores). We’ve been there two times now and when we went today, the manager (who had come out when we came the first time) came out again today to greet us. That is the way so many of the store personnel and local shop keepers are – if you buy there once, they will remember you and give you the royal treatment every time you come back. We have a little shop across from the school that we now buy our water at because of the excellent service they provide for us. The major store at the mall is also called Carrefour. It is the equivalent of a Super WalMart. All of the clerks wear a blue “May I Help You?” vest. It is a very busy store. We noticed some bedspreads for kids with a Sesame Street theme only Sesame Street was spelled teertS emaseS, because in Arabic people read from right to left!
