Friday- A morning off

I finally have a moment to write.  After the plane it's been a bit of a whirl wind.  I have the morning off when Mr. Ramez will be taking me to the Cairo GeziraBTower  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Tower and then to Khan al Khalil Souk  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_el-Khalil.  But all of the that will be for tomorrow's post.

The Flight and Arrival

As most of you know, I left Tuesday night. The flight was fine but long.  I  had an open seat next to me which is a huge score. The fun part came upon landing in Dubai where I had exactly an hour from landing to get a new boarding pass and make the next flight to Cairo.  Let's just say, I may have damaged UAE/American relations after almost body slamming ten people running to the flight. It was quite a sight, but I made it.

I landed in Cario around 11:00 PM local time. I cruised through customs and found Mr. Mohammed my driver holding the Jeanne Pellegrino sign. So the funny part (to me) is everyone here calls him the driver, but he's more of a facilitator.  Someone else drives (I don't know his name). Mohammed more helps me do things.  He opened the apartment for me, carried my bags etc. The apartment is very large and has lots of character. Just to give you an example, I just tried to open the shutters and window of my bedroom and couldn't. Here is a picture of my coffee this morning. This does not include my boiling the water a pot on the stove. When one needs caffeine.....

Getting in at midnight and needing to meet the bus to go to school at 6:45 am made for an interesting time figuring out the shower, and a few other things.

School

I ran out the door barely knowing my name.  So here is an interesting tidbit. The school has 35 buses and teachers and students ride the same bus.  Imagine seeing my smiling face before you go to school in the morning.  Apparently there are assigned seats, as I was immediately waved away from my first attempt at sitting.  I wound sitting next to what I think was a first grader who immediately put his head on my shoulder and fell asleep.  See....everyone knows I'm friendly.

After a 45 minute drive another teacher waved me off the bus. I was whisked into the office and met several very nice people.  Now you all know how I am at names, and being severely sleep deprived makes it worse. I did my best to be charming while we discussed the goals of the week.  Then it was breakfast time.  It was an Egyptian breakfast of foul,a fava bean dip, hummus and taameya which is like falafel, but also made of fava beans. The drink was a very strong delicious tea. I finally knew my name again. :-)

There was a school tour, a meeting with English teachers and then the KG (elementary)  show of Trolls. The school is K-12 and each level has a show. Well the kids were adorable and sparkly, but in a dark room I struggled to stay awake.

Then I observed two English classrooms. It's always funny to me how students are the same all over the world. There was the class clown, the slacker, the sleeper, the quiet genius and everything in between. The one thing I didn't see was the student married to their phone. The school seems pretty strict about phones not being out during the day.  They were doing Kahoots to review for exams on Sunday. Yes Sunday. The school week here is Sunday-Thursday.

This was a quote from one of the classrooms.

Internet has been spotty, so more pictures tomorrow.