Our morning terror!!!!!

Some time ago (weeks ago) the door bell started ringing at 5 am ... that is not something usual here, but once again, there are so many things happening here, that there is no definition for normal or usual. It happened that i opened the door the first time. It was a young boy and he was telling me that he is the garbage man and he collects the garbage every morning from our door and that we need to pay him 5 LE. He woke me up ... it was 5 am, so i looked at my watch very puzzled, i looked at him, looked at my watch again and gave him a look that said smth like: "you must be kidding me!". I was too sleepy to react in any way, so i told him to come the next day, coz it was too early in the morning, pointing at my watch.
Surprise!! Next morning he came again... it was around the same time, or earlier. This time, Nichole woke up and gave him 5 LE.
Well, he came again last week, while we were waiting for our piano to be delivered, so i opened thinking the piano was here. Of course not!! It was our dear friend, the garbage man, coming to collect the money again. One thing that i need to mention before is that he is NOT the garbage man and we are not suppose to pay him, but we didnt know this before.
So, he shows up at the door (we had lots of garbage, as Mohammed cleaned our house the day before and he took all the junk from our balcony out).
He says to me: "madame, i collect the garbage every morning and you owe me 5 Le!".
I said: "No, i am not paying you!".
He says: "Madame, kiteer garbage!!" (a lot of garbage)
I said: "I know!"
He says: "Madame, 5 pounds!"
I said: "I am not paying you! Mefeesh money!!"
He says: "Madame, i collect garbage from everybody and they all pay me 5 pounds!"
At this point i am getting frustrated so i go: "Listen, if you dont want to take the garbage it is ok! Leave it here, i dont mind!!"
He goes: "Madame ...."
Then, Nichole comes out of her room, coz she hears me raising my voice; he sees her and jumps with excitement: "Aha!!! Madame arfa!!" (Madame knows!!) - coz Nichole paid him last time. i get even more upset and say: "Laa, madame misharfa!!" (No, madame doesnt know!). Nichole goes back to her room and tells me to call Nora - the landlady - but i was in the mood, and i didnt mind arguing with him. I guess i needed an Egyptian man to throw my anger at.
Me: "what dont you understand?? Leave the garbage here and go away!"
I am trying to tell him that our landlady told us not to pay him, because we have somebody else collecting our garbage. So, i tell him to go and ring the bell at flat 1 (our landlady), and ask her for the money. Then, he asks me if he should take the garbage or not, so i tell him to do whatever he wants. I go back to bed, he takes the garbage down. 15 minutes later, the doorbell rings again. He tells me that he rang the bell at flat 1 but they sleep.
My reaction: "Of course they sleep!!!!! I dont blame them!!! IT IS 6 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING!" At this point, i was very upset and i was almost at the point of switching to Romanian and talk him about all the saints.
He backs off coz he sees me going mad, and tries to calm me down; i start shouting at him, saying i am not paying him, so in the end he leaves.
At this point i couldnt go back to bed, so i just made coffee and got ready for school.
Today, at 7 am i was coming back from the train station, after 12 hours on the train - guess who was at our door? THE GARBAGE MAN! He sees me ... i am like: "you again!!". He asks for money, i tell him i am not paying him ... I tell him it is too early and ask him to come at 9 or 10 having in mind to take him downstairs to the landlady and have her talk to him. he never came - i expect he'll be here tomorrow morning. Our landlady advised us today not to pay him at all and not to open the door, coz he is dangerous. I dont know if i will be able to put up with all the ringing at 4-5 am for half an hour - if he drives me really mad, i might just get a stick and run after him on the stairs.
All our conversation was in Arabic - as he doesnt speak English - his only English words were: money, 5 pounds, garbage. My Arabic is limited to a few words as well, but i think i made myself understood...

Ahelen to Israel!

I seem to be behind with my updates, but is only because my computer is out of order and i've been waiting for it to be fixed for 3 weeks now.

At the beginning of November i made a short trip to Israel. I was not planning to, but dont know how much you understand when i say that i HAD to. Anyways, Freddie came with me, so that helped a lot, as i was clueless of buses, hostel, etc. me and Freddie took the night bus to Taba - an Egyptian town by the israeli border. After a turbulent night (loud Egyptian music, incantations from the guy behind us, movie at 2 am, 120 km/h) we made it there and we walked over the border to the city of Eilat.

We managed to get to our hostel (Corinne Hostel - very clean and nice people who speak very good English); we took a shower and headed to the Egyptian consulate to do our business. Israel was very hot - hoter than i expected. One thing that slipped my mind was that Israel is a different country, where the dress code is different than in Egypt, where sleveless tops are allowed and shorts trousers as well; i had only jeans and decent tops, so i burnt!! In the bussiness of packing i forgot to take my swim suit, so i didnt get to swim there at all.

After getting everything sorted, we went back to the hostel and slept - it was too hot to do anything anyway and we were tired.

We went out at night to the mall and had dinner by the sea at a nice restaurant.

We had falafel for lunch earlier that day, when i texted everyone to say that i got everything sorted! We didnt pay a lot for it ... and it came with a drink, fries and salad.

Next day i wandered around by the sea to the little shops there; i bought some little things and enjoyed the scenery.

Israel is very expensive, especially when you come from Egypt. Coming from Europe, might seem affordable, but i found it quite expensive. For example, a night at the hostel costs around 40$ which is a lot, for a hostel. Actually, hostels are cheaper in Europe.

I was happy to be back to Egypt and the girls had cake prepared for me as it was my name day - St Gabriel. We went straight to Pieter and Sid for coffee and cake.

December!!!

It is the 1st of December, Romania's national Day, when everybody has the day off at home and they eat beans and sausages (pork, btw - which we can hardly find here). So, if i were at home, i'd just chill; here, i have such a busy day!! Lots of things to do at school, a meeting after school, life group tonight where i am supposed to do devotions etc etc.
I feel shattered!! I am so looking for the Eid break, even if it's just 5 days! Me and Nichole plus the gang (or at least Rachel and Esther) are going to Aswan. We might take a felluca back from Aswan to Luxor and camp in the desert; that was Rachel's idea. it is getting chilli here, but we can go for the adventure.
Bronwyn is leaving this week to South Africa ... so, in the end it will be just me and Nichole. We decided to stay here for Christmas. We are house sitting, so it should be fun having 3 houses. We'll soon have company as Chase's cousin is coming and she'll stay at our house.
Btw, talking about the devil ... we went to the cinema this weekend wt a huge group of boys ... they're all hilarious!! There were just 3 girls: me, Nichole and Rachel and then a bunch of guys: Ben, Karaboo, Luke, Chase, Benjamin, Matt, Dave. We watched James Bond - Quantum of Solace; not my kind of movie, but it was neat to be wt everyone. After that we wanted to go to our favorite place: Dunes; to our surprise, when we got there they said we need to order of a minimum of 40 LE each, so we decided to leave. We went to our house. Totally inappropriate!! In this culture, you're not allowed to have men over to your house. But, we dont know our neighbours; they dont know us! and besides that, they're all foreigners anyway!
Better go back to class!! This was supposed to be a time off for an "Advent cup of tea".

the spirit of Christmas ... is all over us!

Both me and Nichole are in the Christmas zone ... Ellien went to Sweden for 3 weeks .... So, we went to Carrefour yesterday and got a little Christmas tree and today we started decorating it!! We got some candles, Christmas lights and some other stuff. It started to look nice ...
Tomorrow we are finally going to get fabric and get our curtains made! ... which by the way, reminds me that i need to go and measure our windows!
At school we started practising Christmas carols for our Carol service which is on the 3rd of December .. pretty soon, heh? But, we have one week off starting with the 5th, because of the Eid (muslim holiday). Yuppeee!!

Attacked on the street

Today, during lunch time, me and Nichole decided to go to a nearby shop and get chocolate!! That is the worst idea we could have gotten!!!!!! You might wonder why ...
well, there is a boys' school next to our school, so i dont know their schedule, but it appears that there are always boys out. So, once they saw us, they started whistling, shouting and worst throwing stones at us. I turned around and said in Arabic "what is the matter?"; now they were all backing off, but when i started walking off again, they came after us again!! One of the teachers in our school was just coming out, so she chased them away.
My knees were shaking and i promised myself that if they would do the same on our way back i'd grab hold of one of them and smack him!
We made it safely back to school, though one threw a stone and hurt Nichole's foot. When we got back, one of my kids' parents was at school and she said she scolded them, because she's seen the whole incident! Now i understand when Sarah said she's been through the same incident last year.
Anyway, now we know we shouldnt go out anymore during our break!
It makes me very mad and upset at the same time, and it seems that these boys have no manners! I dont know what they teach them in school...or their parents....
Maybe this explains to a certain extent why there are so many private schools here. the system seems to be quite "unique".
I do have in plan to go and visit an Egyptian school one day and i do have a contact .. i just need time!

Pumkin carving!!

A very American thing is to carve pumpkins in October ... so i joined Heather, Wendy, Sarah and Nichole for this new experience.

We went to Road 9 a few days before and bought pumpkins; they were pretty expensive as it is the pumpkin season, so we couldnt really bargain. I decided to take one that had a little hole on the bottom and agreed to pay less since it has a "bruise".Well, 2 days later, when i wanted to carve it, half of it was soft and soggy so i had to cut half of it - "surgery by Gaby". Well, it looked ok in the end. I took all the inside out and kept it for later, in the freezer. I used it for my pumpkin pie last week. :DWendy has made apple cider for us and John joined us later.

Sarah showed off her artistic skills and carved the pyramids and a camel - it looked really cool!!! very Egyptian; i named my Lebanon as it had a tree carved as a background ...

Two days later, Lebanon died ... :( Even MishMish liked it - he ate a piece of it!

PS: Today Nichole told me what her brother, Adam said about my pumpkin - he said i might not know what carving a pumpkin means, by the looks of Lebanon ... well, when you have a rotten pumpkin, there's not much you can carve ... i was lucky it even looked the way it did!!! I thought i did an amazing job with it (actually, it kind of looks like crap, but hey i did my best!)

Romanian food

My turn has come to cook a Romanian meal ..So i invited the girls on Saturday evening for a Romanian experience! The whole week i thought about what i should cook for them ... early on Saturday i made up my mind - i went to Saudi market to buy what i needed. The decision was made: Salata Boef and ardei umpluti (stuffed peppers) plus pumpkin pie for desert.

It turned out good in the end ... i was proud of my stuffed peppers as it was the first time i cooked that.

We enjoyed our time together.. Rachel has brought icecream and it went really well with our pumpkin pie!! Yummeeee!!