Final Day in Dahab

Tomorrow morning first thing in the a.m. we are catching our bus back to Cairo. It has been a quiet few days. Today was weird. We were sitting there quietly reading our books minding our own business when suddenly the speaker above us starts blaring hits from the 90's. We listened to the peaches song, gettin' jiggy wit it, ace of base, and a few others. THEN they put on new country music. One of the songs nearly made me pee myself, something about how she thinks his tractor is sexy LOL!!! I am not a fan of country music, but that was funny. At the cafes here cats and dogs snuggle up to you at your tables in hopes of tidbits, the restaurateurs provide old windex bottles full of saltwater as an anti-animal device.

In order to return to Cairo we must drive under the suez canal, which isn't much to look at you can barely see the boats above. It is however surrounded by a large military presence. Lots of checkpoints and armored cars. All along the road for about a mile there are men posted in fox holes above the street in full on combat uniform, complete with metal helmets, poor bastards. I waved at a few of them on the way through they looked so hot and bored. Maybe on the way back I'll flash them, yeah that won't get me into trouble in Islamic Egypt :)

Dahab Day three

I got a baby tan!! I am now slightly more beige than I was yesterday!!! Also I sunburned my knees. I don't know how I did that last bit but whatever. I am sitting here at the net cafe watching baby Egyptian mau kittens frolic, they are so cute, but their claws are freakin HUGE! I have sent off a whole bunch of postcards today, if you want postcards and you haven't recieved any yet that means I do not have your mailing address please send it to me.

Anyway Dahab is a beach resort town built up around the dive industry and it is growing by leaps and bounds. Almost everything a vacationer could want is available here from manicures, to pedicures to moonlight horse back rides to Bedouin gigolos, its all here. The street sellers are quite pushy and it tends to limit the amount of time one might spend walking around. Today I got called a prostitute, by a police officer LOL!! I don't think he realized I knew what he was saying in Arabic until I turned arond and stared at him, he had the good grace to blush. I was dressed conservatively too, prick!

Dahab day two

I did fuck-all today. Not entirely true, I did read two books and try to start a tan. We sat by the beach in a cabana style restaurant, ordered food, read, slept, and saw some friends. It is charming here until you start to move around and then the hassles begin.
"Hello my pretty, come see my menu"
"Mama, mama, mama, bring you and your sister here for food"
"Mrs, mrs, mrs buy bracelet, why??? why won't you buy bracelet??"
"taxi? taxi? you want taxi??"
You have to smile because if you don't they try to make you smile by flirting or trying to be funny, which usually just serves to piss you off more. So smile damn it!! Business people try to become your friend right away so that when you have something to dispute or you say that the price is unfair they can act wounded, it is an amazing tactic I have seen it work in the most bizarre circumstances. There is also a gender issue, if you have a penis you get more respect. I don't deal well with that, I try but it is an exerscise in frustration.

Not dead

Valerie and I are going on a jaunt to dhab for a few days. I may not have internet access, just wanted you to know I am not dead yet. I will be in touch with you all as soon as I get back :)

Bedouin Teatime

This is the family that we took the goats to first. I was trying to be as subtle as possible when I took this footage so it isn't very good.

Baby Monsters

Some of my dancers waiting for their turn to perform.

F$#king computers

This was not actually the picture I wished to add, but on dial-up internet on an ancient lap-top, I am not about to take another 30 minutes (not kidding, sadly) to re-post. This is Abdullah the swim captain or life-guard at the school. he is very funny, we enjoy our swim sessions with him.

Going to the Pyramids baby!

It feels funny complaining about going to the pyramids. I mean for most people it is a once in a lifetime experience that is suppossed to be almost spiritual.

For me the experience is a really mixed one. Giza the area where the pyramids are located is quite dirty and there is a lot of poverty there. The people who work around the pyramids are all trying to extort money from tourists any way possible. I can't really blame them for wanting more money but their methods are pretty sleazy. A camel ride around the pyramids should cost about twenty-five pounds, but it is not uncommen to hear of people paying three hundred pounds or even more. If you take a taxi to get to the gate the people at the gate will try and lie to you and tell you that the taxi doesn't need a ticket (it does) so that they might later procure you another taxi at a higher rate and thus get a percentage. Small children ask for pens so they can go to school, the pens are later sold at market. It goes on and on.

Anyway, I am going to the pyramids today to take some pictures of garfield at the pyramids. Heather asked me to do this for a tribute to Cameron. I think it should be a nice day. Also it couldn't be any more different from my first trip to the pyramids. Valerie had hooked me up with this character who was trying to marry his way out of Egypt, he was very pretty. Still I wasn't keen on his manly-wiles. I kept showing him pictures of Allan and Dingo. Me: This is my boyfriend, we live together, practically married, see we have a dog! In canada if you have a dog that means you are serious!!!

Maadi Mornings

Stepping out of your apartment in the morning could easily give you the impression that it had rained over night. The streets are wet, and all the cars lining the avenue are dripping. It didn't rain, the boabs (building handy-men do it alls) wash the cars and wet the street to keep the dust down. Dogs can be found sleeping on the roofs of dryer cars, and cats are often scavenging through rubbish bins. Massive buses wind their way through the streets picking up international staff and students for the drive out to the newer area of Maadi where all the new schools are. As you walk to your bus stop taxi drivers drive up behind you and beep, partly to startle and partly to advertise their availability.

Along came a spider

I saw my first Egyptian spider today note: I don't like them any morethan Canadian spiders. He shook his fangs at me. He was also about 5cm long. Not huge but the fang shaking was weird.

Cheater cheater

I signed up for this camping malarky so I could use the computer all night.

Also I like kids, and the school campus is beautiful at twilight.
We have three days left of summer school and then we are going to the Dahab which is a beach town resort about 6-8 hours away by bus. We will sit on the beach and get brown and perhaps occasionally dip our feet in the crystal blue waters. We stopped at the "hab" as the locals call it once last month on our way back from the Sinai.

It was there that Mom casually mentioned to me "This is where the bombing was at our friends wedding."

Me: Oh?

Her: Yes, they found body parts on their balcony, it was very upsetting.

Of course I knew this story but I had not realised it was in the dahab. Being there was so surreal, you would never know anything had happened it is like hawaii, white people everywhere wearing next to nothing. When we went to Luxor at christmas time we stopped at Queen Hatshepsut's temple where several tourists had also been killed but there is no sign, nothing to indicate that extremists had killed several German tourists.

Male Attention
So this trip so far has been grope free. I have had a lot of hissing and funny noises and one brave soul told me I was booty-full. I was thankfull I mean one always wants to know that their booty is full. Can't be having with half full bootys. One of the male staff members told me that I looked very attractive at the grade eight graduation, that threw me for a loop. Um, thanks? It was funny because the woman he works with totally randomly gave me the exact same compliment like 5 minutes later, maybe it is just a run of the mill Egyptian compliment.

Sweat till you can't sweat no more...

Its fuckin hot here.

We are in the midst of our second week of summer school. Tonight we are camping out at the school, and tomorrow we venture forth to see Kung-Fu Panda in a lovely, lovely air conditioned building.

Bits and Pieces

Some of my favorite students
Sammo
-this little man is hilarious, I met him when I subbed for his regular teacher. It was his birthday and his father owns a trianon bakery so they brought in this massive decadent cake, it was too die for!! For his birthday he was taken to a jewellery shop to pick out an opal, he was telling me how he likes good opals with "clarity of cut." He was also chatting with me about his favorite movies, nightmare on elm st, jaws, and the exorcist. He is a horror fan, and he knows them all, he likes the part in jaws when the mans leg falls off!!! Amber you'd love him, he is so funny!

Nasrine
-Little lady with huge blond afro and missing three of her front teeth, the gap in her mouth is huge, she is just adorable and so talented and funny.

Yahia
-Tiny terror walks up to kids 5 or 6 years older than him and slaps them. This kid has no fear at all of anyone. While I do not approve of his behaviour I admire his spirit.

Yaseen
-It must be difficult being good at everything. This child is just beautiful he gets everything in one go and has a really funny way about him. He never stops chatting though which means he spends a lot of time out on the hallway :(

Carol
-always greets me by shouting my name and running to hug me. Total sweety-pie.

Wrap Up

-It was really sad on the last few days of school everything was getting cleared away and people left really quickly. I miss a lot of the teachers and students. Valerie made a really good friend in Jeanne a neat lady from Toronto, we were both sad to see her go.

-We house sat for awhile but last night we moved Valerie into her new flat, and it is comfortable, this year she won't have any roomates which is something she had been hoping for.

Summer Camp
-I taught a group of children to sing baby beluga, and none of them started bleeding from the ears, miracles do happen.

-Our kids are pretty young they are 6 and 7 year olds. Two of them don't speak english which is challenging. They area really nice group though and aside from the odd break-down, we are having an excellent time.

Whats new...

It looks as though we have found a new apartment for Valerie, it is quite cozy and the landlords seem cool. Hopefully we will know by Monday at the latest.

Summer camp is a lot of work but also a lot of fun. For Newfoundland day (its a Canada adventure camp each day has a provincial theme) I had them paint a life size mural of a 46 foot humpback. We didn't have enough of one colour so I let them paint it any colors they wanted. It is a glorious mess of colour and happy faces, and whale bits. I am going to try and post pictures.

Thursday for Yukon day we took the childen ice-skating. It was very funny, none of the skates fit, the skates were about as sharp as popsicle sticks and none of them knew how to skate anyway. There weren't enough skates for everyone so eventually they told the kids to go on the rink in their street shoes. I have pictures of a boy ice skating in his flip-flops.

I'm begining to get a bit nervous about coming home. I still don't have a place in Nanaimo and facing Allan is not going to be that much fun.