Sand Storm

We had a sand storm yesterday. It was interesting and defiantly a new experience. We were teaching in the class rooms and next think I knew it got all white outside and all the kids were out of their seats and at the windows. At first it looked like the city was covered in a thick fog very quickly but then the air turned an odd orangish color and stayed that way all day. You couldn’t see the buildings the next block over. It was icky to be outside, a little hard to breath and it made you cough and your skin felt very gritty. I had to take volleyball practice inside to the weight room. I looked at the weatherchannel.com to see if you could see it on the satellite, which you couldn’t, but it gave the weather report for Alexandria as 95 degrees and sandy. The photo is the actual photo from their website. I had never seen a weather report like that before. Now there is a thin layer of sand over everything, and since the architecture here builds all the buildings with everything open for air flow there is sand inside all the buildings too. Luckily we still have the AC on in the apartments and the windows closed.

Anniversary

Today is our six month wedding anniversary. We celebrated by going to the hospital and getting my cast off. It’s so nice to have that off and be done with the crutches. My ankle is still a little sore and swollen and I need to wear a brace for the next couple weeks. Seth also gave me gorgeous flowers.

How to take a shower...

How to take a shower when your leg is in a cast.


























I also found out that the lights in the hallway up to our 4th floor apartment are on a timer....I can only make it halfway up the stairs before they go off.

Many kids have made me get well cards, they are so special. The little kids hop on one foot at recess pretending to be me. It's so cute. The older students have been so good asking to help me and getting things for me.

The upside is that earlier in the day I fell, two friends and I went and got pedicures so at least my toes have looked nice sticking out of the cast.

Ramadan

Ramadan started on September 1st this year and is the Muslim religious celebration that takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Muslim's believe this is the month that the Qur'an was revealed to Angel Gabriel, to deliver it to the Prophet Muhammad. During this month Muslims fast and do not eat or drink anything from sun up to sun down and offer up more prayers than usual. They get up before dawn to eat Suhoor, the pre-dawn meal, and perform the fair prayer. They do not eat or drink anything after this prayer is said, until the fourth prayer of the day, Maghrib, is due and then they break their fast with Iftar. Only people that have reached puberty are required to fast but most often the children want to try to fast also. This makes this month difficult for our students. Since we are an American school we don't change our schedule for Ramadan. So our kids are often tried and very hungry and thirsty, but for the most part we have been very impressed with how well the handle themselves and their school work. They usually get up are 4:00 am to eat their Suhoor and the go back to sleep for a little bit, then come to school. After school they usually take a nap because they are tired and hungry and wake up to give their Maghrib prayer and break their fast with Iftar. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are very active and social, they invite huge gatherings of friends over for the Iftar and celebrate late into the night eating, they also participate in many sports and it's common for our students to have soccer tournaments at the Sporting Club till midnight and sometimes even later. The streets are decorated with streamers and special Ramadan lanterns. They are also lined with lots of food sellers for the big Iftar fests every night, including lots of butchered animals hanging up at the butcher shops (gross). There are extra calls to prayers during this month that we hear and on Friday's (the Holy day) it seems like the Muslim services, which are played on loud speakers all over the city, never stop. During noon on Friday it's almost impossible to get around town, there are so many people on their pray mats that they spill out of the mosque and sometime into the streets for one or two blocks past the mosque. We are also woken up by a special call they have in the morning to wake people up for their Suhoor before the sun rises. The holy month of Ramadan ends with the week of Eid ul-Fitr which we have off from school and are going with a couple of our friends to the Red Sea.

Volleyball try-outs

I (Kristal) am the varsity volleyball coach this year. I’m very excited. We are part of the EMAC league with other international schools in the surrounding countries. We practice about 6 weeks on a sport and then all the teams go to one school for a long weekend tournament. The volleyball tournament this year is October 22-25 in Amman, Jordan. Today was the first day of try-outs. I had 15 girls try out and can only take 10 on the team. I saw a lot of skill and a lot of hustle on the court but heard little communication on and off the court. We have another try-out tomorrow and then I post the roaster on Sunday morning. I felt like a dorky and bad coach sitting on the side line with my leg in a cast.

Kristal's Injury

Saturday night (8-30-08) I had just got done working out at the school gym and was walking back through campus to the apartments when I fell on some stairs. I heard a huge “POP” when I rolled on my left ankle and immediately was in a lot of pain and couldn’t get up. I yelled help several times thinking the gate guards would hear me or that I was close enough to the apartments that someone would hear me. Luckily, after only 2 minutes or so another teacher was working late in his classroom and came and helped me to the apartments lobby. For one reason or another it ended up that everyone on campus was called and came down to help me. We couldn’t get a hold of the school nurse, Sahar, or any of the local staff to come with me to the hospital. Plus with my physical therapy background I was over analyzing it and determined exactly which ligament I sprained and how bad of a sprain was it and decided not to go to the hospital. Long story short, after a long night of pain and swelling I went and taught my class in the morning (dumb idea) and then went to the school nurse who rushed me to the hospital. And when I say “rush” I mean it, our transportation director, Habe, drove me and the nurse and he was so worried about me (he’s the nicest guy and always so concerned about us) he was driving crazier than a normal Egyptian drives. I was positive we were going to hit someone and get another passenger to take with us to the hospital. I kept telling him it wasn’t an emergency and he said he was worried and felt like he needed to drive like an ambulance. Anyways, we went to the German Hospital which is suppose to be the good hospital in town. I wont elaborate what it’s like to go to an international hospital since our parents are reading this, but lets just say I’m glad I didn’t need any procedure that needed to be sterile and I was glad to have two Arabic speakers with me. Anyways, they took an x-ray and did some test and determined that I completely tore my anterior talo-fibular ligament (sorry, had to put that in for my PTA friends reading this) and I’m now in a full ankle cast up to my knee.
I can’t even elaborate enough to explain to you how much it sucks to be on crutches here. Let me remind you that we live on the fourth floor and both my classrooms are on the second floor in two different buildings across campus and there are no ramps or elevators here. The entire campus is uneven and there are little steps everywhere with out handrails. I’m just absolutely exhausted by the end of the day and my arm muscles are so soar they might actually hurt just as bad as my ankle. I’m going to have strong arms by the time I get the cast off. I totally believe it’s true that medical people make the worst patients. For example, I thought I didn’t need to go to the hospital, when I did go I was annoying the poor doctor by asking him questions, and recommending special stress tests for him to try on my ankle ligaments. And Seth is constantly yelling at me to stop doing things that I know I shouldn’t be doing. It has given me an appreciation for some of my patients though and I can sympathize with them about some things…but not too much since I know none of my patients ever had to do four flights of stairs to get home.
The plus side is that my wonderful husband has been so good at taking care of me. He really has done a lot and put up with my bad mood when I get frustrated with all the dumb stairs. Everyone at school has been so good to me too and doing so much to help me. All the grades that I teach have made get well cards for me, the 1st and kindergartners are so cute. The cooks will make me special meals and bring them to me if Seth can’t. Our maid did extra cleaning for me and so many other people have gone out of their way to do something for me to save me the trouble of trying to be mobile around campus.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school. It was exciting to see all the kids come back and see what the classes and schedule is like. This year we have a total of 246 students from 169 families representing 18 different nationalities. That’s all the students from our 3 year olds pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. We are both liking the small school feel of things here. We hope the rest of the year keeps going as well as the first day.

What's Kristal's Job?

We’ll that has defiantly been the biggest question since we signed our contract to come here. We knew that I would have a job with the school but we didn’t exactly know what. There was the possibility of being the science lab tech if the past one decided to leave this year, or be an assistant in the elementary school. We also knew that I would be getting paid an Egyptian salary different from the way that Seth gets paid. During these two weeks of orientations and staff in-service the upper and lower school principals and the head of school had the chance to get to know me pretty well and. They actually “fought” for several days about who I would work for. It was a little unnerving for me since I would constantly catch my name in their conversations but never know what they were deciding. Finally a decision was made of who needed me more. Since the school was unable to fill their drama department teacher this year they needed to find a class for the middle school students to fill that time. After talking with the parents and other teachers about what would benefit the kids the most they came up with the idea of a Skills Class, of which I will be the teacher. It’s only two periods a week; one class for the eight grade and one class for the seventh grade. Plus I do two study halls a week and have a homeroom/advisory period everyday. When I’m not teaching my classes for the middle school I go over and work as an assistant for kindergarten and first grade, plus lunch room duty, committees, and coaching. So I’m staying pretty busy, working with a wide range of ages every day and go all over campus.
The Skills Class is a curriculum that I’m coming up with all on my own, there is no text book to help me prepare and when I was told of this decision there was only 4 days until the first day of school. Scary! But I’m excited about it. We are going to work on basic skills that will help these middle schoolers in their ongoing educations, preparing them for high school and college and also into their careers. We’ll work on learning styles, organization, time management, character development, reading comprehension, listening skills, research, and public speaking and then also first aid and CPR. I’m excited and really busy preparing for this class. Also, since I’m a part-time teacher now my salary will increase a little. Yippy!

Seth's injury

Two other teachers and ourselves walked to a near by super market last night to get a few household items. Seth was looking at a microwave for our apartment on the very top shelf. When he opened the door a huge rack of metal kitchen utensils, which were on top of the microwave, come tumbling down onto him and the floor making a horrible racket and attracting everyone’s attention in the market to us. I quickly ran over and helped Seth asking if he was ok and completely terrified by the embarrassment of everyone looking at us, when I looked up I noticed that Seth’s nose was bleeding on the top from where a spatula had hit and cut him. A nice guy came over and said, “Here friend” while he handed Seth and tissue to stop the bleeding. The employees noticed he was bleeding and quickly ushered him into the back room to help him wash up. I and the other two teachers finished cleaning up everything that had been knocked over but couldn’t stop laughing out of embarrassment. Seth’s ok but has a scar on his nose and after going into the back room I don’t think we’ll be shopping at that market any more.

Best in-service ever.

Yesterday, Thursday Aug 14, as part of our orientation and in-service the whole new staff went to the beach for the day! We went to the Montazah Palace which was built by Kind Farouk in the beginning of the 1900's. It's the lavish palace grounds with large gardens and private beach areas. One of our returning staff members has a beach cabin there and invited the new staff for the day. Seth thought this was the best in-service ever, especially since this was the first day of kids returning to school back at Shawnee Mission and instead he was swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. The interesting part of the day was that a President from another Middle Eastern country was staying at the palace and the President of Egypt came up that same day to visit him. So the road to the palace was lined with Egyptian military police every eight feet on both sides of the road for miles and miles. They were there more for the formal look of it rather than the need for them. So Seth is really going to enjoy telling his teaching friends back home that the day they started classes he was getting paid to be on the beach with two countries' presidents.

Noise

One thing that we are still adjusting to is the noise here. For one thing neither one of us has lived in a city before; Alexandria has a population of six million. Since all the building materials are nothing but concrete, sound travels. We are on the fourth floor and it often sounds like the people in the alleyway are standing right outside our window. I swear there is a rooster that lives on our bathroom window sill but I haven't found it yet, but when I do... For any of you that have traveled outside of the North America you know that driving with constant use of the horn is quite normal so that's another noise we are working on getting used to. However, the noise that is the most different to get used to is the call to prayer that happens five times a day. They play it over very loud speakers from every mosque and there are at least 5 mosques near us and due to the varying building heights, the first call (this happens when the first rays of sunlight reach the minaret at the top of the mosque) starts at slightly different times so you hear the same song overlapping a lot in the morning.

Weather

Ok, the question everyone has been asking is; do we have an air conditioner and how hot is it? Yes we have air conditioning in our apartments and in the school. The weather is very nice here. You'll be surprised to find out that it is actually hotter in Kansas currently than here. It's been nice and in the upper 80's here in Alexandria since we are right on the Mediterranean Sea and we get the nice cool sea air. Apparently Cairo tends to be 15-20 degrees hotter. Other people have asked how we have so many trees with so little rain. We are in the Nile delta region and on the sea coast so we have a lot of underground water which allows for the nice trees.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

Oh my gosh, I can't believe we're in EGYPT! I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

The trip: We made it, the trip over was long but went smoothly. We moved over with just 7 luggage bags. We had an 8 1/2 layover in Frankfurt, Germany. Kristal's Dad had just spent the week in Germany for business and we were actually all in Germany at the same time for a couple hours but unfortunately in different airports. We met up with another new teaching couple in Chicago airport and another younger couple that just got married 5 days before us too at the Frankfurt airport. Seth and I are the only new couple that hasn't done any international teaching before. We arrived in Alexandria, Egypt around 2:30 a.m. Egyptian time (we are 8 hours head of Kansas). We were met at the airport by 4 other people that were already at the school and were surprised when our new Headmaster sent us back inside the airport to make sure we got our 4 bottles of duty free liquor. I think we'll like her. We tried to get a few hours of sleep right at sunrise when they were starting the call to prayer that is broadcasted on loudspeakers from every Mosque in the city. That was interesting. It is just the new people on campus right now; there are eleven of us including our new Headmaster and Principal, for orientation. It just happens that they hired all couples this year and now single people so there are actually 4 open apartments this year so there is plenty of space for visitors so start planning your trips to see us now. Our apartment: We were very impressed and love our new apartment. It's not too much smaller than our house was. It has huge 20 foot ceilings and windows with lots of natural light. We have a nice front and side balcony with a nice breeze and a view across the city. We on the top (fourth) floor with the other young newlyweds. The fact that they put the youngest and newly married couples on the top floor has not gone unnoticed! We will defiantly get our exercise around here with all the stairs we have to do around campus. American with Disabilities Act defiantly doesn't apply here, no elevators or escalators. Our apartment is much bigger than what we had expected and very nicely decorated and supplied. We felt at home right away. Our kitchen is small, but I was expecting that and we really don't have to use it since our meals are all cooked for us. We have so much storage space that when we unpacked we didn't even use half of it. We've seen some of the other people’s apartments and we are all amazed how different they are all.

Our day:
We woke up early after about 2.5 hours of sleep trying to adjust to the new time zone. Had our first meal in our dinning hall and met the chef’s who are so nice and eager to please. We had the best French toast made from home made bread that they cook fresh every day. Then we went and unpacked our luggage and arranged our apartment. After a very good lunch were I had some extremely good stuffed zucchini, we met up as a group and took a tour of the campus and found Seth's new room and took care of some business and financial stuff. The campus is going to be fun to explore. As the school has grown over the last 90 years it had created some interesting architecture on the campus there are so many interesting buildings with many nooks and crannies and secret places to explore. After our tour most of us donned on our bathing suits and enjoyed our swimming pool, I think we will have use that a lot. We will enjoy our new staff/family. We seem to have a very active staff and should have lots of company to run and swim together. We checked out the gym equipment and they are trying to put together a bigger gym room for us. After dinner of meatloaf with made-from-scratch BBQ which would compete with any Kansas City BBQ we took a walk to the Mediterranean Sea. There is a huge resort close with a three story mall inside and a movie theater which plays some American movies. We sat at a Starbucks and enjoyed the view of the beach and sea. It was kind of a novelty since Seth and I have never been to a Starbucks but go to our first one in Egypt! As we went to bed exhausted last night Seth and I couldn't believe that we had not even spent 24 hours here yet and have already done so much and feel so close to our co-workers already.

Heading to Egypt!

This picture was taken in Waterloo, Iowa, right after we signed our contracts. As you all know, Kristal and I will be leaving on August 8, 2008. Kristal has graciously agreed to put her career as a Physical Therapy Assistant on hold while I continue to teach Mathematics. We will be working at Schutz American School in Alexandria, Egypt. I will teach Mathematics to grades 7-10 and Kristal will either be working as a general school aide or as a Science Lab Assistant. This is a very exciting time for us! We will be sure to post more when our travels and adventures provide more fun to share with you, our family and friends.