bazaar

This is going to be anything but a long December.

I can't even believe it is December in the first place. My parents and sisters come in 2 1/2 weeks (!!!) and then it will be 2008. I probably should never go to sleep just to try to make it last longer.

We put up the Christmas tree. This is my Egyptian family.


I've already had 2 bazaars. Cheri has one more on Friday. This is Cheri at the German bazaar. At one point during this bazaar I waited in line for an hour and 25 min to get a waffle.




Sometimes Cairo is beautiful and you forget how the air is slowly killing you.


And sometimes, Cairo makes you laugh because it is insane.


And as always, God is amazing.

We delight

So, I can't believe it's the middle of November. It's cooling off, at least more days than not, which makes walking the half hour to work really enjoyable.


This is Tahir Square in Downtown Cairo. It was the most beautiful day I had seen in Egypt. I could actually breathe without my lungs crying.

As for work, Bazaar season is coming up and that is where we sell a lot of the crafts the girls make...which means I've spent a great portion of the last two weeks implementing the new tagging system and packaging all of the crafts. Cheri's English lessons are going well, which I get to enjoy because things she teaches them, they practice on me.

I also started teaching a few supplementary reading classes on Thursdays at the African Hope Primary School. I have three classes, each have three students in them. Eight of them are from Sudan, the ninth is from the Congo. They're in 6th and 7th grade and each one of them is amazing. They are (usually) so eager to learn, and they like to laugh at me when I play charades to try to explain the words they don't know.

This is the classroom. We have a fancy white board.



And, this is the incredible view from the room. I get to watch them play fight with each other and then when it's time to go in the teachers line them up and they sing praise music and dance before they come in.


We had a Young Adults Feast last night, which I lovingly referred to as "fake Thanksgiving." And, when you're cooking all day for "fake Thanksgiving," you can't not think about all the things you're thankful for.

I couldn't even begin to list all the infinite amount of things that I am thankful for. But, I hope you pray Psalms 26:6 for me: That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, And declare all of Your wonders
Because every new day is filled with wonders, and I hope where ever you are, you can see the wonders in your life and are thankful.

past tense

I started working with the girls all day Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and it is amazing. I end up leaving smelling like cinnamon and flower sealant, and smiling about how ridiculous they must think I am.

The girls speak much better English (which isn't too much) than I do Arabic (I can only speak in the past tense and know like 20 verbs), so they get a lot of blank stares and "ana mafahemtish"s which means I don't understand, but we laugh a lot.

I am so thankful for this community of women and the opportunity that it brings for everyone involved.

On an almost completely unrelated note, I kept eating these amazing sesame seed cookies things and they saw I was hungry, so they went out and got me like 3 bags of chipsys (flavors: chicken, tomato, and lime) and then shared their bread with me. Yostina taught me how to make a chipsy sandwich. Which is really just chips stuck in a hot dog bun. It was kind of amazing and now might be in the top 10 least nutritious meals that I enjoy.

Change

Well, since my last post, my life has changed in so many ways. It's funny how fast things happen

Just an overview.

I moved. I'm still living in Maadi, just on the other side. I have a new Egyptian family. I call them my Egyptian family, but none of them are Egyptian. My Egyptian parents are from Canada, Rod and Susan, and my Egyptian sister, Mo, is American.



The girl in the middle is Mo, my Egyptian sister, and the one on the right is Rachel, who is her friend from OBU. I made them go Ramadan light looking with me. This tree had like a 100 Ramadan lamps. It was beautiful.

Ramadan is over. We can now find food in the middle of the day. It's kind of crazy that there is traffic between 5:30 and 6 because before everyone was home eating.

Cheri and I started with the workshop. Our first day was Wednesday and only one of the girls showed up. But, that was good because we got to see where everything was and Cheri went though the curriculum for ESL. We have started preparing lessons, and it is going to be amazing to see what God is going to do because we have no clue. Cheri thank goodness has had some training in this. Which is why she has the wonderful privileged of actually teaching.

God has been so incredibly faithful during all of this change, and I want to thank anyone who has been praying for me and everyone else over here. I hope that you will continue to do that, especially for Cheri and I as we are planning stuff and for our future endeavors at the work shop. :)

Dahab

Dahab is one of the most beautiful places on earth.


Granted, I think almost anywhere I go is one of the most beautiful places on earth.


But, I'm pretty sure I was made to live on the beach.


On a more serious note, we figured out which ministries we're going to work with this year.

I'm going to teach ESL and do crafts. It will be exciting.

Also, I'm working with the fund raising.

While I'm here, my goal is to build up leaders and to give support to those people who need it, and equip long term projects with a fresh outlook. I would love prayer for this. I am so very excited to start working on these projects.

Nobody does it better

Six hours and a continent later, we arrived in St. Catherine's to sleep (or laugh hysterically because you're playing in the mosquito nets) for about an hour before waking up early enough (NB 1:30 am) to climb Mount Sinai to see the sun rise.

The hike was rocky and camel treaded, and since it was 2 in the morning we couldn't see much further than the rocks directly in front of you. (and since I have terrible depth perception anyway, I couldn't see and I ended up coming off the mountain with a fancy bruise on my leg to remind me of the hike) But, the lack of sight on our journey up made the final product so much more majestic. And, let me tell you, it was breath taking.


The crowds of people broke into song rejoicing.

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.

They were all singing in different languages. They had all come to see the beauty that God created. They had come to experience the challenge that Moses had endured as he pursued God.

This is our intern team. They are some of the most amazing people I have ever met.



On the way down, we got to see everything we had missed in the dark. I never knew rocks could be so beautiful.

Prison

Today we went to prison.

It was kind of like a theme park trip. We got off the metro and got in these little tiny moped car things and got carted off to the prison. It was seriously the most Egyptian I have felt since I have gotten here. We were swerving in and out of cars, racing down the street with the wind in your face, and Egyptian music in your ears. It might be the greatest experience of my life. Or, atleast, really close.

Once we got there we had to wait in segregated lines for forever. And then wait again once we got through security to take this tractor thing down to wait again to see the prisoners.

But, all the waiting was worth it. We went in to this cage thing (6 interns, the prison ministry guy and all the other visitors) and the prisoners came in. The ones that we went to see were mostly Nigerian and had been in there around 15 years.

They were all Christians and their lives had been transformed in jail. I spoke to one man for quite a while and he was one of the small group pastoral leaders in prison. He had been in prison for 16 years and he was so joyful. He knew that they had been brought to jail for a purpose to really transform his life to service. I asked him what his favorite verse was, and he laughed and said there are so many, but, appropriately so, he finally answered Matthew 5:3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He said it was really encouraging to all the guys that were in there to really know that they were finally in possession of what they really needed.

They were fantastic men and so encouraged just from our visit to see them. They loved being able to know that they were part of a greater body. They gave us these little trinkets that they made.

All these visits to see all these people who are struggling really put a new perspective on the meanings of joy and hope for me. I mean these people literally have nothing but Christ and they are provided for. They hope in the Lord, and they find joy. If you ever have an ‘I hate humanity day,’ I’d really encourage you to go to jail. You'd be surprised where you can find Jesus and see the purest forms of joy. I know they have some similar ministries over in the states.

And, if you’re reading this and are like wow Katie’s gone off the deep end, ha. I know everyone is not like these people. But, there are people that are. And those are the ones that are inspiring. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder. They’re diamonds in the ruff. Go watch Aladdin, you’ll understand.

Iftar

It's Ramadan here. And, for anyone who doesn't know, Ramadan is where the they fast all day and then break fast at Iftar (I don't really know how to spell that) which is at sundown about 6:00. This lasts for a month. They tend to be tired and cranky all day, and then at 6:00 they usually get together with friends or family and have a party where there is too much food for anyone to eat.

My host family invited me to their company's celebration since a majority of their company is fasting. (They're not, but tons of really good Egyptian food and music is something no one should ever pass up. Especially when it's at the JW Marriott.) I was their orphan child because I wore jeans and everyone else was kind of dressed up. They also introduced me as a squatter.

The JW Marriott is like this magical place. It's outside of down town Cairo and is like a world all it's own. We walked in and one of the girls I was living with was like oh my gosh it's like schlitterbauhn. They had a huge pool, wave pool, slides, and beachy sand areas. All these people on the beach were just with Haliburton. And, this is seriously in the middle of the desert.


This was our table. You can't really tell how much food is there. But they hadn't even brought out the main courses.


This was the main course. We also had tons of this macaroni and cheese type stuff with meat and yogurt or something. More vegetables, more traditional wrapped rice, pitas, and probably some other stuff I am forgetting. It was more than I could ever eat... and I eat a lot here.



And, the Iftar night ended with Kelsey and I getting henna with one of their friends. I'm thinking about permanently getting one. Except for the fact whenever I look down at my feet I forget that it's a henna flower, think it's a bug, and semi-freak out. So, probably not.



Last night we worked the Brian Doerksen concert (a canadian worship band). It was wonderful, I didn't take any pictures except for this one at about midnight when we were just finishing cleaning up the park. But, I know some other people did so I might post some of those later.


If you can't tell this is Brent and Matt sitting on the hood of a mini truck, holding stacked chairs as they drive down the streets of Cairo so that we wouldn't have to come back. Actually, Asha got up there too. We, the people inside the truck, were afraid that the roof was going to cave in. It didn't, but we didn't check for dents.

We're keeping busy here, I think they said we'd be slowing down a bit now but none of us have picked what kinds of things we're going to be working with this year. So, if you want, and wouldn't mind praying for me and my team to find our different niches as we finish up looking at the different organizations, I would really appreciate it! (Oh, and Emily just graduated from massage therapy school and got a job so you should all congratulate her too!)

Found

We finished cleaning the school today. And, just in time, because the kids start school tomorrow. It really is amazing what a coat of paint and some elbow grease can do. (not to mention co-workers with hearts of gold.)

I hope the kids will be excited about learning in their clean school… And that they don't hate the colors yellow and blue because I told them to get those colors… hah.

Here are some pictures of the final product that my friend Curt took.

This is George. He is the principal. We (really the boys did...I think I was scrubbing the floors with fuel to get up the paint) had time to paint their office today so he was really happy


This is one of the painted classroom. Nice, eh? About 20 kids are supposed to fit in these tiny rooms.


Haha. This is one of the pictures before the walls were painted. You can see how dirty they were. And, I think I was trying to make the daddy long leg at the end of the broom attack the boy with the camera.

These were the halls before we scrubbed and painted.



And after, aren't they pretty, sparkley blue halls? (that creative classrooms class I took this summer told me that blue was calming. That's what we were going for since 200 kids are in there a day.)


If this is how the whole year is going to be, then I'm excited. It's hard work, but it really pays off. And, I'm going to be really strong.

Clean

Well this last week was spent running around Maadi and trying to see some of the schools we'll be working with. We also went up to a Sudanese refugee school and talked to them about what they're doing. This one has been here for about 4 years and they're just here to support their community of refugees. They came here with nothing, and have built a school that teaches not only elementary and high school children, but teaches reading and writing to adults.

It's pretty amazing seeing everything that is happening here but it still feels like nothing we can do is enough. But, the hope is to provide resources and help so that they can develop themselves.

Here are some more pictures....

This is the Cario that I do not live in. It's on the way out to a refugee school. It's really a good thing it doesn't rain very much here because none of the windows in some areas have glass in them and a lot of openings in many of the houses are just covered by blankets.


These are my friends and co-workers. They're carrying cleaning and painting supplies because we are in the process of fixing up one of the refugee schools.


We scrubbed and bleached all the walls and floors. I did the bathroom. I almost threw up. But, it is beautiful now.




Just for fun, that little brown door and window is mine. And, that tree is the one growing out of the room next to mine. My host family lives in the house to the right. It is crazy nice.

كاتي

I learned how to write my name in Arabic today.

We've started taking extensive Arabic classes. 3 hours a day 4 times a week I think... It's going to be hard. Two hours of speaking, a thirty minute break, and then one hour of writing/reading. But, we're going to make it happen. There's six of us and so we're going to help each other out. It will be really great when I can actually communicate with people. Even though, one of the girls and I were talking about today, we kind of enjoy not knowing what the men say to us on the street.

I have this one Egyptian friend who is hilarious. One day we were asking her how she liked Cairo, and she went off on a tangent about how she hates so, so, so, so, so, so, so much Egyptian men. Apparently, there are some that are just terribly rude.

Ramadan starts pretty soon, which should be interesting. I've heard it's like a party every night. Everything is really relaxed during the day. Jacqueline said that everyone gets really lazy because they are so tired all the time. She also said when she was in college they would cancel classes like every day during Ramadan (which is like 30 days) because the prof would be so tired.

Everything is going great over here! I hope you are doing well.

Welcome to Cairo

Cario is pretty great, and everyone that I'm working with is so welcoming. I feel like I've been going to the church for years. I really have never experienced such a constant welcoming to complete strangers, it's amazing.

The Egyptian people in general are super friendly too. They really want to please you all the time. It's hard since I can't communicate very well yet, but we start Arabic classes next week so that's exciting.

I am just so thankful for all of this. Here are some pictures. I'll have more up later.

This is Cairo. It is not a bad picture. It just is really this polluted.


So, We went to the pyramids this morning



and I rode a camel.

This is some of my group. From left to right: Kelly (Texas), Asha (England - she is a worship intern), Cheri (Canada), Brent (Canada), and me. We're missing Curt and Matt. They opted out of the camel ride.

Well, that's all for now.

Arriving

I arrived in Cairo Sunday night, and after four airports, two delayed flights, and eighteen hours, I was finally here.

My first impression of the city was of the driving. When they tell you that Cairo has bad drivers, they are not exaggerating. I'm not really sure why they take the time to draw the lines on the ground. And, they really don't turn on their headlights at night. This is not just a rumor. But, some how, they each manage to fall into place and it's kind of, well, amazing that everyone is still alive and more people do not get in wrecks.

The family I am staying with is great. They've actually just moved here from Texas, and they have two daughters, both younger than me so I feel pretty much at home. (They also have two little dogs that are kind of crazy... just like my parents dogs.) I'm living in their garage apartment, and you can walk into the storage part of the garage where there is a Mango tree that they have built around. It is just like that Frank Lloyd Wright house in Chicago.

The suburb I'm living in is filled with trees. I was so surprised when I got here. They told me part of Maadi used to be a canal and where I live would reap the benefits of the flooding and that is why the soil is different here.

The streets are crowded and busy, but it's nice. Chaotic and peaceful all at the same time. I can feel there's a rhythm, and I think in time I'll just fall into it.

We haven't started work yet, I think we start Orientation on Wednesday, the 29th, and I'm not sure when we'll get started on projects but I'm pretty excited. This city is different in so many ways, but still feels so familiar. I just can't wait to see what is in store.

I'm hoping that this blog is going to work and gets more interesting when I start actually working. I'm planning on posting pictures when I have some.

Thank you again for your support and prayers. You all are wonderful.