No nap

Sometimes, even though they need one, Henry and Nathan do not take a nap. These are also the times when they might emerge from their room with 6 shirts on:

Big and small

One of my favorite times of day is when I check on the boys at night while they are sleeping. It reminds me that while they want to be big, they are still small.

Nathan:

Henry:

Throw another shrimp on the barbie!

On Wednesday afternoon, Hesham, the boys and I took our second trip to downtown Cairo. It is a long, stressful trip, and best done with a driver. Our destination was the World Trade Center building which will always sound ominous. Here are N&H by a fountain in the center courtyard:

There was an Egypt dog near the fountain who tried to get near us. Before I could shoo it away, it touched my leg with its old dry nose. I like dogs, but these ones give me the creeps. View of the building upward:

Street view:

Why do I care so much about this old building, you ask? Well, it's because after nearly a year of research, phone calls, overseas letters, consulate and embassy visits, and excruciatingly detailed application forms, I picked up these from the Australian Embassy on the 11th floor!!! Three Australian passports for me, Nathan and Henry. Now if the sh!t hits the fan for Americans in Egypt, the ankle biters and I will become Aussies. We'll be in Perth throwing shrimp on the barbie, mate. Now what to do about Joe...

JW Marriott

On Saturday, May 15, we joined our host family (and former Alaskans) at the JW Marriott. They have a membership to the Marriott, so we could go as guests for a small fee. The JW Marriott is about 40 minutes away from Maadi and at a higher elevation, so it is cooler with a breeze and has cleaner air. We all really enjoyed a day at the pool. Or I should say pools, for there are several: wave pool, heated pools, water slide, etc. It seems strange to need heated pools in Egypt, but the nights can be chilly so unheated pools can feel very cold. Especially for skinny 3.5 year old twins. So H&N loved the shallow heated pool and played in there for a long time. Here are some photos that Joe took from our lounge chairs while eating lunch.

H&N seem to be growing accustomed to this expat lifestyle. Too accustomed...

Al-Azhar Park

On Friday, May 14, we went to the Al-Azhar Park. To paraphrase from the Lonely Planet guide book: It was opened in 2005, and is the city's only park of significant size. It has a profusion of gardens, emerald grass, fountains and a lake, while ambient Arabic music drifts from speakers. The park is located near the Citadel which is beautiful, and you can see a mosque in the background of the first picture.

View across man-made lake to mosque:

H&N staring at an ant. They didn't see many insects during the long Alaskan winter.

Different part of the gardens. You can see the hot, dusty haze over the city in the background.

Nathan resting in the shade near the large and completely unshaded playground:

Playing in the water fountain before the guard told them to stop. The veiled ladies in the background also cooled their feet in the water.

CAC

The CAC is the place to be! It stands for Cairo American College, and it is a school for pre-K through high school kids. It is supposed to be an excellent school. Unfortunately, H&N just miss the September 1 cutoff so they won't be able to attend until fall 2011. No big deal except that without kids that attend the school, we don't have access to the campus. There is a huge wall all the way around it with guards at every entrance. With very limited ourdoor space for kids in Cairo, the large grassy lawns, pool and multiple play structures is a must for us. We got in a couple times as guests of other people, but we definitely needed our own pass. BP does an annual lottery drawing for people without kids at the school to get access passes, but that doesn't happen until August. Thanks to Joe, I now have a pass to the campus since BP agreed to transfer the pass of someone who is no longer in Cairo. So here we are enjoying some late afternoon playtime.

Henry beneath a flame tree:

See how happy they are to play?

Status update

I think I am overdue for a status update, so here we go. The last two weekends have been very hot! Over 100 degF and dusty. There are two weather patterns so far: hot, dusty wind from the desert and cooler, clear, more humid 85 degF air from the Mediterranean. You can guess which one is better. The weekends have been hot and the weekdays cooler. The hot weekend weather has made our zoo trips and other outings a bit more difficult because we have a hard time with the heat. The forecast for this weekend looks good, however.

Joe and I bought the Rosetta Stone Arabic language software before moving here, and we have been good about doing at least 30 minutes per day. I can't say much yet, but I can recognize words that are spoken or written which is an improvement. BP also provides language classes, so we will sign up for those too. The software teaches 'classic' Arabic, and the Egyptian dialect is slightly different.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but Joe officially signed the rental lease for the villa that we like. I'll try to take some pictures this weekend. The landlady has many people over at the villa everyday working on things like painting, installing new air conditioning units, replacing sink faucets, repairing loose steps, etc. They are making good progress so I hope we can move in soon. It is normal for people to negotiate a wish list of things to be done to a place before signing the lease and moving in.

We still don't have our car yet. BP security had to drive it to Alexandria to get the duty free title transferred into Joe's name. It should be done soon, but it's not a big deal since we still have a rental car.

Last weekend we met and interviewed a lady, Lyn, who cleans and babysits for another BP family that are moving back to the UK. We like her a lot and have hired her to work for us starting in July. We also hired the gardener/security man who worked for the people who lived in the villa before us. His name is Mustafa. So we have assembled a staff of two people so far.

All four of us are getting rabies vaccinations which is a series of three shots. We have had two so far and get the final one next week. Apparently the risk of rabies is higher here than most places because of all the stray cats and dogs. So we will be protected just in case. Henry and Nathan now think there are two new species of animals in the world: Egypt cats and Egypt dogs which we never, never go near.

Finally, I signed up for some gym classes to keep me balanced: Pilates and Spinning. So far Spinning is my favorite. The Pilates is OK but I loved my core class in Alaska more. That's it for now!

Grandy Mad Mall

So continuing our activities from the zoo weekend... On Saturday we went to new favorite hangout, the Maadi Grand Mall (or Grandy Mad Mall as the boys say it). It is the Sears Mall of Cairo! It is air conditioned and not crowded. Even this relatively modern mall is not super safe so we keep a close eye on the boys. Here they are peering down at the peeps below:

And I found some new places to shop. Just kidding. But there are a lot of shops selling fashionable head scarves.

Then we went to the BCA (some British expat association) club to play and eat dinner. Even though we only know two people in Maadi, we saw them there. On the way home, we took a local Cairo taxi with no seatbelts back to the apartment. Probably shouldn't do that again! Hosed down the boys and hit the sack to prepare for another week.

Waiting a loooong time for the food:
Playground at BCA:

Cairo Zoo

We asked our driver to pick us up at 8:30am on Friday so we could take the boys out somewhere before it got too hot. Friday is a great day to do things that would otherwise be crowded because many people stay home or go to mosque. On the car ride over we saw the pyramids, several donkey carts hauling fruits and veggies and very bad air pollution.

As soon as we entered the zoo, we were suckered in by photo guide man. He took us on 'behind the scenes' tours to see and hold a 3 month old lion cub, feed hippos, hold a baby nile crocodile and two snakes. We decided to skip holding a 3 year old chimpanzee (concerned about face ripping). All of this in exchange for baksheesh (tips) for him and the various zoo keepers. He also took our photos, and we bought several from him. The five lovely keepsake photos are at the end of the post. They look bad quality because (1) the photos are bad quality and (2) I took a photo of the photos with my iPhone. This tour was fun and scary at the same time. It was strange because we (the caucasian non-Egyptians) were the only ones offered this kind of stuff.

I was relieved to be done with the tour after the reptile house, but then we were way at the other end of the zoo with hot and hungry kids. So we sat and had snacks and water. By late morning it was in the 90's and very hot. Many women wore long black robes which seemed unbearable. There are four main styles of dress for women: 1) no veil and normal clothes (very few of these), 2) veil and normal clothes (long sleeves and pants/skirts, sometimes very tight fitting, usually young women), 3) veil and robes (mostly middle aged women), and 4) complete head veil with only eyes showing and robes (usually also wearing pants, socks and sometimes gloves).

Of course at some point we had to use the public toilets. At almost every toilet you have to pay someone some baksheesh to use it. These were porceline holes in the ground for squatting over. Not great, but not that bad. Good thing we had lots of hand sanitizer during this trip.

Later on one of the zoo keepers let H&N feed camels pieces of bread.

An important thing to note is that cats were in every exhibit except the lions and baboons. These are some wiley Egyptian cats. You can even see one in the hippo video at the end! You can also hear me talking to some young Egyptian fellows who wanted to practice their English.

Week in review

Here is a summary of our week.

H&N went to Small Talk every day this week. Their teacher's name is Jane, and she has about 2-3 Egyptian assistants who all seem very nice. Wednesday was Splash Day, and their room (Rainbows) had a turn playing in the pools on the roof.

While we have eliminated putting on snow clothes, we have added the task of sunscreen application every day. It is getting hotter every day this week. Yesterday and today are 40 C or 100 F!

It is tough living in hotels and apartments so long. H&N only have the same few toys to play with every day. Hopefully we will get our air shipment this week. Here they are building megastructures with magnatiles:Joe had more meetings with our potential new landlady about the villa this week. We have compiled our wish list of things to be done to the villa, and she has agreed to do most of them. Verbally agreed, that is. On Sunday there will be another meeting to finalize the wish list in writing and negotiate the rent. Hopefully it works out OK.

Joe and I got lots of errands done this week. I went to Carrefour again and bought a water dispenser so we don't have to use and throw away so many plastic bottles. Things like this can seem like major accomplishments here.

Every place in Maadi will deliver. This week I had McDonald's and Pizza Hut delivery. We also go to neighborhood markets, Kimo and Miriam's, frequently to get food and supplies. They have US brand food at high prices but it's worth it.

BP took our passports last week to work on getting our residency permits. Everything went smoothly. These permits are what we need to get our air shipment delivered and buy the Prado SUV.

On Wednesday I joined some ladies for a brunch at Maadi House. It's a really nice building with grass and pools for use by US embassy folks. One of my tasks is to figure out how to get access to this place. Must make friends with embassy people.

On Thursday Joe went on an all day geology field trip to the desert to see whale bones. It was a 3.5 hour drive each way into the 'real' Egypt. He wants me to mention that the whales had tiny feet.

Other good news: we are finally getting our sleep on track after 10 days!

Here are Nathan and Henry riding a carousel at the Carrefour mall:

Red Sea

The work week in Egypt is Sunday to Thursday. So on Friday we took a drive to the Red Sea. It took about 1.5 hours to get there, but the road was wide and smooth. It happened to also be Henry and Nathan's half birthday! Here is a video of us at the Red Sea. We were at a beach with only locals. All of the women wore veils, and one lady near us was wearing the full head covering. I didn't think it would be good to go swimming in my one piece bathing suit, so I watched from the beach while the boys played.

Cairo Town

We arrived at the temporary apartment at about 7 pm. It is a groundfloor apartment with three bedrooms, beautiful tile floors and super high ceilings. BP had stocked it with some food which was great. So we had some snacks and went to bed at midnight. And we woke up at 4 am. Thus began our days of waking up super early in the morning due to jet lag. Some days it was 3 am and some days 5 am (like today). It's not too bad except that I get super tired in the afternoon and again at about 8 pm. So we go to bed early and the boys take long naps. Here is a picture of Joe and the boys watching movies on the couch:

Since we got up early on Wednesday and the boys had lots of energy, I took them to Small Talk which is a half day preschool in Maadi. They had fun playing and riding trikes. BP provides a rental car and driver for 30 days while we get settled. Our drivers name is Hesham, and he's really nice. He is actually a very conservative driver for Cairo which makes it more relaxing to be in the car. While the boys were at Small Talk I ran errands to the BP Center and the grocery store. Joe came back around noon and we picked up the boys at 12:30 pm. I can't remember what else we did of significance except nap and get our stuff organized. That night we walked to a nearby restaurant. Here is a picture of Nate and Joe walking through Maadi:

Shopping is a new experience. It's going to take a while to find all the food we're used to eating. Milk is typically bought in boxes like below. They are room temperature and only require refrigeration when opened. Luckily most items have Arabic and English writing.

On Thursday the boys went to Small Talk again. I went to the bank to withdraw money to pay for Small Talk and other things. Then I went to a large store called Carrefour. Not someplace you want to go often, but it's good to stock up on food and other items. It's like the Cairo Fred Meyer. It takes a while to get there, so I got back around noon and then Joe and I picked up Henry and Nathan. Later than afternoon we toured a house that we might want to rent. Here they are called villas. It has a large yard with grass which is unusual. Joe will initiate the contract negotiation process this morning. Then later that night, Joe went to look at a car to buy. We will soon be the owners of this 2007 Toyota Prado. It's a very nice, low mileage car that seats 8 and is all set up for desert camping. We will officially have it once the owner gets back from vacation and we get our permanent work visas. That should happen later this week.

I haven't taken lots of photos yet because 1) our cameras were all out of batteries and 2) the local police don't like to see people take photos. The Egyptian police can be suspicious of people taking photos because there are military zones and lots of embassies in the area. So I'll get some iPhone pictures for now until I get the lay of the land.