This little person was supposed to be taking a nap...

Arabic Lessons

We have had a grand total of two Arabic lessons. Just enough to know how much we need to learn. Now we can say please, thank-you, ask to go to the bathroom and instruct a taxi drive to turn left, right, go straight or stop here.

One of the interesting things has been the differences between masculine and feminine words.

For example, the pronoun you. The masculine you is enta. If speaking to a female, you would use entee. To use a plural y'all, ento.

Please is another fascinating example:
If I were speaking to Brian, I would use menfadlake.
To Sophie, menfadlek.
To Emily and Savannah, menfadloco.

To ask someone "how are you?" when speaking to a man you say, ezayak? or to a woman, ezayek? yes, it is an incredibly subtle difference. Even though I asked our language tutor to repeat it several times, I couldn't distinguish a difference.  But she assured me there is one.

The response by a man is kewayes, alhumduallah which means, "I am fine, praise be to God."
I would respond, kewayesa, alhumduallah and if I were responding for a group, I would say, kewayseen, alhumduallah.

Tonight, as I was painting my toenails, I memorized the numbers from 1 to 10.

Yes, I am just that awesome. Now, we shall see if I remember them tomorrow... insha'allah.

Did they say 8 weeks? They actually meant two days... We now have genuine, honest-to-goodness, high speed internet. How awesome is that?

Language lessons should start tomorrow. Each encounter we have with shopkeepers where they don't speak very much English and we don't speak very much Arabic reminds us of how badly we need to learn the language. A good sense of humor is very helpful in these situations.

A few days ago, I went into a shop and tried some clothes on and the woman who was helping me didn't speak very much English, but we were doing ok with bits and pieces. When she used the word "anna", I thought she was introducing herself, so I said, "Anna? My name is Christy." "No, no," she said, followed by a long string of Arabic. I finally decided that "anna" meant "hem", as in she wanted to hem my skirt. Later, when I was talking with some friends, I was told that "anna" means "I". So now, I'm fairly certain that when I introduced myself to "Anna" it was in response to her saying "I can hem your skirt." Funny stuff. But I will now never forget that "anna" means "I".

As I write this, I realize that I have only lived here for 9 days. So I'm fairly sure that gives me the right, at a later date, to change my opinion. But for now: I really like shopping here. You just never know what you will come home with.

At the end of our street is a long row of shops along another street. Between the street and the shops is a bit of grass, bushes and trees. Like this:

This is the night that we went and got our cell phones... and here is the cell phone shop:

During our walk, the girls wanted me to take their picture of them in front of a jewelry shop:

And this is our local market where we go to buy milk, diet coke, bread, juice, bassbousa, baking powder, etc. I've also bought dish cloths, jelly, flour, sugar and yogurt there.

I need to get a picture of one of the fruit stands for you. We can buy a kilo of fresh green beans for about 3 pounds: about 60 cents.

I don't like to take my camera with me when we go on a shopping trip, because it makes us look more tourist than we already do. Which makes the shopkeepers charge us more. But at the same time, I want to have pictures to show you! This is such a neat experience. A completely different way of life than back home.

Next up, I hope to show you pictures of our flat. (when I get it clean enough to photograph, haha)

And a big shout-out to my sister, Leigh! Hope you had a marvelous birthday! I've been thinking about you today. Love you lots!

Did I say 2 weeks for high-speed internet? what I meant was... 8 weeks. insha'allah.

yeah. but other than the internet. I can't complain.

I'm even getting my kitchen sink fixed today, so I won't even have to wash dishes in the bathroom anymore. woohoo!

We Are Here!

We have been in Egypt for 5 days now. It is hard to know where to begin to tell you all about our experiences. Every day brings a new experience and repeats of yesterday’s experiences becoming more familiar.

For the record, it is not nearly as scary here as everyone made it out to be. At least, that has been my experience in my mere 5 days here. I’m really looking forward to beginning language lessons, as that will help with making friends and listening in when they don’t know it. haha

Our flat is lovely. I will show you pictures soon, when we have a faster internet. But for now, it is amazing. There are lots of cabinets in the kitchen and the living room, dining room area is huge! There is a washer and dryer in the big bathroom. On Monday, when we moved in, there were no dishes or pots and pans or anything in the kitchen. So much of our time has been spent finding suitable kitchen wares to set up housekeeping.

The shopping here is quite fun. There are streets of shops. Each shop is devoted to an item or type of item. There are kitchen shops, fruit stands, cell phone shops, food markets, kids clothes shops, dry cleaning shops. One man fixes tires on the side of the street. We walked into a shop that was about 8’by 8’ square, wall to wall, floor to ceiling with old-school office supplies. We bought tape there.

Some of our friends here have a car and they spent the earlier part of the week shuttling us from shop to shop helping us get set up. But most of the time we will walk to local shops or use the taxi’s.  We are a bit nervous to use a taxi currently because while we know the driver can get us to the Metro Market, we aren’t sure they can get us home or if we could tell them how to get us home.

Today we walked down to our local shops, but today was their holy day, so not all of them were open. However, we found a Chinese food restaurant and ate dinner there. It was amazingly delicious. We figured it had to be good because all the Chinese were eating there….. and it was good. Even things we didn’t think would be good was wonderful.

There are a couple of downsides. A new water heater was put in not long after we moved in, but it only stays hot long enough for a very short shower. We are quickly learning to ration our hot water during our shower. It reminds me of two summers ago when we spent the summer in the RV. There was very limited hot water there as well.… which is why I always took a shower at the bathhouse. But I’m remembering the techniques I used when the bathhouses were unavailable.

I’m looking forward to having my sink fixed in the kitchen as well. When we moved in, the hot water faucet was broken, but there was water. Now the hose from the sink to the drain has disconnected so I’ve been washing dishes in the bathroom sink. The upside to washing dishes in the bathroom is that the bathroom continually stays very clean. Oh, that and we have clean dishes.

Altogether, I like it here. Despite some of the inconveniences, I like it. I really like it.

We should have high-speed internet in a couple of weeks, so I will post pictures then.

Please Excuse My Absence

As we work toward our departure date of tomorrow!!! please excuse my lack of posting. I've been incredibly busy working, cleaning and packing as well as hanging out with friends and family members.

I'm very grateful for all of the help from my family and friends. Special mention goes to my sweet sister-in-law, Sarah, for all her help with my little girls. She has loved on my girls like crazy the past couple of days and has freed my hands for other projects.

I have no idea when we will have internet access again, but when we do I will post pictures of our travel and move-in adventures.

It's gonna be amazing.

I want to scream...

in excitement!

We have a flat in Egypt! Our friends who are already there have been house hunting and they put a down payment on a flat for us! It is fabulous:
       - 3 bedrooms
       - a big kitchen
       - a dryer!!
       - and a dishwasher!

I am crazy excited! Remember how worried I was about not having a dryer? Just the idea of hanging out laundry for 5 people was stressing me out a little... ok, maybe a little more than a little.

I wasn't worried about a dishwasher as much. I can wash dishes and perhaps I would even enjoy taking time to play in the soap suds. However, you won't see me trying to return it! A modern convenience? I love it!  

Emily was excited to hear it was only 12 stories and there was an elevator in the building.

I have read and reread the email describing our new house. Of course I have. Its our house.

And we only have... well, here you go... Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday.

Yep. That is a grand total of 5 days until the great flight across the pond.

Busy much? Oh, yes, my friend, oh, yes.

Mother's Day

One year ago, on Mother's Day, we discovered that we were expecting baby #3.

And that little package turned out to be our baby Sophie. Emily refers to her as "our precious baby". And she is just that. I could not ask for a better baby to be our little girl. 

She is sweet, easy-going, laid-back, friendly, charming and cute as pie. We are all crazy about her.

I am incredibly blessed to be the mother of 3 sweet little girls.

So much to do...

but my husband may be right. It might all get done.

Well, only if I get off my blog, right? Yes, I know.

It does help that our dentist stood us up this morning. Oh yes, she did. We showed up on time with three kids in tow... to find the doors locked and the lights off.  We called and someone told us she was on her way. We waited 10 minutes. Now, 10 days out, I'm looking for another dentist.

Today I'm finishing sorting through stuff for a garage sale on Saturday. It is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in a year.

I'm also cleaning house because my sister-in-law and her family is coming for a visit. That will put a grand total of 6 kids ages 5 and under in our house. That is always fun.

Am I crazy? Yeah, that's what I thought too.

Fredericksburg

It is getting late, so I am just going to post a couple of my favorite photos from the weekend. There are so many, it is hard to choose...

Noah, Savannah, Emily and Phoebe

My husband and my baby 

A view of Enchanted Rock from our friend's property where we spent the weekend.

Fredericksburg is always an oasis for us. Even as I type that I giggle to myself a little bit, because we have to rest up from the trip for two days after to catch up on sleep. But it is so refreshing to go back and hang with our people for a few days. To hear their new stories and adventures, to worry about real life with them, to laugh, to share, to remember. 

Its always good to feel loved on for a few days and to remember old times with good friends. We also got to make some new friends this trip and connect some new friends with some old friends.

I also got to introduce our latest edition to the family to all of our friends... and that was fun. 

They all remember Emily when she was about a year old.

Its been an amazing process watching this little girl grow up. And with all endeavors in life, it is always reassuring to know that there are other people in the world who love her and our children as much as we do.

Many thanks to those who love us and our precious babies.

UnImportant Information

I'm sitting here trying to decide between a nap or some "browning" (read as procrastinating from everything else I should be doing, being 12 days away from moving across the pond). But, I thought I would jump up here and post a quick post.

My plan is to post about our loverly weekend away in Fredericksburg soon. But good posting needs a good picture, so I have to upload pictures first. And that will have to wait.

I joined an organization called Freecycle in our area a few months ago. I typically don't "win" any postings, but I am constantly amused by strangers email addresses. The majority are just first and last names, but a few are a little more creative.

My favorite is "stonerdebbie". Seriously? I hope "stoner" is her last name, but how am I to know? And I'm not going to donate baby clothes to "stonerdebbie". Sorry.

Another one that popped up in my inbox is "hottdove". Is that in contrast to the cool blue jay?

"pupsformrh" is another one that confuses me a little bit. Are you wanting dog babies for the "Mr" of the household? Don't they grow up so that the pups become dogs and now your email address is outdated?

"krazeeredhead" thats funny. I actually kind of like that one.

"nearly5foot3" makes me wonder... does she feel vertically challenged?

But what about "babyclimber"... should I call CPS? that seems a little strange to me.

People typically choose screen names and email address about things that are important to them. I.E. the numerous references to sports ("arrazorback") or their grand-kids, like "txnonie". There is even a nod to donuts, "Krispi Kreme" and yes, the capital letters were already there.

Ok. I'm off to find something else UnImportant to do while my babies are sleeping :)