Thursday, 2/26

2.26.09

Thursday,

It is my last day of school. We make our presentations—2 minutes about ourselves in – ECA. It goes OK. I stumble through some of it, still trying to keep the high school French from bubbling up instead of the Arabic. And just where is that French when I need French I would like to know! Oh well.

 

I grab lunch at school and spend some time in the computer lab checking email since the Internet at the flat has been undependable lately. It is another nice warm sunny day so I walk back to the flat. Once there I start updating my journal as I don’t seem to have much time for it during the school week. To my surprise Halla comes out of her room when she should be at school. She says she stayed home wit ha headache, but was feeling better now. She seems to get them from time to time. Back to writing in my journal I go. I’m amazed at how time flies. Before I know it both girls are asking me about dinner. They have a party they want to go to later, but were thinking about going out and getting some dinner now.

 

We decide to try a place Dee Dee had suggested and head out. It is a restaurant/cofffee house called Ba Ba Omba and the girls notice they have shishas too. After dinner we order tea and move to a sitting area so they smoke their shisha. They haven’t been smoking long when Annieck suddenly isn’t feeling good. She sits backs and rests. I’m hoping she isn’t coming down with the dreaded Phareos Revenge as that can come on quite suddenly. About 15 minutes later, Halla has decided she has smoked enough, and that he stomch is unsettled too. We pay the bill and head back. I’m feeling fine, and since we all shared the appetizers, it wasn’t that. So the question is if it was something they ate or could it have been the shisha?

 

As we are walking down our street an older Egyptian man in galabaya on a bike rides past us and in good English says “Cover your hair.”  This is a new one for all of us! We have been whistled at, told “Welcome to Egypt!” and a few I can’t think of at the moment, but this, this was a surprise. I usually do have my scarf tossed over my head, but it was still around my neck. I don’t think it is a new blond joke …’What do you say to 3 blonds on a street in Cairo?”….The girls are a bit incensed, but hey, maybe he says it to the Egyptians that don’t cover too. Thinking back to how he was dressed, I wonder if he was an Imam from the small mosque in the neighborhood.

When we get home, I give them each an Acidolphilus tablet and they say they start to feel better as we sit and watch TV --but not quite well enough to go out partying. I suggest they take one more before they head to bed and call it a night myself.