The weather has turned downright cool here with temperatures in the high 40’s and low 50’s and a lot of rain. Monday it rained so much that many students and teachers were unable to get to school on time. Several were an hour late as the streets were flooded in spots and cars couldn’t get through. Hopefully it will warm up before the 3 day weekend which begins Thursday. We are planning on leaving Alex for the weekend and visiting Port Said to see the Suez Canal and along the way stop off where the famous Rosetta Stone was found. We are traveling with two other teachers for a weekend of R and R.
Monday evening we joined three others and attended a special concert at the Alexandria Opera House. The concert was presented by the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra as part of their “Jazz on the Nile 2008” tour – a series of 4 concerts presented in Cairo and Alex. The show was fantastic. The 20 piece orchestra played selections from Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and of course, Louis Armstrong. A singer and two dancers accompanied the orchestra on several of the tunes. They brought the house down with a special rendition of “What a Wonderful World” with special lyrics for Egypt. The concert was sponsored in part by Her Excellency, Mrs. Suzanne Mubarek (wife of the President of Egypt), the US Embassy and the Egyptian Minister of Culture and Tourism. The Opera House was a fitting venue for the concert – it has been carefully restored and is very elegant. It was nice to see the house nearly full – hopefully this will encourage other events such as this one.
