Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Hanging out in Cairo

Sam watched World Cup till 1:00 AM. I woke up about 12:30 worrying about where he was (and I told him he could go to KFC tonight to watch—it’s not showing on our hotel’s TV stations). I got up and made sure he was OK and then couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m amazed at the cacophony of streets here at 1:30 in the morning.

Today and yesterday the kids did Alif Baa, our Arabic DVD, together. They finished the first unit today. I kind of did it with them yesterday, in between doing laundry in the bathroom sink and distracting the babies, but today I didn’t even make any pretense of it. They were getting to the part that I haven’t done, and I couldn’t keep up only half-watching. Instead, I ran interference with Isaac and Nora. This afternoon, Sam and Ruth and Ed all did Pimsleur, our Arabic audiotapes, too. Lucy didn’t.

After we’d finished Alif Baa, we walked to Zamalek. As we left our neighbourhood, Sharif, the teenager who stands on the corner near our hotel, ran after us to say goodbye to Isaac.

It was a fairly long walk and at one point we were stranded on a curb with lanes of freeway-speed traffic speeding by us on both sides. We eventually made it to safety, though. Zamalek is a nice area, much quieter and less bustling than where we are.

We had lunch at a pizza restaurant. Eleanor still isn’t eating much. Her diaper managed to come off in the middle of the lunch, but I think I was pretty discreet in getting it back on her. After lunch we strolled down the street and peeked in stores. There was a very nice bookstore with huge English and French sections. We spent quite a bit of time there. There were several toy stores that we checked out, looking for something to amuse Isaac while we study. We found a foam puzzle with the alphabet that I think you can also make cubes out of for a couple of dollars, so we bought that, and the man gave him a bottle of bubbles as a gift. So tomorrow he’ll have something to do.

We took a taxi home. I didn’t even haggle over the price. Just loaded the kids in. At least he didn’t ask for more than the price he originally quoted when I got out!

Sam and Lucy and Ed and Isaac walked to the kushari place and got us dinner to go. We ate it here at the hotel.

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