Elisabeth's class trip to Nile-o-meter

We went to the pharonic village, took a nile cruise, learned how to make papyrus and saw the Nile-o-meter. It was pretty cool. The Egyptian culture teacher from the school was extremely knowledgeable and I just saw and took it all in. Below are pictures of the Nile-o-meter and an example of the oldest preserved arabic writing in Egypt. The Nile-o-meter was used to measure how high the Nile would flood, predicting how prosporous the people would be that year. It was incredible technology for that age and it is still used today to predict how the water supply in Egypt is doing.

Beautiful Elisabeth:)

Arabic writing on the ledge of the Nile-o-meter.

The Nile-o-Meter.

The mighty Nile River.

Race for the Cure

On Oct. 24th, me and the girls headed out to Giza to run in The Race for the Cure, Egypt. It was a pretty interesting experience. The race itself was only 1.2 K (a laughable 3/4th of a mile), but it was historic in that it promoted women and was around the pyramids. The organization was typically egyptian: chaos. The race course was NOT closed to tour buses, so they were trying to drive down the road while all 7,000 of us were trying to run by:) The start began with people behind and in front of the "start line", there were no water stops and there were no course boundaries.....but there were amazing women with pink head scarves, crying over the freedom of the experience. There were sufi dancers with bright skirts spinning, people helping others and encouraging others along (someone even picked up my camera that fell out of my bag and returned it to me) and a great feeling of commraderie among all the different races/cultures represented.

We got to walk/run with the US Ambassador and Embassy crew and with the NAMRU-3 crowd. It was great:)

Emma's class trip to the Pyramids

View from the Pizza Hut...wow, huh:) Cheapest meal for best view around. This is where an entire wall soap dispenser fell on Emma (picture 20 1st graders trying to wash their hands all at the same time) and she was literally covered in pink soap. Not super happy, but glad it was at the end of the day instead of the beginning.

Class picture.

Sphinx, close up.

Emma poking the sphinx in the nose (or lack of, as it were).

Emma "touching" the top of the great pyramid at Giza.

Rebekah tries her hand at blogging

Hey! How is everyone? Well, here it's okay. I have tons of homework. That's for sure. I really miss you all and hope you all are okay and having fun in the states with snow on the way or already falling. I wish there was snow here, but that won't happen maybe until a few hundred years or so. I took a few pics. I want to be a photographer, well, I like taking pics like my aunt Heather. I love your pics Heather! I really miss my cousins! I wish I could babysit all the youngsters or play with my older cousins. Obviously, I can't do all that stuff, so just imagine me there(but don't leave your kids at home imagining I'm there watching them). I am excited to go on my trip to the Red sea. I get to stay in a VERY nice hotel, and get to go snorkling there. I'm sooooooo excited about that. My family is great, as usual. My dad still makes weird jokes at the dinner table, my mom is still stressed as ever over everything, but she is REALLY trying to help me through my struggles, my brother is still teasing us girls 24/7, Elisabeth is, I think, having fun in third grade, Emma had a weird thing happen today, a whole soap(you know the ones on the wall in a public bathroom) fell all over Emma,in her hair, mouth,body,ect., Sarah is singing her head off still, and I am AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! School is really getting harder, but if you have a testimony of God, and are willing to serve and follow God, you can live through any hardship.

Elisabeth and I are wanting BADLY to do gymnastics. I was in a good class, in a nice level, a high level, and now it's all gone! There's no gymnastics here or at the school, so that stinks like diarea.

Hey Cahoon family! I want to hear from you! you all look too old to be true! How are you? Everyone! How are you?

I don't want to disclude anyone, but there are soooooooooooooo many people to talk to and say hi to, so I can only name a few. But please, everyone I know, tell me waz going on by emailing me or my mom! I want to know!
I want to know how everyone is, so email me.

Thanks! I love you all and miss you!
Rebekah

I Spy....going to the date farm

On our way to the date farm for the kindergarten field trip. 1 1/2 hour bus ride each way. We spy a pyramid (Saqqara) in the background?


We are almost there, how can you tell? We spy dates growing in the trees (hint: they are not brown yet).


We spy a man harvesting dates. He climbs up, wraps a rope around the tree so the basket can be hoisted up. His helper holds the rope tight so he can shake the dates into the hanging basket, then they crate the dates to deliver to various markets around Cairo.

We spy a drying mat, weaved from the date palm leaves. Dates, orange in color, are laid to dry. The drying sun causes them to release their natural sugars, which means you get a sweet, brown, shriveled, yummy date to eat when the process is complete.

We spy two different examples of public waterfountain in the local villages that we drove through:) Rere told me that as a child she used to take a drink and THEN wash her hands in these.....not thinking about others who would be thirsty after her. YUCK!

We spy a happy kindergartener who gets to ride on a donkey:) Lucky girl....not so lucky donkey (who had to carry about 80 students that day!).

We spy a bunch of Egyptian school kids who swarmed us as we looked around the farm and the irrigation system. They all wanted a picture before they would go away:) The bigger boy on the far left hand side was the "ring leader".


Well, now you have completed the "I Spy: Journey to the Date Farm". Hope you liked it:)

No rhyme or reason...just life.

I took the kids to Abu Hammad again (the 1950's look-alike retreat) and didn't get lost on the way there OR the way back, so I am feeling pretty good about myself:) I was reminded again how entertaining and stressful driving in Egypt is. We saw some CRAZY stuff on the roads, including a truck loaded with bales of hay, 3 x as tall as the truck itself, almost tip over. A big gust of wind came up and it tipped really far, but amazingly did not tip all the way over. I laughed...AFTER we were safely past!

The picture is of Rebekah on the way to her piano lesson. There are no zoning laws here, so you have a music studio right next door to someone's apartment and laundry hanging from the windows as you walk in to take lessons. That is the way it is when we go to the dentist as well. Pretty funny and a bit weird.

Brent is still gone....he emailed yesterday and said he was going to probably have to extend the trip for an extra 2-3 days, so that puts him gone from Sept. 28th to Oct. 14 or 15th. LONG TRIP! I think he is doing well and teaching a lot of good things to people. He sounds optomistic in his emails to us. Josh is in charge of taking care of his fantasy football team while he is away. Josh says he finally got the team to start winning some points:)

Kids are going back to school tomorrow. I have plans to sit in a darkened room with no sound or busy-ness and just breathe.....well, for a minute at least...in between all the catch up work I have to do to make up for all the time I spent teaching school the last 2 weeks. One thing for sure: all the kids are really grateful for the educational opportunities they have and for the chance to even go to school. I am much more appreciative of the time and efforts teachers put in on a day-to-day basis to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Here is a picture of our boab Sa'id (on the left) and the neighbor's boab (I don't know his name, on the right). Boabs are hired by the landlord to take care of the buildings/tenants. The tenants all pay him (or her....surprisingly there are some "her" boabs!) a bit each month. We pay about $50 a month. The boab helps carry stuff, keeps the steps clean, clean your car and just watches the property in general. The boabs usually live away from their families, with the family back in the village while the man works in the city. Our boab's wife just had a baby a few weeks ago. He took a couple of days off to take the 6 hour trip to see her and the new baby, and his other 2 children. Then, he came back. I feel bad for their seperation, but he does bring home better money than most farmers, so I guess that is why they do it. Today Said saved my parking spot for me, for which I was very grateful. We have a parking carport underneath our apartments, but no cars can really fit into it.....it is too narrow and the beams are too wide---good planning, huh! Since we live right across from a hotel and 4 restaurants, we deal with parking issues a lot on our street. Sometimes the boabs get into yelling matches over it, but usually it works out. I would just park around the corner and walk, but the boab likes having the car close by because then he doesn't have to walk very far to do the daily car wash/wipe down. I guess it is up to him to fight it out then, right?!

We watched the first session of conference on each Sat. and Sunday, on the internet from 6-8pm and then I put the kids to bed. I was able to stay up from 10p-12am on one of the nights, so I only missed one session. I am still hoping to download and watch the RS session, as it was on in the middle of the night. It is great that we can access the sessions and feel part of a whole for a little bit.

We missed you all and thought of you a lot durning this last weekend. Love ya and hope all is well!

Oh grass, how we have missed you!

We drove about 35 minutes to the outskirts of Cairo to visit a friend. She lives in this amazing, grass-filled, groomed, community. It is very quiet there, in fact a little too quiet. That would be because almost all of the surrounding houses are empty, uncompleted shells! Out of hundreds of houses in the community, only about 20 of them are finished and have people living in them. We walked around the beautiful pathways and didn't see a single person! In a city of more than 17 million, that is unusual:) In all the months we have lived here now, this is the first time we have seen such beautiful grounds and so much grass in one place. It was refreshing....even the air seemed cleaner.