Happy birthday Lydia!

At home, on occasion, we used to fill Pillsbury Crescent Rolls with sweet things like nutella, jam, and cream cheese filling then roll them in cinnamon sugar.  Sadly Pillsbury crescent rolls are not available here so I looked up a recipe online for homemade crescent rolls.  They ended up being a cross between cinnamon rolls and crescent rolls but I was glad I could make something similar. 

Lydia was really excited for her birthday. About a month ago I told her she could take the day off from school on her birthday which was likely the best gift we could give her. She planned the menu for the day and every meal included a breakfast item. We started with coffee cake and hot chocolate then ate filled crescent rolls for lunch and had crepes and eggs for dinner. It was a delicious day. Lydia spent her time reading and putting together some maker kits we got her.  She loves doing those. She got some sweet messages from friends and did a video call with her best friend in Charlottesville. Making friends here has been really hard for Lydia and it was really nice to hear her talking excitedly with a friend at home. We are really so proud of Lydia. It was a very hard adjustment for her to leave Charlottesville, a place she loves so much. She left everything familiar to her and ended up somewhere completely different. While she does not like school at all she does like Egypt and is happy to be here. Since adjusting to living here she has been more open to moving somewhere new after Egypt and often says, "when we move to....  after Egypt" which is nice to hear. Currently her wish is Japan. 

Lydia is kind, thoughtful, creative and proving to be very resilient. She loves making things from leftover boxes and other household items. She uses our garden space the most and comes up with lots of creative pretend scenarios, often involving making concotions/potions. Reading is still her go to option for free time and she has many favorite book series. She is a peacemaker and Jared is really lucky he got such a nice sister.  

Lydia had a clear vision for her cake this year. She wanted mint chocolate brownies with a winter theme for her treat. Mint ice cream is really hard to come by here in Egypt.  Awhile ago Mark and I found some mint ice cream dipped bars and Lydia loves them. She used two bars for a set of trees and then made some frosted snow covered ice cream cone trees. It turned out really nice.  I was doubtful and she proved me wrong and was so happy with how it turned out. 

Birthday Interview 

What is your favorite color? Light blue
What is your favorite toy? Creator sets
What is your favorite fruit? Watermelon
What is your favorite movie? Descendants
What do you do well? Read
What do you like to do with Daddy? Sing
What makes you happy? Creating and reading
What is your favorite scripture story? Noah's Ark
What is your favorite song? Evil from Descendants
What is your favorite animal? Wolf
What is your favorite book? Land of Stories 
Who is your best friend? Abby
What is your favorite place to go? Costa Rica
What is your favorite thing to do outside? Swim
What is your favorite drink? Dr. Pepper
What is your favorite holiday? Christmas
What do you like to do with Mom? Bake
What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Crepes
What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Breakfast
What do you want to be when you grow up? Fashion designer, engineer, or cartoonist

Covid 19

22 months into the Pandemic and Mark and I tested positive for Covid (Saturday the 15th).  Our school brought us down. We managed to avoid getting sick all this time but after the way last week went we were pretty sure our time was up.  We had someone come to our house Friday to administer a PCR test and got our results back Saturday afternoon, both positive.  Mark was sure he had Covid but I really had been feeling pretty good and did not think I would test positive.  I had been feeling normal enough that I even went on a 3 mile run Saturday morning (definitely regretting that today).  The run felt harder than usual but I just put it down to slight cold symptoms.  I do feel like my symptoms are stronger today (Sunday) but still nothing like Mark.  I was truly surprised when my results came back positive too.  I mean I had been around Mark enough to know it was likely based on how transmissible this virus is but if one was just going on how they felt it was a big surprise to me. 

Last Sunday we went back to school after Winter break.  When we started school on Sunday there were about 8 teachers in the middle school (including our Principal and Vice Principal) who had not made it back to Cairo.  A few had covid from travel and had to stay where they were and some could not get tested and make flights because of weather on the East Coast. There were also multiple students missing from most classes.  By mid week we were up to 13 teachers out.  Mark started to feel poorly Tuesday night.  He went to school Wednesday for Homeroom but knew half way through the class he was not going to be able to stay.  If so many other people had not been out he probably would have just stayed home Wednesday but he made a valiant effort.  He got back home from school Wednesday and was exhausted and miserable. He had chills, fever, body aches, and a terrible headache.  On Sunday he had met with some Social Studies teachers for planning and one of those teachers was absent the next day and ended up testing positive. It could have been from any number of students or a teacher that he got exposed.  He was miserable Thursday as well and Friday he decided to go ahead and get tested as his illness felt different than other times and since he was getting tested I figured I better too.  I had developed a few cold symptoms but nothing like Mark.  I had a headache and sore throat (I think this was more from overuse than an illness) and did develop a cough.  Since I wasn't feeling too bad and my job was literally made for times like this I kept going to school and taught various classes each day.  I feel bad that I went but I honestly did not think I had Covid, especially based on how Mark was feeling compared to how I was feeling. 

Jared had some mild cold symptoms on Wednesday so we went ahead and kept him home and then figured we might as well keep him home Thursday to be safe.  Lydia went to school Wednesday and ended up having 4 different substitutes as her teacher was home sick and there were so many teachers gone everyone was scrambling to get classes covered.  It was a crazy day for her so I told her she could just stay home on Thursday.  Each school day has 4 classes for students and generally teachers teach 3 classes and have 1 planning period each day (in the middle and high school).  Most days last week I taught all 4 classes and most teachers ended up covering classes for teachers who were out sick during their planning period.  Our Vice Principal made it back to Cairo Wednesday and was at school Thursday and 1 of the teachers who had been stuck in the States was back as well on Thursday but throughout the week around 4-5 more teachers who had gone to school got sick.

By after school Wednesday we (faculty and staff) had been informed by the school that we were going to be online the following week.  It was frustrating that our school didn't just plan to be online the first week back or that once the middle school saw how many teachers were out that they didn't just go online. I know there are a lot of moving parts to making that decision, especially here in Egypt with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education but it was a week of unnecessary stress for a lot of people and I don't think we would have gotten sick this week had we been online.  Lydia is quite happy to have online school, she will take any break she can get from her classmates and Jared is fine with it.  Mark is able to teach his classes and I am covering 6th grade science classes for a teacher who is still stuck in the States.  Because we tested positive we are teaching from our apartment instead of school which is nice.  Today (Sunday) I am feeling a bit more tired/ill and took a long nap this afternoon.  I am grateful I had that option. 

Because of holiday travel and rising cases our church schedule has been adjusted too.   There are not many families in our branch but quite a few are associated with the Embassy and they are all working remotely so there was some concern brought up about them following workplace guidelines.  We are meeting in person for Sacrament meeting but holding virtual 2nd hour for the next 2 weeks.  We did not attend Friday and I am so glad with our positive test. 

The other day I was talking to a friend at home about our test results and she made the comment that at least now we were boosted.  I hadn't really thought about it that way but I guess it's true.  I was feeling rather irritated we had gotten Covid when we lasted so long not getting it but she made a good point. We have not had an opportunity to get a vaccine booster here and neither Jared or Lydia have had a chance to get the vaccine at all which is disappointing.  (We left before it was available for their ages) I know people (American citizens) and their children associated with the Embassy can get vaccinated here but they do not plan to offer that service to private citizens which is too bad.  Our school mentioned setting up a time for students to do so but I haven't heard more about it.  We will see if that comes about.  

Racing through History

 

On December 11th Mark, Jared and I ran in a race at the Giza Pyramids!  Back in September, a teacher at school sent out an email seeing if there was much interest among staff members to run this race.  Once Mark saw that he was in.  You could run a half marathon, a10K or a 5K.  Because it stays hot here forever and doesn't really ever get truly cold outside (inside its feels quite cold which I definitely remember from last time we were here) I knew a 5K would be the only distance I would be interested in and asked Jared if he was interested in running with me.  In the end Mark signed up to run the half marathon and Jared and I signed up to run the 5K.  There were 3 other teacher guys close in age to Mark who also signed up for the half marathon and they formed a whatsapp group to encourage each other in their training. The day of the race Mark ended up running the last 2 miles with 2 of the guys (Matt and Caleb) which proved to be very helpful because the half marathon course was really hard. This half marathon was Mark's hardest by far. It was sunny and quite warm (the sun is so powerful here) the day of the race and there is an awful hill at mile 10, the worst place to have a hill according to Mark.

There were about 20 teachers who signed up which meant that the school provided transportation for us which was a huge perk.  It made the morning of the race much less stressful. The three of us got up around 5:30 to walk over to the school by 6:00.  Lydia stayed home and slept in until about 7:45 (there is a teacher family with a 5th grader who lives above us and they were on hand to help Lydia if need be). The morning was a bit chilly but as soon as the sun was up long enough it was warm.  This race was really well organized.  A group called TriFactory ran it and they did a great job.  They gave out great swag (athletic race shirt, hat (a very ugly hat but it was still there), drawstring bag, huge medal and cute little wristbands with the distance we were running to wear).  I loved that there was a red carpet at the finish line and the whole race had a really fun atmosphere.  Jared actually did very little training the months before the race.  I was really impressed with how well he did for basically doing a 5K as a walk on.  He must get it from Mark.  We stayed together for about 2.5 miles and then since I had trained I went ahead for the last half mile.  I knew he would be safe and there was no way he was going to get lost by then.  We easily met up at the finish line, got our massive medals and then I walked him back to the bus where he stayed and read while waiting for Mark to finish.  It worked out great. 

You can just see the tip of a pyramid between us.

Mark, Matt and Caleb

Caleb, Matt and Mark

We all enjoyed the experience and plan to run it again next year.  I think I will stick with the 5K because the 10K has the same hill as the half marathon and I only heard how bad it was.  I could just already decide to walk up the hill and not worry about my time which would be fine.  I will see how I feel next December and what Jared is up to. I don't feel great about him being alone in that crowd while I keep running.  It was a very well attended race, just under 4000 runners.  In the weeks before and especially the night before I questioned why I was doing this race.  Running is always hard but it has proven to be especially hard here in Egypt.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed that race. It is pretty cool to think that we ran at the Great Giza Pyramids.  The biggest disappointment was the fact that you could barely see the pyramids.  It was so dusty and hazy that even though we were incredibly close we could barely make them out.  By the time we were leaving you could see them better but there were definitely not the best views on race day.  It was Jared's first time seeing the pyramids and he was impressed with what he saw.  He said the pyramids were bigger than he expected.  Soon we will go back and actually tour them. 

Christmas in Cairo

Because I was so homesick in October I was nervous about how December would feel. When Mark and I lived here before it didn't feel like Christmas at all except in our apartment.  I was so surprised at how festive New Cairo is.  There are decorations everywhere and even our school was all decked out.  I read quite a few articles about where to find the best Christmas displays and was so impressed with what we saw.  We drove over to Sheik Ziad near 6th of October one night (passing by the Giza Pyramids as we did - so crazy we live somewhere that that is a normal thing to do) and loved seeing their beautiful displays.  The mall by our house had awesome outdoor decorations as well. It was a festive month and I am so grateful it went so much better than October.  The weather helped a ton as well.  We even felt chilled at times and needed to wear sweaters and jackets. 

On the drive to Sheik Zaid

We chose a burger place (Good Eatery) to eat dinner in Sheik Ziad and were so surprised when we saw they had a peppermint milkshake on the menu!  It wasn't quite like what you would get at home but we applaud them for trying and the milkshakes were the best ones we have had here.  They were thick and creamy. 

Hydeout, New Cairo.  About 30 minutes from our house there is a large housing development and this year they hosted a cute Christmas town so we went to check it out one night.  There was a carousel, food trucks, carnival games, and beautiful displays. 

I had read online that they would have roller skating available and was so excited to try it out.  Sadly it was a very miniature rink but Lydia had fun skating around

 

AIS.  Our school had amazing decorations!  It was so fun to walk around the halls.  One day I went on a quick walk around the school and counted 11 Christmas trees.  It was definitely not this festive when I worked there before.  Each year AIS hosts a food drive where students donate food to give to all the workers at school. We took Jared and Lydia to a grocery store nearby and gave them each 150 Egyptian pounds to spend on food for the food drive. They were pretty reluctant to go and ended up having a fun time choosing the food and budgeting how much they could get with their money.  I love that our school has a built in service opportunity. 

At the beginning of the month I sat down and picked 25 Christmas activities and got all the supplies ready.  They ranged from coloring pages and word scrambles to a Christmas Trivia Kahoot and Youtube playlists of neighborhood Christmas lights displays and the all time best Christmas commercials.  Our school library has a decent supply of Christmas books and the librarian let me check out as many as I wanted.  We successfully did our Names of Christ Advent every night, reading the descriptions by candlelight which made it more special. We watched the 2021 Witness's of Christ Concert the church hosted and the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.  We decided to watch one talk from the devotional a night the week leading up to Christmas which worked really well. At the beginning of the month we spent an evening in Maadi attending a local church's live nativity.  They have been hosting this nativity for 70 years, Mark and I attended it when we lived here previously.  It was a much smaller scale due to COVID but helped set the right spirit for the month. 

I love how festive our apartment was.  I brought some things with me but the teachers who lived here before us really loved Christmas so when we bought all their stuff we got some great Christmas decor which was awesome. 

Maadi Community Church Nativity 

Christmas traditions Cairo edition.

With a little extra planning we were able to do most of our Christmas traditions here.  It is well documented that most things can be done here you just have to add 2-4 more steps so that is what we did.  I was really glad we were able to do our traditions, they definitely made it feel like home. Both Jared and Lydia said Christmas in Cairo was about the same as Christmas at home, that they had a great weekend which made me feel really happy and accomplished.  There are plenty of hard things here but we are figuring it out! 

Ice cream cone trees, Christmas tree waffles, Christmas baking and Christmas caroling.

We had such a fun time caroling.  We picked three families to visit, got our cookie plates together, made our hot chocolate and ordered an Uber.  Mark asked the Uber driver if he wouldn't mind doing more than one stop which made it easier to get to all the different houses. The families we visited were really happy, they were all so surprised it was great. The last one we visited took this fun picture of us. 

We missed handing out the "Best Christmas Lights Award" this year but drinking hot chocolate while watching awesome light displays on our TV worked well enough. The best Christmas commercials were fun and heartwarming to watch. We tried to guess what the commercials were for and were rarely successful.  We watched Food Network's Christmas cookie challenge and I made a Christmas trivia Kahoot which Jared and Lydia loved.  It was great to have these simple activities to make the month feel special.  And we are all thrilled to be on Winter break especially Lydia! 

Christmas Eve 

Since Christmas Eve was a Friday we started the day with church.  We decided to attend the Nile River Branch which is all in Arabic and then attend our own branch after.  We figured both Sacrament meetings would have a special Christmas program and they were both really nice.  That afternoon I did a lot of food prep because we were having our friends from school, the Karsies over for Christmas Eve dinner. We went to the special grocery store that sells ham in Heliopolis last week and got a Christmas ham and it turned out great.  We ate dinner and watched the special Christmas episode of The Chosen together. It was nice to visit with them.  They are easy to get along with and we always enjoy hanging out with them.  Before bed Jared and Lydia exchanged their sibling gift and then we sent a few of Marco Polos to people at home singing them Christmas Carols. It was really fun and a great way to end the evening. Before going to bed Mark and I filled the stockings and wrote out the scavenger hunt clues for the next day. 

Christmas Day

We told Jared and Lydia to meet us in our room at 7:45 so we could watch the Nativity together as we do each year.  Lydia was up at 6:00 and Jared woke up at 7:30.  I got up around 7:00 to make orange rolls since Pillsbury Orange Rolls are not available here. I found a copycat recipe that actually turned out to be very similar to the Pillsbury rolls.  I have a different recipe for orange rolls that I make at Easter which are just like orange cinnamon rolls but these were much more similar to the Pillsbury ones which was great.  Susanna and I were exchanging some Marco Polo's and she ended up having to make orange rolls from scratch too because all the stores near her were out when she went to buy some.  We also both made egg, cheese and sausage casseroles! It was fun to chat with her and funny that we were doing the same things. 

After the nativity we came downstairs to open stockings and presents.  Once that was done we finished getting breakfast ready, ate, and then Jared and Lydia played with some of their new presents.  My favorite presents was a pair of roller skates.  I love roller skating so much and after we attended the Christmas festival with the miniature rink I was thinking about where we could skate and it occurred to me that we could totally skate at our school!  We could try the gym, the canteen or the hallways.  I got in touch with a friend from school who has lived here a long time to see if she had recommendations on where to get skates and she actually had two pairs of rollerblades her kids had outgrown and offered them to Jared and Lydia. It was such a fun surprise. Once they had skates I was pretty jealous so I convinced Mark to go to one store with me and they had roller skates!  It was a Christmas miracle.  I am so happy to have my own skates again and have an active activity to do with Jared and Lydia.  I have missed biking, kayaking and hiking so much since we got here!

Around noon Jared and Lydia asked about the scavenger hunt so we did that together.  It was so fun.  This is one of our favorite traditions and it was fun to have a new place to hide the present in and come up with clues. We did not mean to make it super challenging for Jared but he struggled with quite a few of the clues.  It was really fun. 

Finding the first clue hidden in the tree. This also took him longer than expected. It was great! 

Laser tag.  Jared has wanted a set for a long time and lucky for us a family in our ward who works with the foreign service and gets mail from the US offered to order Christmas presents for us!  We got Jared Legos and this set and he was a happy kid. We found all of Lydia's presents here but Jared really wanted Legos and they are so expensive/hard to come by here.  We hope this will entice Jared to have friends over here.  He always comments that their houses are much more fun than ours and he is not wrong but we would like to return the favor and have them over here too. 

Stuffed animals have been very important to Lydia since we got here.  She had to leave most of hers at home in our attic in Virginia and she misses them.  She was very happy to receive this one. So cute! 

After the scavenger hunt we decorated some more cookies and then took them over to the security guards at school.  Normally we take treats to the fire station/ER but we weren't quite how that would work here so when a friend suggested taking treats to the guards I knew it was a great option for us. Jared was pretty grumpy to help decorate them and then as usual with service had a great time delivering them to people.  They seemed very surprised and happy to receive them.  After we dropped those off we went to the gym to roller skate/blade and play basketball.  Mark has been trying to get us to the school more to use the facilities and it has been hard to be motivated to go.  It will be a goal for the New Year to use the school facilities more and I know these skates will help.  They are heating the pool as well so we need to go swim too. 

We finished the day with leftovers from last night and then watched a Christmas movie.  It was a really lovely weekend.  It was really a blessing to have such a fun month and to not just feel really homesick.  We briefly toyed with the idea of going home for Christmas once our Eastern Europe trip got cancelled but it was just easier to stay here and in the end it worked out really nicely.  We were glad to be together to celebrate such a special time of year.