Eid El Adha

     Eid el Adha is the Festival of Sacrifice.  It commemorates the end of the Hajj, which is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.  It is just a coincidence that it coincides with American Thanksgiving this year.  The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar so it advances eleven days every year.  This feast of sacrifice commemorates the trials and triumphs of Abraham by God (Allah).   In particular the trail of when God(Allah) asked Abraham to kill his only son.  When preparing to do so, God(Allah) stopped him and told him that his scarifies has already been showed by his wiliness to give up his most dear in the name of God(Allah).  So to honor this event during Eid el Adah, Muslims kill an animal in the name of Allah.  Usually a sheep or goat but sometimes a cow or camel; these animals have started to be brought into the city over the past two weeks and are currently in the streets.  This is not helping with the filth and noise that is already a problem here.  Some families have already purchased their sheep/goat and are keeping them on their apartment balcony until the day of the slaughter. As with other Muslim feasts, they demonstrate their willingness to give up what is dear to them by giving away part of their slaughter.  Only 1/3 of the meat is eaten by immediate family, then 1/3 is shared with friends, and 1/3 is given to the poor.  This also symbolizes the understanding of the need for strong ties between family and friends and the understanding that all blessings come from God(Allah) and we need to open up our heart and homes to share our blessings. 

“Allah has given us power over animals and allowed us to eat meat, but only if we pronounce His name at the solemn act of taking life. Muslims slaughter animals in the same way throughout the year. By saying the name of Allah at the time of slaughter, we are reminded that life is sacred.” (Hula. “Eid el Adha”, About.com)

It’s pretty hard for me to see these animals sometimes.   They do not have animal transport trailers here (although I couldn’t imagine trying to drive in this traffic here with a trail attached!).  So they (some how) load up the sheep, goats, or even cows into the back of pickup trucks.  Then they spend the remaining days of their lives either tied up so tight they can’t move out into traffic, or corralled up in a small pin outside the butcher shops.  The most inhuman aspect of this is that there are often other animal carcasses hanging above their heads.  Some people will pay the butcher to slaughter their animal in their name, but most still like to slaughter them their selves.  They will do it right there in the street or sometimes on their balcony.  The day of the slaughter the street will latterly run red with blood.

Happy Thanksgiving

Top Ten Things Seth and Kristal Will Miss about Thanksgiving in the States:

10.  Cold Stone Creamery- Pumpkin Pie Signature Creation

9.   Playing card games with family

8.  Fighting to be the first to get leftovers for dinner

7. The cold fall weather and fall leaves

6. Watching football all day

5.  Cranberries                     

4.  Pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread

3.  The Plaza lights.

2.  Being with our families

1.  Grandma Dally's noodles (& of course, Grandma Dally)

Top Ten Things Seth and Kristal are Thankful for in 2009:

10.  We don’t have H1N1

9.  That I (Seth) don't have to go shopping the day after thanksgiving this year -  I can do it online whenever :-)

8.  Not having to work on Thanksgiving this year.

7.   Our great friends here at Schutz

6.  The support of family and friends back in the States while living
      overseas

5.  Having the opportunity to live and travel in foreign countries and          share those experiences with each other

4.  Spending Thanksgiving in Petra, Jordan this year.

3.  Desiree and Sokkwi

2.  Each other

1.  OUR ENTIRE FAMILY

 

Egypt vs. Algeria Soccer

Last week there was a huge soccer match played here in Cairo, it was the World Cup qualifying game of Egypt vs. Algeria.  It was all you would hear people talk about all week, and people started selling Egyptian flags and Egypt Cat in the Hat hats among other merchandise. People were flying the Egyptian flag from their balconies and their cars.  Little children were running around the streets with little flags.  It was was the first time I've seen Egyptians really proud of their country.

When the Algerians arrived in Cairo they were greeted by a mob of Egyptians stoning them.  What hospitality!  Then the Egypt media it turned into a big scandal and everyone claimed the Algerians were making it up even though there is video proof of the incident on BBC News. 

We had received an e-mail alert from the American Ambassador warning us not to go out, especially in Cairo.  If Egypt looses there are sure to be riots, and if Egypt wins there are sure to be riots.  So either way, a good time will be had by all.

Egypt had to win the game 3-0 in order to qualify for the World Cup.  If they got 2-0 then they would have to play another tie-off qualifying match, and if they won by only one point than Algeria would win.  They just proved, that you don't have to be drunk, to be a soccer hooligan having a "drunken brawl".

It seemed like everyone in the country was watching the match that night.  Coffee shops (the closest thing to a sports bar) were packed to the brim and extra chairs were spilling out onto the streets everywhere.  Seth and I watched a movie on our computer but had our TV tuned to the correct channel but muted.  We didn’t need the sound because we could hear it from the entire neighborhood.  Within the first two minutes Egypt scored a goal.  The entire country went wild and we clearly hear everyone shouting for joy, and see the family in the apartment across the street from our window jumping for joy and celebrating together with the women “trilling”.   Seth and I looked up and caught the slow action re-play on our TV.  The rest of the game was rather uneventful, except for some dirty playing by the Egypt play.  Even though we were alone up in our apartment, you could almost feel the nervous energy in the air as the country watched the clock tick down the remaining three minutes and Egypt was only ahead by one.   And then miraculously Egypt scored a second goal!  Cars were honking, glass was breaking, donkeys were baying, women were trilling, shepherds were dancing with their sheep; the country was united together in one big celebration. 

It didn’t really sink in till the next morning when the celebrations subsisted that a score of 2-0 meant they still had to play Algeria again.  This time on Wednesday in Sudan, they had to win the second game by one point in order to go to the World Cup.  The atmosphere was much the same as the first time, although we could actually hear the country as a whole take a collective breath and hold it anytime Algeria was near our goal.  Unfortunately,  Egypt lost 1-0 and Algeria is going to the World Cup.

H1N1 Schutz Update

The Egyptian Department of Health and Department of Education keep on changing their minds about schools and the H1N1 flu. First of all, it hasn’t been made quite clear if we are a foreign entity or if we should follow the same rules as Egyptian government schools when it comes to this issue. Anyways, we had another case last week in eighth grade and according to the new government regulations we closed just the eighth grade. Since then we have had a case in tenth grade, first grade and Pre-K 3 and Pre-K 4 are also closed down. If you are wondering if our classes are totally self-contained…no they are not. Plus in such a small school half our students are all related to each other and they all eat lunch and other social activities together. The rumor for the last month has been that the government is thinking about shutting down all schools after Eid el Adah due to the fact that they are worried that with millions of Muslims traveling to Mecca for the Hajj, then the flu will just spread even more ramped over all Middle Eastern countries. It sounds like this is a very sure possibility, but for how long we are not sure of yet. Mom, stop worrying, I promise you what I have is just a normal cold. Cough, Cough.

Agony in Agamy

We had a special Hash House Harriers this past weekend.  We called it “Agony in Agamy” but it was actually a quite pleasant day.  Agamy is a smaller “beach” town outside of Alexandria, about a 45 minute drive.  A lot of our local friends have beach houses there.  We had two new runners, teachers from the German school,  join the Hash the week before and they had a friend who let us come use his beach house.  We got there early afternoon and spent awhile relaxing.  The Hares were still out laying the trail.  So I enjoyed playing with his two dogs, especially since they just had puppies only two weeks old!  

 

Eventually we set out on our run.  This week they decided to mark our trail with the traditional Hash flour since it was a “live” trail that was just laid out.  Flour blows away easily and beach front tends to be a bit windy; more importantly, try to find clumps of flour on the beach!!! But it was a very lovely run through the town and a little on the beach too.  It was nice to be able to run on quite streets without getting hit by cars.  When we finished our run we enjoyed the sunset while we did our Hash Circle.

 

Progressive Dinner

The staff residents planned a progressive dinner together last night.  We started at one apartment and had appetizers and cocktails and then walked to the next for soup and salad, then to main course and finally to dessert and after dinner drinks.  It was a great evening with some great food.  Everyone cooked food that we don't normally get in our dinning hall so it was quite the special treat.  I was in charge of dessert and made my first pie crust from scratch.  It was delicious and so light, buttery, and flaky.

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.