Recent Adventures

The fam in Tokyo! Can't believe we got a picture
with all of us smiling at the same time.

I refuse to beat myself up over not updating, but where did summer go again? Oh wait it's definitely still summer, evidenced by the strength of the sun and the heat of each day. And the length of my days! Summer means extra summer camp classes for me, which means longer hours. I'll blame my absence these past two months on that.

Since June started I've been to Danxia Mountain, Hong Kong, Macau, Tokyo, and Dongchong beach outside of Shenzhen. And they've all been some wildly different trips! So continue on for a picture-heavy recap of my summer so far.

Croatian Explorations

As you may or may not know, I had the last week off of school.  Fall break came laden with expectations, as people went off to Stockholm, Dublin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome, Naples, Istanbul, Sicily, the Cinque Terre, Madrid, Marrakesh.  Yeah, major cities or tourist destinations.  And our plans had started off big: we were going to get Balkans EuRail passes and head into Serbia, exploring Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania before heading home in only 10 days, in the ambitious way that plans always begin.

We then had everything fall through.  The flight we'd booked home from Bucharest?  Canceled.  The EuRail pass?  Impossible to get.  A week before fall break began, we had only a bus ticket to Novi Sad, Serbia, and big expectations.

The Beginning of the End

A lot has happened in the past week that I have failed to blog about - sorry! An unfortunate side effect of doing all these things is that I haven't had much time. So I'm gonna do 2 blog posts in rapid succession- this one on our recent work with St. Andrews', than one later on about our vacation to Sharm el-Sheikh.

So last week was, in some respects, our last week of normal class. Tonight and the next two days are going to be review and wrap-up and a celebration of our last day, so we won't be teaching anything new. But last week's outing was really fun: we met our kids at the Sadat metro station and walked them down along the Nile to where we could take a faluka ride. 16 of our kids showed up, which was amazing - we did not expect so many of them to transport themselves all the way to Garden City just to go on a boat with us. 

Juweria, Zaynab, Ifrah and Samira

Allow Me To Present...

Pictures! Yup, one of the added bonuses of having our own internet is that I am actually able to post pictures to things. So, here's the Shutterfly slideshow, conveniently located in this post. I haven't totally figured out this Shutterfly thing, but I think this link should always bring you to my share site, even if I post new pictures onto it. Unfortunately, I'm honestly not sure. I think it's weird that the website doesn't allow you to be constantly upgrading and editing published albums, but maybe I just haven't figured out how yet.

In other news, today's a day off for us - we were supposed to be doing some kind of field trip, but that got relocated to tomorrow and, since they'd already canceled with the secondary volunteer sites (for me, Ana al-Misri), Zoe and Ustaz Lo decided we deserved a day off. So, last night we went on a late-night faluka ride on the Nile (complete with our speakers and lots of singing) after watching the World Cup game at the Hard Rock Cafe, and today we're just relaxing (maybe shopping...?). But enjoy the pictures!

Today I Learned...

Okay, more like "these past three-ish weeks I learned," but I decided to enlighten you on the little things in Cairo while I upload photos to my new shutterfly account! Mostly because Facebook refuses to let me upload photos. Stupid Facebook. Anyway: