Engagement Party

I had the day off, and I decided that I needed two more days in my hostel to really figure shit out. In a way, leaving the hostel can be a stretch, because it is a breach of the false comfort zone that one has set up for oneself. Either way, I took off with the intention of finding an English book store and going to the Egyptian museum. I also happened to eavesdrop on an American couple’s conversation at reception in the Hostel about finding an apartment, and it turned out that they had a friend in Heliopolis (the town where I wanted to be) who was looking for a roommate. Without much further ado, I piped in and got the number of this friend, setting a time to meet between five and six, to meet and talk about the apartment. So basically I had time to kill.

I found the book store, almost by mistake, but found the book that I seem to have lost at camp, “Cairo the city Victorious.”

Popping my head into a bakery, this one random dude stopped me and said “are you looking for some real food?” Since I am one to talk to strangers, especially when I don’t know how to pass the day, I put my guard up and said, “Yeah, actually.” And this man went on to explain that he didn’t want to come off as too forward, but that he studied English with the hopes of being able to practice it as much as he could. His nickname was Ali, but his name was Wael. Strange, but normal enough. He took me to an authentic Egyptian lunch, where there was only one thing on the menu, watched me eat and told me his whole life story. His father was quite rich and owned a papyrus company, he wanted to go to the United States one day, and he loved helping people. He then went on to ask me if I was willing to buy alcohol for him. Ha. I knew there would be a catch. I wasn’t sure about this, but I wasn’t quite yet ready to ditch this interesting character. So I stalled him, and gave him neither a yes or no. He then went on to saying how he could help me find an apartment, assuring that he could. He took me into his shop, and interoduced me to some of his friends who turned out to be Peruvian. They assured me that this man was nice, literally knew everyone in town, crazy, but completely harmless. Either way, I had time to kill, he was paying, and he insisted that he could help me out in any way possible. It meant that I had to grab my passport, but once I did, he bought me a tea, and we waited for his friend. We made it to the Sheraton no problem, where you could buy alcohol at the duty free shop. He then took me back to his shop, and showed me some of the papyrus that his father makes. I ended up buying two for an absurdly low price. One for Rudi, and one for me, both which I put in a package that would be sent home. We continued talking, but by this time, I had my guard up enough against this old fellow. He told me that the alcohol was for an engagement party, and that I was more than invited. I thought about coming, but at this time though, I had my meeting with David, a potential flatmate in Heliopolis, which was a great meeting. David was Norwegian, had studied in Cairo before, speaks Arabic, and seemed to know his way around town. We talked for a good 30 minutes, and hit it off real well, but by that time I had to take off back to the engagement party.
The party turned out to be a real hit. I was the only whitey there, but that didn’t really matter. It was a genuine invitation to an event that most outsiders would have a difficult time getting invited to. I introduced myself to the important people (the parents and the engaged), after giving them my gift (some extra Swiss chocolate that I had bought), I sat on the chairs for a while, watching the party go on. People dancing to Arabic music. Lots of clapping. Then at one point, the grandmother pulled me up and started dancing with me. Before I knew it I was in the center of the circle, being demanded to perform. I did, and people enjoyed it, morre clapping. A couple of phone number changing and facebook promises later, I took off.

In sum, life seems to be working out from random encounters, and I have begun to experience the extreme niceness which Egyptians are capable of. It is day 3, I have been to an Egyptian engagement party, and I have a roommate who seems legit in the area where I want to be.

First Cairo Impressions

Now I am in Cairo, writing this from the 13th floor of the restaurant in my hostel in downtown Cairo, over looking tall apartment buildings, unfinished top floors, mosques jutting upwards, banks, one church, and buildings with Arabic writing going up it. The city is endless, and the smog makes it so you can see faint silhouettes of sky scrapers, but nothing more. It is hot, but there is a breeze coming through the window. There are a dissonance of sounds; Arabic prayer coming through a loud speaker, honks from the traffic below, the buzz of air conditioning.

I just finished my breakfast. Two pieces of bread, jam, butter, and tea. I treated myself to some extra chocolate that I bought in Switzerland though.

The trip from the airport to my hostel was supposed to be painless. In less than 20 minutes, I landed, bought a visa, changed some money, and grabbed my bags to find someone waiting for me with my name. This was the assistant to the lady who was helping me to find an apartment, chosen because it was much trustier than just a normal taxi. Instead, it turned into a mini disaster when the car broke down on the sixth of October bridge. This is the largest bridge in Cairo, and it stretches over a large number of slums in the city. Yes, the car broke down, and the three of us in the car were behind it, pushing it, trying to get it to start in the midst of honking and traffic. It started once, but that was a tease because 300 feet later, it broke down again. We ended up pushing it off of the bridge for a good half mile to a place where I could take a taxi with Ahmed, the younger guy who came along. We made it to the hostel just fine, and he helped me buy a cell phone. This was key, because without it I wouldn’t have found the bus to the school the next morning.

The next day, orientation at the school where I will be teaching until June started at around 9:30, after being picked up by the staff bus in a downtown square (Tahrir Square) at around 8. It was definitely overwhelming the first day; to meet a number of people, my bosses, see my classroom, begin to learn the rules of the school, and knowing that what you are learning is just the tip of the iceberg to all of the little things that go into being a foreign teacher. Fortunately, everyone at the school is very pleasant, and there are also at least two others in my position, so people have extended themselves to being very helpful.

I now have the next two days off, maybe three, depending on when Ramadan decides to begin. The first day of Ramadan is when the Crescent moon shows itself, so it could start on either Sunday or Monday. There is no way of knowing until Saturday night. Tomorrow I will look at apartments, and I have a large amount of material to read and prepare. The way I see it, this whole time in Cairo will be a mental test; challenging my threshold to the complete foreign and my resilience to it. In work, it will be doing the best job that I can.

I am sure that part of me is going through culture shock, but that has been the plan all along. I know that this will be tough, but my goals are still the same, to learn Arabic, make friends, to learn about myself, and to find meaning in the Middle East.

more about camp

Before I go on to what's happening now, there need to be a couple recaps from camp.
Ninja assassin needs a proper explanation.

Let me rewind first. A lot of credit to this game should be given to the excursion that the juniors took to adventure park. Basically this place is an attraction ground for kids to the max. Not only does it have millions of games everywhere, but it also has the largest labyrinth in the world. It is huge. It is a bit stressful to lead 8 kids through it – each one wanting to go this way and that – and having to mediate between all of them. Some of the parts of the maze are actually pretty cool. There is a zipline, a spider cage, a rope that you are supposed to swing across. Of course my fat Russian kid, Vova, didn’t make it across this rope, and all of his change fell in the dirty pool. We ended up seeing a place where you could climb up, and made it out. In this park, they had some of the biggest slides that you had to go down with a burlap sack. To get to these slides you actually had to climb up about 7 or 8 stories, and the wind up there was definitely above hat speed. On top of all this, the people gave us about 500 water balloons and told us that in one part of the park there was going to be a water balloon fight. Instead of giving these out to kids, as counselors, we knew better, and kept them for ourselves.

That evening, when all of the kids had evening activities, Logan, Janine and myself made some coordinated attacks. Although I guess this could be seen as obnoxious, it was mostly for fun and to lighten up the long job that the specialists had with our kids. We started with Giuseppe down on sports one. Attacking him from storming down the hill, and me coming in from behind the large circus tent, he ran and ducked to get hit by little water balloon fray. Yann was next down at circus. At the time he was consoling a girl on the tight rope, but since Logan and Janine saw him first, and I was swooping around on the other side, I could not be informed of this in time. Boom. Direct shot on the chest. Soaked. At least the girl stopped crying. We then hiked up to get Daniel Banks (a largely disliked counselor who had taken my job as the Karate specialist). Instead of doing Karate with his one child, he was in the arts and crafts room. A couple squirts with the gun got him outside to some righteous point blank shots. Mattieu was next, an easy target at climbing. As a new staff member, he took it like a champ, and we weren’t too malicious. The last target was Alex at music. By this time, we had Kevin with us, and he was able to coax Alex outside of the music hall who then became berated with water. I kind of felt bad about this one, because we really did get him wet, and he had a dinner about 30 minute later.

Anyways, this planted the seed in people’s mind about Ninja Assassin. Ninja, because things this year have been ninja, from
Ninja chair - a game that takes place at santa maria that involves through a golf ball through a heart shaped hole, to Ninja horsehoe (the same game but with a clay horseshoe), to Ninja anything (anything that you do that is stealthy around camp).



So here's how the game worked. The night before, Logan and I carved out a Potato with the word Ninja on it, which we proceeded to soak up in red paint which made it the "ninja stamp." Then, with the 41 names playing, Logan took the first 20, I took the last 21 - so we wouldn't know where the names were, we decided who had to kill who, placed the name inside an envelope along with 10 balloons. Basically, you had to kill your name, and once you killed that person, then they were supposed to give you their name. You could kill them using a water balloon, a water pistol, or a water bottle. If someone was trying to kill you, and you got them wet before they could get you wet, then you had immunity from that person for one hour. The game went off without a hitch, and even though people were pissed they got killed, I am pretty sure everyone enjoyed it. Jenny won, but since she was cheap about it, it was the righteous thing to do to go down to Golf with about 40 balloons and 6 other people and make it rain.

To recap camp as a whole, it has been amazing, I am happy I went, and I have made some more great friends this summer. I will miss them all and all of the memories.

the train museum

Sometimes when it rains the activities at camp can be a real stretch, and drive kids and counselors absolutely crazy. It can be a lot of uno, wink murder, babyfoot, and card games. For our half day hike though, instead of having to entertain the kids for 3 hours when it was raining, the camp sent me and Julie to the train museum. About a 10 minute walk from camp, the train museum sits in town with surprisingly large space. The people who run it are true nerds, and passionate about their trains, but it gets completely lost on the kids who just want to run around and touch things (exactly what they are not supposed to do). It brought me back to the hobby that my dad shared with me when we built z-scale trains, and it actually was cool to see how they reconstructed a lot of the train towns. The immaculate attention to detail in these models reminded me of how my dad used to build his models, and revealed itself as very Swiss. In a way, it showed the roots of where my dad was coming from, as nerdy as it was. It was also kind of cool to see this one demonstration by the owner of a train that was over 100 years old, and was propelled by a wind up. 




Here is a picture of the train that goes up from Chamonix. The only Z-scale one. 

Music is the language that sets you free

Last night was definitely one of the best nights this summer. I had been bugging Kirk for a while about playing at the Jazz bar, Rhapsodie, and finally we set a date and made it happen. The instrumentation was Kirk on piano and singing, Alex on violin, me on drums, and Helmut (the owner) on Alphorn and Flugglehorn. We played two sets, and for me, it was an expression of music that had been building up for a while, and letting it out was the most soul-satisfying feeling. As a musician, being able to play something that the audience can feel without being able to put words to it, is the most incredible thing. From the feedback, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and a couple staff members said that it was the calmest they have been all summer by hearing the live music. We had a pretty large repetoire, and had so much fun playing every song. From latinified-techno songs like "harder, faster, better, stronger," to classics like "I will survive," "Summertime," "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone," some Alisha Keys and Coldplay songs, we kept it jazzy and lively the whole night. It was particularly impressive with Kirk who is really a Sax player - so he basically fakes it on the piano - being able to hold it down the whole night. The son of some famous piano player also heard us play in the beginning, Victor Rosenbaum, and bought us drinks. Helmut also let us know how he is going to sell the place, so this probably was the last time that we will play with him. 

3rd Session

So now the 3rd and final session of camp has begun.  Back in the juniors, with a very russified group, here are some enjoyable/distorted pictures of my campers.  In total, I have three from Moscow, one from Kiev, one from China and France, one from Guadalupe, one from South Africa, and one from England. They are a good group, and all get along quite well. I can definitely tell already that there will be a number of characters. In our drama class today, I convinced the instructor to do it outside, and we all went around camp walking in different fashions; like a robot, lord of the rings, zombies, on the red carpet, swimming, etc.. It was great because these kids are still at the age where there is no shame and they will do absolutely anything.  With the Russian boys, I have been learning new words. With my limited vocabulary we have some really good conversations. 

Dobre = nice/good

Sliznak = slug/bad person

Pajoot = bad

Te dobre?  Nyet dobre! Sliznak!! Ya ne sliznak, te sliznak. Pajoot!! Kagdila. 

sessions come and go, but legends are forever

This is my last day as a specialist, or Sensei Chris, and overall it was a blast, so here is a recap on a couple of highlights...

I had a number of records that the children could set which they got really in to. One of them was how many roundhouse kicks they could do without setting their foot down. This competition got heated when one boy Craig Einstein (yes, the great great nephew of Albert Einstein) was able to kick 305 times without setting his foot down. Another boy, Ascanio thought he could beat this record, which I promised him the chance to, but there never were open activities when he could come. So, on the third to last day when I had terrace duty, he brought out the shield, and on the terrace blasted away 350 kicks. Of course Craig was right there, and I gave him the right to rebuttal where he turned around and smashed 500 kicks right there on the terrace. Albert would have been proud.

 Craig, with Ascanio walking away defeated.


In the second half of the session, when I had groups for the second time, I also got to bring out the trampoline, which meant that people could fly off and do kicks. The "matrix kick" got really popular, where kids took off the little trampoline with one foot and saw how many kicks they could do in the air. As far as teaching a lesson goes, it made it a lot more of a relaxed lesson, but pretty much everyone enjoyed it.

Here is one kid who came to karate a lot doing a split kick. He wanted to learn how to fight people and defend himself, but clearly he will be most effective in a situation where he has a trampoline and can kick to people at the same time. 



What really made my day one day was when anabelle, who was filling in for Kirk brought a group to come Yodel in front of my karate tent. This all came about when I mentioned to her that Yodelling really should be an activity at camp.