Egypt – Josh’s Travel Blog

First Sandstorm

This past week I had my first taste of a sandstorm! It had been warm for about two weeks prior to the storm; daily temperatures were ranging from 60 F in the morning to 72-75 F in the afternoons. Come to find out, that was unseasonably warm for late January and early February.

The storm began Tuesday afternoon, the 10th. It was warm for much of the school day, and the morning sky was clear. Once I dismissed the last class of the day, I looked out the window and was a little surprised to see the sky and buildings looked yellow-orange outside. I had seen colors similar to this on hazy days, so it didn’t occur to me that this was a sand storm…just another hazy day, I thought. (But wait, weather in Egypt is not supposed to change this fast, is it? I thought I left all that in Kentucky!) We had a faculty meeting immediately following dismissal. Once that was over and I packed up to go home, I saw the wind whipping trees and shrubs around on the school grounds. I also noticed the canopy covers in the inner courtyard were flapping under a lot of wind. Oh, so this must be what a sandstorm is like! I went home and could hear the wind howling past the side of my apartment building the rest of the evening.

I wake up the next morning on Wednesday, come outside to wait for the bus, and the sky is still orange! The air was also colder and heavier than I remembered. Once at school, I saw the halls had lots of sand. Very soon into the day, the teachers were told no one was to not go outside for recess. Air quality was just too bad for physical activity outside. It was decided after lunch time that after school activities would be cancelled for the day. No Percussion Lab for my two enthusiastic drummers! According to one of my Egyptian coworkers, this storm was the longest, most severe storm for Cairo in the past six years. Calls had to be made to the parents, and the school bus schedules had to be rearranged to take everyone home by 3:15. I found a news article mentioning the sandstorm had shutdown Cairo Airport to all arriving flights. That’s when I took a photo of the sky outside my villa, and the landing just inside the main entrance.

I think one of my colleagues suggested that we close the main entrance door to the villa. That would have been a smart idea, although sand would still have made its way through cracked windows in the stairwells. At any rate, the floors and handrails were covered in sand when we came home. On Thursday a friend found this Buzz Feed News article showing photos around Cairo during the sandstorm. The video at the top of the article is from Aswan in May 2014 when a similarly severe storm hit the town. The rest of what you see are buildings around Cairo and the Middle East affected by the storm of this past week.

Thursday morning still had an orange sky and colder temps, but I was told the storm was supposed to clear out during the day. And that it did! Here is the same spot at the villa after coming home Thursday afternoon, one day after taking a photo of the sky during the storm.

20150212_164002 — After. Thursday afternoon.

So now I have lots cleaning to do this weekend. Even though I kept my doors and windows shut, sand was still able to leave its mark on every level surface. But at this point, it will have to wait for tomorrow. It’s now past 11:00 pm.

In other news, Spring Break plans have partially materialized! My parents and one of my brothers are coming to Cairo in April! We will spend a few days here, then we hope to go to Luxor in Upper Egypt where many ancient Egyptian temples and burial sites are located. If it’s possible, we will also go to one or more of the monasteries of ancient Scetis, where most of the Desert Fathers lived and pioneered the monastic life for Christendom. This area is in between Cairo and Alexandria, just about a 90 minute drive from downtown. I’m excited!

First week back from Christmas

I’m back in Egypt after flying from home in America. I had a wonderful time visiting family, friends, former coworkers, and students! My trip took me first to Newark airport, then Munich, Germany, and finally to Cairo. I saw some large, fascinating churches as we were circling and descending to land in Munich; I wasn’t able to get pictures of them because my seat was not near the window.

School started on Sunday the 11th. Usually we will have a morning assembly on the soccer field, but it was cancelled because it was drizzling and abnormally cold: about 5 C, or low 40’s F. It was also very cold inside the school. Since Egypt does not have as much lumber resources in its arid climate, all the buildings have walls made of concrete and no insulation. Pairing this with standard high ceilings makes them ideal for keeping relatively cool in the summer. But with the winter temperatures we were having, the concrete walls having no insulation, and the high humidity, every room felt cold even with heaters going constantly. Thankfully the moisture was mostly gone the next day, and temperatures warmed up by Wednesday. In the last few days, temps have been ranging daily from 50-65 F, with forecasts of 55-75 later this week. I’m not sure if the forecast is more normal seasonal weather, or just a warm spell, but I’ll take it!

It definitely would be nice to have the low 40’s back home, I’m sure! But with living in any new country, there are trade-offs. In America, and particularly in my home state, winter months are colder, sometimes as low as -15 C or 0 F. But the houses are built with insulated walls and good heating systems, so the coldness only gets to you when you’re outside. In Egypt, the winter nights are generally warmer– sometimes 5 Celsius, or the low- to mid-40’s F. However, with the walls naturally being cool and having no way to retain heat, I sometimes have to go outside to get warm! Thank goodness for flash water boilers and plenty of tea!

This week my school will have Monday off as a holiday since it is the Coptic feast day of Epiphany. So I hope to go to the Egyptian National Museum then. Then next week, we will have a Sunday off as a government holiday, making a longer weekend. During that time I hope to go with a Coptic parish on a day-long retreat to the monasteries of St. Mina and St. Philopateer (Mercurius). It will be the only three-day weekend until Palm Sunday in April; might as well take advantage of the breaks while I have them!

My New Home

This is quite a hiatus from posting! It has been quite an adjustment since coming here. I have a new home, new school with new colleagues, students, parents, new culture with a new language, church community, friendship circles, ways of getting around, food, and places to go and see. After more than three months living in Egypt, I still haven’t found time to visit the Giza Pyramids yet! Hopefully soon.

So here’s a little about where I live. If you look on Google Maps at Cairo, you’ll notice a long road circling the city. This is called “Ring Road.” The Nile River separates the big city: on the east side of the river is Cairo city proper, and on the west side of the river is the city of Giza. Both places are under different local government jurisdictions, called Cairo Governorate and Giza Governorate, respectively. I think of Governorates as a loosely related term to State governments in the US, though I haven’t done any research to see if that is a correct way of thinking of things.

I live in a “suburb” called New Cairo. There’s still at least a million people living there, and many consider it part of greater Cairo, so it’s not really a suburb. Perhaps you could think of it like Manhattan or Brooklyn in relation to New York City. New Cairo is just outside of Ring Road on the east side. Another name used for this place is Tagammoa El Khames, in Arabic meaning “The Fifth Settlement.” I’ll write in more detail about New Cairo later. Now for some photos!

I live in an apartment building with eight other teachers from ISE. Below are some pictures of my apartment:

And to the left out of view from the living room is a door out to a balcony. And it’s the best part!

I later learned that the mosque in view of my balcony was the mosque ex-President Mohamed Morsi used to attend while he was in power. Now he is in prison and his political party has been outlawed. But taxi drivers still point out his mansion almost every time I ride past it; it’s hard to miss, and is located in a busy street not far from where I live.

I hope to make more posts about where I attend church, and about my school. God willing, of course. Right now we’re at the end of the first trimester at school, and gearing up for the Winter Show. Next few weeks will be busy. I miss you all!

Flight to Egypt: A Recap Part 2

I am already in the middle of the second week of school, and it’s hard to know how all that time has flown by! Since Egypt’s people are culturally Islamic, the work week revolves around the religion’s traditional weekly day of prayer. That day is Friday instead of Sunday; as a result, the Egyptian weekend starts with Friday and ends with Saturday, and the work week begins on Sunday. Our school follows the same schedule: our first day was Sunday, August 31, and we are now halfway through the week, even though it’s Tuesday. It’s been a crazy whirlwind so far!

I left off last time with me touching down in Amman, Jordan. I had about a 90-minute layover at the airport, from 4:30pm local time to around 6pm. It was just enough time to walk to the proper terminal for the flight to Cairo, get settled, and observe the surrounding area: all flat desert, with a small number of buildings in the distance across the runway. The airport seemed to be on the outside of Amman, but I could not see the city itself from the airport. All announcements over the airport were given in Arabic, and I could definitely tell I was in a foreign culture. On the way to Jordan, the announcements were given in Arabic and English. I suppose having the English still made it feel like home in some way. While waiting for the next flight, and until I met with school staff in Cairo, all communication around me was Arabic. While about half of the women veiled their heads in the traditional Muslim fashion on the way to Amman, the flight to Cairo had most women wearing the hijab. Few of the men dressed in a traditionally Arab manner as well, wearing the ghutrah and agal head dress with a robe called a thawb.

I boarded the plane and was able to get a text out saying I was leaving Amman. Again, all the flight attendants and the captain exclusively spoke Arabic, so I had to follow the actions of others and the lights indicating seat belts had to be worn. I was given some paperwork for Egyptian Customs, making the required legal declarations. Happily, it was finished before we backed out of the terminal. I was put on edge as the plane was turning onto the runway. Usually in America, a plane will turn on the runway and sit idle for a few seconds. Not so this time! Instead, I could hear and feel the captain engaging full throttle for take off as he was aligning with the run way! That was certainly more of a dangerous move than the typical American is used to! But it ended up being fine: I was able to watch the edge of the runway along our side and once the turn onto the runway stopped, the plane never had to correct its course down the runway.

I was once again at a window seat, so I could take pictures of the desert as we flew to Egypt. Interestingly, I observed from our flight path screen we had to completely avoid Israeli airspace. The plane flew straight south along the Jordan/Israeli border, and turned west once it was clear of the southern tip of Israel. But that allowed me to get some shots of the Sinai peninsula! The sun was setting as we were descending for Cairo, so I could see the building lights flickering on. Not much for a camera to catch anything, though.

We landed and taxied near the airport terminals, but we did not park near a terminal. Instead, I came off the plane with the passengers on a mobile staircase and boarded a bus. The bus let us off at a place in the airport that looked like customs and immigration. Before getting into the line for customs, I had to purchase an Egyptian touring visa from a bank in the room. I was told ahead of time that the visa price had gone up from $15 US to $25 US. Curiously, I looked at the new, official visa and the price indicated on it was still $15 US. Seems someone was making a buck, but it’s hard telling who. But it’s also something that’s different about many other countries: bureaucratic racketeering can be much more common than in the States.

Anyway, I cleared Customs, collected my luggage, and met some of my colleagues for the first time! The Head of School, 8th Grade Homeroom, and Art Teachers met me in the airport lobby. I also saw some familiar faces from Chicago and Amman; they turned out to be the school 4th Grade Teacher, 9th Grade Teacher, and his wife! We made a quick stop to a duty-free shop and then loaded our stuff onto an ISE school bus. While we rode to our apartment building (referred to by everyone as “the villa”) Ellen, the Head of School let us know we would be dropping our stuff and sleeping at the villa, and then drive out at noon the next day to a resort at the Red Sea!

We arrived at the villa and I was given the key to my apartment and an Egyptian cell phone provided by the school. Fortunately, they had ordered dinner at another teacher’s room. The food was all Egyptian cuisine, including Koshary, which is a distinctive and popular dish in the country. I met three other new colleagues and we comprised the group that would be going to the Red Sea the next day. The Head of School and Art Teacher would not be going with us in order to accomplish things at the school. So all in all, we were a group of eight that would head out the next day. And that will be the focus of the next article!