Woo, asked Mr. Hendy to make my flash drive work, thus, lots of backdated entries.

Apparently, my seafaring uncle is now in our house (at home), staying in my room. I hope he doesn't poke around in my drawers and cupboards (XD), see, he has no concept of privacy - he'll be like, oh, look, wonder what's in here, la la la! Oh, how interesting! Etc. XD

We are having a heatwave. It was 37 the day before yesterday. Our TV is fixed.

Wow, it's been a while.

School's started again, and Ramadan is well under way. I have mixed feelings about Ramadan here. On the one hand, it's Misr Egypt, a muslim country, and everyone really gets festive and happy and excited...but on the other hand - I think Laila got it exactly right - I haven't felt the deep spirituality of Ramadan properly yet - you know, the sense of barakah and contentedness and the syrup-like passing of time. I thought this year, being away from work, away from university, away from anyone who would distract me, I would have oodles and oodles of time, but somehow, it's like there is even less time here. Even last year, which so far, was my busiest Ramadan ever (going to the shop just about every day - even on Eid), is paling to this - the shop environment was such that you felt like it was Ramadan for every minute. One of the things about here is, even though it is Ramadan, everyone still does just the same things they do the rest of the year - same old street-fights, road rage, shisha and cigarettes, loud music...it's probably very naive of me, but the first several million l times I heard a passing car blaring out horrible music, I was shocked - don't they know it's Ramadan? It only really feels like Ramadan inside my house (and even then, not all the time) and in the masjid.

On the other hand, we've been going to a masjid (mosque) close to us a loooong walk away for Tarawih (special Ramadan prayer in the earliest part of the night), and it really is something. The masjid we go to is called Masjid Salaam, and Zakia said people come from all over Misr to pray there. There are so many people that they put out carpets over the whole huge courtyard, and even then, there isn't enough room, and they spread carpets right onto the road outside. The great thing about MS is that they have a completely separate masjid building for ladies, and this lovely huge grassy courtyard which is curtained right off from sight, so it's really nice and safe inside, and open to the sky. I haven't prayed inside yet, but I love it outside, with the wind and biting ants grass and sky. The whole recitation can be heard via loudspeakers, and it's loud enough to drown out random noise. It feels like...I don't know, as if the recitation were a liquid form of Qur'an, and you become submerged in it. The sweetness of Qur'an increases with the more you understand of it. It has to be the best thing about being here - I mean, of course, it's the reason for being here, but those moments of clarity and understanding are what is really motivating, just for the sheer pleasure of embracing Qur'an, and truly feeling like Allah is talking to you. Subhanallah.

At iftar (fast-breaking) time, the buses and cars and everything just stop where they are, at the side of the road, and get out and eat and pray - right where they are. I watch them from our window. It's so nice to be in a place where people do that! When you spend most of your life squeezing in a prayer here and an iftar there, it really is liberating to live where people schedule their lives around prayer times. Misriyyun Egyptians may keep horrible time (worse than Indian Standard)(that is +2 hours)(they turn up the next day if you're lucky, but more likely, the week after), but they definitely keep their prayers straight. Also, something we've noticed since we got here, is the daily charity of just about everyone. Our local supermarket does weekly deliveries - useful ones, of proper basic food like rice, oil, pasta, beans, lentils, sugar, etc. - and during Ramadan they do it almost daily. It's not just the supermarket, but everyone who can, does. The welfare state may not be like ours, but here, people care, and do something, instead of just talking about it. I would love to see Zakah in action properly...it must be amazing...people who can afford to give up some wealth give it up, and people who can't, receive. Such a simple system, but not a country has managed to get it right yet.

Anyhow. I'm not glossing over the things I don't like; I just happen to have forgotten them. Zax is leaving on Saturday, and Laila the week after. Don't know what I will do without them :( Having them here has hugely eased the transition from one kind of life to another (notwithstanding Mr. Darcy), and it's felt so natural, them being here. I kind of get used to seeing Zakia everywhere, that it only occasionally strikes me as unusual that we should both completely seperately end up in Misr, within 20 minutes of each other, at the same school, and in the same class (to start with). Weird, that. But! Looking on the bright side! They have bequeathed a ton of spices and medicines (medics, eh?) to my household, for which I am always grateful (food vanishes so fast here). And I like spices. Hee. ^_^

We made a ton of samosas and spring rolls and kebabs before Ramadan started. Ooo we had a terrible fishy saga, also XD XD I had the misfortune to buy some smoked fish here - and is smoked fish normally salted? But anyhow, this being Misr, it was salted. Very salted. And it STANK. I can't stand the smell of raw fish, but smoked fish is worse than meat and fish and cats put together and even after I cooked it with onion and spice and all things nice, the smell didn't change one bit...I mean, except to become more pungent, if that was even possible. My hands stank of stinky fish for four stinky days (of course, nobody else would touch it), and it was so salty that we couldn't even eat it as we'd planned to. So then, dilemma, dilemma, dilemma, POTATOES. Eleven kilos of them. I probably only put in about two, though. I turned them into fishy kebabs. Without tasting it at any point. Clever me. XD XD Yeah, they were still too salty. So they have become our fishy horrors, all 164 or whatever of them. But we had some for iftar today, with salad. Made it edible, surprisingly. Tasty, even. Smell was still very...exotic, though.

Fish, fish, fish, I feel like a proper little housewife sometimes - especially after a particularly enjoyable conversation about the many uses of semolina, conducted in English, French and Arabic, all at once, or how to best prepare various incarnations of rice, or the particular virtues of Indian cuisine (namely samosas and chops and all things bright and beautiful), or indeed, managing one's finances while trying to come to terms with the alkaline-wrought destruction of one's handies by a year of hand-washing.

Most of the time, I just can't believe how it's nearly been two months since I last saw my mama, and how on earth we are getting on without her. It's funny how these things go; I used to differ with my mama on all sorts of things, like the way she cuts onions. I always cut them the other way, just because I thought it was a better way to do it. But lately, completely subconsciously, I've taken to cutting them her way. Funny ol' world, innit?

Argh, I feel like I only come online to complain about the computer I'm using >_< It won't recognise my flash drive and rejects the drivers, too.

Ramadan Kareem!

Despite the 'anonymous' comment, I would beg to disagree, but I don't have the time to expound why (but I will eventually). Of course, from a secular point of view, the material benefit is outward charity. The rest doesn't really count. After all, who needs blessings and god and all that? [/extreme sarcasm]

John! Arabic! Why else? I'm so sorry about your mother, too :(

This business of blogging at the net cafe really doesn't work. Thus! I am taking to typing up at home, and then later copy-pasting at the cafe. Am not I clever? (Heh.)

The water's been a bit offish for the last few days - it comes and goes erratically, and without any notice that I might understand (like, not in Engrish XD).

Oh man, today, we got ripped off so badly - Tabs and I went to buy fruit, and we thought we'd go to the shop next to our net cafe, since it was closer, and also, we hadn't been there before and I'd seen some nice-looking banababanananas there. So there we were, trying to buy mangoes, and the guy said it was 'ashara guinea' (gin-ay-a), and I was like, sorry, ashara? Isn't that, like, a lot? 10 whole pounds! For a kilo of mangoes! He was having a laugh! I've bought them for three fifty a kilo! So I was like, eh? and asked for a kilo of the other ones. Dunno what he gave us but it certainly didn't look like a kilo. We also asked for some nice looking golden deliciouseseses and he kept trying to sell us the red ones (waxy ones, yuck) and kept plying them at us, saying 'amrikiyya, amrikiyya' (american, american), and we kept saying we didn't want them, but he put them straight into the bag and then with a face as straight as you know, he said it was ishreen guinea (20 quid)...like, eh? Me and Tabs looked at each other and agreed we heard wrong and I gave him 20, and waited for change. And a minute or so later, he was looking at us like, 'yes?' and I asked him for change. And he said there wasn't any. Oh man, was I mad. I don't know enough ammiya to have a good yell at him for trying it, and he'd just taken all my money. >_<

So THEN. Then we got home and Heidi was like, yay, red apples! But she cut one open and it was rotten. So was the next one. And the next one. Ooo so mad. Not only were we ripped off, but he also gave us rubbish apples we didn't even WANT and then had the nerve to make us buy the damned things GAH. Anyhow, I will never go to his shop again. OoooOoo. >_<

Abdullah just asked me to help him with a maths problem. I couldn't do it. How pathetic. Why do they give people like me degrees? Don't they know I can barely do year 7 maths? Here is the question:

Mum is 20 years older than Andrew, and 24 years older than Anne. The three ages ages total 73 years.

Mum is ___ years
Andrew is ___ years

I still can't figure it out, and I've forgotten how to do simultaneous equations even though I was forced to revise them some months ago...OH OH OH I KNOW HOW TO DO IT. I feel so happy!

a + (a - 20) + (a - 24) = 73
3a - 44 = 73
3a = 117
a = 39

Yo ho, me hearties, yo ho!

And now, I have letters and emails to write.


Oh no. Here is another one I can't do.

In a school there were altogether 476 pupils and teachers.
The girls + the teachers = 241 the boys + the teachers = 258

There were ___ teachers, ___ boys, and ___ girls.

g + t = 241
b + t = 258

I'm too tired to try and work it out. :(

I forgot to bring the phonecard down that we were supposed to ring mum and dad with XD XD And nobody wanted to go upstairs (6 floors XD) to get them. Also, I don't like to surrender my key. I'm the only one with both keys, and it is a bit scary.

I wrote a big long post the other day, and the computer ate it.

Decided to diarise at home since I find computer-diarising much easier. No internet here means I write at home, and then just take it to the net cafe and Bob's your uncle, Jenny's your aunt XD XD

We don't actually have a proper computer table so one has to write on one's knees. Sehr uncomfortable.

There is no water at the moment. The water here goes more often than the current (eckeltrickity) goes in Bangladesh! Of the two, I prefer losing electricity to losing water (still having the presence of mind to recognise which is the essential and which the superogatory XD)(the desert addles my head, but it also teaches me the value of wasser). Aieee! It is back!

Alhamdulillah! Here, you really begin to understand why rain is one of the blessed times in which du'as are accepted, and rain itself is described as Allah's mercy (rahma) - where it barely rains for two days out of every year, water from the sky is a blessing indeed - like that ayah in the qur'an, '...and We send down pure water from the sky' - water from rivers - particularly the Nile, which serves so many people and countries - can become tired by the point they reach their ends. The heavily chlorinated Nile-water of Egypt is nothing like rain. Perhaps in green England (and sub-sea-level Bangladesh) it's difficult to appreciate the sweetness of rain (do we not spend our lives complaining of it?), but here, with the Sahara at our backs, the thought of rain is like a pipe-dream.

I miss the rain.

Anyhow, nature calls. now that the water is back XD XD

This is an interesting computer...it closes my email window, citing 'may contain adult content' as the reason. Hrmph?

Omg we went shopping today and it made us SO HAPPY. I spoke to my mama and papa this morning, and they told me to stop worrying about money and buy what we needed (real trouble making budget work), so I felt much better and not so much like I was counting the piastres. Since we all promised each other to get ourselves a post-exam treat, we spent aaaages looking through Awlad Ragab (shop - like Tesco's but more expensive!) at their cakies and sweeties and looking for people who spoke English. We finally decided on a pick-and-mix of baklawa (mmmmmmmm, lazeeeez)

damn net time is up XD

We had our end-of-level tests yesterday and everyone did really well, alhamdulillah! I got 79/80 and now we all have to treat ourselves except for the penny-watching business. Alas!

I have lots of emails to reply to and my time is nearly up. We farewelled Piruze yesterday :( and now she is gone back to Germany, and their Awesome Foursome is sundered (Laila, Zax, Heidi and Piruze) and our English-speaking ghetto is broken up. Sad :( I kept imagining I heard her speaking when everyone was around yesterday...I suddenly realised also, that she reminded me of Nour from school.

Ack, time up!

Oh and I forgot to add things!

On Tuesday, we have to have a little leaving-thing for Piruze (I can spell her name now!) and we are going to have a Pride and Prejudice munchfest. I feel a bit guilty about it, but it probably won't happen again, anyway. I miss my Fruits Basket :( All those DVDs I burnt of my stuff before we left are...dunno, they don't work in Heidi's laptop which makes me very O_O 'cause there was tonnnnnnnes of stuff - and all my fruits basket >_>

Mama and papa called yesterday. Want to go home. Can't believe it's been a whole month since I saw my mama. But! 11 to go.

Ramadan soon - it really is so different - the mood in the streets is more buoyant, and they are being decorated and all the shops have begun to sell a million different kinds of dates and it's generally very festive. Ramadan here will be an experience, inshallah.

It's so weird - I think I dream about the library every friday night. A
couple of nights ago, I dreamed that I was in the liberry, and Debbie, Louise, Jemma and Jane were welcoming me back.

The dreams are generally very bizarre - like another night I dreamed I was home for a week on holiday from here and my dad suddenly had a butcher's shop, and I was sailing around Tooting High Street on what were like skates but were really tiny hovercrafts strapped to each foot.

Today, I fell asleep in my lesson and my teacher threw a pen at me, and then I refused to give it back (she shouldn't have thrown it) - so it was a classic stubborn-as-a-dog me-moment especially when she refused to continue the lesson and I refused to return the pen (she shouldn't have thrown it at me).
Drama!

Life here is a lesson a minute.

It's a good thing I unlearned hating washing up years ago. I am currently learning to enjoy cleaning the toilet and constantly working...I don't mind it on my own. It's therapeutic. But the rest of the time, it just makes me tired.

We made jelly today. One of the great liberating things here: you can buy food without checking the ingredients! We bought sausages yesterday! They were spicy and tasty!

and now my time is up!

My papa left today.

Want my papa back. :(