Seoul vs. Cairo

1. Seoul is cleaner than Cairo. Both cities are very congested, but in Seoul the trash is handled much better.

2. The average person in Seoul does not speak English. In Cairo, the average person on the street speaks some English. It is amazing that even little kids who are selling things on the street speak some English and a few other languages. In Korea, if they don;t feel they speak English well, they won't try. In Egypt, they milk every phrase they know. So it is definitely easier to communicate for the newcomer in Egypt Korea. You can earn a lot of money teaching English here, I am told. I really need to learn to read Korean and speak survival Korean fast!

3. No tips in Korea except on post or "rounding up". People who do know English will stop and help you when you look confused and they don't want money for it. In Egypt, people are always scamming for money and asking for bakshesh.

4. No livestock in the streets of Seoul. At least I haven't seen any yet. In Cairo it was very common to see camels, donkeys and goats on busy city streets.

5. In Seoul, there is a lot of technology at all levels of society. The repairmen that have come to fix things at our apartment have PDAs where they take pictures of the work and we sign after it is done. In Cairo, while many people have cell phones, they often work with very primitive or improvised tools.

First Steps in Sharm el Sheikh

When you are an international jetsetting baby like Ian, you are bound to have milestones in fabulous places. He did his first, deliberate rollover in Doha (Qatar) and on June 28th, he took his first unassisted steps in Sharm el Sheikh.

I was sipping a Turkish coffee and Kate had a cappuccino while we were waiting for the Egyptian Folkoric show to start. Ian busied himself by making eyes at a voluptuous, blonde, French woman. She motioned for him to come to her and he put his hands out then turned back all the while smiling and making this crazy noise (sucking in air). After a few times he forgot that he wasn't holding on and took three steps! We started clapping and cheering and he promptly fell on his butt. We didn't get the steps on video but we did take his picture with her.

Masalema, Bye, Bye to Cairo*

Cairo Mama has left Egypt. Towards the end of our 3 month stay in Virginia, we learned Curt would be going to Iraq for 6 months. He left for Iraq and Ian and I headed back to Cairo to pack out. We will be staying in Pennsylvania until he gets back.

My sister came to help. She wrangled Ian while I sorted: ship, store, mail, suitcases, give away, throw away. It was a crazy week, but I was ready for the movers. We were sipping on lattes while the upstairs neighbors who were also packing out the same day were trying to sort and organize.

We also did a lot of shopping to pick up some things like Mashrebeyya tables, Bedoin jewelry, a large marmalite vase, more glass ornaments, more alabaster, etc. I hope they survive shipping!

Between packing preparations and shopping, I did manage to get Katie to the Pyramids of Giza, the Citadel, Cairo Tower, Mokkatem Church, a falooka ride on Nile, and invitations into two Egyptian homes. Afterwards, we recovered at the Sofitel on the Red Sea in Sharm el Sheikh.

We are supposed to go back to Cairo in January, but we may not be going back. I was not quite ready to leave. There is still so much in Egypt and in the region that we wanted to see. I guess Ian will have to focus on traveling in America. Poor guy won't be staying at 5-star hotels in this country!

*The Egyptians often say "Masalema Bye Bye" when talking to Americans.

Driving in Egypt

There is always lots of traffic. The rules are simple: if you are even a fraction of an inch ahead of another car, you have the right of way. In the far right lane and need to turn left? Mafeesh Mouskela (no problem)! Did you miss your turn on a one-way street? Mafeesh mouskela! Need to park but there's no space? Mafeesh mouskela? Traffic lights? Merely suggestions, not need to mind them. Just don't use your headlights at night. It is wasteful and really annoys people. I didn't drive in Egypt because I didn't have a car, but those who did said it was like navigating a crowded sidewalk, that you do it by feel. Many people find it fun after awhile.


It only takes the ride fromthe airport to find the humor in this sign. Egyptians use the horn constantly. They honk as they go past pedestrians to tell pedestrians they are not going to stop. They honk going through intersections to tell other cars they are not going to stop. They honk when pulling a maneuver like turning left from the far right lane. They honk when someone else pulls a maneuver like turning left from the far right lane. And about every 30 seconds for good measure.

Heather's Maadi Shopping Experience

This shop has tchochkes and shisha (flavored tobacco for the hooka). Erie has several places to buy shisha, but it is 1/5 the cost here in Cairo:


This man has a nice alabaster shop. He has a good variety and decent quality. He does not bargain, but he does not harass you either, so I like to shop here:


Tree Shop Produce:

Closeup:


Construction or Demo?


Balady (Local, Wild) Dog on Car:

April Falooka Ride on the Nile

On Heather's last day of her Egypt trip in April, we cabbed it to the Corniche with my friend, Nicole, her husband, Rob, and their son, Caiden for a Falooka ride.

I am going to give our Falooka Man a copy of this picture when I go back to Cairo in two weeks:

Falooka Self-Portrait:

Hazy Sunset:

The wind really picked up and we had to go back to shore a little early. View from the Falooka:

Lost in Translation, Part IV: "Cook Learn Book"

An advertisement from the Bio Shop:

Globalization: Menus in Egypt

At the koshary place, you can also have a "Cordon Bleu" or "Mexican Chicken":


Of course, there is ham subsitute in the Cordon Bleu--looks like beef balogna.

At the Lebanese restaurant you can order "Thai Wings" and "Peking Spring Rolls":

Lost in Translation, Part III: Menus

Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are often lost in translation on menus and everything else. Part of the reason is that these things, especially spelling don't seem to be very important over here. This can be especially frustrating when you are trying to learn Arabic and the teachers give you inconsistent transliteration. On menus, it is just funny. There is a restaurant on the way to Sharm that serves "Shiknees Food"

First example:


"Frensh" Dip


Cry Me Cheese?

Found: "Egyptian Cotton" in Egypt

The coveted "Egyptian cotton" is hard hard to find in Egypt because the good stuff is exported. While I was registering for baby clothes and recently, looking for cloth diapers, I saw tons of overpriced items that were "100% Egyptian Organic cotton, made in Egypt". The nicest things that I have that were made in Egypt, I bought in the States. I wondered where I could get quality things here.

Yesterday, I went to a store called The Bio Shop and found some items by Sckoon and Under the Nile for reasonable prices. I think some of these items might be factory seconds or discontinued items or patterns. You do have to be careful because size mean nothing in Egypt. Clothing often has sizes, but they aren't standardized. Even within this store, I found two of the same item, with the same European size which is the child's height given in centimeters (ex. 68 cm), that were drastically different sizes.

I bought a very soft, "organic" cotton hooded towel, two cotton menstrual pads with inserts (that I have been thinking about trying), an "organic" cotton diaper and insert, a shirt for Ian and a natural colored "organic" cotton blanket with a light brown edge to coordinate with his brown-toned clothing for a grand total of 144 LE or about $25. Then, for fun, I checked out the same items on the Sckoon and Under the Nile websites and what I bought would have been over $100, not including shipping costs and using the lowest sale prices I found and assuming that liners were included. If, I add in shipping, regular prices and buy liners seperately it would be much more.

After I got home, I did a little research and found that the manufacturer is the Sekem Group. Supposedly, the farming and cultivation practices are certified organic by DEMETER. The Sekem Group provides schooling, healthcare and other benefits to their workers and operate through "fair trade". I found a list of stores in Egypt that carry their products. Good to know. The summer clothes are coming in this week, so I hope to find some good deals.

Lost in Translation, Part II

I saw a little girl wearing a head scarf and a shirt with the following phrase,"The Best Number is...69". I didn't have my camera with me to get a picture, though.

Lost in Translation

More Nile Cruise Pictures

Ian drew crowds of ladies everywhere we went.

Hangin' with the President

Everyone I've met in Egypt has told me to do a Nile Cruise, but we hadn't gotten around to doing it, yet. In the spirit of making things happen in the New Year, we decided to go. We chose the Sonesta St. George boat because it is the newest one. When we arrived, our tourguide, Mohammed, told us that President Mubarak would be visiting the boat. On Sunday, we got up early and saw the Temple of Karnak and Luxor Temple. Mohammed had us back to the boat by 9:45am because it was scheduled to leave at 10:00am with Mubarak. When Mubarak is on the move, no one else goes anywhere. The streets are lined with soldiers and shutdown to traffic and sometimes pedestrian movements. If we weren't back on time, the boat would have left without us. We made it, but Mubarak was late. When he finally arrived, he got on board and went to a 4th floor suite. He had some drinks and sandwiches, sailed to the West Bank (of Luxor) and back and then got off. As he was leaving, Curt got a picture of me holding Ian and shaking Mubarak's hand. We have him on video asking,"How is your baby?"


The next day, we visited Valley of the Kings and Mubarak showed up there. I got a picture of Curt and Ian with Mubarak. Condoleeza Rice was in town to meet with Mubarak. We were hoping to see Condi, but she wasn't scheduled to go to the Valley of the Kings until later. The video camera died right before he came through the new visitor's center. Mubarak's visit to Luxor did hold us up a bit, but it was cool to get the pictures.

Hathor, the Cowgoddess

We just took our first big trip with Ian after returning to Egypt. We took a Nile Cruise with a sidetrip to Abu Simbel. We flew to Aswan, switched planes and flew to Abu Simbel. From the Abu Simbel Airport, we took a bus to the Aub Simbel Sites where we saw temples built by Rameses II for himself and his wife Queen Nefertari. Queen Nefertari's temple is dedicated to the Goddess Hathor, Goddess of Fertility, Motherhood and the Milky Way, among other things. She is often depicted as a cow or as a woman, sometimes breastfeeding the Pharoahs. Mothering Magazine hosts live chats with Heather Cushman-Dowdee, creator of a character called Hathor, the Cowgoddess. She advocates breastfeeding, babywearing and attachment parenting. Just before I left, I was wondering where she got the name. What a spectacular way to find out! I couldn't take pictures inside her temple, but I did get some in other places on the trip.

I didn't have any problems or negative reactions breastfeeding in public on this trip. In fact, I got pantomine lectures in Italian, Arabic and Japanese telling to me breastfeed Ian because it was best. It usually involved the woman cupping her breast saying,"Baby eat only from mama" or some variation. I do try to be discreet while breastfeeding in public, but a baby's got to eat when a baby's got to eat. It is great to have positive reinforcement from strangers. Of course, women outside the US are much more comfortable expressing their opinions about your parenting than American women. Strangers routinely tell me that Ian is too cold, too hot, should be laying flat, etc. That can get annoying, but on this trip it was all positive.

Picture of My Ezzazit Maya Kabir (Big Bottled Water)

Tanya, from Motherwear, tagged me to post about my water consumption in relation to breastfeeding. Even before I had my baby, I carried around a big bottle of water that I drank from all day. The biggest difference since having Ian and breastfeeding is that I need water at night. Still, like Tanya I don't drink as much as I should. The water here is heavily chlorinated and even though we have a filter on our faucet, it doesn't seem to take the taste out. Maybe if I filtered the filtered water through a Brita that would help...Anyway, I stick to bottled water for the most part because of the taste.

I usually drink Baraka (pronounced with short a's and emphasis on the first syllable, the feminine version of famous Illinios Senator Barak Obama's name ) water and thanks to Ahmed, my teacher for the Pre-Modern Standard Arabic class I took at last fall, I can read the label. As a side note, the written and spoken languages in Arabic are different. Different grammar and vocabulary. On top of all that, Written Arabic does not always write the vowels. For example, my Baraka label has 4 letters: b, r, k and tamarbuda (a at the end of a word). It does have the "clues" that tell you the vowel is an "a" sound. A slash above the letter is an "a". A slash below the letter is an "e" and something that kind of looks like our number 9, is an "oo". The Koran has the clues written out as well, but the newspaper, most signs and most other writing does not. The other writing on the label doesn't have the clues, either.

I'll pass this challenge back across the Atlantic to Katy in Canada.

Nefertiti's Christmas

We have Curt's office holiday party here Thursday and all we've done so far is make Christmas cookies shaped like Queen Nefertiti, King Tut and a camel. Most of them are Nefertiti because the others tend to break. The cookie cutters are made to cater to the American market and are a bit too high to make a detailed impression on the dough. It is kind of a fun, yet weird, twist on tradition incorporating the symbols of both Ancient and contemporary Egypt. Ian's first visit to Santa included Cleopatra and a camel.

Christmas in Cairo

Egypt is about 95% Muslim. Most of the rest are Coptic Christians who celebrate Christmas on January 7th. Rare as it is, my husband has an Egyptian Catholic employee. We get all Muslim, Coptic and US holidays off. One of my husband's employees was complaining that two of the holidays overlapped this year so they only got one day off instead of two. Fortunately, Bush declared a National Day of Mourning for Ford, so we get another day off. They would all be shocked if they worked for a private company in the US and only got 6 holidays a year.

As we learned last year, one of these groups is always fasting in some manner. Last year, we had the office staff over for a Christmas/Holiday Party only to find out that the Coptics were fasting and couldn't eat meat or dairy. This was after I made 3 batches of rolls that had to rise three times each, cranberry cheesecake from scratch, roasted tomato and cheese puff pastry tarts, a cheese platter, a ham and a turkey. I threw a tofu vegetarian chili together at the last minute and it was quite popular even though most of them had never tasted tofu before. We thought we were in good shape covering the Muslim dietary restrictions of pork and alcohol. We had turkey and kept the champagne next to the punch bowl so that it could be added or left out. Not only did we have the fasting surprise, but many of the Muslims drank beer and champagne. You never know what people will do. We are smarter and better prepared this year, so we are having the party on January 11 after all the fasting is done for all the groups.

This year, on Ian's first Christmas, Curt and Roxxy (the dog) got up early. When Ian and I awoke, we found Curt hanging pictures and listening to Christmas music on the ipod in the Bose Sound Dock. There is a good, cheap framer here in Maadi so we had all of our wedding, baby and family pictures framed to protect them from the dust and dirt of Cairo and also make this apartment feel more like a home. I'm not sure if he is using acid-free materials and they don't measure precisely, but the price is right. We can have them reframed in the US--by expert framer, Heather Hosu--when we get back, but at least this way we can enjoy them now and protect them a little bit. We set up all of our technology the night before so everything would be ready to go. We actually used our big video camera that I bought a few years ago after making Washington Interns Gone Bad. I was inspired, but with my wedding, moving to Egypt and then pregnancy, I haven't done much with it.

Ian was not interested in his presents, but he got some cool stuff: Dr. Seuss books and coordinating plush toys; a book called, Where did Daddy's Hair Go?; teething toys, Robeez dragon shoes, outfits, and a savings bond from his Great-Grandparents.

Roxxy loves packages. I've always ordered her treats and accessories online, so unlike many dogs, she adores postal workers. She got two latex toys and a rawhide. Curt bought clothes for me. I was a little worried because I am not back to my pre-pregnancy size, but everything he bought, including a pair of pants, fit. I got Curt an electric griddle, a granite mortar and pestle (same as all the chefs on BBC Food use) and a breadmaking book called The Breadmaker's Apprentice. Curt made pancakes on his new electric griddle for breakfast. We had salmon in puff pastry for lunch. It was leftover from our Christmas Eve dinner. We finished off the night with crab legs, fresh pasta and asparagus. Curt made everything and it was all terrific. He hasn't quite mastered his pasta maker (one of his goals for the new year), but you put clarified butter, parmesano romano and herbs on anything and it will taste great.

Merry Christmas! New Year's Report tomorrow...

Making Sand Angels at the Pyramids

It is December in Cairo and though it is freezing here today (50's and windy), there is no snow for traditional winter fun like snow angels. If it weren't so filthy, I might actually try to make a sand angel, but I'll save that for my next trip to the Red Sea. You can't come to Cairo without visiting the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza. Now that Ian will be living here for awhile, we thought we'd take him so he can give better tours when our friends and family come. We took him to the Pyramids last year at this time when Chad and Lauri were touring, we just didn't know it. Ian won't remember either trip, but this year's pictures with him on the outside are much cuter!

This was a victory for us because we got out of the house and drove ourselves. It is easy to hibernate to avoid the traffic, pollution and hassles of Cairo, but that is no way to live. I've been back for almost a month and have spent most of that time working on organizing the house. Most of the ex-pats leave for the holidays, so everything shuts down until mid to late January.

Fridays and Muslim holidays are the best days to go to the Pyramids because there are less people. This is especially true in the mornings. We set up our tripod to get a family picture without having to pay someone to take our picture. Harassment avoidance!

Ian is wearing his new outfit from Aunt Kate. The wind was rough on him, but he was a champ.