Short Cut

We were on our way to take some of the new staff to the Portages’ Club (a hangout for Expats) so we hopped a couple of cabs. Seth and I hailed a taxi and got in with our new tech. coordinator. We weren’t far from our destination and traffic wasn’t too bad but our driver decided to take a short cut off the main road for some reason. When he tried to cut down a side street to get back to the main road he apparently found the only one-way street in Alex that is actually is marked and monitored. All the people along the street where pointing and yelling at him telling him it was a one way street. And at the end of the street there were two police officers just waiting for him. So one officer came over and as he was walking toward the car our driver tried the throw it in reverse and back out of the street, however, another car was blocking him so the police man caught up. Then our driver didn’t want to talk with him and acted like he was ignoring him. The officer opened up his door and the cabbie literally started to push the officer away. The officer got the door open so our driver tried to speed away while the officer was still hanging on to the door so the officer tried to hang on and got his feet on the door frame inside the car so finally our taxi driver stopped and talked to the cop. He got him out of the car and they walked away for awhile. We were so shocked at our driver’s actions that we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what etiquette was. Should we wait? How long would this take? How long should we sit there? Is the cabby going to try to scam us into paying the ticket? Should we just get out and walk or hail another cab? After about 15 minutes we finally decide to leave a few pounds in the divers’ seat and get out and walk, then the officer and the driver stopped their discussion and said they were finished so we got back in. When we finally arrived at our destination we were 30 minutes late but with a good story to tell about our short cut.

Subscribe

While we were at home this summer a lot of friends and family talked to us about our blog. While some people check our website every single day to be mostly disappointed by my lack of daily post; others unintentionally forget to check on a regular basis.

Well after much research, I have learned how to let people subscribe to our blog. That way you will get an e-mail every time I post a new blog. So if you look over to your right hand side and down a little, you'll see a gadget that says "Subscribe via e-mail" enter your e-mail address and follow the directions. It will then send you a confirmation e-mail to make sure you actually wanted to subscribe to our blog.

The down-side of this is that you wont have to actually go to our ULR and won't see pictures and the blog layout. So please periodically still check out our actual site; besides, I want you to look at my AccuWeather gadget and rub it in that it is always sunny, clear sky's and 85 degrees here!

Volleyball in Qatar

Last week I took my Girls Varsity Volleyball team to our EMAC tournament in Doha, Qatar. Coach Tamer (boys coach) and I traveled with 17 high school students (8 boys and 9 girls). It was a fantastic trip and we had a wonderful time. Unfortunately the girls did not win…I mean, did not win a single game. However, for only having two weeks of practice due to the school closing I think they did a fantastic job and really made some great improvements in such a short amount of time. I was very proud of them and I think it was their best playing of their volleyball careers. At least, I can say that we never lost by much and always played some very competitive matches. The upside is that our boys won the entire tournament beating the American School of Doha’s boys team, a very impressive feat since that school has dominated the tournament for many years! You should have seen my girls cheering during that final championship games. We definitely had the most school spirit and country pride with their Egyptian drums and belly dancing skirts!

Teaching 6000+ miles away

Some of you may know that I did a couple of Skype webchats with some 6th graders last year. One of my best friends, Genie Scruton, transferred to Mill Creek Elementary this year and has asked me to continue the webchats. With the support and approval of her new principal, John Bartel (another former colleague), we started again this year. I got the opportunity to talk to the kids about my experiences here in Egypt, how schools compare, what food is like (I can get McDonald's delivered 24/7!), and insights into Egyptian culture such as Ramadan (holy month of fasting). We even made the front page of the Shawnee Mission School District's website for a couple days! You can see the article by clicking on this sentence. Check out the pictures - I've never been on a big screen before - must have been kinda scary looking!! Anyway, I had a great time talking to the kids and look forward to more. Thanks Genie & John!!!

Volleyball Tournament

I'm leaving today with my Girls Varsity Volleyball team to our EMAC tournament in Doha, Qatar. Wish us luck. It will be interesting, since we only had 2 1/5 of practice due to school closure, but the girls have been great and have learned so much and improved a lot in that short time. GO FALCONS!

Canadian Thanksgiving

This past weekend, all the resident staff were invited over to our fellow teacher, Debbie’s house, to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving together. She cooked two turkeys, stuffing, and pumpkin pie; plus, every year she brings back canned cranberries just for Thanksgiving. A lot of us brought over side dishes so we had a huge feast with lots of “family” and a joyful celebration.

Open Water Dives

This weekend Seth and I did our Open Water Dives for our SCUBA class.  We did them in the Mediterranean Sea at the Montazah Palace.  Montazah was the summer residents of the Egyptian Kings when Cairo got too hot, it is still used today by the president.  We’ve been here several times with friends who own private beach houses here and there are huge lovely gardens to walk about.  It was pretty exciting to be scuba diving in the Mediterranean with the Kings Palace in the background.

We spent two days in the water working on our open water skills.  The first dive did not go well for me (Kristal), but I kept at it and the rest of the weekend went great!  From our starting class of nine we were already down to four by the time we got to the water skills.  After our first open water day, Seth and I were the only ones that returned for the second day.  Hopefully, the other two will try to complete the class next weekend.  In addition to the skills we had to perform, Seth did five open water dives and I did four.  Unfortunately, the visibility was horrible; but we have officially passed our class!  We are now certified Scuba Divers!  We’re so excited and can’t wait to go dive in the Red Sea or do an archeological dive here in Alex.

Swine "Flew" --when pigs fly

After three long weeks, the school is opened again!  It's so good to see our students smiling faces again and hear their laughter during lunch.

They actually apprciate us now after having to learn on thier own on-line and have their parents constantly on their backs to get thier work done.  Also the parents reeaally apprciate us.  We were constantly getting phone calls from parents telling us how hard it was to try to teach their kids math that they didn't understand, trying to modivate their kids to do thier work, and also just plain begging us to open up the school because after weeks with their children they were really get on their nerves.  Hopefully they can remember that they appreciate us for atleast a little while.

Scuba

Seth and I are taking scuba diving classes.  We've wanted to do this for awhile and I had contact with a Dive Center here in Alexandria though my After School Activities Coordination, so I set up some classes for us.  We initially started with nine teachers interested in getting certified, but in just a few days we are down to only four of us.  Since last week was our last week without students, we hurried up and got through all the classroom knowledge.  Then, on Friday we spent several hours in our pool doing our confined water dives.  It was a lot of fun and we are loving it.  We'll do our open water dives this weekend in the Mediterranean and then we'll be done and certified.

World Cup Soccer

The Under Twenty Year Old's World Cup Soccer Tournament is being held in Egypt this year. They are having games all over Egypt, even here in Alexandria. It has been quite exciting and quite the talk of the town. The USA team has been playing in Port Saiad, so that’s too far away for us to travel on a school night. But if they make it to the next round the games will be moved to Cairo, or even Alex. However, a friend of ours worked some contacts and got us invitations to come watch two of the games here. We saw Hungry beat South Africa 4-0. Then United Arab Emirates beat Honduras in a very exciting game 1-0. The UAE game was a very exciting game to watch since everyone was rooting for the Arab team and there were a lot of Emirate people there in the crowd. It was crazy. One entire section of the stadium was packed with the Egyptian army. It was a new experience for me to walk in with my three American girl friends and realize and ENTIRE section of a large stadium is no longer watching and cheering for a soccer match, but looking and yelling at YOU!

 

Ain Sukhna

We had five days off for Eid El-Fitr, the big feast celebration after Ramadan. We found a beach house for rent on Cairo’s Craigslist. It was in Ain Sukhna, which is about an hour east of Cairo on the Red Sea. The villa was in a private resident’s beach resort. It was three levels with five bed rooms, two kitchenettes and two sitting areas with balconies. We went with four other couples from school so there was a total of eleven of us with baby Malcolm. The resort had two nice pools, a clubhouse with a restaurant and a small pizza place on the beach. Besides that there was nothing else to do and the resort it’s self was far away from anything so we never left.

The trip was very relaxing, which we needed because teaching without students for the past two weeks has been soooo hard! The hardest thing to do every day was decide if we wanted to read by the pool or read by the beach.




Lianne and I did go running on the beach in the morning. They were great relaxing runs with beautiful scenery to admire. We were on some stretches of beach that was completely uninhabited and barely ever touched by humans. On morning I found this HUGE clam shell!

We found pool rule number 6  interesting.

On the way home, we passed these boys in the back of their truck with their sheep. We drove next to them for a long time because we were having fun playing with them. They got a kick of us waving to them and taking their pictures, and we got a kick of them playing with their toy guns.

School Closed...still

We found out that our school is going to remain closed until October 4th now.  The government has requested that all schools remain closed until this time.  We are continuing to provide on-line classes to our students.

Eid Mubarak

A special Eid card for you. Click!

Hash

I’m a Hasher! My friend, Lianne and I have joined the Hash House Harriers (HHH). It is an expat club in over 180 countries all over the world. They are world renowned for being “a drinking club with a running problem”. The original club started in Malaysia in 1938 and they have grown and spread since then.
The one in Alex has just started and there are less than ten members currently. We meet at the Portuguese Club (the local expat club) every Friday afternoon and then take a van out to the trail. The Hare lays a trail the day before with balled up scraps of paper. Here in Alex the trail is sometimes here in town and sometimes out in the farm lands. The Hare will often leave false trails, short cuts, dead ends, and splits. These features are designed to keep the “pack” together regardless of fitness level or running speed, as the Hounds in the front are forced to slow down to find the trail, allowing for the others to catch up. There are also check points where everyone has to stop and re-group (and sometimes chug a beer). Like I said earlier, it’s a non-competitive social running group that has a long tradition of drinking…drinking before, during and definitely after a run.
 
The Hash House Harriers have many long standing traditions and every club usually has a few of their own. Failures to follow traditions or rules are punishable by down-downs during the circle at the end of the run and since there are so many silly rules and traditions to remember it is almost certain that you will be given a down-down by the Grand Master. Down-down means chugging a warm beer until the group finishes singing a song. The more heinous the offence, the longer the song will be.

One of the most famous Hash traditions is Hash names. Everyone gets a name, which are usually pretty vulgar and obscene. Failure to use someone’s Hash name will result in a down-down during circle. I haven’t received my Hash name yet, you usually have to attend several Hash Races before you are awarded a name.
I’ll write more about my first Hash Race in another blog. If you want to check out the Alexandria Hash website (still a work in progress), click on the hyperlink.

9/9/09 9:00am

What were you doing on September 9th 2009 at 9:00am?

We were in a staff meeting discussing ways to provide on-line classes to our students while the school is closed.






Happy birthday big brother!




Congratulation's to Amy and Sean and welcome to the world little baby Anna!

Tom Palmer Autographing books

We had such a nice time with our visiting author Tom Palmer. We got to spend a lot of time with him and really enjoyed talking with him and getting to know him. This is a picture or Tom Palmer autographing some books for us and our niece Makayla.

School Closed

We have closed school until Sept. 26th! The staff still has to work and we are actually working more now trying to create on-line classes to keep contact teaching hours with our students.

The timing of all this is really such a shame since we have the author Tom Palmer visiting us this week and all the time, effort, and budget we put into bringing him here. When we realized that they were going to close the school yesterday we tried to have Mr. Palmer do as much with as many of the grade levels as possible.

Tom Palmer

The whole school is very excited for this week and has been looking forward to it for a long time. We have a very special visitor coming, author Tom Palmer.

Last year, one of our 7^th graders, Omar, won a book from the library when we did the 180 Days Around the World challenge. The book was Foul Play by Tom Palmer. Omar loved this book so much that he saw the authors website listed on the back of the book. He wrote Tom Palmer and e-mail telling him how much he loved the book and asked him if he was going to have any other books coming out soon. To Omar’s great joy, Tom Palmer wrote him back and they corresponded a few times which then evolved into his English teacher and Jane and I in the library corresponding with him too. We are all very proud of Omar for initiating this contact.

We invited Tom Palmer to come visit the school and we have been planning several months now for this exciting visit.

Tom Palmer is from the UK and writes children’s books about soccer (football). He describes himself and a student that was never very good, especially at writing and hated to read; then when he was seventeen he came across a book about soccer that he enjoyed so much that it spurred his new love for reading. He decided then that he wanted to be a writer and write about soccer.

He has two series about soccer; one called Football Academy (reading level grades 3-6) and another called Football Detective (reading level grade 5-8). His latest book, Dead Ball, part of the Football Detective series just came out last week!

I have been reading all of his books in preparation for his visit and have been loving them. I can’t wait to meet Mr. Palmer face to face.

To find out more about Tom Palmer and his books please visit his website at www.tompalmer.co.uk Our students were so excited last week when they saw that Tom Palmer had posted on his schedule about his upcoming visit on his website and on his blog. (click on the hyperlinks to see)

H1N1

Yesterday we officially became the only school open in Alexandria. The government schools don't have classes during Ramadan and most of the other International schools have shut down due to H1N1 flu. Yesterday the British school had a case of the flu and closed classes, leaving us as the only school open in all of Alexandria.

Today we officially have our first case of H1N1 flu. We are still open and continuing classes but monitoring the situation closely and taking lots of health/safety per-cations for our students and staff.

Does anyone else see the irony that the American school is the only school working on Labor Day?

Back to School

Whew, time gets away from me when we are staying busy and I don’t realize how much time has gone by between posts.

Since we’ve been home, we’ve enjoyed time catching up with our friends and how their summer vacations went, meeting the new staff and making friends, visiting some of our favorite spots around town, and then of course the obligatory back to school in-services and meetings.

Ramadan started Saturday August 22nd. (You can go back to last year’s posting that explained Ramadan) The night before Egypt went on Daylight Savings Time early to accommodate for people fasting. So we are currently only seven hours ahead of you now.

School started on August 25th. It was a rough first day back for us, early that morning we received the news that Seth’s Grandma has passed away. We were both heartbroken but were grateful for the time we got to spend with her this summer. This past week we’ve realized the worst part about living overseas and being so far from the family we love and long to be near, especially during sad times. Our Schutz family has been very supportive though.

I held try-outs for Girls’ Varsity Volleyball this week. We will be traveling to Doha in October for our tournament. There was a lot of drama with the girls during try-outs but I think it all has been resolved and I believe we’ll have a good team and a fun season.