Hays Travelogue

Hely Meli: Hamid El Shaeri
I love this song. It reminds me of Cairo traffic.
We’re making one last trip to the Khan al Khalili this weekend to convert Mike’s obsolete gold crown into jewelry. The tooth got a little bent out of shape, so the crown no longer fits. Anyway, does anyone need anything from the [...]

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Mike and I have many reasons for leaving Cairo. First of all, we miss our families and friends. We are far away from you guys, and given the eroding dollar and the nearby wars, not many of you have wanted to visit. Then, there is the issue of job satisfaction, but I won’t go into [...]

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It’s been a weird couple of days for my face.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been feeling like I had something wrong with a tooth, a kind of pressure around it as if I had something to floss out.  But flossing didn’t help.  Then anytime I would get sick, which with me—being a teacher [...]

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This is Mariam all decked out for Mismatch Day. The 7th grade won the “Pound Wars,” a competition between the 6, 7, and 8th grades. The whole middle school raised 14000 LE, about 2500 USD, but the 7th grade raised the most. Their reward was a series of dress-down days, each one goofier than the [...]

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Tomorrow, May 4, is Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday. The opposition parties have called for a general strike to protest rising prices. In April, the military quelled a strike. On Thursday, the government promised a 30% raise to employees. Here are some articles about the problems here.
New York Times, January 17
Der Spiegel, April 18
Washington Post, April [...]

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Tomorrow, the Monday after Coptic Easter, is Shamm al-Nisim (Smelling the Breeze), an ancient spring festival that is still celebrated in Egypt. It’s a national holiday that everyone will spend picnicking in the parks and gardens. The traditional foods associated with Shamm al-Nisim are fisikh (salted raw fish), green onions, boiled eggs dyed with onion [...]

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Last weekend, Mike and I scouted out a couple of field trip possibilities for my 7th graders. We also did some souvenir shopping. While we waited for the cartouches  -Debi, Jesi, Jesi, Magi, Sadi, Ali- to be made, we had lunch at this tea shop.

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Some of you have noticed the link in the sidebar to Laughing Dove Poems. This is a static page on my blog with no archive and no comment. I’m using it as a place to air out some poems I have written this year while I decide what to do with them. It’s amazing what [...]

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