My Tour of Cairo Hospitals aka Middle School Sports Festiva

It was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon around 2:00; I was alone in my office enjoying reading God Dies by the Nile during our school wide sustain silent reading time.  The students and coaches leaving for the ISAC Middle School Sports Festival had loaded up on the bus and headed on their way to Cairo thirty minutes previous, or so I thought, until our Athletic Director knocked on my door.  A expression of horror and shock flashed across my face, my eyes grew wide and I made the sign to ward off the devil as I backed away from our AD screaming, “No, No, No No!”.   And then he said the words I had been dreading, “Lianne has a temperature, she can’t go, how fast you can pack.”

We had just had another confirmed case of H1N1 that morning, closing down the 8^th grade class.  (For those of you who are counting, yes that is the fourth time the 8^th grade class has been shut down.  We’ve decided that we are going to give them a personal hygiene for health lecture when they return.)  It was touch and go all day long of whether the 8^th grade athletes going on the trip would be allowed to return to school to travel, if not we would have to withdraw from the tournament.  (In hindsight, this would have been the better option.)  So when Lianne, who hadn’t been feeling well all week, was running a high fever, there was no way the school was going to let her go.  Luckily, Lianne is a close friend and the kind that doesn’t mind throwing your underwear in a suit case while trying to help you pack in 15 minutes.  So within 15 minutes of the AD showing up at my office door, I was packed and on a bus with 18 5^th-8^th  We were an hour late getting started by that time so we said no stops on the way down.  Little did we know that we would hit the worst traffic ever in Cairo and a usually three hour drive lasted eight!!!  At one point we moved less than 100 meters in over an hour.  This was after the first couple hours of the trip where the kids did nothing but drink soda and each junk food, so their little bladders were pretty full by this time and I sure got an ear full hearing about it.  Despite the fact that they also all have their own iPod, cell phone, lap top, Blackberry, and Nintendo games with them, I heard them whine, “I’m so board” about every five minutes.  We arrived at our hosts well after ten, exhausted and hungry only to realize the first item I had forgotten to bring in my whirl wind packing experience.  

Things did not get better from here; I can’t even say we kicked off the tournament to a good start.  During the first minute of our first soccer came, one of my girls got hit in the arm with a soccer ball and fractured her arm.  The tournament was so tightly run on a time schedule, that I couldn’t even take extra time-outs for an injury.  So I had the school nurse talking in one ear, the girl’s parents on the phone on the other and still managed to coach the girls on the field!  Thank goodness I’m a multi-tasking woman!  

That same night, while I was chaperoning the Festival Dance (Ah the joys of watching a Middle School dance) a frantic mom called and insisted that we take her son, who had fallen during basketball earlier that day, to the hospital.  We had already determined that it was only a slight sprained wrist, but when you have a frantic mom calling, you do what you gotta do.   So a nice lovely visit to Cairo hospital number two was arranged.  

The next day wasn’t that much better.  After a full day of basketball outside in the hot Cairo sun, I was trying to enjoy a relaxing coaches dinner with the coaches from the other countries.  But I kept on receiving phone calls from two of my girls.  They were being hosted together and were on their way home for curfew with their host sister, the maid and the driver when the car can out of gas in the middle of a Cairo highway.  The girl that called, while no great athlete could win the Olympic speed talking championship; she also has the highest pitched voice I’ve ever heard on a pre-pubescent girl.  Now just try to imagine a blur of words in a high pitch squeal when this girls calls all panicked, and then the more panicked she gets the more Arabic words she through in until I can’t understand a thing she’s saying.  What started with frantic phone calls that the car had broken down, then turned into Farida doesn’t feel well, to Farida can’t breathe, to Frarida had passed out and is shaking, to we are going to the hospital with a lady we don’t know driving and we don’t know which hospital we are going to or what area of Cairo we are at.  Just try to imagine my sheer panic right now as the adult responsible for these girls!  (Damn you Lianne and your temperature)   About half and hour later I had managed to arrive at the right hospital and was already fielding crazed phone calls from parents, our Principal, and Athletic Director to the best of my ability in my cool calm professional manor. I’ll spare you all the medical mumbo jumbo but after several IV’s and medication the girl was released a few hours later.  It was well into the wee early morning hours when I returned to my host house to only discover that I was locked out because she was still out drinking with friends.

By the third day of the tournament I was down so many injured players that I barely had enough girls to play volleyball.  The other coaches took a vote to allow me to bend the ISAC rules when it came to substitution so that I could give my remaining girls a little bit of a break.   Needless to say, we did not win the tournament but thought we had at least made it through the final day without any more injuries.  Except for during the middle of the awards ceremony my fellow team coach jumped up and yelled at me to run over as he scooped up one of our boys that had fainted and had blood just pouring from his nose.  How embarrassing, our team can’t even sit in an auditorium without requiring medical supervision. The other coaches did vote for me and my team to win the Sportsmanship Award.  They were impressed by how many rotten things could keep happening to my team and we just kept on playing and trying our best with a smile our on face.

By the time we had returned back to our school the following afternoon, our Principal came out to meet our bus and I declared, “They are all alive, that’s the best that I could do.”, while he humbly and remorsefully apologized for sending me at the last minute on such a horrible trip.

Thank goodness it’s a short week.  I only have to make it through two days and then we have a four day weekend and we are going to the Siwa oasis.

Happy Valentine's Day

 

We just wanted to wish a special Happy Valentine's Day to all our loved ones.

We love and miss you all so much. 

Newly christened

After a few weeks hiatus around Christmas break, we are back to Hashing.  Our Hares this week lead us to a new area outside of Alexandria, past the agricultural area and to the marsh lands where they have constructed what looks like fish hatcheries, but we believe to be just waste water?  Basically, they have built up muddy banks into very narrow foot paths to create rectangular ponds similar to crop fields.  It was on these very muddy very narrow paths that we ran on.  Without any vegetation around, it was interesting because we could often see our fellow runners or walkers but finding the right path to get to them was a challenge.  The bigger challenges were the acrobatic acts to get across some of the narrow water cannels, running in mud that sunk up to your ankles, and meeting a donkey, cow or buffalo on these very narrow paths and convincing them that you wanted to simply pass by and not to be kicked into the murky water.

 

But this 6 kilometer run was one of our best Hashes yet.  (Seth and I being the only Americans, we can’t seem to convince our fellow Canadian, British, Scottish, Finish, or Kiwi Hashers to use miles)

During The Circle, Seth and I finally got christened with our Hash Names.  We were brought into the middle of The Circle while our fellow Hashers recalled anecdotal stories, personal characteristics and just plain humorous lies about us to create the fable of the ancestry of our new names.  We then knelt down and were anointed with the cherished water from the hallowed Nile River, arose and drank the sacrificial fluids from the sacred Delta Hash chalice.

 

  

 

In other words, they made up ridiculous stories about us, poured mud on our heads and made us chug a beer.  If you’re wanting to know what our Hash Names are…well, you just have to be a Hasher to be privy to that information (or ask us in person because we're NOT posting that information here). 

African Cup of Nations

Some of you may have heard about the African Cup of Nations in the news over the past month.  Unfortunately, it was probably due to the violence against the Togo national team on their way to the host country and subsequent pulling out of the tournament.  This has resulted in their being banned from the next two ACN tournaments because the Togo government supposedly influence the decision which in turn has spurred more protests.  But I digress, as that is a story for another time and not the true purpose of this post.

Our beloved Egypt is the two-time defending champions for the tournament.  In fact, it has been brought up how we can dominate this tournament which occurs every two years, but get so unlucky in the World Cup qualifiers.  Well, we advanced out of pool play and into the tournament bracket.  Our semi-final match was against rival Algeria, whom you may recall beat us in November in the World Cup playoff match (see blog from November).  This was the 5th match between the two teams going back to the World Cup qualifier.  Seth went out with Bob & Ana (fellow residents) and Abeer, Maie, & Nawal (fellow local staff/teacher) to The Jungle restaurant to watch the game on the big screen.  The atmosphere was relatively calm.  People were excited and nervous about the match, but did not display a lot of animosity towards the Algerian team.  Of course, beating the living snot out of them 4-0 probably didn't hurt either!  In fact, the Algerian team got 3 red cards and finished the match 3 down vs. the Egyptians!!  Things like that just don't happen - it was a complete meltdown.

SO, that meant we were in the finals against the team from Ghana.  The finals were held Sunday, January 31.  Our friend Nawal invited us over to her house along with Bob, Ana, and Maie (Abeer had to stay home with her kids unfortunately).  That game wasn't quite as exciting as the two teams were evenly matched.  Both had several scoring opportunities, but could not convert.  That is, until the 87th minute when Egypt had a sweet give-and-go on just outside of the box and struck the ball into the far side of the net.  It was beautiful and we went crazy!  Surviving the 3 minutes of extra time seemed like forever, but we did and Egypt WON ITS 3RD CONSECUTIVE AFRICAN CUP OF NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP!!  That's pretty awesome in today's age of sports competition.

On the way home, we saw all sorts of people outside, honking horns, waving flags, and being generally rowdy/excited.  Kids were sitting on car windows driving down the road with flags waving, people on the sidewalks had flags around their necks like capes - it was pretty cool to see.  Seth & Bob were confronted by Egyptian soccer hooligans shouting out "Egyptian!" and holding up the (correct) finger to indicate they were number one.  Of course, they joined in and high-fived the whole group along the way home. 

Unfortunately, Algeria still gets to go to the World Cup in South Africa this summer, but Egypt reminded them who was the better team with a dominating win and 3-peat championship.  Mabruk Egypt!!

Oh, Deer!

I just had to share this picture with you.  My mom took this from her kitchen window of their backyard in Lees Summit, Missouri.  Amazing, huh?