Virgoes make the best cleaners

Before and after photos of our 3 hour cleaning stint on Wednesday.

The Ace Club

Last night we popped along to the ACE Club, which is a watering hole for expats. Only Egyptians who are married to expats can go into the club and you have to become a member to belong to it. It's the only place we know that has pork so each time I've been I've eaten ... pork. 

Iti made some new friends with some locals who made themselves at home and found him in my handbag. I pulled him out of the bag to see what they would do and sure enough they treated him as one of their own.

From left: Anna (wife of Ahmed & Senior School English)), Shannon (Middle School Social Studies), Bonnie (Grade 2) and Bill (Bonnie's husband). Shannon and Bonnie are newbies like me.

From left: Debra (Grade 5), Joanne (Grade 2) and Dr Farnsworth (Head of Elementary aka my boss). Debra & Joanne are newbies too.

Once we become members this will be our local. At the moment we pay LE20 to be visitors signed in by Dr Farnsworth which can be a drag if he is not around. Our other option is to stay home and invite others over which may have to happen for a while so we don't drink on our own. That wouldn't look good :-)
 

Room 212

I got to see my classroom for the first time today. It's on the second floor at the far end of the corridor. There must be something about me being at the end of corridors. Hopefully with this classroom I can hide away :-) The room is very different to Room 25 and I'm looking forward to getting some colour on those newly painted walls. I'm not sure if I can swap those desks and chairs for smaller ones as the choices I've seen in other classes are pretty limited.

 Only one computer and that's the teacher's.

 Display space is limited (.but I brought blutack)

 I have air conditioning!!!

This is the front of the school where the kids enter.

Photos of Our Place

Most of these photos are already on my FB page so these are for those of you who haven't seen them yet. Only the lounge & dining area to give a good clean tomorrow then we start again as he dust is neverending. It's amazing the number of large empty areas throughout the city. There are huge numbers of buildings that all look the same and most look unfinished and are unoccupied. The front of our building doesn't normally look as good as it does in the photo. There is normally rubbish left behind and that day must have been street sweeping day. We are learning to ignore it but still feel guilty about not picking it up.

Every day there is a boy, about 13 yrs, who pulls a hand trolley along the road and collects rubbish from inside the buildings. Downstairs is a tyre shop and there are boys (about 10 - 11yrs) working in there and fixing tyres on the side of the street. Yesterday when we were at a local shop there were 3 and 5 yr old kids trying to sell us tissues. Their mother was standing nearby encouraging them. It makes you appreciate the lifestyle kiwi kids have. I'm not sure if these kids actually go to school. I hope they are still on holiday like me and will go to school in the next week or so.

 

The apricot lounge is the same colour as the spare room at Seaview when we first moved in.

The green lounge. Spot the "Gladstone" postage stamp on the wall.

 

The dining area is right by the front door. Great place for an office.

 

The kitchen is big enough for the 2 of us (just).

Gas stove needs matches to start it. Scary oven!





Our bedroom now with only the one bed

The Lockie Suite with a double bed, previously from our room.





 

Bathroom & Laundry

 

View from the apricot lounge towards the dining area, kitchen, bathroom & bedrooms.

 

View from our lounge window down to the street.

 

The back of the building. Note the trees on the left.

 View still behind our building. Note the trees are now on the right and yes that is rubbish.

Iti's view of the wasteland. That's the rubbish from the last photo on the right.

 

Cairo was built on a desert and this is still more of the view from behind our building.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Settling Into Maadi

I really can appreciate what it feels like for new immigrants settling into a country where you don’t know the language or the beauracracy. Lucky for us we have some amazing new Egyptian friends who can soeak Arabic and English. Life would be 100% harder if not for them.

We moved into our little flat 3 days ago and have the BEST landlady. After we arrived with our bags she took us to a huge mall 20 minutes away to buy things we needed e.g. sheets, towels, jug, crockery, etc. When we got back and eventually got our 3,000 LE worth of shopping unpacked (in between cleaning) we realised there were a few things we’d forgotten so the list of necessities doubled and we are heading back to the mall tomorrow.

There were a couple of things that needed fixing. The hot water thermostat had blown so she got it replaced on the second day, the connection that holds the shower head onto the wall has snapped so that will be replaced in the next couple of days (baths in the meantime) and I had no idea how to use the washing machine or the oven. We spent the first two days CLEANING. The place was full of dust, we couldn’t see out of the windows and the beds had to be reshuffled (there were 2 double beds in the master bedroom -  go figure!) There’s only the lounge and dining area to finish off thank goodness.I will take more photos when it's presentable (sort of).

What do I miss so far? The 3 Ms. Milk, Marmite and Margarine (Olivani to be specific). The milk is UHT and comes in a carton, I can’t find Marmite or margarine in the local supermarket. Maybe tomorrow or the next day when we go back to Carfour (the mall) I’ll have better luck with the margarine. They do have Subway, Pizza Hut, etc but it’s the same  price as NZ and I’m sure the workers don’t get the same minimum wage as in NZ.

Third day in we organised to go to the airport with Ahmed, our guardian angel, to collect the 2 boxes of resources, etc I had freighted over. We left the flat at 10.30am and got back at 2.30pm. What a logistical nightmare! Everyone needed to be paid for their “service” and if we didn’t pay our way to getting the boxes the process could have taken up to 1 week. We were so thankful for Ahmed’s help! He’s helped with sorting out everyone's phones and finding our flat. Today he took  Tony to get the wi-fi connected in the house and is now fixing is laptop which crashed at Maadi Hotel.

New Friends

There is a group of 5 newbies that have arrived ready to start work at MAC. Anna and her husband Ahmed (our G.A) have been our guides and have made the group feel so welcome and part of a community, even having us over for dinner. They are basically our go to guys. The group consists of all Americans and me.

Unfortunately due to watching too much news on the TV there have been a few teachers pull out so the poor principal is having to fill 5 positions in 2 weeks. Some of the existing staff are not returning – ridiculous because we’ve seen absolutely no unrest in Maadi at all. Anyone want to come teach in Maadi?

The other night the principal took us to the ACE club for expats. It was pretty busy – Sudanese, Zimbaweans, Brits, Americans, Welshmen, and 1 other Kiwi teacher who will be working at MAC with the KG1s. Pork was number one choice for Tony and I as we can’t get it outside the club. I’m a bit over the Stella here but will continue with it until I’ve worked out what the bourbon is made of. Jim Beam is not Jim Beam… it’s Egyptian.

 The curfew has been shortened to between 9pm – 6am! Theoretically it should be gone completely by mid September which is a little bit of a worry because we are on a road of shops. Our spare bedroom faces the street front so if you are visiting bring those ear plugs.

These photos are of our flat pre clean up:

All the windows looked like this

 

 2 double beds in the main bedroom

 Huge cupboard space.

 

I'm looking forward to teacher orientation which starts on 1st September. It feels like we've been on holiday forever. If all the museums and tourist venues were open it would have been more exciting than cleaning the flat.

 

 

 

Maadi Hotel.

Third night tonight at the Maadi Hotel. Thank goodness we are moving out tomorrow. The internet access and the elevators have been a nightmare. We have had to walk down 15 flights of stairs a few times because the elevators haven't bothered coming up to the 15th floor. One way to lose weight!
Apart from the hotel, there is a mosque straight across the road and the first call to prayer is 3.55am, the last 3 days have been okay. The only other glitches have bee that our portable Wi-Fi router has a new sim card but they Vodafone shop didn't give us a security code for it and our plugs don't fit the adaptors they have here so we have had to buy new cords for the laptops, camera & phones. Joy! Joy!
APART from all that we've had a great time wandering around. Found a couple of great places for food near the hotel. This morning we signed up for an apartment and move in tomorrow. LE3500 per month knocked down from LE4500. I'll take photos when we move in so you can see what it's like. Don't expect too much :-)
Highlight of today was the ACE Club with the newbies and Dr Farnsworth. We were able to meet some expats, mainly Americans and Brits but I also met a Welshman and an American who had been married to a Samoan and spoke a little of the language - very cool. We also met the newest staff member who is a "KIWI" (woop woop) and has been in Egypt since January.
Sadly there are 5 teaching positions available as a lot of the Americans who were hired decided to pull out. I can't believe how stupid they are. We have seen 2 tanks outside the police stations and that's it. People can even have their photos taken with them if they want. Nothing has happened in Cairo all week so whatever violence the media is showing is inaccurate.
We are looking forward to tomorrow's move but I am not sure how long it will take to get the Wi-Fi connected in the apartment. Until then ...

Last report from Le Meridien

We had arranged to be picked up from Le Meridien at 10am this morning but have to wait now until 12.30 due to a lost in translation moment. That's okay because we have got very used to just hanging out in the lobby or wandering around chatting to staff and other tourists. Can't say our Egyptian is getting better though. We have a grand total of 6 phrases we use ... I'm better at learning them than Tony though.
The staff were setting up for yet another wedding today but have just started dismantling everything.  It must have been cancelled. There has been a least one wedding each day we have been here even with the curfew. They start after midday prayers and everyone is gone by 6pm. Tony was told the cost of a wedding in the hotel is about LE30 - 45,000 which is $7,000 - 10,000 which is pretty cheap compared to NZ weddings. I guess with the hotel's occupancy rate dropping from 95 - 100% prior to the 2011 revolution to around 8% currently the wedding are the main source of income. It must be disappointing when weddings are cancelled.
So if you are heading to Cairo and don't want to rough it at the Mudgway's I highly recommend Le Meriden.

Wow! Well Worth The Wait

We just spent the last 3 hours at the pyramids and the sphinx with an amazing tour guide called Memo. He's an Egyptologist and speaks Arabic, English and Italian. How's that for intelligent!
I can tell you the great pyramid is definitely a "wonder of the world".
For all you people that are interested in facts ....
Did you know that there are actually 9 pyramids in Giza? The 3 large for the pharaohs and 6 small satellite ones for their women.
The great pyramid was built by Pharaoh Cheops 4600 years ago. It took 20 years to build and was only worked on for 3 months of each year. It was built by local farmers not slaves. It is 157 metres high, the base is 52,000m square and there are 2,300,000 limestone blocks which were brought in from the Tora quarry 3 km away. It has 3 satellite pyramids next to it for his mother, his wife and daughter.
The second pyramid was built by Cheop's son, Kefren, and is one metre shorter than the great pyramid. The upper part of the pyramid still has some of the white cement which was originally on all 3 of the main pyramids. Apparently this white cement made the pyramids look like they were covered in gold when the sun set on them.
The 3rd and smallest, due to economics, is made of limestone and there are 7 levels of red granite that are on the outside. Unfortunately the pyramid wasn't finished so that's why there were only 7 levels of the granite.
The sphinx is incredible. It was built by Kefren to guard the pyramids against evil. In front of it is a temple of mummification. Every night there is a light show against the sphinx and pyramids. It must be amazing and we will try to revisit after the curfew is over.
Didn't enter the great pyramid or the 2nd one today due to lack of time (they were only open for 4 hours), the cost of $50NZ for the great pyramid, and Memo said it was very claustrophobic inside. Maybe next holidays.
Check out some of the cool photos I took today:

 Memo's number one rule: Don't talk to anyone. What a great rule! There were so many hawkers there. We were so lucky to have him with us. That's Memo in the photo.

We could have hired a cart to take us to the top of the plateau but we preferred the air conditioned car.

 This is the main entrance to the Great Pyramid. There is a smaller entrance below.



You can see from this photo of me how big the blocks are.

The smallest pyramid and its satellite pyramids.

 The second pyramid.

 The smallest pyramid is the only pyramid in Cairo with hieroglyphics on the outside.

Iti on the walk down to the sphinx

The nose and beard of the sphinx are in the British museum. Go figure. 

Inside the Temple of the Sphinx. It had a wooden roof originally.

Anyone for Pizza Hut of KFC? This is 300m from the sphinx. MacDs is around here somewhere too.

 

Can't wait to see the Cairo Museum ... so much history! What did you think of that Room 25?

We are safe as houses

Another day was spent hanging out at the hotel. Haven't mentioned this in any of my earlier blogs but this is a five star hotel. Didn't quite make it to the gym yesterday but I think we will be heading there today as we have eaten so much while we've been here.
Unfortunately when I opened my emails this morning the MFAT Consular had emailed about our wellbeing. The media had contacted them about us being "trapped in our hotel room". God knows where they got that from. Hopefully they don't have access to this blog which is only supposed to be for my friends and family.
Anyway enough about that. Congratulations Jason and Richmond Prems on beating Otara earlier today NZ time. We are so proud of you! Looking forward to watching the game online later today.
Another 35 degrees and blue skies for us today :-)

Friday Funday

No pyramids today either. The Muslim Brotherhood  have planned some demonstrations throughout Cairo after midday prayers today so we have to stay inside the hotel complex again. I feel sorry for our tour guide because he can't work while the tourists are stuck in their hotels. Maybe tomorrow...

These photos were taken within the hotel gates

 

 The roadway outside the hotel. Can you see the lane markings? There aren't any!

 Vans and donkeys everywhere. Can you spot the donkey?

 This shoe shine station is in the foyer. Tony's new job??