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First Week of Family Move to Cairo: Katie

January 16, 2010

Hi!  All is well here.  We got here fine and the girls are ready to start their second week of school.  They’ve both had some homesickness, and we’ve all had sleep issues but that should get better before long.  We like the girls’ school.  Maya’s teacher is nice and she is starting to interact more with some of the kids in her class.  Since she’s never moved, entering an established class where she doesn’t know anyone was an adjustment for her, especially since she couldn’t figure out students names just by looking at them spelled out on the name tags on their desks.  There’re students from all over the world.  She goes to Arabic (which she picked over Spanish or French) three times a week.  The class has PE and music twice a week; and art, library and Egyptian culture once a week.  Ivy has pretty much the same classes she had before, minus a science class and a section of language arts, but adding health (for the rest of this trimester, not sure what she’ll get next trimester) and an art class (drawing and painting, which she especially likes).   It’s an odd schedule—four classes each day, with those rotating, so the schedule repeats itself after 8 days.  The four class sets are the same each time, so it’s just the order that gets confusing.  Luckily she can write down where she should be going each day in her calendar so she can refer to that.  Other than the rotating part I like it, especially since she always has 2 days to complete an assignment for any class.
Today we took a taxi to the pyramids.  They’re bigger than I pictured.  We were able to walk right up to the first one, and they’ve built steps up a little ways.  There was more there than I thought.  More than 3 pyramids, although three stand out, various other buildings, some of which you a can go up to, as well as the Sphinx.  We three girls each took lots of pictures, so we should get some good ones.  Ivy especially enjoyed taking pictures of camels.  Maya wants to take a camel ride, which we’ll do at one of the other pyramids.  Despite enjoying photographing camels, Ivy didn’t want to ride one, but maybe that will change.  We had lunch at a nice Egyptian restaurant before coming home.
You’ll never guess what we did last night—bowled!  We had dinner with a (Egyptian) friend of Mike’s (good food), also a German arbitrator.  Afterwards we went with his sister to a big place with bowling (I think he picked something the girls would enjoy).
The night before that we celebrated the girls finishing their first week of school (which had moments of drama for both) by walking to Lucille’s for dinner.  There’s an article from Time proclaiming it to have the best hamburgers in the world.  Of course, neither of our girls like hamburgers!  Maya thinks they make good quesadillas, and Ivy liked her spaghetti with grilled chicken.
While the girls were at school last week (unfortunately we arrived late in the evening and they had to get up early to start the school week the next morning—they hung in there well!) Mike showed me a number of local sights as well as taking the bus (AUC  bus) to his campus.  It would be very easy to get lost at his school!  It was fun having lunch, just the two of us, at some of the local restaurants.

Jan. 18
Mike will be going in to school tomorrow, and it’s easier to email from there, so I’ll finish this up so he can send it out.  I’ve met a number of his co-workers and/or Fulbright people.  Today I’ll learn about the laundry.  The girls are getting very crabby; I think homesickness has set in.  We’re going to see about Maya getting together with a friend from her class—Alva from Ireland.  Yesterday she was playing on the merry-go-round (don’t see those much anymore at home!) with Sarah.  Several girls said “hi” to Ivy after school, and that’s how we got to meet the girls she eats lunch with—Elana, Alyssa, and a name I can’t remember.  They were staying after school, so if Ivy wants to, she can see when they stay after, and that would be a good social “thing” for her.  Later this month we will be going to Grease (the high school is doing it).  Mike may go to a wresting meet Thursday night.  I think the girls and I will probably pass on that.

Sorry this is so long, later letters will probably be shorter.

Love,
Katie

1 comment to First Week of Family Move to Cairo: Katie

  • Linda and Roger

    We were so glad to stumble upon your blog, while trying to locate and email address for you. Congratulations to Mike! We’ll be looking forward to following your adventures. Roger wants to email Mike about Hyannis, but we don’t have his address.

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