Saturday, December 15th

We are all getting ready and are excited for our holiday vacation. It's hard to keep track of where everyone is going over vacation. We have 3 people going back to the states to be with their families for Christmas and New Year. Others are going other places in the world (Spain, Morocco, England, France, etc). The fun part is to hear about everyone's adventures when we all return.

There are still many activities taking place. Thursday, our soccer teams went to Cairo for the ISAC soccer tournament and will return Sunday. Other team's families house our students just the way we did here with the volley ball tournament.

Today we have our PTA Christmas Play day. The teachers and parents set up booths with games and the elementary children go around and play any games they like. After the Play day activity we are going to a jewelry party in the city with Debbie (the 4^th grade teacher). A lady makes her own jewelry and it is quite beautiful. After that we are heading to the Coffee Roastery for dinner.

Tomorrow night we have our Christmas Art and Music Production. Monday we have an Author's Tea that the 3rd Graders are putting on. Monday night is the resident’s Christmas Dinner – it will be very similar to our Thanksgiving Dinner with Turkey and all the trimmings – the kitchen crew takes great pride in preparing a wonderful feast for us. Tuesday is our last day of school for the year. Also on Tuesday, Santa will be making a surprise visit to the PreK 3, PreK 4 and Kindergarten students. Wonder who Santa will be?? (see picture). The children go home at 13:35 and the staff head to our headmaster's apartment for our Christmas Party. We exchange gifts and eat. Most people leave Tuesday night for vacation. We are going out for dinner with Tony and Dellaine (headmaster), they have visitors from Iowa staying with them. It will be good to hear about what's going back home in the Hawkeye state.

Wednesday we leave for Rome and will meet our son Aaron for 10 days of R & R in the eternal city, Naples and Sicily. We are really looking forward to the trip.

Today, I paid our cable television bill for the next three months. The charge is 560 LE (approximately $100). As with most services, everything is in cash and the company will send over a messenger to pick up the payment. No bills are sent through the mail, companies prefer to operate in person and in cash.

The Eid El Adha starts this coming week. We hear it might be Tuesday or Wednesday. We never know until the day or two before, and it is hard to tell you why because we don't understand it. We took the following off the Internet:

“Eid El-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. It concludes the Pilgrimage to Mecca. Eid El-Adha lasts for three days and commemorates Ibraham's (Abraham) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son. Muslims believe the son to be Ishmael rather than Isaac as told in the Old Testament. Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs. According to the Koran, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead. The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing a cow or ram. The family eats about a third of the meal and donates the rest to the poor.”

We see sheep and cattle in pens along the streets. When we walked on Thursday night we did see men killing and skinning some sheep right on the street then they would hang the carcass above the sidewalk. We are not sure if we will be here when Eid El Adha starts. Last year we were in Jordan when this occurred and we did see the blood from the slaughter running down the streets. Sometimes you will see hand prints from the blood on the walls of buildings. They tell us this is not part of the religion ceremony but people who are superstitious.

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and if we see the Pope we will say Hi to him for you.

Sunday, December 09

There is a song about New York being a city that never sleeps – well the same thing can be said about Cairo. It is one of the most vibrant cities in the world with 24-hour activity. The “official” population is listed at approximately 16,000,000 people – but with the constant daily influx from the country side, it swells to nearly 19,000,000. Located on both sides of the Nile, the city is nearly 6,000 years old with a rich cultural and historical heritage. Cairo is the main business and financial center of Egypt with many varied neighborhoods. It offers the best of Egypt and also some of the worst as well with major problems due to overpopulation and poverty. We traveled to Cairo this weekend for the annual CAC Christmas Bazaar. This Bazaar is sponsored by Cairo American College – one of the most established international PK-12 schools in Egypt. The bazaar is host to vendors from many different countries offering their handicrafts to eager buyers looking for a bargain.

Following the bazaar, we registered at our hotel (The President), an older hotel located in the Zamalek area (along with 2 other couples). Zamalek was once home to many of the embassies. Several have moved to new locations, but the area is still very pleasant with tree lined streets and many villas – unlike many neighborhoods in Cairo and Alex with are almost void of vegetation and lined with high rise apartment buildings. Friday evening, we ate at a Lebanese restaurant near the American and British embassies. Food was very good and plentiful. Pat and I shared a main course of grilled chicken along with salads, mezas and bread.

Weather in Cairo is warmer than Alex and it is very dry. Alex is going through a rainy season, with rainfall frequent and plentiful. Cairo, on the other hand, rarely has rain – tree leaves almost always have a dust coating on. We noticed a distinct difference in air quality between the two cities. Alex has much cleaner air than Cairo. In spite of the climate differences, Cairo is the place to be for Egyptians on the move.

After supper Friday evening, we went to the famous Khan El-Khalili for a little shopping and tea. We explored the area around the Khan, walking down winding streets and exploring all the little shops. The pressure to buy is very low key in these shops as opposed to the constant barrage in the Khan. The shopkeepers are pleased that you come by and are proud to show their goods – many of which are unique handmade items. As we ventured around these streets we were again struck by the hospitably and friendliness of the Egyptian people. We were the only Westerners in the area and while we were often greeted by stares, that quickly changed to smiles. We stopped at a street side fruit stand and purchased a kilo of tangerines for 3 LE (about 51 cents).

Saturday morning, we walked around the Zamalek area looking at the various shops and stores. Many of the stores are in buildings that one would never know was a store unless they walked in. In some cases, there are apartments on the first floor and the store might be on the 2nd or 3rd floor. Many of the shops we visited were furniture stores in which most of the furnishings are hand made items of solid wood. Many staff in the past have purchased many items of furniture to ship back to the states because of the high quality of workmanship.
We traveled back to Alex Saturday afternoon on the “fast train” from Cairo. The trip took only 2 hours and 15 minutes and it was nice getting back to the city by the sea. Traffic between the train station and the school was brutal. What is normally a 10 to 15 minute trip took nearly an hour. While Cairo certainly has it shortcomings (pollution, garbage, traffic jams, noise), it has many areas that are very interesting and attractive. Just 50 years ago, it was a city of only 2,000,000 and now it is bursting at the seams and continues to grow. We enjoyed our weekend in Cairo and look forward to going back down and exploring this fascinating city.