Transportation in Egypt

Sometimes, while driving down the road we see some pretty scary things. This is just one of the things, that unfortunately, we see quite a lot. We just happened to see this on the way in to school one morning and I had hubby snap a quick picture. While we see these kind of things quite often, it is hard to get actual pictures of them because we either do not have the camera with us, or we are moving too fast in traffic and don't have the time to get the camera out and take the picture before the opportunity is gone. We see so many things like this that would be illegal in the States because of safety laws. I will try to keep my camera with me more often so that we can snap some of these type of pictures. It is too bad we couldn't get this on actual video as the mini-van was moving at an alarmingly fast speed.

School is back in Session

Well, as you can see, I have a full class-room again. I know it has been a long time since I posted last, and, we have actually been in school again for a couple of weeks now. When we first returned to school, I took my camera to take some pictures, but a couple of the students were absent. After they returned I kept forgetting to take a picture. The other day we were working on a project for Social Studies and I noticed what a mess the kids were making of the class, so I decided to snap some pictures. The kids had a lot of fun doing this project, and they helped me clean the room as soon as we were finished. Hope you enjoy these pictures of my little cuties!

Curious Kitty

Just thought I'd post this cute picture of Miss Kitty that I took. There is a place on the balcony that she can sit and look at everything going on below, but apparently, something was going on down below, and she just had to take a quick look. I have some more funny pictures that I took of her recently, but they are still on my camera which is at school. So, I'll post them later.

Al Rehab gets a Redo

The area I live in here in Cairo is called Al Rehab. Last summer they started repainting the apartment buildings. This area is pretty much surrounded by desert, at least on 3 sides. The 4th side is the big city. So, the heat and the wind are pretty hard on the appearance of the buildings here. Above is a picture of buildings before, during and after the painting. Everywhere we look, buildings are either finished or in the process of being painted. For some reason our building has not been painted yet. In a way, we are glad they have waited so long to get to our building. Our apartment will have to be closed up during the painting because they are even painting the balcony areas. The weather is finally cooling down so it won't be as hot while they are painting. It is making quite a difference, don't you think?

My Lonely Classroom

Just thought I'd post a picture of my classroom. As you know from my previous post our school has been closed now for a couple of weeks. I, as a teacher though, have still been going to work. It was kind of nice because it gave us teachers time to work on long range lesson plans and other things we usually have to work on in our free hours during school. Well, I got lots of work done, but still have more, and on top of that, the students brought in work they had finished on Wednesday of last week. So now I have lots and lots of grading to do.

Most of the schools here in Egypt started as of yesterday. Our school will start again on this next Wednesday. Tuesday, the 6th, is a national holiday here, so we already had a break scheduled during this time. As some of the teachers and students' families use this time to travel, we decided to just keep it as a break.

I will be really happy when I can return to school on Wednesday though and see lots of little smiling faces (I hope they are smiling) instead of the empty desks as you can see above. I will try to remember to take a picture of the students so you can see the classroom when it isn't so lonely.