Egypt!

We have arrived in Cairo! It is hot, bright, and full of interesting colors. And, it is a mess. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it, but that is the overwhelming impression I have gotten from being here so far. Messy! But great :).

We are staying in a friend’s apartment in what is definitely a “real” part of Cairo. Unfortunately, right before we came our friend was riding a microbus (a very cheap form of local transport that basically is an ancient metal bus that they have gutted and cram as many people as possible into it) when it got into an accident and he was pinned between the bus and the street. His whole back is road rash, ripped completely raw, and he has broken at least one hip and possibly his pelvis too (I don’t completely understand the exact details). We went to see him in a very dirty (looking, it is probably sanitary, I hope) public hospital. The surgery to repair his hips etc sounds horrific- the doctors are going to rebreak his hips/pelvis and then screw it back together with metal screws attached to a frame. Then after four weeks they will open him back up and take them out, and after he heals he will have to learn to walk again. That is how I understand it anyway, its hard not being able to speak Arabic. He seems to be a really wonderful person, and I have heard really good things about him. He is about the same age as Gabe and I are, and it was really sad to meet him for the first time while he is lying in an old metal hospital bed that looks like it should have been recycled in 1970. We are getting to know his friends and family though, and hopefully our being here at this difficult time will be a blessing for them and not an added burden.

We are also learning a lot about Egyptian style construction at the moment, because we are helping to remodel the apartment in return for staying here. Having grown up with a Dad who owns his own construction business, I feel I know enough to say that I think if there were an earthquake here the entire city of Cairo would crumble to the ground. Luckily they don’t have earthquakes very often. The building is a concrete frame, five stories tall, with one apartment on each floor. The walls are made out of sun-dried bricks made of red earth and straw, with concrete over them. I am not sure who lives on the bottom floor, our friend and his family live on the 2nd floor, we are staying on the 3rd, our friend’s brother’s family lives on the 4th, and on the 5th they keep their goats, chickens, sheep…I’m not sure how many animals live up there. On top of the fifth floor they are adding more bricks to add more stories, even though the concrete frame doesn’t go up that high. There is a bunch of very interesting cactus plants up there on the roof as well as the usual layer of dusty, sandy grit that covers everything. We are currently working together with another man who we know from Germany to redo the kitchen and the bathroom. We are smashing the tiles from the walls with a hammer and chisel, which is hard because they used concrete to stick the tiles directly onto the bricks the make up the walls, and it tends to take a lot of brick off with it. Then we have to repair the wall as best we can with more cement before we put new tiles up from floor to ceiling, with concrete again because ‘that’s how its done in Egypt.’ When we are done with that we are moving the toilet from the shower room into the next room, and putting in a counter top, as well as making a kitchen in one corner basically from scratch…yea I think you get the idea. Luckily the room we are staying in has a door, and luckily Anthony (our friend from Germany) knows what he’s doing. There is also good food for sale for .35 cents a bowl downstairs that is both relatively healthy and filling. We are really very very grateful to have such amazing friends here and to have this place to stay. The construction work is also fun!

Soon we will be meeting with more people who will help us get connected with other people who will help us find some teaching jobs. This culture takes a lot of patience, because everything revolves around relationships and friendships instead of schedules. It is very different and is taking some getting used to, but it is also a nice way to live. The people matter, conversation and friendships are real, and time can go by without too much stress over it. Especially since people here go to bed between 3 and 4 am and get up around 11 am. Good place to be a night owl!

German Trash Adventure

So this morning I decided I was going to clean our apartment, as I do most Saturday mornings. We share it with two other married couples that are away right now. Up until this point, one of the other 5 people has taken out the trash, but this morning the job fell to me. The problem is, in Germany the trash is sorted into five different bins- a very good, efficient and environmentally sound plan- and the five bins are hidden in different, obscure and seemingly random places around the outside of the apartment building. So, I gathered up our collection of small plastic bags filled with different kinds of trash and went out. First I found the green point bin- that’s the one that you put plastic and packaging (like empty plastic nutella containers) in. Then I found the Bio bin and the paper bin. Bio gets all food and plants but no plastic or anything else (besides the reward for smelling the worst), and paper gets cardboard and paper. That left me with a bag of mystery objects, the bag from the bathroom, and a bag that had old socks in it. I decided that first I would go find the Restmul, or residual waste, bin for the old socks, and deal with sorting out the other two after that (I was not looking forward to it). Residual is where you put old clothes, shoes, etc. I wandered around both the large buildings and finally asked an old man who was cleaning his stairwell where “restmul” goes, and he pointed at a window to the basement. So, I hurried back around to my own building to go down to the basement, and was met at the door by another old German man, dressed neatly in a hat and sweater (in sharp contrast to my unwashed hair and fleece pants, way to go Amaris), who started talking very seriously at me. Obviously he and probably the rest of the occupants of the building had been watching me running around out the window. I can understand about 10% of what people say in German, so I knew he was scolding me about the trash but I didn’t know what else to say. Finally I sheepishly shrugged and said, “restmul?” and he led the way to the basement, where he seized my bags from me and started looking through them, talking all the time and pointing at things. He then led me around the building again, repeating over and over “Essen, braun” and “Papier, Blau” meaning “food, brown bin” and “paper, blue bin”. Finally after about a half an hour he had satisfactorily showed me everything (I had of course already known) and explaining that there is an expensive fine for doing it wrong all in his heavy Eastern German accent (which didn’t help me with my not understanding). Who knew taking out the trash in Germany could get any more complicated?! I can’t decide of I am grateful that he sorted those bags of trash for me or if I want to die of embarrassment…

It is so good to feel like life is finally “right.” As long as we were where we don’t belong (which for us happened to be Colorado Springs), we were always fighting misery. But now, actually doing the things we longed to, life just seems correct. It is good, it is exciting, but it is also just exactly as it SHOULD be, at least for us. It is not a fantasy or a fairy tale, it is real life, and we are free. And, there is no end in sight! This is not a short trip or an experience. This is life, and life as we were made to live it. I feel like god made the two of us out of some kind of oddly patterned fabric that hardly matches anything, but I wouldn’t change it. I always knew I would live this way. So, we pick up our two backpacks, my violin, and a duffel bag, and off we go again! Ah the feeling of freedom!

Life...

Well, I haven’t written in a long time because my life has been kind of…unpredictable. At least it felt like it was, looking back it wasn’t so bad, but for some reason since I wasn’t sure exactly what we were doing or where we would be it was hard to write.

Basically, my husband Gabe and I decided to move overseas and teach English, so after some months of preparation, we flew to Prague where we did a TEFL/TESOL certification course. We were going to teach either in Prague or maybe in Turkey (Gabe used to live there), but then a good friend of mine got a hold of us and asked us to come see him. We went and visited him in Germany and he convinced us to come and stay with him and his community of artists for a while. So we did. It seemed like a crazy change in plans, especially because we couldn’t teach in Germany (complicated immigration laws etc etc), so we wouldn’t be making any money. But, it has worked out great. We have been here about a month, we’ve made some good friends and got to be a part of their energy and creative excitement, and it has been a very rewarding experience because we were able to trade working for room and board. So we get up early, walk through a fantastically beautiful German forest to the “castle” where the day’s activities commence (its more of an old mansion, but they call it the castle), clean, do yard work, and cook, and spend time with really fun and talented people. Also, one of the best things is that we met Mark, who has amazing contacts for TEFL teaching in Cairo, Egypt, and is helping us plan to get started working there. So we are off to Cairo in two weeks! I am so excited; I even made my husband watch Raiders of the Lost Ark with me (I know I know…I just HAD to). I have never been to Africa before, and we get to see one of the ancient 7 wonders of the world, and ahhhh its just so exciting! So that’s an update of what we have been doing and are about to do and I am determined to blog more from now on.