It has come down to this...

This morning walking to church I enjoyed a refreshing breeze and a long sleeved shirt after a heat wave moved through Cairo at the beginning of the week. We're enjoying seasonal norms of 25 C, as opposed to 40 C last Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes it hit me, as it did this morning, "I live in Egypt." That's a loaded statement now.

Courtney and I had some friends over for dinner the other night, and this was the result of full stomachs and the company of good friends.

In case you can't read the title, it is the "School Closure Potluck Pool." Rumours and speculation are so strong in Egypt about once again closing the International schools that we have started a pool for the date and the method by which we will find out. We have a break at the end of November, and the idea is that we'll be closed after that, until after Christmas. C'mon November 22!

Last weekend our Church hosted a Dinner Charity Auction for 450 people. It was amazing the amount of people who bought tickets and came to support various Egyptian Charities. The Church itself only has about 100 people, so I'm not sure where everyone came from. The evening was complete with a cash bar and black jack tables. I love being Anglican!


We had a table of "young adults" (starting to take issue with that phrase - as one person at the table put it "I'm not all that young any more, and I'm not sure I'm an adult"...). We talked a lot about why people come to Egypt and what we were all doing there. There seems to be three main reasons. 1) specifically for interest in their job. 2) Interest in the Middle East and Egypt.
3) Interest in living somewhere other than your own country.

I had to admit that I was in the third category. I was put to shame by some of the others, who have studied Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in University, and who really want to be specifically in Egypt. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, and it's a fascinating place. It's just that before January 28, 2009, I had not really thought much about Egypt as a living, current place. It was just boring history to me.

Now that I'm here, my interests still lie more in the way people live currently than they did in history. I wonder much more often about the people around me - how they live now, and how they interact with one another. It also frustrates me that I have few opportunities to interact with Egyptians, and many language and cultural barriers prevent this from happening. I will have to keep looking for ways to make that happen that are appropriate and safe.


I try to get out on Saturdays to explore somewhere new; last weekend I was in Old Cairo, tomorrow I hope to join some people from work on a tour of Zamalek, a small island region in Cairo with lots of little shops and galleries. The above picture is the inside of the first Mosque built in Cairo; it was built large enough to hold the Muslim army (3500 men) for prayer.