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.

Back to Egypt

Well it was a wonderful summer being back home in the states. We got to enjoy lots of time with almost all of our family and a few friends. We filled up our bellies with lots of good American food and our suitcases with lots of new clothes and Crystal Lite. But now it’s time to head back to our other home in Egypt and get ready for another school year.

We left Kansas City on August 13^th at 11:00 am and headed to Washington D.C. We followed Kristal’s dad who had left at 7:00 that same morning to catch his connecting flight in Washington D.C. for his business trip to China. He’ll be there for three weeks. The following day Kristal’s mom flew to New York to help her brother move from Texas to Horse Heads, NY. I know what you all are thinking, us Brady’s are hard to keep track of and we never stay in one state long much less on the same continent together.

From Washington D.C. we flew to Frankfurt, Germany and then to Cairo, Egypt and met the school van to drive us to Alexandria. It took a total of 32 hours from door step to door step.

Poor Sokkwi was in his cat carrier for that whole time. But once again he surprised me with how good of a traveler he is for a cat. I think it’s pretty awesome when we can be seven hours into a nine hour flight until the people around us ask, “Is there a cat under there?” and even, when he does meow he usually is happy and quite if we slip our hand into his carrier and pet him for awhile. We’ve been truly blessed on all our travels so far and always manage to sit next to people who like cats and are always interested in Sokkwi. The flight attendants are always happy to give us an extra cup of water for him and we’ll give him a couple handfuls of food to munch on in his carrier throughout his trip. On our layovers, I will find a family restroom that is a single room so that I lock the door and let him and out stretch for awhile. We’ve worked out a great system with a Ziploc bag of kitty litter and small Rubber Maid container that he can use the litter box.

We meet our good friends Joseph and Lianne in Frankfurt and were very excited to see them and catch up. The more we talked with them the more excited we were to get home and see the rest of our “Schutz Family” and meet the new staff for the year.

Somehow we lucked out and got bumped to First Class for our flight from Germany to Egypt. Neither of us had ever flown first class before and I don’t know if we can ever go back to economy again. It was such a luxury to be able to stretch out and be totally comfortable and pampered during such a long trip. But of course, it had to be the worst that Sokkwi had ever been while traveling and wouldn’t stop meowing unless I had him in my lap and begged him to be quite because I didn’t want to get kicked out of first class. I think the problem was that they were serving fish and he really wanted some.

I thought I might take some time to get reaccelerated to the driving and noise in Egypt, but surprisingly it felt like we hadn’t been gone long at all and we both truly got that warm fuzzy feeling of “coming home.”

We had chosen to move into a new apartment this year. It’s bigger with two bedrooms and a much nicer kitchen. We spent the first two days unpacking while Sokkwi ran from one end to the next non-stop to stretch his legs. I’ll post pictures of our new apartment soon.

7-8-9-10-11-12

What were you doing on July 8th, 09 at 10:11 and 12 seconds? (7-8-9-10-11-12)




We were comforting our dog who we had just brought home from the hospital.

Right before we left for our trip to Italy my parents had called and told me that Desiree had gotten hurt pretty badly. She’s usually pretty good about staying in their yard “off leash” while they are doing yard work; plus, they have a “natural fence” at the end of their yard- a 12 foot drop off cliff. But that day something down in the woods had gotten her attention enough for her to go over the edge. I’m guessing a turkey or raccoon. When she didn’t come back after awhile, my hero of a daddy had to go down and search for her. He found her laying in the leaves and mud whimpering and giving my daddy big ol’ puppy dog eyes pleading her him to come help her. He had to carrier her all the way back up to the house (that was no easy feat). She couldn’t walk at all and was in so much pain that she’d cry unless someone was laying next to her with their hand on her. Once again, a big old thank you to my daddy for sleeping on the floor with her all night. They were worried that she had broken her back, I’m glad they didn’t tell me this since I was worried enough about her as it was and glad I’d be home in two weeks. They got her to the vet the next morning and x-rays and their best diagnosis at the time was a badly sprained ankle.

She was up and walking but with a pretty bad limp by the time we had arrived home, the following day I took her back to the vet for a follow up appointment. They re-did some x-rays and test and determined that she had torn her ACL. So she had surgery to repair it. Poor girl.

To add insult to injury she had to wear one of those funny pet cones so she’d leave the stitches alone. But even worse than that, after Mommy and Daddy had abandoned her for months, they finally come home but bring this stupid annoying Egyptian cat with them who thinks it’s entertaining to play with her cone on her head while she’s all hopped up on pain killers.

The surgery really helped though. She was able to walk right out of the vets office with only a little limp and was doing stairs and short walks in just a few days. But we learned that it is next to impossible to keep a bandage on a dogs’ knee, especially when that dog just won’t lie down and take it easy. In addition to the fact that we found out that Desiree is allergic to latex! So our vet told us it was ok to abandon the bandaging idea after a few days of frustration. But a new frustration arose. Her first set of stitches came totally undone and we had to rush her to the vets office once more and they put staples in them. A few days later, she had managed to get a few of the staples out herself so we took her back once again and tried a different type of suture.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time this summer with my dog and going to the vets office, but I am sure glad I was home and able to be with her.

Home Sweet Home

We're home! We arrived back in Kansas City on June 28th to a very welcoming reception by our families at the airport. Sokkwi (our Egyptian cat) did very well traveling. Poor thing was in his carrier for 23 hours. After being sure to have all his vaccinations and papers for him to clear customs, he even has a kitty passport, the US customs agent only looking into his carrier and asked, "You still alive, ok.".

Our first night home mom and I ran to Target. (Ah, Target!) While there, my mom asked, "Does this make you feel at home?" ask asked if she meant being in Target and she said, "No, the two veiled ladies" who were standing near us. I replied, "I didn't even take note of them, what I was noticing where that girls very short shorts, and that ladies bra strap showing, and that I can see that young girls belly button." The next day I dug out my summer clothes, I thought I was so looking forward to wearing shorts and tank tops, but when I put my shorts on I felt so self-conscience wearing something so reveling. For the last three days I've been pulling on my shorts to cover up my legs and keep changing into pant to go out in public.

Seth went out to the Lake of the Ozarks for a few days to visit his old boss at the summer camp he used to work at and to get some water skiing time in. Then we went out to my grandma's farm for the 4th of July weekend. We had a great time visiting with a lot of my family, catching up and sharing pictures.

Our Trip to Rome

It was so refreshing to have a break from school and be able to jet away to another country for a few days to relax. It had just rained in Rome when we arrived and the fresh sent of rain drops was so invigorating after months in the desert. To see trees and grass and flowers delighted my eyes, not to mention recognizable things like Blockbuster stores. Although right way we both noticed how our opinion of modesty had changed after a year in a Muslim country to the vast difference of Italian fashion.

We stayed at a quaint little bungalow park only 7 km north of Rome – Flaminio Village Bungalow Park. It was on several acres of park land and had sites for camping, RV’s and bungalows. It was quite a walk to get anywhere but the bungalow village had everything we needed including a pool, restaurant, bar, pizzeria, mini-market, and a very helpful tour info kiosk. We could catch the train about 300 meters from the park entrance and from there connect to the metro lines or buses downtown so everything was very accessible. We did a very smart move and got the Roma Pass which got us on ALL public transportation for three days and included entrance into any two museums. That was well worth the money and more than paid for itself.

The first day we headed off to town with two guide books and probably three city maps in hand. We decided to go see some sites on our own and do a few self-guided walking tours from our guide book. First stop we were both dying to see was the Colosseum. As soon as we walked up out of the subway station it was almost like the Colosseum smacked you in the face. We weren’t expecting it to be just right there, and so huge! We spent several hours walking around the outside and really enjoyed discovering the inside. This was defiantly both of our favorite site of our whole trip. From there we walked around the Palatine and the Roman Forums up to Monument di Vittoriano (their over-the-top tomb of the unknown soldier). Then we walked along Via del Corso street to Piazza Del Popolo, where stands a large Egyptian obelisk. Walking along Via del Corso is in the heart of the shopping district. It was so fun window shopping into the top Italian fashion designers’ boutiques, but I didn’t even dare go in one although we did stop at a little street café for lunch. That was quite a bit of walking for the morning so we decided to take an open bus tour and get the layout of the land of where some other important sites where. Then we headed to the Spanish Steps which is the evening hang out area for locals and tourists alike.

The next day we had reserved an audio guide tour of Rome. We went back and spent some more time at several sites that we saw briefly on out bus tour the day before, including Piazza Della Repubblica, Vatican City, back to the Colosseum and Palatine, then to Campo Dé Fiori, Piazza Navona where we bought some art, to the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and back to the Spanish Steps. Of course, a full day of walking required some refreshments so we stopped and had gelato three times that day. Hey, when in Rome….

On Wednesday we had read about how to get tickets for a general audience with the Pope. We arrived early that morning to St. Peter’s Square and got seats about 50 yards away from his chair. He arrived in his little pope-mobile and drove around the square twice so that most people could see him up close. In doing this he was only two rows (ten feet) away from us. The audience lasted about an hour in a half where some scripture was read by some Cardinals, and then several Cardinals introduced large groups that where there which the Pope waved to everyone and then he blessed the audience members, and by extension, their parents, children, family, friends and loved ones and any religious items they brought. So if you are reading this then you are probably a family, friend or loved one to use and by extension have been blessed by the Pope. This was done at least five different languages: Italian, English, German, Spanish, and Polish. We were most surprised by how many Polish people there were and they are quite proud that the Pope is Polish!

We headed off to Villa Borghese and to the Museo e Galleria Borghese, but first we had a very nice lunch in the Villa’s Park. I have a new found respect for Bernini and loved his sculptures of Ratto di Proserpina and Apollo e Dafne as well as Antonio Canova’s Venere Vincitrice. I was completely awe struck by their ability to make granite look lifelike and their minute details that made these massive sculptures seem as light as air. It’s difficult to fathom that they were able to perfect such art work hundreds of years ago without modern power tools, let alone all the famous artists and historical art works housed in this galleria. The villa itself was worth its own visit.

The next day we had reservations to go inside St. Peter’s Basilica in the morning and through the Vatican museums in the afternoon. The only way I can describe the inside of St. Peter’s is by one word….ornate! Ok, two words, ornate and massive! Michelangelo’s Pietá and Bernini’s canopy alter were once again superb example of their mastery of art and creations that prove today why they have been declared masters of their own right for hundreds of years.

The Vatican museum was actually both of our least favorite part of our trip. It was way too crowded with hoards of people that you couldn’t enjoy yourself to look at the collection. Not to mention that you have to follow the same path and are not allowed to backtrack or take another route and most people are only trying to press on until they get to the Sistine Chapel anyways. The Sistine Chapel was a letdown after all of the hype we’ve heard all of our lives, and also due to the large crown and not being able to enjoy looking at it. You are not allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, but everyone one was.

That night we ended our wonderful vacation to Rome with a dinner cruise on the River Tiber and a nice evening stroll by the Castel Sant’ Angelo and the Vatican City, lit up in all its splendor.

We are back in Alexandria right now, packing up our stuff and grabbing the cat to head home (Kansas City) in a few hours. We are very excited to be coming home and can’t wait to see all of you.







Don't forget - we enjoy reading your comments as much as you enjoy reading our blog!! (Especially Kristal cuz she does an awesome job on all these videos) :-)

End of School- Rome- Home

Today is our last teachers work day. Graduation was last night.
On the 21th, Seth and I are flying to Italy and spending five days in Rome. This is our delayed first anniversary celebration vacation.
On the 26th we come back to Alexandria, pick up our stuff and the cat, and leave the next day to fly home. We will get into Kansas City on June 28th and will be home until August 13th.

End of the Year Video

One of our senior students put together a very nice video of the Schutz school year.

Snip, Snip

We had Sokkwi neutered this weekend. Most vets here do house calls and don't have clinics. So the vet came to our apartment and did the operation right there on our kitchen table.

(sorry, couldn't bring myself to take a picture to include with the story, so you get a cute one instead)

Finals

Baby Evie helped grade finals this week.

Family Friend

Two of our staff members had a friend come visit them from back home in Iowa. I got to meet Bev her first morning at breakfast. When she heard my last name she got excited and asked who my husbands father was. Long story short she used to work for Seth's grandfather, Paul Spurlock in the Iowa school district several years ago and absolutely adored him. She had some wonderful memories and stories to share with us about working with Grandpa Paul. Turns out she was at his funeral three years ago and remembered hugging all the grandchildren. Who knew that thousands of miles away, Seth would bump into someone that has given him a hug before!