multi-lingual musings

I thought I'd write the latest update to the blog by giving you some local color. These are a few favorite sayings of Nadia, our very well-loved housekeeper, whom we are incredibly lucky speaks English as well as she does, which is an asset we will never take for granted, and in no particular order, here they are:

• ‘There are too many many dustings!” --regarding relative dirtiness of something

• ‘You know me?’ --i.e. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ this phrase was a little off-putting when she used it the first couple of times I met her--my innate response was ‘not yet, lady’—until I figured what she meant

• ‘Miss Katie, I need you talk with me think’ translation: it is necessary that I ask you a question, the answer to which might require some mental effort on your part

• The substitution of the verb ‘sit down’ for ‘stay somewhere,’ e.g. in the sentence, ‘Jane’s family is going to go sit down in London/Sharm el Sheikh/ Mt. Everest/etc. for 5 days.’ In the Egyptian dialect, the same word is used for both meanings, so you can’t really blame her on that one

• ‘My father with me,’ my kitchen with me,’ ‘my clothes with me’…I’m not sure what is happening grammatically here, since she actually gets the English right but then adds something redundant on the end. Similarly, it’s not the way you make something possessive in Arabic, so…

• ‘That family has too many children’ or even ‘Mister Connor has too many holidays.’ Sounds like quite a strong opinion, but actually ‘too many’ and the morally neutral term ‘a lot’ are the same in her native tongue

• ‘People in Egypt crazy, baby.’ In response to any logistical snag

• ‘Sakkara, are you gonna work a poopoo [emphasis on the second poo], sweetie?’translation: the cat is about to take a dump.

[Kate's] Letter [about] the Thessalonians

Last week, Kay kindly humored my offbeat idea of heading to Thessaloniki, in the Macedonian region of northern Greece, for a four day city break. I have been intrigued by Greece's second largest city ever since travelling to Athens a few years ago, when I saw a lot of references to it in the media and culture during the trip. I felt like it might offer a more eastern European flavor (it's only 60 miles from the Bulgarian border) than the more popular Peloponnese and Greek islands. And we certainly were not disappointed. Thessaloniki is a lush, prosperous, and bustling mini-city in which it is incredibly easy and delightful to spend time. There are so many historic buildings to explore: a vast amount of ancient Greek ruins, breathtaking mosaics housed in early Byzantine churches dotted around town, a beautifully-revamped waterfront area, lively outdoor markets, and much more. Here were some of our/my highlights:

archaeological ruins: just strolling around the downtown area, you suddenly encounter a triumphal arch from the era of the emperor Galerius; a Roman forum; a bathhouse, and not to mention that several of the neighboring towns have extensive ruins and gorgeous tomb artifacts from the era of Alexander the Great (his family hails from Pella, a town we visited about 40 minutes from Thessaloniki). I felt that apart from Delphi, the ruins we saw in Macedonia and certainly the quality of the museums were higher than anything I saw on the typical 'ancient Greece itinerary' I did with the school back in 2007.


bougatsa: a cream or cheese-based filo dough pastry, typically eaten for breakfast--I swear there were about 3 bakeries per every citizen in Thessaloniki and hey, you know me, I wasn't complaining! Any town that is that much into baked goods goes down well in my book for sure.

pork and quite quaffable carafes of local white wine: I partook in both of these treats several times. I had to take advantage of being outside of Egypt! Kay amiably shared with me.

churches: several of the churches in Thessaloniki still in use date back to the 400s AD (one church even took over an old Roman bath complex) and have been carefully restored from the years in which they were converted into mosques. As I mentioned before, the golden mosaics, often depicting lush vegetation or saints in heroic poses, were stunning.


ease of transport: it is so user-friendly to navigate around Thessaloniki. All the bus stops have digitalized signs showing the order and frequency of the next 5 bus arrivals; once on the bus, there is a digitalized sign telling you what the next stop is, in both Greek and English, as well as announcements in both languages; a way above average bus terminal; the grid pattern of streets makes navigation a synch; and the presence of several parks and streets with little traffic. If I'd encountered all this in Athens, I would have guessed that it had been installed for the Olympics, but why Thessaloniki has so many modern creature comforts I don't know. I was certainly grateful for it!

kindness of strangers: Kay and I discovered that it's best to explore the attractions of Pella, which has the excavations of the ancient (300 BC era) city on one side of town and the amazingly well-designed and upscale archaeological museum on the other side of town, by rental car. Seeing as we arrived by public bus, hoofing it around the not insignificant distances was mandatory. But how did the folks at both the museum and ancient site help us out? They immediately offered to give us a lift in between places.

views of Mt. Olympus: even though it was hazy each day, Mt. Olympus stood out as a snow-capped behemoth across the bay, its uppermost peak shrowded in whispy clouds. I could see why folks in antiquity would assume this had to be the place where the gods lived.

an exhibit and the unexpected

Recently I read about a showing of contemporary art at a local gallery called Darb 1718 and decided to check it out. The theme of the exhibition was bread, in particular the wholewheat pita that is literally the staff of life here in Egypt, called 'aish baladi.' The gallery was showcasing the work, in mixed media, of 13 different artists. A further bonus was that this gallery was located 'just behind the hanging church', as the web site casually proclaimed, near Coptic Cairo, the historic Christian area only four convenient metro stops away from Maadi. So Connor and I hopped on the subway and were whisked to the walled city-within-a-city that is Coptic Cairo.

I insisted that we didn't need to print the map from the gallery website, as the directions looked so easy and surely we would spot it the second we got off the train. Well we started wandering (it turns out, in the correct area) and once we left the immediate vicinity with its historic churches and excellent museum filled with loads of tourists--literally 15 seconds after we left this very popular site--we were in a different universe altogether. Life for the Cairenes who live just outside the carefully-manicured courtyards and abbeys of the Coptic neighborhood is hardscrabble. As we continued to explore/look for the gallery, we walked by men tinkering with cars so worn out and worked over that I couldn't imagine they would ever carry a passenger again, but yet admired their perseverance nonetheless. Even though we were in the middle of the city, there were herds of goats and sheep milling about. Children ran through the streets giddily and shouted 'Welcome to Egypt!', a popular and charming phrase that locals use frequently here. A maze of precarious apartment buildings with laundry hanging out to dry between windows was a scene that has remained unchanged for centuries. While I catch glimpses of neighborhoods like this while in transit, it's rare so far that I have found myself immersed in one, and it really was fascinating and an honor to be present. We felt safe, even looked after, within this urban village. Finally we bumped into the gallery in question, which was at the end of the one very polished street around, and took in the paintings, short films, and interactive exhibits within. While some of the pieces were engaging, I couldn't help but think the real learning experience, and the images I will take away with me from that day, were actually from our accidental stroll through the backalleys of this neighborhood. In a matter of minutes, we were whisked away from the bustling metropolis and into a culture that operates on a completely different sense of time, space, and necessity. It's a glimpse into an alternate lifestyle that most of the tourists who had been bussed in to see the orthodox architecture and ancient icons, then quickly bussed out to continue their whistlestop tour of Cairo, had no idea they were within mere meters of. It is that Egypt, however, that I think people will gain the most from experiencing.

a day at the beach

Yesterday we hopped in the car and made the 90 minute trip along the highway (and I mean THE highway; there's only one road that goes there) to the closest resort area on the Red Sea, called Ain Sokhna. A little Arabic for you: literally 'ain sokhna' translates to 'hot eye' but in reference to the place it means 'hot spring.' Ain Sokhna is a very new beach area, having sprung up just south of the industrial area of the Suez Canal to accommodate the burgeoning well-heeled population of Cairo. Many well-to-do Egyptians have condos here that they frequent during the winter and expats see it as a quick getaway from the city. Connor and I were even joking that we should snap up one of the $30,000 apartments available in some of the lesser-developed neighborhoods.

We arrived at our hotel, which wasn't one we had heard of before but it was the most reasonably-priced one I spotted online, in the late morning and checked in. The place is new and I think desperately wanting to be 4 star digs but seems solidly in the lower-mid-range hotel class to me. We quickly headed to the beachfront. I was hoping for a long walk in the sand, but the coastline allocated to our hotel did not stretch too far and was bordered on one side by a shipping container area and on the other by a brick wall that enclosed a fancier resort immediately to the north. Ahh well, I was looking forward to my first dip in the Red Sea anyway. Well...the second I stepped into the water, a clay squidginess thrust itself between my toes and with each progressive step, I nearly lost my footing and toppled in! Both Connor and I found the sea floor too off-putting to go much beyond our ankles. We knew that Ain Sokhna's waters have nothing on its more established neighbors to the south, the international resorts of Hurghada and Sharm el Sheikh, with their crystal clear waters and world-class scuba areas. However we didn't expect to be, well, grossed out! Hmm.

After a couple of hours reading under a beach umbrella, we were antsy and decided to explore the rest of the greater Ain Sokhna area, partially in hopes of finding a better meal than the pricey buffet our hotel was offering later. Since Ain Sokhna is comprised solely of resort hotels and condos, we only spotted a combo Pizza Hut/KFC, which we were planning to go for in a desire for non-all-inclusive normality. We ended up choosing to do some reconnaissance work at another hotel we'd heard good things about, called the Movenpick, which I thought maybe was as Swiss as Haagen Dazs but does have genuine European roots. We strolled along their beach (acting natural, assuming a confident air of actual Movenpickers), took note of their watersport options and the fact that the bottom of the sea here was covered in stones, not mud, and had a light meal in the waterfront cafe. We both agreed that that is probably the hotel we will choose whenever we do head back for a weekend.

Back at our hotel, in which we were the only Westerners staying, we were kept up by a live folk music show occurring by the pool directly below our window, although it finished mercifully at 11pm. We headed back to Cairo this morning and were back in our own flat watching the latest episode of 'The Office' well before noon, which was great. It was definitely good to see what Ain Sokhna is all about, but I think we'll more often than not save our shekels, and our time off, for beach trips further afield.

Luckly in Cairo

Well we have quite a bit to update everyone on now (in chronological order):

1. We moved into our house! My pessimistic predictions were nowhere near accurate, because the movers showed up with all of our stuff on September 2! All this during Ramadan, and working with the ban that prohibits trucks in Maadi until after 7 pm. Things here either happen painfully slow, or before you even think about them. The total time spent in the hotel was just 6 short weeks. Not too much damaged either, so we felt very good about it all.
2. We have our car! This was one of those painfully drawn out things. From the time we agreed to buy it to having it registered in my name took three weeks. But it's a good, big, beater car for exploring the country, and Kate is also driving it around Maadi herself!
3. We have a Maid! Nadia started a week after we moved in part time - 4 hours a day/5 days a week. She has worked with expat families in Maadi for the past 20 years so she is an enormous help to us. My shirts are folded just like I found them in JC Penny, and she does a lot of prep work for Kate's cooking. It's also just nice that she knows a lot of essential servicepeople in Maadi and will make living much easier.
4. We went on vacation! During Eid (a 5-day weekend that marks the end of Ramadan) we went to St Catherine's in the Sinai peninsula. It was a great vacation, although a bit more rustic and physical than we were expecting. We camped out on and did a morning summit of Mt Sinai. We stargazed at an ecolodge in the middle of the desert, and we learned to ride camels!
5. We have a Cat! Sakkara came from a animal shelter on the road to the Sakkara pyramids, and is a nice addition to our family. She's still settling in, but loves to sit with us on the couch and chase around water bottle caps.

Logistics and Practicalities

Well I thought I would update everyone on two very important steps to getting settled here: House and Car. I am pleased to report that we are in a state of decided transition with both. Today we just got back from spending a few hours in Maadi, for church (10 am every Friday), and then to spend some time checking out our house. Kate just got the keys for the house on Wednesday, and we gave our approval to start the lease, even though there are just a few minor fixes left. We've been fairly pleased with the process. My company required that the outlets in the kitchen and laundry room be changed from two prong ungrounded to three prong grounded, and I'm impressed that they actually rewired the place for us to move in, in only about 10 days! That would never happen in the US for a one year lease. So, even though our place is a bit dirty and tired right now from vacancy, we are sure it will be spruced up and make a great home. However, we still have to wait for our sea crate to arrive to really move in, which is why we're in transition on the house. The sea crate left our house in Denver on July 15, and it should get into port any day now, maybe August 30? Then a few weeks through customs, truck it to Cairo, and I think we'll be lucky to move in in about four weeks from now.

The other piece is the car, we've been looking quite fervently for a while because we are allowed to get a duty free car (normal car duties are very high for big cars here - a full price Chrysler Town and Country costs about $120k). However, to get a used duty free car it has to be bought from another oil industry expat, so the pool is quite small. But, luckily we just found a great used Mitsubishi Pajero, similar to the US Montero. It is the quintessential car for expats here, there's about 562,000 of them in Maadi, but we couldn't resist the cliche. So, if everything goes well then in about a week the official car processing guy will change the registration for me, possibly including driving it to Alexandria, and then it will be ours!

television weirdnesses

So here in the hotel we have at our fingertips an interesting assortment of English language tv channels. For instance, right now I'm watching the current episode of 'The Daily Show.' Love it. Similarly I have caught 'Good Morning America' live (airing at 2pm here) several times and consider it a mid-afternoon treat. Another channel I've found with fairly good programming is called Dubai One. At any given time you could catch an episode of 'Lost' or 'Grey's Anatomy,' among other shows. It's easy to forget you are watching a channel run by a Muslim country. I have been jolted back to reality several times, however, when there's a sudden interruption to announce that it's the evening prayer time in the U.A.E. (hint hint, get out your rugs, couch potatoes, and face East). Yesterday a brief message appeared on the screen to remind us that Ramadan is a time for quiet devotion to god and increased piety. I think I can do without the channel that pipes 'Dr Phil' into my home also acting as a moral compass. A similarly bizarre item is a cartoon that stars 4 middle-aged housewives and I think they might be superheroes; unfortunately the teaser for that one's in Arabic. Even though it's a cartoon, the wives, while not wearing burkhas, have these weird golden contraptions drawn over their noses and mouths. It's a little creepy, like 'Desperate Housewives' meets 'Halloween.'

The major entertainment channels here have also been showing lots of promos for the lineup of holiday programming that's on during Ramadan, traditionally a time when families stay home in the evening and eat together. A lot of the 'special' shows are variety acts that seem to hail from the 1970s and spotlight drag queens. The other main holy month tv delicacy appears to be soap operas involving camels and villagers with torches.

Just one more quirk for you: here they bleep the word 'ass' from being said (and I would be very curious to know how the subtitles bowdlerize the nightly episodes of 'Family Guy'), yet you can change the channel and see full frontal nudity posing or strutting the runway on the fashion channel!

..................

On a completely unrelated note, here in Egypt we went back an hour in time zones last week so folks could start their evening feast a bit earlier. It happens the day before Ramadan every year, apparently. The thing is, it's not widely publicized, none of the other Arab countries do it, and much of the world is unaware that we've already done our 'falling back.' Cairo time is still listed as two hours ahead of the UK on many web sites. Go fig.

Ramadan recipes with Raga

Yesterday I took an Egyptian cooking class through CSA, the main expat community center in Maadi. Raga, a woman whom many in Cairo call upon to cater their functions when they want delicious local dishes, led the class and quickly executed 5 dishes in 90 minutes! The six of us in the class diligently and speedily took notes. Each measurement was quickly 'translated' from Raga's useage of different sizes of spoons, to metric for the Europeans, and cups and pounds for the Americans. I really liked her emphasis on lots of vegetables and her preference to limit the amount of oil wherever she could. I'm looking forward to trying them out for myself once we get kitchen access again. In the meantime, I'll share them with you.

Torli (only an approximation of the Arabic word...could also be 'touli' or 'toli'...)

2 potatoes
2 carrots
1/2 lb green beans
2 small zucchini
6 plum tomatoes, boiled and then peeled (I could also see using canned plum 'matoes)
1 red onion, chopped
1 large spoonful butter
1/2 tsp crushed garlic
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp boharat, a mixed spice, similar to the Moroccan mixed spice ras al hanout
2 cubes chicken stock
1/2 tsp cardamom
1 cinnamon stick

Slice vegetables (minus the onion and tomatoes) lengthwise into sticks. Grate the skin off the zucchini before cutting it. Sautee the onions in a large pot. Put the tomatoes in a food processor and roughly chop. Add the garlic, curry powder, spice mix, stock cubes, and cardamom to the onions. Pour 2 1/2 cups of water into the pot with the onion mixture. Also add the tomatoes now. Insert your cinnamon stick and then add the veggies. Cover and cook on medium for 20 minutes. Serve in a glass dish and top with freshly chopped cilantro.

Chicken shwarma

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 small onion, sliced
2 tbls canola oil
3 peppers: 1 red, 1 green, 1 yellow, cut intro strips
1 chili pepper
2 diced tomatoes

Add peppers to the onions in the pan. Now add:

1 tsp garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp boharat spices

Now add the diced tomatoes. To the onion mixture, add:

2 large (SERIOUSLY) tablespoons tahina (sesame paste that goes into hummus)
1 large tbls vinegar
1 small (like the little 4 packs) container of plain yogurt
1/2 yogurt container's worth of water

Add all the above ingredients to the pan. Cut up the chicken breasts and brown in a separate pan, using just enough oil to coat the pan. Now add chicken to the vegetable mixture. Cook on low heat for 5-10 minutes. Serve rolled up in slices of pita bread.

Egyptian-style eggplant side dish

Poke holes in a medium-sized eggplant (the eggplants in egypt are sort of pumpkin-shaped in that they have a bunch of ridges arching out--pretty cool) and roast on top of a gas burner, turning halfway through after you see steam coming out and the roasted half of the eggplant starting to disintegrate. Rinse in cold water, let it cool down, and then peel. Mash up the eggplant with a fork and on top add: the juice of 2 lemons, pinch of salt, bit of garlic, a sprinkling of cumin, a drizzle of oil, and top with freshly chopped mint and cilantro.

Baladi salad (perfect for summer)
Baladi means 'of the country' so this is a particularly Egyptian dish
This salad results in a gorgeous confetti of fresh produce.

1 small red onion
1 carrot
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 green pepper
2 large cucumbers, peeled
3 tomatoes
1 large lemon
mint, cilantro
salt, pepper, oil

Pulse all the veggies EXCEPT for the tomatoes and the herbs in a food processor until they are in very small chunks. Dice the tomatoes and chop the herbs by hand. Mix all the ingredients together and squeeze lemon juice, generous pinches of salt and pepper, and a drizzle of oil on top.

And for dessert: a dried fruit salad, eaten especially for Ramadan

1/2 lb each of: prunes, apricots, dates, figs, and raisins
1/2 lb of apricot paste (called amardeen--I saw it in the supermarket today, actually--similar to the guava paste used in Mexican sweets and I bet you could sub it in with no problem)

Cut all the fruit (well, except for the raisins) into small pieces. Let the dates sit in 1 cup of water along with the apricot paste for 4 hours. Then add the rest of the fruit to the date and water. Add honey or sugar to taste.

Al Iskandria!

Just last night Kate and I were having dinner in La Bodega in Zamalek (the island in the Nile) when we got a text from my coworker Michael asking if we wanted to go to Alexandria for lunch the next day. So, it was a great chance to do some touring and we took him up on it!

We set out at 9:30 this morning when the streets were clear due to Friday prayers, and drove 2.5 hours to the coast. Alexandria has quite a different feel than Cairo, still seems quite busy and sprawling, but has a wonderful corniche road that follows the coast line for several miles, and is every bit a beach town, albeit with burkas replacing bikinis. After a scenic stroll we ate lunch at a place where you choose your own fish and how you want them to cook it, a process which was much easier since our gracious Egyptian hosts were translating. Then the obligatory trip from ice cream (just pull up on the street outside it, honk your horn, and get served on the curb), check out Carrefour, and 2.5 hours back home! Turned out the "lunch" trip was from 9:30 am to 9:00 pm, but was really a wonderful day. We are really pleased to be becomming friends with Michael and Silvana, who we think we can really relate to and are such great hosts showing us our new city!

On another personal note: almost three weeks in. I've had a fair amount of logistical frustrations so far, but a lot of other things here are so easy. These last. . . three or so days I've been really anticipating an exciting and fulfilling life here.

setting the scene

Here are some shots from the window of our latest hotel room, which overlooks an intersection. Note the really old school black and white taxis. They're everywhere although we haven't used them because they lack both seatbelts and fare meters. Cairo has recently instituted an upgraded type of taxi service with late model cars and NYC-style meters that we are finding very easy to use so far. I've taken them several times myself, in fact.

field trip to the Citadel

We decided to grab a taxi and head to the Citadel, a complex of buildings originally built and fortified by the ruler Saladin in 1173. The fortress offers great hilltop views of Cairo and the desert beyond. If you look *really* closely in the city panorama shot, you can make out the outlines of the two main pyramids of Giza in the center. It was our first view of the pyramids!

There are several mosques inside the fort, one of which is especially grand and is where Connor got a little artistic...

pictures of the hotel

these are some images of the hotel we're based at for probably the next two months. It's certainly lovely but...we just moved into room #3 today. The last room had someone seemingly right below hammering and sawing away at pipes each night between 2-6am... third time's a charm?!

hitting the streets

Well today Connor was ready to do some driving! We headed out a little before 9am to cruise the route from our hotel in Heliopolis, northwest of downtown, to Maadi, the town to the south where we are planning to live. In total it was about ten miles. We strategically chose Friday morning, as it has the least amount of traffic by far. We set out in our rental car (a Toyota Corolla!) with an old-fashioned map as well as cell phone GPS in hand. The ride down was a breeze; we were even the only foreseeable car on the road at times. We found ourselves in the center of Maadi quickly. Maadi, however, is a labyrinthine collection of tree-lined streets that jut out at odd angles from each other. An Egyptian colleague of Connor's said that Maadi, a major haven for expats, was set out deliberately to confound any local burgler so that he would not be able to escape before the police nabbed him! While this is probably an urban legend, the amount of taxi drivers who have to ask for directions repeatedly in this part of Cairo is pretty high. We got a little tangled up among some roundabouts and one way streets, but with the help of good old sat nav we made our way back north onto the highway. To be fair, the streets are mostly numbered, which is helpful, and there is a much higher percentage of labelled streets than anywhere else I have encountered so far. We're looking forward to the day when we can wind our way around the roads with stealth and precision! Connor did a truly masterful job at interpreting the maps and I tracked our little moving blue dot as well as possible.

initial impressions, observations, and thoughts

Well we've been here in greater Cairo for about a week. I am having trouble getting started with my very first post, so I might just kick things off with some bullet points of the interesting things I have noted in the past seven days...

• the watermelons in Egypt are the deepest, rosiest red I've ever seen
• people drive very daringly except over speedbumps, when they slow to 1 or 2 mph at most
• on a related note, neither traffic nor driving conditions have not been *too* bad so far, but I am fully prepared to eat my words
• I saw a woman get into the pool with a swim cap covering her hair but a torso-exposing bikini...really--what's the point then?
• after having seen about 30 apartments in two days, bowwabs (doormen) span the whole spectrum of friendliness
• it's not overwhelmingly hot--we walked around for about 2.5 hours straight yesterday at midday (high: 100 degrees fahrenheit) and while we were ready for some AC, it was certainly bearable
• coming from Colorado, we're the only people we know who think it's humid here
  
• Maadi, the area of town where we are planning to live, has a laid back, leafy green vibe
• at Spinney's, a Target-esque store right next to our hotel, you can find all the typical toiletry brands that we use in the States--makes me feel a bit sheepish for the massive quantities of Pantene I stocked in our air shipment
• we're enjoying ourselves!