Jenyfer Matthews

Or maybe that should read “Orchid Obit”.

The last of the orchid babies died this week. I prefer to attribute their demise to the poor quality of the Cairo tap water than to any sort of negligence on my part. Yeah, that’s it. It was the water… It’s certainly been known to make me sick!

The last morning of our weekend away we woke early not because of a wake-up call, but because my son, having been reading books about sharks and the Titanic, was determined he was going to go snorkeling before we left. So we got up early, had breakfast, and headed down to the beach.

There was a coral reef right next to the beach, then a drop-off – which is great for snorkelers but doesn’t make for the most child-friendly approach since you have to jump off a pier to get into the immediately deep water. Add to that, it was extremely windy so there were some big waves coming in. Cold wind. Cold water. I wasn’t planning to get in the water, but I got myself a beach towel anyway to wrap myself for warmth!

The water was gorgeous – so clear and inviting. If only it had been a bit warmer!

I took this picture from on top of the pier and I imagine it’s a lot deeper than it looks. That is how clear the water is!

I had no intention of getting in the water after I felt that cold wind, so fortunately for my son there were a couple of really patient and kind people in our group who were going and were willing to swim with him.

Poor little guy though – he was afraid to let go of the stairs because of the waves. We could not convince him that being on the stairs half-in and half-out of the water was the worst place to be because he got slammed by the waves. If he had let go, he could have bobbed on top of them. Eventually, he gave up and let those people go and enjoy their own snorkeling, though he was quite sad and dejected at his “failure”.

He sat for a while, huddled in his towel, thinking. He asked me a few times if I wanted him to go in. I told him honestly that what I really wanted was for him to be happy – there would be other beach trips. But if he wanted to go in that day, he better make up his mind to do it because we didn’t have all day (literally!)

A short time later, he steeled himself and went back for another try.

He still didn’t let go of the stairs, but he got his face under the water and got to see lots and lots of fish. He came up grinning and full of fish reports that time.

I could see some of the more colorful fish darting around from my perch on top of the pier so I can only imagine what wonderful things he could see underneath.

All too soon it was time to take him back to the room to clean up before we checked out. We needed to be back on the (damned) bus by 11am. I’m sure if we’d have had the rest of the day, he’d have been swimming for the horizon by afternoon.

His pleasure in that short-lived activity is what has me considering signing up for a beach trip next month – on a bus. What I won’t do for my children. The beach in question is only two hours away however

Having had a night’s sleep to recover from the long bus ride the day before, you can imagine how pleased I was to have a 6am wake-up call to ensure that I was awake and ready to board the bus again for our trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery and Mt. Sinai.

I was in fact already awake. I don’t always sleep well away from home, and in this case I had two things going against me: the room was a bit stuffy and dinner hadn’t agreed with me (a common occurrence at buffets in Egypt). Still, since I had planned on climbing the mountain, I decided to stick to the original plan and go climb the mountain. I did however skip breakfast as I didn’t want to risk further stomach upset on the way up the mountain.

St. Catherine’s Monastery was about a two hour drive from our hotel. It’s pretty far from just about anything, unless you happen to be a Bedouin goat herder and even then, it’s not that easy to get to. This was actually my second trip to the monastery, my first back in 2003. My primary interest in this trip at the time I booked it was to climb Mt. Sinai.

Since the monastery closes at noon, we visited it first. It was pretty much as I remembered it, only a tad less crowded.

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The monastery has its own gardens where they grow olives and grapes, among other things.

Our first stop was to see the bones of the many monks that lived and died at St. Catherine’s over the centuries. Apparently they don’t do things this way anymore. (I can only imagine it would be a bit demoralizing!)

It was so crowded at the monastery that pretty much the only way to get a decent picture of anything was to look straight up!

There is it – the burning bush. The withered leaves are, I am sure, a result of the extremely arid climate and the fact that the tourists are constantly pulling on the branches they can reach. As I expected, my son was less than impressed. I tried to get a picture of myself with the bush but people kept walking in front of my son as he tried to take my picture or would come up and pose in front of me for their own picture so I finally got fed up and left. I have a picture with it from my previous visit anyway.

After our tour and a break for lunch, it was time to start climbing the mountain. There are two ways to do it: on camel or on foot. We all (foolishly) opted to walk. Check out the grin on that first camel – he was probably laughing at our folly!

We opted for the “easy” path – the camel path. Can you see the tiny people in the lower right corner, on the path near the monastery? Objects may be farther than they appear!

It was a gorgeous day, with a cool breeze blowing, but I was beginning to feel the effects of my fast. And the fact that I was carrying two liters of water in my backpack, along with snacks, my purse and a camera. Ugh. My son skipped along, unencumbered, far ahead.

The lower portion of the trail was fairly wide, but with a steady climb and many switchbacks. The small house is a rest station where they sell water and pop at only a modest markup.

Just when you think that you have to be getting close and that you can’t possibly walk anymore, you come to the last bit: the 700 stairs to the top. There are two ways to climb Mt. Sinai – the “easy” camel path that we took, or a more direct but steeper ascent of 3000 stairs, also known as The Stairs of Repentance. Believe me when I tell you that the 700 stairs were agony enough!

This isn’t quite at the top, but I loved these signs. Duh!

Tah-dah! I made it to the top in only 2 1/2 hours of grueling climbing. My son bounded up the mountain in record time and was all set to go back down the moment I arrived. Ah, to be young again!

I was glad to know these were available and equally as glad I never saw the inside of one!

If the climb up the mountain was hard, the walk down was harder. Not only did you have to watch your footing on the loose dirt / stones on the path so you didn’t slip and fall, but I had a migraine brewing and felt truly awful. Whether it was heat, dehydration, or low-blood sugar contributing, it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other. I tried to distract myself by taking pictures. Even in my distress, it was amazing to see flowers blooming in such a harsh environment.

What I wouldn’t have given to ride a camel down the mountain! I saw many camels, but no drivers. I passed several groups going up the mountain as I was going down, both on foot and on camels. Sunset and sunrise are very popular and more usual times to climb the mountain. People also camp up there to catch one or the other.

I must have looked pretty awful as I made my way down the mountain because a German man on his way up stopped to ask if I was all right and to advise that I find myself some electrolytes. I took one of my magic migraine pills, made my way down the mountain, drank some juice, and forced myself to eat a banana muffin. Within an hour I felt almost normal again, except that I was physically exhausted and my legs felt like jelly.

As we set out on the trip in the morning, our guide told us that our attitude would decide what sort of experience we had and he was right. I didn’t feel well, so I can’t say that I enjoyed the climb as much as I hoped to. I can only say that if I hadn’t have done the climb, I’m sure I would have regretted it, but that having done it, I kind of wish I’d have stayed on the beach! I’m convinced that there were actually more than Ten Commandments, but that Moses just couldn’t face the trek back up the mountain to get any more than the first ten! However, now I can tick this item off my list and I never have to go back again.

My son was fairly upset about the fact that his sister was going on a class trip to Cyprus with her class and he couldn’t go. So, as a way to make it up to him, I booked just the two of us on a weekend trip to Dahab, Egypt.

That was back in March, and by the time this weekend rolled around I’d had a hectic week and enough travel for a while so I was seriously considering canceling. I really really wanted a morning to sleep in and a day to do nothing. I didn’t want to disappoint the boy though, so I soldiered on.

Picture it: me lugging two suitcases and a backpack two blocks down a still quiet street in order to meet the tour bus for a 6am departure. The itinerary indicated that we’d drive seven hours, arriving at the hotel mid-afternoon.

There’s not much to be done on a bus for seven hours except read – and take pictures to amuse yourself.

This didn’t seem the most auspicious start to the trip! Apparently they meant all foreigners except for all the huge buses full of tourists going through…

The landscape varied from flat and featureless to this. Certainly gave me some perspective on why Moses wandered around out there for so long. Even the drive went on and on and on…

After being on the bus for endless hours, even rest stops in the middle of nowhere offered some entertainment. I took these shots from the bus window. I love my new camera.

Is this a great face, or what?

It was closer to 4:30pm when we arrived at the hotel, a mere ten hours later, but just look at the view from our room. Gorgeous.

This is the view in the other direction – and what so much of the coast of the Red Sea looks like. There are an unbelievable number of unfinished hotels / chalets going up along the beaches – so many that I wonder if they were all finished, would there be sufficient demand for them?

The hotel was a pleasant surprise – so many of the hotels that the university books for its tours are total dumps.

The beach was stunning and I was quite sorry that we didn’t have more time that afternoon to enjoy it before the sun set.

A view of the hotel from the pier in the water.

So all in all, while the scenery was lovely, I wouldn’t call sitting on a bus for ten hours all that relaxing a way to start a weekend. Stay tuned – it gets more ridiculous. Wednesday: St. Katherine’s Monastery and Mt. Sinai.

This year has been very episodic and strange. We were just settling in to a nice routine after last summer’s vacation when the school closures started for the 2009 Flu Freakout. Then there were holidays, more flu closures, and more holidays. I went on my trip to Thailand and just when it looked like things were settling down again, I had to go to the US on the medical mission with my son.

And still there’s no stopping in sight.

This weekend my son and I are taking a university organized trip to the Sinai peninsula. Part beach trip, part tour of St. Catherine’s Monastery it should be a lot of fun. Apparently the official name of St. Catherine’s Monastery is The Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai. It’s also home to the well where Moses met his wife and site of THE Burning Bush. My son has been having a hard time understanding that the Burning Bush is not still burning (no eternal flame!) and that there aren’t any charred leaves in evidence either (at least there weren’t when I last visited the site in 2004) If the bush will be underwhelming for him, perhaps a climb up Mt. Sinai at sunset and some beach play in the Red Sea will make up for it.

Expect pictures next week.

I booked this trip for my son and I well before I knew he and I would be spending so much quality time together in Cleveland. It was also meant as a special trip for him to make up for his disappointment over the fact that his sister is taking a week-long class trip to Cyprus next week. I’d kind of like to just relax this weekend, but I also like to take advantage of these sorts of opportunities when they come along. So I spent yesterday packing: for my weekend getaway with my son and also for my daughter’s class trip. I’ll get home on Sunday evening just in time to send my daughter on her way Monday afternoon.

And if all that wasn’t enough, I already booked my reservations for summer vacation (barring more volcanic activity!) I’m racking up the frequent flier miles like you wouldn’t believe!

I’m a wanderer, yeah the wanderer,
I roam around around around around…

Believe it or not, the orchid babies survived my absence while I was away in Cleveland. They don’t look much bigger but they are still alive.

There was, however, a fifty-percent reduction in my poinsettia population – two of my four plants died.

Since my plan is to be away for approximately six weeks this summer, I wonder how many of any of the remaining plants will still be here when I get back?

I’ve come to accept that as long as an indoor laundry drying rack and a mountain bike are permanent fixtures, my bedroom will never be a beautiful room. And that’s a shame because we have a couple of nice pieces of furniture and some really lovely quilts to beautify the space as well as a wall of windows to let in the sun.

My room has also been the space where all the stuff I intend to deal with “later” ends up. I’m happy to say that “later” finally happened over the weekend.

The club where my children take tennis lessons hosted a flea market so I reserved myself a table and got all the various boxes and bags of clothes, books, and toys the children have outgrown organized to sell. In truth, it didn’t look like much when I hauled it in there, and I wondered if it would be worth the effort. I’m happy to say it was – the sales were fast and furious for a little more than an hour and by the end I only had a few items unsold and $120 in my pocket.

Until I the day we buy a house where we have room enough to have spaces dedicated to hobbies versus sleeping, I guess my bedroom will never be beautiful, but at least now I can walk across the room without tripping over something. For now that’s good enough.

Until I succumbed to the lure of taking tennis lessons myself, that is.

I did hold out a long time, though – I’ve been watching my children play for ten hours a week for nearly two years. I’ve tossed around the idea of taking lessons for a while but always decided against it because of back problems, shoulder problems, time. But when a friend of mine recently asked me if I’d take lessons with her, I immediately agreed. That was Wednesday morning and we had so much fun that we decided to do them two mornings a week.

I’m taking the lessons from my children’s coach and my biggest worry in the whole thing was that I’d be awful. My children are both so physically gifted that it is inevitable that he would likely expect more of the same and that I’d disappoint him. All I really wanted was not to look like a total spaz – either missing all the balls or hitting them out of the court. Happily, I didn’t miss many and all of my shots stayed within the walls of the court, if not the lines!

My children were with me for the first lesson, watching avidly. My daughter’s assessment? “You don’t suck!”

I was using my daughter’s racquet and wearing my sport sandals for the first lesson. Since I’m going to stick with it, I bought proper tennis shoes yesterday. Buying a racquet is slightly more complicated so I’m going to take more time with that. If you see a blonde playing bad tennis in blindingly white tennis shoes using a racquet with purple strings and a Sponge Bob vibration dampener, that’s me. Keep your eye on the ball because it might just come flying out of control in your direction…

I started taking pottery classes with another tennis mom a little more than a year ago (with time off for summer and other assorted holidays) in exchange for a couple of quilts. I glazed the items that I’d produced thus far and she fired them while I was away in the US.

You know what they say about the best laid plans. I am not very experienced in making pottery, but I do know that try as you might, things don’t always come out as you might expect them to. There might be an air bubble in the clay that causes a pot to crack in the kiln or the glazes might mix in unexpected ways or the kiln might heat unevenly. There are also times when something really wonderful happens that you might like to reproduce and you’ll never know just how repeat it.

I picked up my things this week and it was a mixed bag. Some things were as I thought they would be…and some thing were not.

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This was one of the first items I did (shows, doesn’t it??) A pinch pot (made by pinching the clay) was supposed to be glossy green on top, black underneath. Hmmm… Good thing I wasn’t terribly concerned with how this one came out!

It’s prettier underneath – where the glaze stuck, that is!

I made this little pot on the wheel and when it got a bit wonky at the top after we transferred it to the table to dry, I whacked the sides to square it up. The glaze is a dull pewter (which shows fingerprints terribly!) and the inside was glazed black. It looks better inside than out!

I did this jug on the wheel too. Again, a bit wonky on top so rather than cut it off, I formed it into a lip and added a handle. Voila. More dull pewter with black inside. Again, prettier inside than out!

I made this mask based on a picture I took of a ceramic mask my friend has. I don’t mind the color of this one, but a crack developed across the front (near what would be her hairline) and the glaze blistered on her nose. However, I kind of like this one because it looks like something I might have excavated myself.

This is a slab bowl – pretty quick and easy to construct. Just roll out a piece of clay, cut it to shape, drape it over another object and let it dry.

I had what I thought was a great idea – I crushed up a green wine bottle and sprinkled it on a couple of pieces, hoping to get a high gloss glass coating. As you see, once again the green glaze failed, the black underneath vanished, and I have a bowl that looks as if it has a blob of green wax stuck to it.

It looks much better from the side!

A big lesson I took away from this experience is to always do a test tile when working with unfamiliar glazes / materials. However, since this wasn’t my kiln it wasn’t really up to me.

This lizard is hand built and I futzed around with it for weeks to get it right. So can you imagine my disappointment that the glass didn’t melt properly? I may try to “fix” this one with some ceramic paints that I can bake on in my own oven.

This is by far my favorite pot of the bunch and is the only one that pretty much came out as I planned it to. This one is also hand built, a coil pot. I had intended to mount a small antler or a piece of drift wood in the hole in the lid. The antler I have is the right size, but doesn’t the mount pieces don’t quite fit flush and the drift wood I have is a wee bit too small. I’ll be back in the land of antlers and driftwood soon enough so either I guess I’ll wait and see what I find.

So there it is, my first and last pottery exhibition. I won’t let it put me off pottery forever, but I’ll probably stick to quilting and writing for a while…

I spent much of the last week cleaning the floors of my house, which were neglected in my two week absence, and last night cleaning the vacuum cleaner.

We’re nearing the end of our fourth year living in Egypt and I’m on our third vacuum cleaner. I know that nothing is built to last anymore – how else would we be able to sustain an economy built on consumerism? – but a vacuum cleaner a year seems more than a little absurd to me.

My mother still has had the same vacuum cleaner that she’s had for years, a Dirt Devil upright. She’s had it long enough that I can only sort of remember the vacuum cleaner that she had before that (a blue Hoover upright?). That’s right, I can only remember two in my lifetime. And I suspect that the Dirt Devil didn’t actually replace the Hoover, but that it was bought around the time that she set up housekeeping on her own when my parents split up, which would be something like 26 years ago.

I swear I don’t mistreat my vacuum cleaners. I had the same one in the United Arab Emirates for about six years and other than the odd bit of plastic breaking off here and there, it worked fine until the day I abandoned it when we moved to Egypt. I think the real issue is Egypt.

You might think the problem is sand, but it’s not. Well, at least it’s not only sand. It’s the dust. The dust, and the fact that my floor to soaring ceiling wall of windows doesn’t have the first gasket to properly seal them against the outside – which is why they let in drafts, rain, feathers, sand, and dust. Pounds and pounds of dust.

My last two vacuums gradually started to work less efficiently until they finally just stopped altogether. Since they didn’t cost so very much and were mostly held together with duct tape by the time they died, I decided (each time) to simply replace them.

This time I chose one with a plastic dust collection box rather than a reusable bag. I understand the reusable bag in theory, but in practice? Don’t love it. Since dust is primarily an organic matter and paper could be made to biodegrade easily, why bother with reusable bags that are impossible to empty without scattering all the dust / dirt you’ve just collected?? I thought that the plastic box was the solution to the above problem. That, and the several layers of HEPA filters that the vacuum is fitted with. Surely they would keep the vacuum from choking to death?

So far, the vacuum works really well, and it’s not that big a deal to empty the plastic dust collection box. But I also have to clean all the filters every time, and now I can completely understand why the other vacuum cleaners died. The dust is silky, fine, and completely insidious. Have I mentioned that we are coming up on sandstorm season?

My next project? Investigating weather stripping and trying to convince the housing department to pay for and install it…