Birthday Letter

Getting a letter here in Egypt is quite the treat and we get really excited. We've only gotten three so far, two Christmas cards, and an invitation to my high school best friend's wedding. But the day before my birthday I got a birthday card from Seth's Oma Heidi. I was so excited to get a card but I was really quite upset that my birthday card went on vacation without me. Apparently not everything gets lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

Kristal's Brithday

We celebrated Kristal's 29th birthday yesterday. Seth got me a fancy birthday cake to share with all the staff on campus for Thursday's dinner. Then yesterday we went shopping and got a few new shirts for the warmer weather and then we tried out a new restaurant for dinner with many of our friends. Our head of school sent me the biggest bouquet of flowers I've ever seen and they smell so great. I told everyone that this birthday is just practice, next year we'll celebrate my 29th birthday for a second time.

Our 1st Anniversary

Today was our first wedding anniversary. We can't believe it has already been a year. My how time goes by. It went by so quickly but then again, when we think of all the amazing big things we've done this year we can't believe that either.

We celebrated the day enjoy the full spa treatment at the Four Seasons Hotel and a nice dinner out. It was a wonderfully relaxing day.

Our real gift to each other is a trip to Italy at the end of the school year. We were going to do our anniversary trip over spring break but Kristal's parents are coming for 15 days and we are going to take a cruise on the Nile as well as many other activities in Cairo and Alexandria. We are both very excited for them to be here for spring break and our Italy vacation later on.

St. Patrick's Day Party

We had a big staff St. Patrick’s Day Party today after school hosted by the Walsh’s; Frank our upper school principal and Jane our librarian. They are both part Irish and have held a large St. Patrick’s Day party for most of their married years together; even the 15 they have spend in other countries. Frank made corn beef and cabbage. He makes his corn beef from scratch every year which includes soaking it in brine for 21 days. It was quite delicious. And of course we partook in green beer. A good time was had by all!

Ladies Weekend

With Seth gone to Oman this past weekend I was really looking forward to some time alone. Although this experience has been great for the two of us; living in a foreign country, working together, and living where we work has been quite a difference experience than our lives back home. There are some days that I feel like I haven’t been more than 100 yards away from my husband all day long. For the most part it’s nice, but it can get a little tiresome other times. So a weekend alone was sounding great to me.

However, my nice quite weekend to myself didn’t quite work out that way. I ended up being too social. We had Noah’s 5th birthday part on campus Friday afternoon. It was fun, but I helped Jean and Tamer a lot with the set up and kid control. Noah made out like a bandit and got so many presents. Not to mention the coolest guy in Pre-K for getting to have a party at the school play ground on a weekend!

That evening, six of us girls went out to the Greek Club and met up with our new high school secretary, Karen and a few other girls. We had a really fun “girls night” out and enjoyed a really good fish meal. The Greek Club is literally that…a club for Greeks. There is a fairly large population of Greeks in Egypt and they all know each other. We had to pay to get in since we aren’t Greek. Karen is Syrian but engaged to a Greek so she goes there just about every night. It’s kind of like a country club (without the golf); there is a restaurant/bar, lounge, recreation room, etc.

The next day, we did our normal every other week run to Carrefour (Middle Eastern Wal-Mart) and did our normal shopping and had lunch at Costa Coffee. A nice little sandwich and coffee shop that we really like, there are a few around town, we’ll call it (Middle Eastern Panera)

Then that afternoon, four of us girls went to a ladies house for her Jewelry Open-House. Maia, one of our Pre-Kindergarten teachers, whom we absolutely love, has a best friend who makes local Egyptian silver jewelry and Maie invited us to her open-house sale. I always love going to the locals apartments and seeing what they look like. From the outside, ever building here looks really old, run-down, and cheap. But you can never tell how nice it might be until you go inside and then the apartments could be amazing. The Egyptian style is lost of huge crown moldings along the ceiling and walls with lots of gold paint. They also love large furniture pieces, especially dining room sets. They enjoy entertaining and will often have many different seating areas even within one room. So even if an apartment is large, it often feels small or doesn’t have much moving room once they crowd all their large furniture and several different seating areas in. When we arrived at the ladies house, it was quite crowed with women and very little room to move or walk in-between the people and the furniture. But she had tons of jewelry out on display all over the apartment and it was all so amazing you didn’t mind not being able to more quickly because it took awhile to admire all the pieces. I found two silver rings I really liked. One almost matches perfectly with my favorite bracelet that I was wearing that day, therefore, by Women’s Law: You have to buy anything that would go perfectly with what you’re currently wearing. I also got a silver necklace with an Arabic saying that roughly translates into, “May God watch over you.” We ended up spending four hours there. We were surprised when we first arrived to see our friend Maie, who is a covered lady, with her scarf off. I had yet to be able to attend a women’s only function where the women could be unveiled. After we decided on what we wanted to purchase we sat down and had a nice long conversation with Maie and a few of her friends. At one point of time, I notice that someone got a phone call and one word was spoken to the room and all of a sudden ever women were putting their scarves back on. Maie explained that a husband had called and was coming up so they all had to cover again.

So I had a fun but very busy ladies weekend and not much time to myself. I was happy to see Seth when he returned on Sunday and had missed him. He brought me a little wooden jewelry box from Oman with a silver and onyx necklace on it. I really made out well with new jewelry this weekend!

Basketball in Oman

Well, I got my first exposure to the world of International Basketball last weekend. After several years off, I took the Schutz Girls' Basketball team to Muscat, Oman, for a 3 day tournament. This was the first time in 3 years that the girls had fielded a team and many of them hadn't played basketball outside of PE class. However, they worked hard and put forth a good effort in practices.

Days 1 & 2 of the tournament were round robin between the 6 schools that attended. They were: American British Academy from Muscat (the tournament hosts), The American International School of Muscat, American International School of Abu Dhabi, Al Nahda National School from Abu Dhabi, Ammerican Community School of Amman, Jordan, and of course Schutz American School. Day 3 of the tournament was an elimination day to place all teams first through sixth. Unfortunately, neither Schutz team won a game in the round robin portion. The boys team won their final game to finish in 5th place while the girls lost both games again and finished in 6th place. However, they played hard and despite being blown out in all of their games, they never once quit! I was so proud of their effort. In fact, they played their best basketball on the final day - as it should be! On the first night, one of the girls won the 3-point shooting skills contest...yay Shereen! At the end of tournament banquet, his girls were rewarded by their effort with the Sportsmanship Award Trophy! Another proud accomplishment. In fact, they received 6 out of the 12 votes (each coach and each team or captain vote) and actually received 6 out of 10 votes because we didn't vote for ourselves...something these girls were proud of and excited about.

Overall, I had a good time in Oman, though he didn't get to do much sightseeing. I was able to spend time with our friends Ty (we met him when he brought the Oman team to the JV Games tournament the weekend before) and his wife and son one afternoon for an hour or so and visit their house. I was also able to go by the Grand Mosque built by the Sultan of Oman. It's pretty impressive and very cool to view at night. I was completely exhausted coming home - not feeling well when I left, followed by 18-hour days of basketball, and then a day long trip home. I'm finally almost caught up on rest. Who knows what next year will bring as far as a team goes, but these girls can continue to improve and hopefully win a game next year. It's hard when some of these teams play 30+ games in a season and scrimmage against other local teams or travel to multiple tournaments. They play more like a traditional American basketball season, but our school had 4 events/activities practicing at one time and when you only have 110 students to make these teams, the same kids tend to participate in all of the activities. Not to make an excuse, but that's just how it is at a small school. Either way, I enjoyed my time returning to coaching and was quite touched when some of the girls came up and thanked me in person for coaching them this year. These are the type of students we get to teach and it makes things so worth it!

Introducing Sokkwi- Movie

Seth leaves for Oman

Seth left for Musket,Oman early this morning. He is taking 8 girls for his Varsity Basketball team to the ISAC tournament. There are 10 high school boys also traveling with their coach Wessam, the High School Classical Arabic teacher.

This basketball team has been a constant source of minor frustration. Schutz hasn't had a girls basketball team for three years now. Basketball is just not a Middle Eastern sport. Seth really wanted to coach again, in fact, that's one of the reasons why we came over here. So there was a lot of pleading, begging, and compromises from the administration, Seth, and the few girls that really wanted to play to get enough girls to make a team. Their skills are defiantly not at the level that Seth is used to coaching; but for the most part he has had fun practicing with them. They should have a fun weekend and we wish them good luck.

Junior Varsity Academic Games

We are hosting the EMAC Junior Varsity Academic Games this weekend. We have eight other schools from the EMAC conference from Abu Dhabi, Oman, Cairo, Qatar, two from Dubai and two from Kuwait. Like all EMAC activities the traveling team members are being hosted by our students and staying at their houses. The traveling coaches are being hosted by us here on campus. We have so many empty apartments this year that most of them are able to stay in empty apartments. This is both of ours first experience with being involved in academic games. It’s been really interesting and we’ve enjoyed it. We have helped out by being readers, timers, or score keepers. We are impressed with the students and how challenging the questions are. It’s fun to try to answer the questions correctly in our heads before they do. We really enjoy when we get to host activities because we like meeting the other teachers and learning about their countries and schools. You soon realize what a small world the international school community is. It’s a great way to network and find a new school to move to in the future. Seth and I have been very social with them this weekend, taking them around town, out to dinner, or just hanging out drinking beer in our apartment.

It just so happened that the coach from Oman staying in the apartment next to ours is from Wichita, Kansas! Seth is taking his basketball team to Oman next week! So we’ve really be enjoying talking to another Kansan and learning more about the Oman school where he will be next week. Now that they’ve met, Ty is going to try to host Seth when he comes next week.

Exciting Weekend

This past weekend we had Thursday off of school and enjoyed a three day weekend. Remember that our normal weekends are Friday and Saturday s here. Seth and I had talked about going to Cairo for the weekend but never got around to planning it. Plus our new little kitty is too young to leave alone that long just yet. We planned on doing a lot of stuff around Alexandria that we haven’t done yet, museums and such, but ended up having a semi-lazy weekend.

I’ll tell you about some other people more exciting weekend first and then ours…

Our friends and fellow teachers, Clay and Susanna, did got down to Cairo for a relaxing weekend and to visit a friend that lives there. Susanna is 8 months pregnant and due to have her baby April 2nd. They went to the large popular outdoor market area called the Khan el-Khalili market. They had just bought a small inlayed table and were trying to hail a taxi when a guy rushed a Clay with a knife screaming. He cut Clay on the check and Clays reaction was to push him away with the table and was able to knock him down and pin him down with the table. Susanna and their friend were screaming and so the police and everyone else that was around came running to help them. There was soon a mob of taxi drivers, market owners, shoppers and police on top of the guy and helping Clay and Susanna. The police arrested him and Clay got a couple stitches in his face. They were interviewed by the local TV and soon it was all over the news and newspapers. It was quite the international scandal. We read reports that the guy had just been released from a mental hospital a few months ago after being detained for eight years after trying something similar. He is going to be tried for attempted man slaughter. The humorous part about this story is that in all the reports they say that Clay is in his fifties which really pissed him of since he is only thirty. The other funny part of this story is that our I.T. guy at school told us that our school website got over 800 hits the day after this story hit the news. You’ll also see in the reports (if you didn’t hear already) that earlier this week there was a bomb in the exact same place that killed one and injured several other French tourists. Just think about what a conversation starter that table will be for them, “Oh what a lovely table!”, “Yes, that table saved my life one day!”
Kansas City Star Newspaper Link
Egypt Today Link
Another Story

The other exciting event this weekend, was that several of our students went to AKan concert and the stage fell. Several of our students got hurt with one needing several stitches.

Now I’m sure I have you all very concerned but do try to realize that these are the only incidents that have happened the entire time we’ve been here and it’s a very slim probability that it just happened to happen to people we knew. Before you start to go all crazy and worry about us, watch your local news and think about how many shootings, stabbings, robberies etc. are happening right in your own city and you feel plenty safe there.

Now Seth’s and mine weekend is going to sound very boring in comparison but we are glad we stayed in Alex now. On Thursday we did go out shopping with some friends and had a nice lunch out at T.G.I.Friday’s… mmmmm yummy greasy American food! Then that afternoon Seth and I went to the Alexandria Bibliotheca and took the tour and then just walked around on our own for a bit. You defiantly don’t want to get a cab near a tourist spot if you don't look like a local. The cabbie tried to charge us twice as much as the amount should have been for that distance. We told him we live here and know what the amount should be and got out of his cab. We walked about three blocks away from the Bibliotheca before trying to get a cab again. Here is a link to a page that has better pictures of the library.

That night we went out with a co-worker, Wessam who teaches Arabic, and his wife. They are a young couple and very newly married. Seth has gone out with Wessam several times for guys night to smoke Sheesha and we had briefly met his wife at a couple school functions. They took us to a very nice local cuisine restaurant that was newly opened. This was defiantly not a tourist restaurant and Seth and I felt like we might have been the first non-Egyptians to eat there. There was no English section of the menu so Wessam had to order for us. Hospitality to guest is a huge part of Egyptian culture. They want and will do anything to make sure you are happy, including making sure you have had plenty to eat. Egyptians will constantly offer you way more food then you need or could eat and if you refuse they take it very personally. You should have seen our table and the amount of food Wessam had ordered for us. There wasn’t an inch of bare space on the table and the food was piled so high. Seth and I were already quite full from our large late lunch at T.G.I Fridays so another huge meal was not in our agenda. If we stopped eating for just a second, they would say, “What’s wrong? You’re not eating! You don’t like the food? I’ll order something else you like. Why are you not eating?” and they would put more food on my plate. There was seriously a point of time where I thought to myself, “Ok, Kristal, just keep eating and you can go through-up later.” I was that full and I didn’t want to offend them. And of course they wouldn’t let us pay for our meal either. After dinner we went to an outdoor mall area called Green Plaza and walked around and had an after dinner coffee and the boys enjoyed Sheesha. Which, they of course insisted on paying for also. We had very nice conversations all night and I was asking them about good authentic Egyptian gifts that would be good to bring home to family and friends. We ended up walking around the shops some more and they ended up buying both of us a gift. It is very common in Egyptian culture that if you say you like something, they will get/give it to you. I was warned early on to be careful about complementing my Egyptian friend’s jewelry (etc.) because they would literally take it off and give it to you because you said you liked it and they always want to make people happy. So we had a very lovely evening and enjoyed true Egyptian hospitality.

The other two days of the weekend we had plans to go see areas of Alex that we hadn’t been to yet. However, we had such bad rain storms that we didn’t feel like going out. It was a good time to curl up with the kitten and a good book in bed. Last night there was a big lightning strike which had to be very close, it was the brightest flash and the loudest longest thunder crash I had ever heard. It shook the whole building and even rattled windows and doors open. Our little Sokkwi, who was not before, but now is terribly afraid of thunder storms. The lightning knocked out all of the internet service in Alexandria. It has happened before where the entire city hasn’t gotten internet back up for days. I was starting to worry that our parents would see on CNN about an American teacher getting stabbed and not be able to reach us. But obviously we got the internet back up today.