Athens

Pardon the title--it's 12:30 AM and I am still awake! So I got ready to blog about Greece and made the list of the pictures I need to resize and upload. There are over 40 pictures I want to share. So I am going to post our Greece trip in parts. I'm not very good at condensing and eliminating pictures...unless you consider that we took over 200 while we were there.

We left Cairo at 4:00 AM on Friday morning. It seems that all flights that aren't operated by Egypt Air leave at ungodly hours of the morning. Since we left for the airport around 2:00, Jason and I had hardly slept and Luke had gotten about 5 hours of sleep. The flight to Athens was 3 hours. It wasn't too bad, and Luke slept for part of it. When we arrived in Athens, we took a taxi to our hotel, which graciously agreed to let us check in even though it was 7 AM. We put our bags down and resisted the urge to go to sleep. The hotel also let us eat breakfast for free.

Jason had planned an hour-by-hour itinerary for us that hit the highlights of Athens. We went straight from breakfast to the National Archaeological Museum, which was pretty near our hotel, so we were able to walk there. The weather was sunny, cool, and beautiful. Here we are outside.

And here is a picture of what was mostly inside...naked statues. I told Jason we could've made a game up for Luke to play called "count the genitalia..." (You didn't know this blog was rated R, did you?)

The museum might have been more interesting had we not had such minimal sleep and had we not had a tired 2-year old with us. There was some really cool pottery, jewelry, and golden Minoan masks, but there's only so much of that one can truly appreciate.

So after the museum we headed toward the parliament building to see if we could catch the changing of the guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It happens on the hour, and we arrived at 11:15. We decided not to wait for it, but we stopped in a park across from the parliament building to plan what to do next. While we were there, Luke made friends with this little Greek boy named Arris.

The park was really pretty and Jason wanted to take a nice picture of Luke and me--here it is:

Luke threw a fit because he didn't want to stand by me for the picture. Lovely. (I'll blame it on lack of sleep, not on any lack of affection for his beloved mother.)

We decided to leave and walk to a part of town called Plaka. It's a really pretty part of town with nice shops. It felt so far removed from Cairo and very clean and westernized! I was instantly happy. Here's Jason near the Hotel Adonis on a very pretty street.

We searched for a restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet called Byzantino. Just before we reached it, several different restaurant hosts began vying for our business. They approached us with menus, told us the specials, offered free wine and dessert, and disparaged the other guys' restaurants. We liked one of these guys better than the Byzantino host, so we ate at another place. (Can't remember the name.) It was our first chance to eat Greek food. We ordered spinach pie, fried zucchini balls, and maybe fried cheese. I had soup, and I can't remember what Jason ordered.... It was all pretty delicious. We drank the free wine but didn't eat dessert.

The restaurant was pretty close to the Acropolis, which is where the Parthenon is. We walked up a pretty steep street to get to it, only to discover we were at the back side of the Acropolis. We had to walk all the way around the place to reach the front entrance. We walked through a neat little village, though, so it was actually really fun.

I loved how they paint the buildings white to reflect the sun. Everything looked so fresh and bright.

Luke fell asleep in the stroller while we were walking to the Acropolis, so we decided to sit down and let him sleep for a while. I didn't want him to sleep through seeing the Parthenon, since he'd been saying all morning, "I'm going to go see the Parthenon!" I decided to lie down too...the stones were so cool and inviting... Jason was the only one who didn't nap.

Also, they don't allow strollers around the Parthenon (why?) so we eventually woke Luke up to go inside. It's such an impressive place--temples everywhere, and then the actual Parthenon itself, which unfortunately is covered in scaffolding and you can't walk around inside it. I was a little disappointed. I guess Egypt's monuments and temples have spoiled me--you can climb right in the Great Pyramid and walk all around the temples in Luxor. Anyway, Jason was great--he kept Luke busy and let me see everything. I was really probably more fascinated by the Parthenon than he was. Probably because in 6th grade when we had to dress up as a Greek god or goddess, I was Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. We have this great picture of me in a silver war helmet wearing a white sheath (which I think Kari used later to be She-ra for Halloween) holding a silver javelin and a shield with an owl on it. My teenage attitude had hit long before, and I had this spectacular scowl on my face. (Mom--if you know where that picture is, scan it and send it to me and I'll post it!) Here I am reenacting the picture in front of the Parthenon:And here is precious Luke (in a better mood since his nap) showing us how BIG it is!



These are the Caryatids, which are part of the Erechtheion, a temple in which Athena and Poseidon-Erechtheus were worshipped. The figures you see here are actually concrete casts of the originals, 5 of which are housed in an Athens museum. The other is in the British Museum.

After the Acropolis, we walked to the Roman Agora and the Ancient Agora, which were ancient marketplaces. They were interesting, but didn't take too long to see. Inside the Ancient Agora was the Temple of Hephaistos, which was cool because you could walk right up to it and see inside. It had some neat (but decayed) carvings on the front depicting the feats of Herakles. It reminded me of the buildings in DC that have the sculpted figures on the front, and made me wonder about the eventual decay of our own civilization... Anyway, here's the picture of that temple:

We were pretty wiped out and ready for dinner after seeing all of that stuff. Jason did a great job of organizing our itinerary and had planned dinner at a nice restaurant facing the Acropolis. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasn't open, so we were FORCED to eat at this restaurant called Chocolat. Twist my arm, really! We sat outside where we had this view of the Acropolis:
We ordered hot chocolate, but then had to move inside to warm up because the weather had gotten chilly. After that packed day, we crashed back at the hotel, grateful for the hot showers, comfortable beds, and the fact that the busiest part of our trip was already behind us.

Tomorrow....Crete!

Luke is 3!!!

We wanted Luke to feel extra special on his birthday. After all, as anyone who's ever heard the Jason Deutsch Birthday Philosophy knows - on your birthday, it's YOUR DAY! Luke's already got this sort of figured out. He even tried to finagle a felucca ride on his birthday, saying, "Mommy, can we go on a felucca tomorrow since it's my birthday?!?" Crafty already. We had other plans for him, though. We planned a fun but low-key day from start to finish for our sweet three-year old.

Luke has recently declared Jared's Bagels his favorite restaurant. It's a really nice little bagel shop near our house. We eat bagels there just about every weekend. When the weather's nice we sit outside, and when it's hot, we relish their air conditioning. Anyway, Luke LOVES bagels, so he and I started off the day with his new favorite: chocolate bagels. As he was eating his bagels, he was singing "B is for Bagels, that's good enough for me! B is for Bagels, that's good enough for me! Be is for Bagels, that's good enough for me--OOh, Bagels bagels bagels starts with B!"
After our breakfast, we played at home together and watched a bunch of Sesame Street podcasts together on the computer (he LOVES these). We had Luke's favorite lunch (peanut butter and jelly--that hasn't changed) and played some more. He was extra sweet yesterday, and I indulged every request to sit down and play with him. I put him down for his nap at about 2:00, knowing he'd need a good rest before the little family party we had planned when Jason got home from school. Luke had other ideas, though, and didn't sleep a wink! He was good and stayed on his bed and just talked and sang to himself while I got his cake ready.

His cake was a special challenge this year. I didn't bring any of my cake decorating supplies with me, and even if I had, I don't have a mixer to make icing with. They cost $35 for the cheapest model that would cost $12-15 at home, so I can't bring myself to buy one. I still insisted on making his cake, though. Desserts ordered out here just aren't the same, and I always want to make his birthday cakes. So I had to be creative. Luckily, I could find Betty Crocker cake mix and pre-made chocolate icing, so that part was easy. I just had to figure out how to turn a chocolate cake with chocolate icing into a fire truck cake, which is what Luke had asked for. I hunted for just the right toy fire truck to go on top to make life easier, but couldn't find the right one. This week I had the idea to color sugar and use it in place of icing. Also, another teacher at school brought Luke some candy this week, and I was able to use that, too. So his cake has Fruit By the Foot underneath all the red sugar so that the red sugar didn't sink into the icing...there's sugar on top of that...I used black licorice to outline the fire truck...yellow twizzlers for the stripe...gummi worms for the siren and head/tail lights...and that's a black licorice roll that was perfect for the fire hose. I used the ladder and the little fire man from the Little People fire truck we found him in Greece. I was very proud of my idea to have the fire man hold the hose like he was putting out the fire from the candles! :)


When Jason got home, Luke got out of the bed and we gave him his big present, a bright shiny new bicycle! We bought it in Greece and brought it home on the plane. It's the perfect size for him. He was thrilled with it. He needs some practice pedaling his feet all the way around in a circle, but I think he'll have it down pretty soon. Here are some pics and video from the hour he got his bicycle.







At about 6 PM, we ate homemade pizza for dinner (Luke's choice). I am still figuring out my oven and experimenting with different ingredients available in Egypt, so the sauce was a little soupy, but it was still Very Delicious Pizza. Luke enjoyed it, anyway, and Jason ate at least one more slice than he normally does!

Noel & Rachella came upstairs to join us for cake. They brought flowers for Jason & me, since they said that Luke's birthday is a celebration for us as well. It's true--I felt like it was Mother's Day all day long.

Anyway, we got the cake and set it on the table. Luke, who had not seen it, said, "My fire truck!" (Did I mention he's currently obsessed with fire trucks?) I sat Luke near it and instructed him not to touch it while I got the matches. I came back into the room to hear Jason say, "Nothing to see here, folks..." Luke had accidentally put his fingers in the icing while I was out of the room. Here's the video. It's pretty funny!




So we sang to him, he blew out the candles, and then (if you watched the video you heard me chastise Jason for not taking actual pictures for the scrapbook) we reenacted blowing out the candles so I could have pictures. We ate the cake and then gave Luke his toy fire truck. He sat and played with it at the table for about an hour, even after we had cleaned up all the plates and moved to the living area to visit. He was so happy to have that fire truck!


Oh, some other funny things to tell: When Luke and I were shopping for cake ingredients I began looking for party plates and napkins. When he saw the party supplies, he said, "We are going to have party hats, right?" I looked at him in a funny way and said, "What?" He said, "You can't go to a birthday party without a party hat." I have no idea where he got that notion. He has never been to a birthday party with hats to my knowledge! I never buy them because I have always hated those elastic cords and no one ever really wears them, but you can bet we bought them and wore them at this party!


We all had a great time. I think Luke had the perfect birthday--almost. The only thing I would've changed would be to have family here with us for it. It was hard not to have them to share in it, and I know they missed being with him on his big day.

He fell asleep right away at 8:00 with no arguments! This is a picture of him at 10:41--which would have been 3:41 Texas time--the actual time of his birth. Zonked out!

As Promised--More House Pics

Before you laugh...
Keep in mind that this IS Egypt and that there are DEFINITE differences in what is considered beautiful!

This is our front entry room--the mirrored Taj Mahal thing is directly opposite the front door. Note the coat rack with all our heavy winter coats on it. I took this picture 2 weeks ago when we were still wearing them, and now it's 100 degrees here. Anyway, there are some seriously bad tile choices throughout our whole apartment--they definitely did not visit the "new home center" when building this place--and this black and white combo is some of my least favorite. However, there WAS a huge rug in this area with King Tut's death mask on it, and thankfully, that was removed before we moved in. A framed picture of it still remains on the wall, luckily! ;)


To the right of the entryway there's a door leading to the bathroom and bedrooms. The bathroom is on the left hand side. It's actually not bad space-wise and color-wise compared to our last apartment. The window at the back opens to a tiny bathroom off our bedroom which we call Jason's bathroom. It's got a shower in it (which is worthless), a little sink, and a toilet. I haven't taken any pictures of that one, but here's the main one:


Just after the bathroom on the left is our bedroom with its lovely furniture. There are some pretty rugs on the floor, which is made out of pine, I think. I actually like the blue walls paired with the black and white...but the mirrored headboard speaks for itself.


There is also some nice crown molding in the bedroom which I think is really pretty.

Across the hall from our bedroom there's a guest room which is spacious, but not noteworthy...

Across from the bathroom is Luke's room, which is pictured in an earlier post.

To the left of the entry way is the living room, seen here with its gorgeous entertainment center. And yes, those are brown mirrored walls on the left side of the room.


Then next to the living/dining room is the studio, which you've seen before. It also doubles as Luke's playroom. That big coffee table is perfect for trains.

And last, there's my kitchen. Sigh. It is my least favorite room. It actually has lots of storage and a new refrigerator, which are its good points. The stove/oven is ancient and doesn't get hotter than 400 degrees.


Anyway, there it is, folks! As you can see, it's not a dream home by any stretch, but it is big, comfortable, and has lots of windows. We like it lots better than the other place!

Greece pics are coming soon...but Luke needs dinner so I have to stop for now!

Our First Visitors!!!

We had our first visitors to Cairo week before last. Brittany and Nic (whom we met through friends and didn't know before they came to Cairo) got in contact with us about a month before they visited Egypt. I was brimming over with way too much advice, I'm sure, and we were SO excited for them to get here. We took them on a felucca ride and shared our travel experiences with them before leaving them to explore Egypt on their own. We got to meet back up with them at the end of their trip to hear all about their time here. It was great to make some new friends and share our new home with some people from our REAL home!


Luke immediately loved Brittany and started calling her "Aunt" Brittany almost from the moment he met her. When we brought them back to our apartment, Brittany was a great sport and rode in Luke's Mustang (which he now loves to pretend is a fire truck) for a while.

We feel like we are becoming well-versed on Egypt travel and loved sharing our knowledge and experience with these guys, so we're looking forward to more visitors!!! Anyone? Anyone?

All the King's Horses and All the King's Men

Well, I've been looking for an excuse to make a Humpty Dumpty page in the scrapbook. Now I have one. Last weekend we went walking down Road 9. Jason and Luke like to balance on curbs and jump off little steps. Jason likes to let Luke jump by himself a lot--gotta encourage the athleticism, right? So they were showing me how Luke can jump by himself off this little wall. He did it all by himself one time and landed superbly on his feet. Then he did it again. He was all set to jump and I could tell he wasn't really paying attention. I saw him--slow motion--lift into the air, hang his feet on the edge of the wall, and land, forehead first, then nose, then chin on the sidewalk. He screamed. I screamed. His forehead was instantly bruised and scraped, his nose was scraped, and his teeth had cut the inside of his bottom lip. I was so scared (concussion! teeth knocked out! We're in Cairo!). I sent Jason to get something cold to put on his head while I rocked and held Luke. Some guys who worked in a shop down the street brought ice. We comforted Luke, who was fine after a few minutes, and still insisted that we go to his self-proclaimed favorite restaurant, Jared's Bagels.
We went back the next day for the pictures (aforementioned Humpty Dumpty page in mind). His face had already started to heal, but you can see the knot on the left side of his head in the picture, and his little nose looked like he'd left half of it on the pavement. I guess some of these incidents are to be expected when you've got a two-year-old son, but it doesn't make it any easier on the mother!

We went to Coptic Cairo a few weekends ago. It's one of the best-kept secrets in Cairo, I think. It's just four short metro stops from our house. We got off the train and stepped into a different city, it seemed. It was so clean and fresh looking.

About 6-10% of Egypt's population is Christian, and about 95% of those are Coptic Christians. The Coptic church was supposedly started by St. Mark, and the Copts are supposed to be the direct descendents of the "real" Egyptians. Coptic, the language spoken in their church is supposed to be very close to what was spoken in Egypt long ago. Click here for more info about Copts.



There were even green areas where people were sitting, reading books or having a snack.

This is the Coptic Pope, Shenouda III. Betcha didn't know about him, did you? He actually was in Euless, Texas just a few weeks ago to bless a new Coptic Church there.

We hoped to visit several churches, including The Church of St. Surgius, where the Holy Family reputedly stayed in a cavern. We visited a few churches (but not St. Surgius) and a cemetery before Luke started acting all TWO on us and we went home. ;)

Sufi Dancers

This is by far my favorite thing we've done in Cairo. We went to see the Sufi dancers in downtown Cairo two weeks ago. We took the metro there, had some Egyptian food, and then found our way to the really amazing building where they put on their performances. It's outdoors, but there's a really high canvas sort of ceiling. It felt like a church--it would be a really neat place to get married.

Anyway, the performance is rare for Egypt because it starts at a set time, ends at a set time, and is free. We got there an hour early, but the place was more than half full already, so we chose to sit at the back so we could stand or sit on our feet if needed. It was odd, because people kept coming in to join the audience (which was standing room only) throughout the whole performance, and about halfway through about a third of the audience got up and left. Very strange to me. The Egyptian ushers kept trying to make us give up Luke's seat, but it was a 2 hour performance that didn't begin till 7:30, so there was no way I was holding him on my lap the whole time. The kid has to have his own seat on a plane, so I figured we were entitled to the seat.


The band came out as the warm-up act. It was made of mostly drums. There were 3 stringed instruments which were not miked but were piercingly loud, and a really comical guy who played finger cymbals. He really hammed it up and totally made the musical part of the show for me.As soon as the music started, Luke got excited and clapped along to the beat. Except for about 10 minutes when he was lying in our laps, he watched the whole performance.

After they played a while, this Sufi dancer came out. It took him a while to get going, but he then spun in circles for 45 minutes. Without stopping. Sometimes he went fast, at others slow, but he never stopped. He had a really enraptured look on his face the whole time.
When this guy finally stopped spinning, we all applauded like crazy, and I thought, "He can't see us applauding. For him, the whole room is still spinning around." He walked off the stage totally unsupported and did not falter one step. I wondered if he went backstage and threw up.

Then three more guys came onstage in even more colorful costumes. I was excited, because I'd seen pictures of the really bright skirts (?) they wore and wasn't impressed with the first guy's get-up!

One of the neatest things about the show is that the dancers have on a long galabeya with a full skirt in a solid color, and then on top of that they wear 2-3 more skirts. During the performance, they untie the top layers and work them up over their heads and spin them around. They do this all while they themselves are spinning. Now, I am an unusually talented hula hooper (one of my hidden abilities). I can still move the hula hoop from my feet, up to my waist, to my neck, and up over my head to my arms (and yes, I'm totally proud of this feat), but I've got NOTHING on these guys. They take those skirts up over their heads and toss them like pizza dough. It's amazing. (Have I used up my quota of "amazing"s yet?)

Toward the very end of the show, they pulled up the last layer of their skirts and made this neat little shape:
Still spinning....

I would've gladly paid as much as we paid to go to the pyramids for this experience. There was not even a donation box.

This is the first thing we've done that made me say, "I wish someone would come visit us in Cairo. That was so cool!" So--come visit!

New Home

Our new home is finally feeling like a home. Granted, the tile is hideous, the furniture's not ours, and some of (well, most of) the decor is pretty outlandish (I'll post pictures here later of our bedroom furniture, which is straight out of the 80's, I think), but slowly we're making it ours.

Here's Luke's bedroom. It has a pretty good-sized closet, which more like a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe with sliding doors, and on the wall opposite his bed I've strung clothesline and hung his art projects from school. (His school is amazing--each day he comes home with a new, good-quality art project. Makes for good room decor!)

This is my "studio" where I work on my scrapbooks and other art projects. I bought a bulletin board and turned it into a sort of French memo board by sewing ribbons to construction paper and then stapling the whole thing to the bulletin board. Too much time on my hands.

This is the front of the house. Noel and Rachella have the bottom floor and we're on the floor right above, with the yellow shutters. Our landlord lives above us, and another teacher from AIS has the top floor.

This is the garden area which is very well kept - a yard guy rakes the dirt every day and sweeps up all the leaves. Luke is probably getting a tricycle for his birthday so he can ride it around the house.

More pictures will follow as I get time to upload and post them.

Al-Azhar Park

Turns out there is a park in Cairo. A great one--only a 20 minute cab ride away. So, it's not really accessible, and there's still no playground available to us (they've locked the one we used to play on)--but we did have a great family day at Al Azhar Park in the middle of Cairo a few weeks ago.

We happened to go to the park on the last day of a 2-week holiday for the Egyptian public schools, so the park was really crowded. You do have to pay admission, and while Jason was buying our tickets there were two things I wish I'd taken a picture of. One is that the ticket lines are segregated into a men's line and a women's line. The other was all the beautifully colored headscarves the women were wearing. I was surrounded by so many women and their headscarves reflected each color imaginable, and they were decorated with beads, sequins, and all kinds of patterns. The women here may be more limited in what they can wear (as in they must be so covered up) but they definitely use those headscarves to accessorize. (The headscarves are technically called higab, while the ones that fully cover their faces are niqqab.)

Anyway, we took a blanket and pillow to the park, as well as Luke's new basketball. When we got there, park officials took the basketball away for safekeeping, because apparently balls are not allowed in the park. Who knew? We walked around and explored, enjoying green grass, pretty water features, flowers, and the beautiful weather.

It was a pretty day, and we enjoyed the great views of Cairo. You can see lots of the mosques in the picture. You can also see a castle-like building up on the hill in the background. That's the Citadel. We haven't been there yet.

The Egyptian girls love Luke and often ask to kiss him or have their picture made with him. He tolerates the paparazzi pretty well.

Luke rolled down his first hill with Jason. He had tons of fun just running up and down, back and forth on this hill. He and Jason started a trend, and by the time we left lots of kids were rolling down the hill.

Luke had a great time just running and being a kid. All in all, it was a pretty cheap, good way to spend the afternoon. Hopefully next time we'll have more of the park to ourselves instead of feeling like all of Cairo is there!