Wednesday, September 12

One more day and we will enjoy a 3 day holiday on the North Coast of Egypt with 7 other resident staff. We are going to a resort near Marsa Matrouh (Iberotel Almaza). We stayed there last November and had a wonderful time. The beach is pristine and the water so clear you can see the bottom. We will leave after school tomorrow and return Sunday afternoon.

The past two evenings we have had open house for the parents with students in grades 7-12 (Monday) and PreK-6 (Tuesday). This gives parents a chance to meet the teachers, visit the classrooms, sign up for Edline (my main responsibility during the event) and mingle with other parents. As is typical in Egypt, nothing starts on time. The events were to start at 7:00 – but didn’t get going until 7:10 or so and many did not arrive until 7:30. It lasts until 9 but then since several didn’t come on time, the evening drags on for another 30 minutes or so. We are getting a large number of parents signed up on Edline (this is an interactive web site where teachers can post information and progress reports for their classes and communicate with parents).

We have booked our flights for our winter holiday this week. As is the custom here, we call our travel agent who works closely with the school and then she will send a messenger over to pick up the money for the tickets (almost always in cash). It is really a cash society, credit cards are rarely used here and I don’t know if they would ever accept a check from a US bank. Payment is never sent by mail – even for services that we purchase for the school. A messenger will be sent to pick up the cash. You would think there would be robberies with such large amounts of cash floating around but it there are, it is not publicized.