Walk Like an Egyptian (Curriculum Specialist)

Thursday Morning here

which is the equivilent of Friday in this Muslim country - so it's the last day of our work at the Cairo American College. I'm going to swing by the Sudanese refugee school where Franklin has been volunteering at this afternoon to read the kids some Ashley Bryan stories. Then we are officially on a vacation. We hop a plane to Aswan and start a three day cruise down the Nile.

It's been a great experience at a wonderful school. Super staff engaged students and they have kept us busy. I'll be posting later in more detail - in the meantime here are some pics from a nightime street market run and I do mean run - our number one poet wrangler and curriculum specialist, Peter Ducket, the very long legged man with gray hair in one of the photos strides through the city at a pace that sets the rest of us mortals on the verge of breaking into a trot.

In a state of De-Nile

Today after school a couple of the librarians from the Cairo American College took us out on a falluca ride. A fallucca is a sturdy sailboat that plies the Nile. We drifted up the river with the tide and then sailed back as the sun set behind the pyramids. It was a perfect way to end another busy and productive day at the school. The staff here is making sure we are getting a rich Egyptian experience.

Part of that authentic Egyptian culture included mooring the boat to a dock a block or so from a TGIF restaurant where we all had hamburgers. The menu was pretty standard fare - but I would hazard to guess that not many of the franchise restaurants stateside have hookahs next to the tables.

Afterwards, near our apartment, we stopped with one of our host librarians at a local grocery where we bought some staples for the apartment, eggs, milk, bread that kind of stuff. We also bought a couple pomegranates at a quarter of what the price would have been back home. The librarian explained to the owner of the market that we were visiting poets and I ended up giving him one of my books. He in turn gave me a story.

He said that it is written that within the pomegranate only one of the juicy and tart seeds is blessed by god so that when one is peeling the fruit - it behooves one to be very careful not to lose a single seed because it is impossible to tell by looking which is the blessed seed.

There are a thousand lessons one can take from this parable - but I know I will never peel another pomegranate without remembering Cairo.

Cairo - day one

Well,

I was happily surprised by how impressive the pyramids were. I had heard from several folks that one could be underwhelmed by the size of the tombs in real life. I disagree - they were wonderful on the seven wonders of the ancient world roster definition scale.

I knew the sphinx was not very large – relatively speaking so I did not expect too much from it so I was not disappointed. Frank and I did go into the second pyramid – taking the claustrophobic, steeply downward angled, nearly airless and stiflingly humid tunnel into the depths of the monument along with busloads of screaming elementary school aged children. Definitely not a trek for the asthmatic or easily spooked as the average height of the route I guess was around four foot. Luckily halfway down the passageway it opened up into a small chamber where the ceiling shot up to lofty level of five foot or so – allowing me to uncoil my back a bit. The burial chamber at the end of our journey was of course empty and about the size of Winnebago. I’m glad we did it, but it is definitely one of those did it once – don’t need to do it again experiences.

From there our guide took us on the obligatory separate the tourist from some cash destination. Now I don’t know for sure – but I think it is a pretty safe supposition that these guides supplement their income by steering their clients to certain opportunities to spend money. For example, in Bali a tour we took included being taken to an artist’s house who was selling his pen and ink drawings. His work now proudly hangs in our house. Here we were brought to a perfumery where we watched glass being blown and received a thickly accented treatise on the advantages of Egyptian herbal extracts and then maneuvered toward the purchase of three hundred dollars worth of various unctuous concoctions. We demurred – opting to pick up a much less expensive bottle of eucalyptus oil. We also let our guide know we felt we could skip the papyrus factory and instead headed directly to the Museum of Antiquities.

Two hours are not enough time to really see the museum – but that was all the time we had. Realistically – jet lag was beginning to swim around our skulls and two hours was most likely all the attention span we had left. Even in our foggy states, the collections impressed. The King Tut exhibit was literally breathtaking. Seeing the gold death mask ubiquitous to all things Egyptian for every westerner just four or five inches behind a glass display case was much more moving than I had expected. What was amazing though was the sheer quantity of the artifacts that came out of the tomb. I was very impressed, especially since I worked for a moving company almost three decades ago and can appreciate expert packing. Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed inside.

To be cont…

pics from pyramids

like a whirling dervish

Today blew by like a sandstorm - no time for a real post have to get some sleep in order to be able to be on my toes at school tomorrow.

sara me and frank

Waking in Cairo

Well,

The trip here was fairly uneventful. Long and somewhat grueling - but nothing compared to going to southeast Asia. We did have a lost wallet scare for an hour or so in Rome - but somehow - miraculously - we were able to get it back. My son Franklin, of the lost wallet, has started a blog to chronicle his side of the trip -

http://frankiesalinger.blogspot.com

Today we tour the pyramids and the museum of Egyptian antiquities. Sunday we start school - the week here runs Sunday through Thursday so Sunday is their Monday.

to be continued...

Sometimes you just want to...

So
we're getting our act together little by little to get out of town. I have the collected stories of Eudora Welty - but the travel time all totaled is around 22 hours so I decided to pick up some back up reading.

There are a few books that I always say were watershed moments in my literary career when asked. Most of them I do not remember though - I just know they made a big impression - so I have decided to start re-reading some of these tomes.

Sara and I stopped in at the local Barnes and Noble.

Do you have Celine's Death on the Installment Plan?

Not in stock no, I could order it for you.

No I don't have time, what about Journey to the End of the Night - same author.

No sorry

Okay, how about The Trial, by Kafka?

Let me check, how do you spell the author's name?

You would have been proud of me gentle reader. I did not rip the clerk a new one - did not say EXCUSE ME? You work in a bookstore and you're asking me how to spell Kafka? I just calmly spelled it out for her.

Sometimes...

What Sphynx in here?

Okay,

Our next overseas adventure is waiting in the wings like an antique bathtub (sans overflow escape) filling down the hall. I can hear the water running, the sound changing pitch as it gets closer and closer to the brim but I am stuck on an important phone call and the cord won’t reach into the tile floored bathroom.

I can’t hang up, but I can’t ignore the looming flood and now the cat just ran by with a still alive chipmunk in its maw and there’s a kid in full marching band regalia straining with boxes of smoked almonds at the front door.

So much to do that it’s easier to ignore it all and post a blog.

This coming Thursday we head to Egypt! Sara and I are teaching at the Cairo American College for a week and then we are going on a three day cruise (sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…) down the Nile! We’re taking my younger son Franklin with us. He will be enrolling in the school we are teaching during the day and volunteering at a Sudanese refugee school afternoons – this should put a different perspective on some things for the young man

I’d be even more excited if we hadn’t crammed our every hour of the week before we leave with gigs and obligations. This is the rip the band aid off in one quick pull approach to overseas travel.

I am confident that muscle memory experience will pull us though this one – once we whip out our passports at the ticket counter we will transform and mesh into lean mean traveling machines. Shuffling forward in lines of humanity, dragging our Sisyphysian bags, eating whatever is provided in compartmentalized plastic platters by smiling flight attendants ‘cause ya don’t know when you’re gonna be fed again, boarding passes being the one constant as the surrounding environs become more and more foreign.

Yep – less than a week to go and we’ll be rocking in the cradle of civilization – but first, I’ve got to take my shirts to the cleaner.

could be worse - it could be Newark - wait, it is Newark!

just
a quick one.

Sitting in Newark now waiting on a plane. It's gonna be one of those little jet prop egg beaters similar to the one I just took here from DC. My kidneys haven't had a workout like this since I quit drinking...

Been a good couple days.

Keystone State Reading Association conference in Philly followed by a day spent with daughter in law and kids in Virginia that included a pee wee football game - which I got some great action shots of to be posted later.

Working at Playhouse Square Ideacenter tomorrow with their Fall into the Arts program - this is sort of a speed dating approach to professional development - five twenty minute sessions with groups of teachers - wham bam here's your plan...

6:44 and it's dark out

Telephone Survey

The phone rings
I answer before I finish swallowing
So
I am choking on my lunch
As I gasp I imagine
Dropping the receiver
The recorded message continuing efficiently on
My skull careening off the kitchen counter
Like the first bounce of a cue ball
Tossed down a flight of concrete steps
I will instinctively and ever so momentarily
Regain my balance
Then slowly spinning on my left heel
As a pastoral paddock gate
Silently swings in an early spring breeze
I list then fall onto the white tiled floor
Eyes as wide as a hoot owl
The color washing from my flushed cheeks
I begin to turn blue
My dogs sit side by side in the doorway
Cocking their heads in mummed amazement
While my hands become the feet of a chicken
Hanging in Chinatown butcher’s window
My right leg kicks as if electrically stimulated
Upsetting the cat’s water dish
I convulse like an automobile running out of gas
Then become exquisitely still

My dogs simultaneously cock their heads in the other direction
The larger of the two ventures forward
Sniffing as if he is reading the smells around my body
The other
Jumps onto the counter
And finishes the macaroni and cheese