last day in cairo

I went to the refugee school at 8 and worked with the kids until around 10 then it was their break time. During their break Emanuel came over and wanted to do math again. MY dad showed up around 10:30 to read to the kids. All the kids were having a good time doing poetry with him and listening to him read stories. When we had to leave they were all sad and Emanuel ran over and gave me a big hug.

After we left and dropped my dad off me and M.J went to the zoo. The first thing that happened when we walked in was a man asked if we wanted to see a lion. We said ok then he lead us to a back room where a zoo keeper showed us lions. Then he said do you want to hold a baby lion, I said yes again. We went to another room and the zoo keeper gave me a baby lion, it was amazing it was like a giant kitten. Then the man took a picture and said 20 pounds. So we got in a big tussle with them then eventually gave him 20 pounds and got a ticket so we could go get the picture.

We went on and looked at all the animals and had allot of Egyptians want to speak English to us and some wanted to take pictures with us. After a while we wanted to go so we decided to go look for the photo hut to get the picture. We asked an Egyptian and he took us back to the man that tricked us into getting the picture. We found a map and eventually found the photo hut and I actually got the picture.

We headed back to the American school. I hung around there for a while then we went back to the apartment. At 4 peter and Ann came and picked us up to go the market. I can honestly say I didn’t get in to any trouble with cars this time. Peter showed us allot of cool shops and buildings then we went to dinner. We went to this really nice Egyptian place where the food was amazing and the people were even better. We were there for a while then we went shopping for a little bit then headed back to the apartment. And today were heading off on our cruise.

So today I had classes in the morning. Firs off I had integrated math. Here they just take all forms of math and throw them into one class instead of having algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2 ect. It wasn’t that much different from my math class in America ,we were doing the same ; but what was different was that at the end of class he gave us a problem we didn’t know how to do and told us to figure out how to do it. It was pretty interesting.

My second class was a theory of knowledge class. The teacher was crazy and I mean crazy. She was jumping around the room talking about exponentialism , getting into big argument with kids about the way people act and why. We talked about how we have choices and free will. We also talked about if we are actually forced to do anything if we choose not to. This class got really heated and crazy, it made me want to take a philosophy class.

Later I went to the refugee school wit h the suitcase of gift for the kids. We had t-shirts and office supplies for them. We gave the older kids the shirt because they were to big for the younger kids and we’re giving the younger kids the pens and pencils. The kids looked so happy to get new clothes. The teachers were very grateful as well.

For dinner we went to this good restaurant down town. The food was great but it took us along time to get out and Sara and my dad had to go to the book fair soon. We got there on time and now I’m waiting in the library for them to be done.

Tomorrow I’m going to the refugee school in the morning then my dad is coming to read to the kids. After that M.J crouch (the lady that’s been taking me to the school and helping me out) is going to take me to the zoo!

I went to the Sudanese refugee school again today. I had 2nd graders instead of 5th graders this morning so we just went over the alphabet. It was harder then you would expect. During lunch though one little kid named Manuel came over and wanted me to do math with him. He was really good at addition he could even go up to the thousands place and he was having fun doing it, but when I changed to subtraction his mood rapidly changed. He refused to do it and would draw in the second line to make the - into a +. We changed what we were doing to the alphabet and spelling after math and continued working together until 12 when the lower grades left and the higher grades came in. I read with 2 6th graders until it was time for me to go.

The elementary school librarian took Sara and me to a small part of the market where we went shopping in some silver stores and an artist gallery then we came back, and now we’re waiting for Thai food to be delivered to our apartment.

The refugee school is a small bottom floor apartment with 4 classrooms. Each room should hold 5 people tops but the cram 20 students into each room. They have a small courtyard outside where the kids eat and take their recess break.

I sat in on one of the classes before spending time with the kids. I had a small table and 2 chairs outside where I got to spend time with one kid at a time for 20 minutes. I read to them and I had them read to me. Then I had them write out words and spell some. Most of the kids I had are in 5th or 6th grade but could barely read. During their lunch break 2nd graders that wanted me to teach them the alphabet bombarded me. They already knew it but they wanted to show it off. I just kept seeing kids till 2 then headed back to the American school.

we then got taken on a felucca (Egyptian sail boat) ride by the head librarian and the elementary school Liberian. We didn't got out far we just left the current drag us most of the way, it was a very calm ride; i got alot of pictures. After that we got together with the elementary school librarian's daughter and two of her friends at T.G.I Fridays and i got to talk to them about the school. After dinner the parents headed to the market and we had dessert and headed back to the apartments.

We got picked up by our tour guide (George) at about 12 and we went to the pyramids first. It didn’t take us long to get there because they were a lot closer then you might think. First off the pyramids are huge. The blocks of granite that make it up are about four feet tall and each weight 2 tons, can you imagine how hard it was for the workers to stack millions of them to make the pyramids. In each pyramid there were deep holes where the excavators entered the tombs some were the actually tunnel the Egyptians used and some were made by the excavators. My dad and I went in to one of them, it was really cramped and small and when we got into the tomb there wasn’t anything except an empty sarcophagus. We left the pyramids and went and saw the sphinx it is a lot smaller then you expect but still wonderful to see.

We were heading towards the museum when the tour guide took us to a place and said we would see how the blow glass. We saw how they blow it and that was pretty interesting but then one of the workers in the store took us to a separate room and went on for an hour sales pitch trying to get us to buy perfume. When we finally got out of there we headed for the museum.

The museum was beautiful. It was filled with all kinds of ancient Egyptian artifacts and they had a copy of the Rosetta stone. We saw lots of different sculptures and thrones. We saw bed covered in gold and old wooden statues. The main thing we got to see was King Tuts belongings and sarcophagus. Every thing he owned was covered in gold and his sarcophaguses were each made out of pure solid gold weighing 250 pounds each. We saw the famous mask that you see every time you thing of Egypt it was amazing.

We got taken back to the apartment then got taken out to dinner by peter again. He took us to Al-Azhar Park. It was a former trash dump right by the city of the dead but they transformed it into a beautiful park. The park was right by a market. We got to go to the market and see everything there. While walking down the little roads winding the market some one came down the road fast as possible and I was really close to getting hit. But after that little upset we kept going and got to see beautiful building and a magnificent market.

I got to go to school today and I got a tour from peter which was nice. I got to meet a lot of the teachers and see a lot of place most of the kids don’t go. After that was over Sara my day and I went to this teacher apartment where he let us lounge around before we had to go to the book fair at the school. He made us a delicious dinner of quiche, salad, and potatoes and gave us cheese cake.

We then went to the book fair where I had to help 3 other high school kids watch little kids while there parents went shopping for books and that took up the rest of the night. Tomorrow I go to the Sudanese refugee school.

in cairo

When we arrived in Cairo there was a man waiting for us and on the sign it actually had my name on it along with my dad and Sara’s. He took us through custom and got us our visas and our bags. He took us out to a driver that was to take us to our apartment.
Driving was crazy. There seemed to be no driving laws to follow, people just went where they could as fast as they wanted. I though we were going to get hit for sure, but after a 45 minute drive we got to our apartment and peter from the school was waiting for us.

Peter and 2 kids that lived in a small house attached to the apartments helped us get our bags in. then he gave us about an hour to get cleaned up and get our bags unpacked then he came back and we went and got dinner.

On the way to dinner we got to check out the school because there was a Halloween party for the kids.

Dinner was great but I was so tired I really just wanted to get to sleep. On the walk back to the apartment we saw guards go and break up a fight between two local kids and it made me think "no matter where you are if you get a lot of teenagers together there’s going to be a fight.”
When we got back to the hotel we said our goodnights and ran into teachers from the school one of which was the math teachers whose class I was going to attend. We went upstairs lounged around for a while and finally got to go to sleep and today I get to go see pyramids.

crisis in rome

Just as we were about to go through customs I noticed I had lost my wallet. We tried to go back to the plane by using the tram that got us to customs but were turned away by the guard. We went through customs and asked a guard where continental was but he didn’t speak English so he got another guard but she didn’t speak English either finally on their third try they found one that did. He directed us to go to the lower level where he said continental was, but when we got down there was no continental in sight and no one was there to help. We waited for about 10 minutes then decided to look in the terminal so we had to go back through customs and this time they almost didn’t let me through because I didn’t have my ticket yet. When we finally didn’t get through we went to go find someone to get me my ticket to Cairo and somehow ended up back at the tram that we came on. We took it back and after a little walk around the departing gates we found the plane we flew in on and asked the lady about my wallet. Lucky for me it was still where I sat and I got it back. Then we found the V.I.P lunge and got my ticket to Cairo so in 3 hours time were off to Egypt.