I can't get it out of my head...

Despite not having heard this song since approximately 1997, it has been in my head for the last week.

WARNING: There is a lot of 90s awesomeness, including two types of overalls on tough guys. And no, I don't understand the ladies dancing in front of cars or the strange ventriloquist dummy, either. If you have a low tolerance for music with excess soul, please start 50 seconds in.

the band's visit

Andrew and I recently watched a film I had been wanting to see for some time. I really enjoyed The Band's Visit. It is hard to describe how cool it is to actually understand the spoken Arabic.



Lest you be intimidated, the film has Egyptians and Israelis communicating, which is done mostly in English. Unfortunately, the trailer doesn't really catch the spirit of the film, but you can take a look anyway.

I'm missing Egypt...

...which may also be compounded by the fact that work and church responsibilities are back in full swing!


p.s. No, I did not always cover my hair. We are about to enter a mosque. And no, I did not wear a burqa, burtka, or boobka while I was there. (All actual pronunciations... I feel like I should join the mythbusters.)

Work Facebook

My employment has necessitated that I start a Facebook page for the nonprofit organization that I call home, which requires a personal profile. Not wanting to use my own, I had to start a work account.

I know several of you are thinking, "You're gone for two months and you come back to work and play on Facebook in this economy?" It's true. In fact, it is recommended.

It is weird 'friending' someone as my work self. They need to develop a new term. Thus, my aspirations of world domination via Facebook and our newly launched website are progressing quite slowly. (Perhaps the rest of the world is not as impressed that you can now request a volunteer OR sign up as a volunteer online.)

So, if you care about kids and education, I recommend you become a fan, supporting efforts to reconnect and revitalize the community through a coordinated campaign of volunteers and guest speakers.

I've been spending the last few weeks convincing my boss that Egypt should be a write-off since now I can be a guest speaker on the topic, thereby increasing our organization's capacity.

old alexandrian stuff for our friend seth

This is me in front of "Pompey's Pillar" which is really a misnomer as it was built for Diocletian. I have actually heard of him so therefore he is probably important. It is about 100 feet high. I touched it for you, Seth.

We also went to the Catacombs of Kom el-Shuqafa which was amazing. And the place that most tempted me to break the no cameras rule... Basically, it was a series of tombs that combined both Greek and Egyptian traditions and styles. (Which I see as symbolic of Seth and Andrew's relationship.) It was amazing to duck through all kinds of tunnels and see thinks carved in the first century. Pretty awesome. One of the coolest (literally and figuratively) things I've seen so far.

proof

A proud day

This week I proved for the first time that studying Arabic will one day feed my family. Michelle and I have a brand new oven in our Cairo apartment but we hadn’t used it because we didn’t have any cookware. We tried to light it, unsuccessfully, right after we moved in but I burned myself with a lighter in the process so I gave up. I know when all else fails to follow instructions but the instruction manual was entirely in Arabic and I couldn’t seem to find the section that had to do with lighting the oven, at least not on first sight. When we bought disposable baking pans and were desperate to eat meat we decided to try again. After skimming the instructions for a long time I realized that my knowledge of classical Arabic didn’t prepare me for the technical terms used in an instruction manual so I would have to translate my way through it or starve. I pulled out my trusty dictionary and made my best guess as to which section of the instructions had to do with lighting the oven. I translated the title and found out I was right. After skimming that section I still had no idea what it said so I set out for a word-by-word translation. Twenty minutes later, with my translation in hand, we successfully lit the oven. It was moment of triumph. It turns out that I just had to do the same thing I tried when we first arrived (I knew that lighting an oven ought to be intuitive) only I needed to burn myself a little bit longer with the lighter in order for the oven to catch. Celebrating small victories? That’s how I’ve survived four years of studying Arabic. And now I’ve proved once and for all that my translation skills can feed my family. Literally.