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!!

Holiday in Dahab

Ok, i know this post should've come here a month ago, but i completely forgot i didnt post anything about my holiday in Dahab.

We had a one week holiday at the beggining of October, for the Eid. The Eid is a big thing here; it marks the end of Ramadan, when all the fasting is "khalas"; it is a bit like our Christmas day. So, me and Nichole plus some other work mates embarked on the first bus to Dahab. Dahab is a nice little town by the Red Sea - actually more the Gulf of Aqaba... It is close to Sharm el Sheikh, but more relaxed, cheaper, nicer in a very bedouin style.
We stayed at Dyarna Hotel - realy pleasant - not too pricey, with a nice swimming pool and breakfast included.

We went snorkelling by the Lighthouse and it was amazing!!! It was my first time snorkelling but i enjoyed it a lot!! We tried to snorkle further up but it was so windy and i got so many bruises from the reef!! Nichole got excited because she saw a lion fish and got near, without knowing they are poisonous and you can die if you touch them!

Second day in Dahab i tried scubadiving; it was an intro dive and i promised myself that was my first and last experience of that kind.

The water presure was too strong for my ears, plus i didnt see any fish!! Snorkelling was so much better! I went 8 or 10 m under water, which is quite of a thing for me! Well now i can say i've done it!

We couldn't have missed Sinai, so we took a night bus to St Catherine's. It took us 2 hours to get there. We started hiking at 2 am and got to the very top around 5 right in time for the sunrise. Numerous groups of Russians were up for the same thing as us, so it made it even harder to get a good spot at the top, in order to see the sunrise. It was packed!!!!!! We managed to find a spot, which was a bit dangerous, but we were able to enjoy our experience - sunrise from the top of Sinai mountain.

The whole hike was an adventure, with a crazy bedouin who made fun of all the Russians, and staring at the girls' bottoms, saying "babushka".

I forgot to say that the best place to eat in Dahab is the Funny Mummy - the atmosphere is amazing and the guys that work there are really great!!! the owner remembered Nichole, who's been there right when she arrived to Egypt. They have good sheesha there and the best chocolate milkshake in the world!!!!!!

Dahab seems to be out of Egypt, as there are many foreigners there and the rules that apply when living in Cairo, dont apply here ... you can wear any type of swimming suit you want, you can hold hands wt your bf/husband/fiancee ..whatever...

It is a cool place to go to! you can see Saudi Arabia from there!