New Year, New Career

A Happy (belated) New Year to you all!

(And a Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating today!)

How has my first week in 2013 been? Pretty great.

New Year’s Eve, I met up with a friend-I-hadn’t-met-yet (we knew each other online), Jennie, and we went to the American embassy for their New Year’s Eve party. It sounds exciting; it wasn’t. Copious amounts of security, awful music, and a guy-girl ratio of 7:1. Not at all fun. However, we made it to midnight, loudly and obnoxiously sang Auld Lang Syne (when I say we, I literally mean only Jennie and I), drank our champagne toasts and then ran for the hills. The hills being the flat Jennie lives in currently. She works for the British Council apart from studying here (she’s still in university) and currently lives with her boss until she finds her own place. It is one of the nicest apartments I have ever been in. Ever. Simply gorgeous. Jennie and I watched The Little Mermaid (yeah we’re the cool kids) and then I headed home. Let me tell you, walking around in a short dress (not even that short it hit my knees) at 2am by yourself in Cairo is not an experience I want to have again anytime soon.

My friend Nora, who is Egyptian, was so kind as to buy me masa harina and sriracha sauce and send them to me when her dad came to visit his family. This means I made homemade corn tortillas – which were then fried into tortilla chips and made pico de gallo to go with it. Glorious. And that sriracha sauce has been going on everything. EVERYTHING. Rooster sauce, I love you so.

Thursday evening, I met up with my old bosses from AMIDEAST. They are here for the first summit of all the education abroad departments for AMIDEAST (it’s a very big deal). Luckily, they had some free time before the summit started. We all went out to Korean BBQ and caught up. I can’t believe I haven’t seen them since May! One of the first things they said was, “YOU CUT YOUR HAIR!” I did, way back in August, but they wouldn’t have known so it was quite funny, since it was old news for me but new information for them. It was however incredibly wonderful for me to catch up with them, and made me miss the AMIDEAST office quite a lot. And miss home. And DC. But made me happy I am here in Cairo too! It was a good night.

Jennie also started up a philosophy book club, and we just had the first meeting on Friday. Our topic was existentialism (although we didn’t discuss much of that) and politics (discussed a lot of that) based on Sartre’s play Dirty Hands. We had 8 people for the first meeting, which was a good turn out. Everyone brought snacks (I brought the homemade chips and salsa – huge hit, made it later for my flatmates, also huge hit) and we had a nice two hour discussion. As it wound down, Jennie asked if I wanted to go see Les Misérables in two hours. I said yes, why not. And then three of the other book group participants came with! Which was wonderful. The film was quite good, although holy smokes so much close-up framing. I have never paid so much attention to people’s teeth in a film in my life.

However, the biggest news is: TOMORROW I START MY NEW JOB! AAAAHHHHHH! I would be insane to say I’m not freaking out, but to be honest, I’m trying not to think about it too much. Obviously I am thinking about it quite a bit so I’m fluctuating between “I got this” and “What the hell am I doing”. Crazy mix of emotions.

Wish me luck for tomorrow!

Rotation, Review, and Regards

It is the last day of 2012! Another full calendar year has passed us, the Earth has fully rotated around the sun, completing its orbit (from this point in the sky anyway, the calendar measurement of time is relative), and life goes on.

I’m a fan of lists – so here is my life in 2012, however self-indulging it may be. (Head to the bottom of the list if you want to read about my Christmas). Oh, and I put in pictures, so this post seems long but the reading is minimal (don’t be lazy).

January 2012: I begin my life as a college graduate by interning at AMIDEAST, working at the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, and babysitting (always the babysitting!).

January 16, 2012: I turn 22 and get to celebrate with so many of my closest friends. 

A birthday with some excellent ladies!

February 14, 2012: Best Valentine’s so far because my diploma arrives in the mail.

Spring 2012: Puppies. Volunteering with puppies. The best! Baked a ton. Including for Pi Day. And Leap Day (Leap Day William!).

April 2012: My APO family got a bit bigger! Went to Foxfield. So many preppy drunk biddies. SO MANY.

PEONS.

Thankfully I like horses.

May 2012: The long, long goodbye to DC, filled with adventures, picnics, selling stuff and embraces you wish would last forever. And graduation ceremony times!

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June 2012: One of the best trips I have ever taken, with some of the best people I’ve ever known: California Road Trip with Sydney and Alex (how I miss you so).

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Summer 2012: Unpacking, packing, unpacking, packing. Spending time with my family and friends and my pets. (Also got into a car crash but whatever).

SMUTTY DOG.

On a boat in a lake in a park in SoCal with Mitchell.

Late August 2012: My family and I say goodbye to California and hit the road. Destination: Springfield, Massachusetts, my parents’ new home! Driving cross country with 3 pets is a HASSLE.

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Early September 2012: Visit Arthur, Deepika and Sydney for one last time in Boston and Long Island respectively. Relish the last days with my family.

September 11-12, 2012: Move to Cairo, Egypt for a new adventure.

September-October 2012: Take CELTA course to become certified in teaching English.

October 1, 2012: Will’s (my brother) 25th birthday! ALL DOWN HILL NOW.

October 2012: FINALLY SEE THE DAMN PYRAMIDS.

Sphinx too.

October-December 2012: Crazy shenanigans in Egypt (see the rest of this blog, duh.)

November 2012: My APO family gets a bit bigger again (hello glittle!) and I have two Thanksgivings.

Family Name: Keefe No Shits Given. Represent.

December 2012: Hired to be a Grade 6 teacher, job starts in January.

December 25, 2012: My dad’s 60th birthday! And Christmas. I spent Christmas with Melissa’s family. I went to their home in Heliopolis for evening tea and sweets. Melissa’s parents were there, and they gave me a beautiful silk scarf. Two AU alum came for tea as well and we all talked and talked and talked. The next morning (I spent the night), we had a big Egyptian style breakfast (with lots of adorable family bickering) with Melissa’s grandmother. Then her, her mom and I went to see The Hobbit. IT WAS SO GOOD. I got a big piece of homemade fruitcake (no really) to take home with me. A simple, quiet but wonderful Christmas. Thank you Mafouz’s!

Oh yes, forgot, Kate, Christine and I went to the Swiss Club Christmas bazaar. This is what happened.

Representing AU gorgeously.

Boxing Day Breakfast with the (adopted) family!

December 27, 2012: My mom’s birthday! Happy birthday, miss you and love you!

And that, my friends, is 2012 in not-so-short. May 2013 be filled with the same type of love from family and friends I received this year! Here’s to tomorrow and every day thereafter.

One Week

I’ve officially been in Cairo for one week now.

How crazy. Eight days ago, I was home with my family and my pets in Massachusetts (and even that’s weird, because a little over three weeks ago I was home in California). I miss them more than eight days worth. It feels like a month since I’ve seen them, but it was only a few days ago. How will it be when I say I’ve been gone for a month? Six months? A year? Ah, but it is too hard to think about that now.

Today was a good day! It was the first time I ate a real meal. My appetite from being sick hasn’t really returned yet, so I’m not eating much. But this evening after we finished CELTA for the day, a few of the fellow trainees and I ate at Beano’s, the cafe inside the British Council. Just simple sandwiches and stuff, but hey, first real meal in days!

Before that, we had “unobserved teaching practice” in our class of refugees. Which meant myself and another teacher in training taught the students without Nick, our tutor, in the back. It went…alright. It is very hard to co-teach, and when you are just figuring out how to teach yourself, trying to work with someone else’s teaching style is twice as difficult. So it could have gone much better, but in the end, the students got the target language: the use of the phrase “So do I” when they’re in agreement with someone. Win!

After I had dinner at Beano’s, I got in a taxi and went to the Hardee’s (Carl’s Jr. for you California folks) in Mohandiseen, the next neighborhood over. There I met Hayde (pronounced Heidi), a Greek woman who is a part of an expat women’s group I joined on FB. She was wonderful; she’s lived in Cairo for almost two years now and speaks ammiyya (Egyptian colloquial Arabic) pretty well. She did what I am doing, essentially: picked up and moved here with nothing in place. She lives at a Greek school in Masr Gedida (New Cairo) on the other side of town. We walked around and eventually went to a cafe, where I got an apple shisha and some hibiscus juice.

A note on shisha: While college students everywhere take part in shisha, in Egypt, it is still largely for men. Most cafes (the “local” cafes) are for men too. Women just don’t go to them. Anyway, even though I will occasionally smoke hookah doesn’t mean I smoke as a habit – I can probably count on both hands the number of times I’ve smoked hookah.

We chatted, and the table next to us had a family of five: a father, a mother, a teenage girl and two younger girls, around 12 and 6. The younger ones started talking to us, and it turns out they go to a British international school in Athens! So they were able to chat with Hayde about Greece. Small world.

It was a good day, overall. Tomorrow, though Thursday, is Egypt’s Friday (weekends, once again, are Friday and Saturday). Who knows what’ll happen tomorrow?

(Hopefully me doing some laundry. Which will be an experience on its own.)

From Home to Home to Home, I’m Home.

We’ve finally made it to Longmeadow, Massachusetts, my parents’ new home! We got here on Saturday afternoon after a seemingly endless drive across the country.

The United States? The United States is VERY large. I could drive from Cairo to Casablanca and it would still be less that driving from Fresno, CA to Longmeadow, MA. I’ve no desire to do this drive again!

Thankfully, in just a bit over a week I will be in Egypt once again, and I will not have to be making any multi-day drives anywhere, inshallah. 

This new house for my parents, which is just a rental until they find a town/neighborhood/house they love and want to buy, is very small. My parents’ king size bed cannot even fit up the staircase to their room, so they are sleeping on my queen size mattress. Just the mattress, not even the box spring, because that can’t even get up the stairs. All that means I’m sleeping on an air mattress for the next week. 

Yesterday I went into Boston and hung out with two of my closest friends, Deepika and Arthur who had come up for Labor Day weekend. It was fantastic getting to see them – since I figured I would not see them for another year or two. It is so weird to think about, knowing I won’t see them face-to-face for such a long period of time. I am incredibly lucky to live in this digital age, where I can be in contact with my friends and family all the time.

Tomorrow I head to Long Island to go see another of my close friends, Sydney. She is, in a few short months, going to be doing the same thing as me almost: heading to Colombia to take the CELTA course then teach English and make connections. Her, my friend Alex in Argentina, and I are all on somewhat similar paths…and we’re all left-handed. No wonder we’re friends. 

Moving so much has really ingrained in me that
home is a mental concept. It is where my family and friends are, wherever that may be, for however
long I get to be with them. Home doesn’t have to be one place, but can be many places at once. It is where you lay your heart down at night, not where you lay your head. 

So starting very soon, although it really has already started, my heart will lay down in places around the globe each night.