Lately

I know it's been awhile, as usual, but sometimes I just can't make myself sit down and write a blog post after a day of work, which lately has been giving me a run for its money. But before I get into the work aspect I'll start off by outlining a vacation I took at the beginning of September.

I went to a city called Marsa Matrouh, which is such a beautiful place! Not because of the city, but because it's on the Mediterranean Sea. The sea is absolutely gorgeous and has so many different colors of blue depending on how deep the sea is in different areas. I went with Mervat, a lady who works in the Healthy Life Center below the Egypt Field Office. She was vacationing with her mom and her 3 brothers. They go to Marsa Matrouh every summer. On the way there I went on the train, alone I might add, because Mervat had already been there with her family since the previous weekend, but I couldn't be gone from work for more than about 3 days. So Manal and her sister Rahil dropped me off at the train station, helped me find the correct train and board, and I proceeded to sleep during the night while the train chugged on closer and closer to Libya. I was somewhat scared of traveling for the first time by myself in Egypt, but it wasn't a problem and everything was ok. I did find out later that Manal and Rahil had directed me to the 2nd class seating but my ticket was for 1st class, so I missed out on that and Mervat was sad about that. Anyways, I arrived in the morning, got off the train, and found Mervat waiting for me to pick me up. I was also greeted by a delightfully welcome sea breeze. The weather was much more pleasant than my last trip to Sharm el-Sheikh. The next 3 days were rather interesting. I saw a couple famous beaches, Cleopatra Beach and Ageeba Beach. Ageeba was one of the beaches that we swam at too, and it was amazingly beautiful! The beaches in Marsa Matrouh are awesome because the water is so blue and gorgeous and the sand is really white. I got a decent tan with a little bit of burn, but not nearly as bad as my burn in Sharm el-Sheikh. It was a little interesting spending 3 days with Mervat's family because she has 2 deaf brothers and her mom doesn't know English, so I could only talk to Mervat and her brother who isn't deaf. Anyways, all in all it was a good trip.


I came back to a hard couple of weeks at work. Actually, I guess the first week back wasn't bad because there were still not too many children because summer was still in full swing. School starts rather late here because after Ramadan the Muslims have a feast, and then school begins after that, which is this coming week. Anyways, this week has been so hard in so many ways. More kids are coming back now that they're finished traveling for the summer, and some new kids are starting to come. One of them screams whenever their mother leaves and won't stop unless she comes back, one of them only likes Manal and cries whenever she leaves, which makes it difficult if she's helping a child in the bathroom or if she's on break, because then this child won't stop crying and disrupts the atmosphere of the room. I also found out that one of the preschool families was in a bad car accident on their way back from vacationing...incidentally in Marsa Matrouh, the same place I went to. The grandma died and the dad is still in the hospital with a problem in his lungs and is having many operations currently. The mom has a big gash on her forehead and I believe has a hard time walking because of something happening to her feet. Saif, the little boy from preschool, hurt the back of his head and his younger brother had some glass on him from the windshield. Saif finally came back to preschool this week after being gone for quite some time, and his younger brother came with him one day. His mom wants his brother to start in the preschool now, but he's not even 2 years old and we're making a new age rule. So we'll have to figure out how to handle that situation, but for now we'll let him come to the preschool while she's having a hard time going back and forth between her home and the hospital all the time. Anyways, next week all the children will be back because school is starting and some of their parents are teachers and will have to bring them back to preschool because they're starting to work again. It's going to be another crazy week next week!

Oh, last week we had 2 days of vacation in the preschool because of the Muslim feast, and on one of the days I went to 3 Coptic Orthodox monasteries with one of the preschool families (Miro and Youssef's family). It was really interesting and a great day. It was nice to get to know their family better, especially because they're such nice people. On the way back we stopped at a place with a grocery store, a restaurant, and a park, and we all ate together. I picked up some groceries too. It was just a really good day, and I really appreciate their family. I also went to a birthday party this week which was pretty fun. It was on the roof at the Sudanese refugee Adventist school at night. It was a really fun time and we had some good food. Also, my violin lessons to Youssef are going really well. He's practicing at home, he's enjoying it, he's doing a great job and learning and improving, and I'm also remembering things I used to do when I taught in high school. It's a good feeling. Next week I'm going to start teaching piano lessons to Kimo, a 3 year old boy in the preschool, and I'm also going to start teaching one of the preschool parents (Bibo's mom) some English next week too. Since Saif went on vacation and had the car accident I haven't started teaching him piano lessons again, but after things settle down we'll probably pick up where we left off. I think that's about all the lessons I can handle right now, especially since working all day with all these children takes so much effort.

Now I'm going to just focus on relaxing and spending time with friends and with God over the weekend. Tonight Manal and I are going to NUA (the academy) to spend the night and also Sabbath morning at the school. I need to start getting to know the student missionaries. I haven't been to NUA since campmeeting I think. Then on Sabbath evening someone is having a birthday party here behind the preschool so we'll come back for that. So I hope this weekend will be fun.