It’s been a while and I have many things to write. To make it more manageable I’ll post it up in a few sections. If you have a sufficient attention span, you can read them all at once!
January has been a unique month because I have not had any work to do at the school since the end of December. The students had a break for a Muslim feast, then for Coptic Orthodox Christmas, then studied for exams, then wrote mid-year exams, then had a two-week mid-year vacation. I had no role to play in any of this at the school, so I had a month off from that aspect of my work here. The evening English courses had ended as well, and it was decided to have a one-month conversation course on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was quite enjoyable and really easy to prepare for, and my only official work for the entire month. I learned a lot about the students in my class through our conversations during this class, about everything from what they do in their spare time to their thoughts on prayer and hearing what they think it means to get blessings from visiting monasteries.
I had fears that the month might be lame because it can be hard to fill the days in Beni Suef where there are only shops, houses, roads, cars, carts, and livestock, yet the time has come and gone and here I am with some good memories.
A visit from my friend Kim from Canada certainly added some interesting experiences to the month. Kim had lived in Cairo for a year through the same program I am doing now, but five years ago. It was fascinating to travel around Cairo with her and meet some of the people who had become dear to her during that year and come to understand much more clearly what that year was like for her, something I had never really grasped before coming to Egypt myself. We also visited some friends of Kim’s friend (and Arabic professor from the U of A) which exposed me to a different social circle than I had yet seen in Egypt. A bit of an intellectual and artistic crowd that provided some great conversation.
A trip to the beautiful city of Alexandria was also in order. Kim, Brittany (the other SALTer) and I took the train there for the weekend and took great pleasure in walking along the vast, circular harbour and watching the waves crash up against the sea-wall, eating extravagantly at various restaurants, hiring a tiny little rowboat to brave the wake of the sea for an hour (with a young Egyptian guy rowing, not us), and taking in the atmosphere and architecture of the Alexandria library.
A highlight for me, other than the exciting rowboat ride where we had a lovely view of the entire waterfront of Alexandria from the sea, was eating at a seafood restaurant called Samakmak which was recommended by friends who used to live in Alexandria. We were led to a display case full of ice and fish where we chose the exact fish that we would eat, watched them weigh it, along with fresh shrimp from a large metal bucket, and gave instructions on how it would be cooked. It was a novel and delicious meal. The entire experience in Alexandria was refreshing because of the sea which offered delightful sights, sounds and smells, as well as the beauty of the city. Where Cairo feels huge and busy, Alexandria felt smaller, more relaxed, and around every corner was another pretty building, the sea and the waves, or public gardens with shrubbery pruned into squares, curls and other shapely assortments.
Near the end of January I heard that I would be leading six days of “English Camp” for students during their mid-year vacation. Abouna Youssef had suggested the idea before I had even left the school at the end of December, but it had been shot down as far as I could tell. I didn’t hear anything more about it until I went to teach my evening conversation course in the school building one fine evening in January and heard from one of the nuns who works there that I was starting an English camp the next week. Oh. Apparently somebody decided it was indeed a good idea to have something for the kids to do during their break. This was followed by me scurrying around looking on the internet for ideas (including a frustrating power-outage just before printing all the games I had copied and pasted from various websites which nearly caused me to throw my computer through the window into the street), talking to other foreigners and English teachers, and trying to put some of my own ideas together. It didn’t help that I hadn’t a clue how many kids would show up. I heard between 2 and 30.
The first day of camp arrived and I was ready with games, songs, ideas for team competitions, and the potential of having two other Egyptian English teachers help me out. But at 10:30 (the camp started at 10:00) we had but one enthusiastic kid. A few more trickled in throughout the day and we ended with 7. Well, the grand team-competition ideas went out the window, but I could handle seven kids by myself, and we actually had a pretty good time. It was challenging for me to come up with new and interesting ideas for each day (the camp was only 2 to 3 hours each day) and felt like my creativity had been exhausted by the time we finished on the sixth day, but the kids had fun, I feel a special bond between me and those kids that came to the camp now that I see them back in school, and I learned a thing or two about entertaining/teaching Egyptian elementary school students.
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