Jenyfer Matthews

Since moving abroad nearly ten years ago, I haven’t worked outside the home – instead I had two babies to keep me busy. Now that they are old enough to be in school all day, it seemed like a good time to explore some options to keep my resume alive. Which is how I started working as a substitute at a neighborhood school library.

I started in January and since then, it’s been a day here, a day there. But since last week, I’ve worked five days and I have six more days scheduled this month already so far.

It’s not so much that it’s a demanding job, but when I’m there I’m not at home and when I’m not at home, a whole lot of stuff goes undone. I can’t grocery shop at my usual time, I can’t do the laundry – or any of the other hundreds of chores that go along with keeping a house with two small children in residence tidy. (Note: I live in one of the dirtiest cities on Earth and we’ve had a two day sand storm this week. Guess how much dust and grit is coating my home right now??) Homework, dinner, and bath time is a mad rush. If I’m lucky I can collapse on the couch by about 8:30 – and have an hour of chat with my husband before we both crawl off to bed.

As I said, it’s not a demanding job, but I guess I’ve become spoiled in my decade at home. I don’t like having my routine disrupted, I don’t like seeing clutter and mess all over the house, and I really don’t like not having more time to myself. I haven’t written anything new in months and I have a long list of quilting projects I need to complete in the next little while.

Yet I know that other people deal with FULL TIME jobs on top of having a family to take care of AND still find time to write. I am in awe. It makes me wonder – do they never sleep? Because that is perhaps the only way I could find any peace and quiet to do any writing or anything else.

Being a parent is like trying to solve a never ending riddle. There is no rule book – only general guidelines – and every child is different. Just when you think you’ve got it down, they enter a new phase and all you thought you knew is no longer valid.

Anyone who has read my blog regularly will have already gleaned that my daughter is something of a tomboy. She has friends of both genders, but the ones I hear about most frequently are the boys. This week the mother of one of her male friends asked if she could come over after school today for a play date – and a sleep over.

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. The play date was fine, but a sleepover? I kind of thought that most parents were on the same page as far as co-ed sleepovers went (as in NO), but these particular parents are European, apparently a much more broad-minded group of people as compared to the average American

As usual, I’m probably getting ahead of myself and over-thinking things. They’re young and I know that it’s totally innocent, but in my mind parenting is all about setting precedents. I say yes to a co-ed sleepover when she’s 8, how will I explain my “no” answer when she’s 12 or 14 or 16 and she wants her boyfriend to stay over?

I guess I’ll just keep making it all up as I go along.

Tomorrow: pictures and a recap of my recent trip to Doha, Qatar.

So my flight out of Cairo started with a five hour delay due to a technical problem. I’m all for safety, but the Cairo airport is boring under normal circumstances so the delay was especially dismaying. Thank goodness I had a great book to lose myself in (Tell Me Something, by Adele Parks)

We were finally allowed to board and I was all settled in when the flight attendant comes to me and asks if I’d like to change seats since the plane wasn’t full. It wasn’t a long flight and I was already all settled in so I declined.

The flight attendant must have known something I didn’t know. During our 3 hour flight my seatmate picked his nose, licked the underside of the foil covering of his entree and ate with his fingers, snored wetly, blew his nose on his shirt, and spit a loogey on the floor near the window. Is it any wonder I always feel the need to take a shower when I get off a plane? I wanted to wash my hair with sanitizing gel after that display!

The next time a flight attendant offers to move me to a row on my own, I’m going to do it! Anyone have a seatmate horror story to top this one? (I sincerely hope not!)

Yesterday was Coptic Easter, which makes today the celebration of Sham el Nessim – translated as “smell the breeze” – the first day of spring.

Egyptians celebrate by having picnics and eating a variety of traditional foods including salted fish, green onions, lettuce, and dyed eggs.

Sham el Nessim seems as good a reason as any to have a picnic, though I don’t think I’ll be able to convince my children to eat green onions or dried salted fish! Being outside to enjoy the weather will have to do.

What’s on your schedule for today? Any signs of spring in your part of the world?

My family joined in with several other families we know and went to a resort in Ain Suhkna, on the Red Sea, for the weekend. I wasn’t expecting much frankly – I’ve stayed in some real dives in some very nice places in Egypt – but I have to say that this place was a very pleasant surprise. The rooms were a nice size and more importantly, clean! But who wanted to stay in the room when there was a beach, multiple large swimming pools, a playground, and seven tennis courts on the grounds? The only time we spent in our rooms we were sleeping!

(Click any image to enlarge)

A view from the beach

A view of the resort from a jetty built into the water

A line of ships waiting to pass through the Suez Canal

The first two days we were there, it clouded up in the afternoons and got cooler. It even attempted to rain a couple of times.

Luckily for us, this is about as much rain as I’ve ever seen in Egypt at one time!

Who needed sand toys when there were sea creatures to play with? These jelly fish look pretty serious to me, but in fact were pretty harmless. The children were picking them up and tossing them like frisbees!

We did encourage the kids to let this lovely starfish go back into the water.

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend. I would have been happy to stay a few more days! Since it’s only an hour and half away, I’m already scheming on when we can go back again…

Thank you, Jenyfer, for allowing me to visit your blog today. As part of the “Go Green, Read e” program, I’ve been part of an effort to make people more aware of what we can do to make wise use of our resources.

Although the inspiration for the program might have been to raise awareness of e-books as an alternative (note—alternative does not mean replacement!) method of reading, the concept of “green” is much broader, and covers every aspect of our lives.

Since I live in central Florida and Jenyfer lives in Cairo, we thought it might be interesting to compare some of the ways our respective countries and communities address the serious problem that there are only so many resources on the planet. And things like carbon footprints, global warming, and conservation should be dealt with on a planetary basis—we’re all in this together, after all.

Something we can all participate in: Recycling.

Terry
Recycling. Our county provides residents with two recycling bins. One is for newspaper, and recently they’ve added catalogs and magazines (at last—a way to get rid of all those mail order catalogs that show up daily). The second is for glass, cans, and plastic. At the moment, they will only accept plastics with a recycling label of “1″ or “2″, but perhaps this will expand in the future. When the program started, they took only newspaper and only specific types of plastic containers rather than anything with the correct code. (images of codes)

Jenyfer
Unfortunately, there are no formal in-home recycling programs in Cairo. Still, I do what I can: we reuse empty glass jars and plastic containers for food storage, I wash and reuse plastic zipper sandwich bags, and unneeded print outs become scrap paper for drawing. We use reusable water bottles for school lunches and have our water delivered in five gallon bottles which we trade in when they are empty, cutting down on the waste. Even our beer bottles are returnables! (I wish they still did that in the US!)

But that isn’t to say that recycling doesn’t exist in Cairo. There is a community of people called the Zabbaleen who live in the Mokattam hills. They collect about a third of the city’s garbage, take it back to their homes, and sort it for recycling. They not only recycle things like glass, aluminum, and plastic, but they also compost or feed the wet food scraps to their pigs and take cotton scraps and make things like mattress wadding, colorful rag rugs, and even quilts to sell. All in all they manage to recycle up to 80% of what they collect. No small feat in a city of nearly 20 million inhabitants!

Terry
Grocery stores have collection containers for plastic bags. More and more are encouraging customers to bring their own bags, and some even give modest rebates for doing so. So, when the bagger says, “Paper or Plastic?” your answer can be, “No, thanks” as you hand them your collection of canvas bags.

Jenyfer
If I am doing a small shop, I will tuck my purchases into my large canvas carry all. Often when I do a larger shop and request home delivery, my items arrive loose in a large cardboard box. Otherwise, I take the plastic bags that I am given and then reuse them as can liners for my small trash cans.

Terry
It used to be, any food product listed the ingredients. As we became more health conscious, the labels expanded to show nutritional analyses so we know how many calories, grams of fats, carbs, proteins, as well as sodium content and more. With more green awareness, we have another thing to consider when we look at packaging. Does it have the recycling symbol? It probably tells what percentage of the product is made of recycled materials.

Jenyfer
I prefer to buy food products with sensible packaging. Why buy something in a plastic or metal container when a simple cardboard box will do?

Terry
Some companies are getting creative. I was shopping recently, and found doormats made from recycled flip-flops.

Jenyfer
I bought a purse recently, entirely made from plastic fibers created from recycled materials! The Zabbaleen also make handmade paper for notebooks and tablets from a portion of the paper they collect.

Terry
What about electricity? Here, fluorescent light bulbs are touted as energy savers, and they’re becoming easier to find, and available in more varieties so we can replace the older incandescents in more fixtures. Remember when they were only available as long tubes, and pretty much relegated to the kitchen or garage? And now, LED is offering another alternative.

Jenyfer
I was pretty excited to see long life light bulbs available in my local grocery last time I looked. In addition, I use rechargeable batteries as much as possible, turn off lights when leaving a room, and always turn off my computers over night – an idle computer still uses a tremendous amount of energy.

Terry
Cars? Here in my neighborhood, gas is hovering around $2 a gallon. I park my little Honda Fit at the Y and it disappears amid all the bigger minivans and SUVs. It’s not unusual to see the occasional Hummer. And everyone drives. We have very limited mass transit, so rush hour traffic is inevitable. Unfortunately, the attitude seems to be, ‘if I can afford it, it’s might right to drive it.” I never saw gas-guzzlers when I visited my daughter in England, or on my trip to South Africa.

Jenyfer
Cairo is a tremendously large city and nearly everyone drive, making traffic a nightmare not to mention contributing to high levels of air pollution. My family does not currently own a car. I walk nearly everywhere I want to go. For trips further than I want to walk, taxis are plentiful and inexpensive – most trips across my section of town cost me about $1. There is also a mass transit train called the Metro with a stop near my home. I can take the train into downtown Cairo for about $0.20, arriving in less than half an hour (taking a taxi would not only cost more but I’d be stuck in traffic breathing exhaust for at least an hour)

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Those are just a few of the comparisons. Thanks again to Jenyfer for sharing this blog with me.

Terry Odell is a romance author and avid eBook reader, blogging this month for All Romance eBooks’ Go Green/Read e Campaign. Learn more about the Go Green/Read e Campaign, and to learn more about Terry, visit her website at . You can find Terry Odell’s ebooks and thousands of other eBooks on-line at All Romance Ebooks.

Every year the children’s school has an Easter bonnet parade. I have done my best to ignore and generally wiggle out of any need to participate in this activity in the two years they’ve attended school there. Last year I gave them dinosaur baseball hats to wear as they were walking out to the school bus. My daughter informed me earlier in the week that that wasn’t quite good enough for this year.

So, I went out on Tuesday and bought two plain straw hats to decorate, and yesterday I gathered supplies – Easter grass, plastic eggs, and small stuffed animals (fyi, that’s the bunny from the classic book GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU). I was fairly pleased with the assortment, actually. When they got home from school, I told them that we could decorate their Easter bonnets anytime.

My daughter looked at me in surprise. “But I already made a crown at school today!” She looked at the hat and the items I’d assembled and insisted she’d rather wear the crown she made. My son picked out what he wanted to put on the hat – and then left me to it.

And guess who got to decorate their hard boiled eggs for the egg races as well? I stuck temporary dinosaur tattoos to the shells, wrote their names on them, and called it good.

It’s not as if they did a lot at school this week. From what I can tell they spent plenty of time coloring pictures of Easter eggs, so I’m not sure why they didn’t ALL just make crowns at school and leave me out of it. They want them to bring eggs for egg races? Call it a cookery class and have at it!

It’s not as if I don’t have enough to do. My family will be getting out of Cairo for a few days and spending the weekend in Ain Suhkna, on the Red Sea and I have to organize and pack! Author Terry Odell will be blogging with me over the weekend and we’ll be discussing how we can all do our part to keep the planet healthy: recycling. So please stop by and share your own tips with us.

And have a Happy Easter!

Contrary to the post I had up over the weekend, I have another busy week ahead of me with very little fun time scheduled. I participated in a craft sale yesterday, I have to work at the library two days this week, my daughter has a class play on Tues, I many and sundry errands to run – including as my sometimes alter ego the Easter Bunny, and I have to go out and find a couple of straw hats for my children to decorate for a 10 minute Easter bonnet parade at school on Thursday. (Apparently the dinosaur baseball hats I slapped on their heads as they walked out last year didn’t satisfy them)

This is the last week of school before spring break and I’m pretty much ready. Yes, I’ll have to entertain the little creatures at home, but at least I won’t have to wake up with alarm every day!

As for spring – I’m not sure what happened to it. It has been hot for the last couple of days. Upper 80s, creeping up to 90F. A couple of nights ago I was wearing layers to watch tennis lessons after the sun went down, now I’m sweating and slapping at flies. Today it’s hazy. It’s only a matter of time before the sandstorm season starts. Yippee.

Isn’t this the most amazing bougainvillea you’ve ever seen? It’s more of a tree than a shrub – just look at that trunk!

It’s located on the grounds of a local school – which is currently remodeling. Honestly, I was worried about its fate. I couldn’t imagine anyone involved in the construction process caring about whether or not they chopped it down, and if you’d ever seen the way they go about pruning trees around here you’d understand. There’s really no telling how old it is. Probably not as old as I would guess, given the long growing season here.

An acquaintance of mine whose husband is an architect involved in the project told me that there are plans to attempt to move the tree to a new location. I suppose time will tell whether it survives being uprooted and moved – and whether it likes it’s new location as well as it obviously likes this one! – but I am pleased to here that they are going to make the effort.

Just take a look at all those flowers. How can you look at that and not be amazed?

A friend send me the following article from the Los Angeles Times and I had to share it with you. I only have one small quibble: not *all* the expats here are rich (though I do know plenty of those too). We certainly don’t have an SUV – or any car all in fact (too expensive!). My family is only “rich” by comparison to many regular Egyptians – but there are also plenty of Egyptians who make us look like paupers! In the US we’d be middle class at best.

The rest of this article is a wonderful slice of a day in my life.

Walking the beat in a Cairo neighborhood

In Maadi, young police officers keep watch over streets filled with scurrying schoolgirls, bellowing junk dealers, hustling gardeners and well-off expats as the ancient rhythm of the city plays on.

By Jeffrey Fleishman
March 16, 2009

Reporting from Cairo — Faces peek out through the wire mesh in the green trucks that rumble through the morning. They are not prisoners, but they seem so. A back door opens and they drop out one by one in their black uniforms, scuffed shoes and clumsily tilted berets.

Their rifles clatter, they are on the beat. They yawn and stretch and meander through the neighborhood, a trickling dark sea beneath the jacaranda and magnolia. They watch the Western girls, unveiled and unattainable, scurry to schools and cafes past bicycle delivery boys and men calling for “junk, junk” outside embassies and the homes of the rich.

They are young, these policemen, carrying bread and beans in plastic bags, taking positions on corners, along train tracks, in front of the villas of diplomats; they wait for trouble or lunch.. No one here seems particularly worried, not even after the recent bombing in the Cairo bazaar that killed a French schoolgirl or the stabbing of an American teacher a few days later.

This is Maadi, a southern neighborhood just off the Nile, a place of draped vines and shaggy willows where gardeners hustle hoses across narrow streets and black-and-white taxis troll for fares, rattling and held together by spare parts and ingenuity, their drivers sometimes pulling into the shade to slumber. There are no meters, the taxi man sets a price, the passenger counters, heads shake, an agreement is reached.

Walkie-talkies squawk like birds. There are the police you see — the young men in their uniforms and smiles — and those you aren’t supposed to notice, the undercover guys with bumps beneath their jackets, who whisper into car windows and call aside laborers in tunics. It seems conspiratorial, a sprawling secret conversation at the edge of the lives of expats, who appear oblivious, zipping around
in SUVs, playing baseball and backgammon, hurrying off to swimming classes and yoga meditation.

The eyes watch. Sometimes the eyes sleep; snoozing policemen in the 2 p.m. heat. Egypt is a police state. It runs on bribes, informers and the hauling away of suspicious men. It knows terrorism and has spawned its share of Islamic radicals: Ayman Zawahiri, a surgeon turned Al Qaeda lieutenant whose screeds are posted on the Internet, grew up in Maadi in a family of scholars and doctors.

The blast in the bazaar turned the mood a bit edgier, and suddenly roadblocks appeared where they hadn’t been and streets that had been dark at night were brightly lighted. A poor country struggling through the global financial crisis and relying on foreign workers and tourists can’t afford explosions and staccato images of bloodshed on the evening news.

Maadi stayed calm, perhaps with an underlying buzz of anxiety, but nothing to change routines, except the intemperate winter weather, which turned from cold to dust storms to sun. An ancient rhythm. The policemen roamed. They checked their bullets. They filled out time charts, thumbed the Koran; the lower ranks fetched more beans and bread, joking with the drivers who waited for women carrying bags of fish and meat and packages of cookies that each cost more than what a policeman earns in two days.

The mosques filled and emptied. The sun made ghost shadows of laundry against the buildings. The maids went home; the nannies were dispatched. The school day was done.

Teenage girls with Western money walked past a policeman with a worn Kalashnikov and loose buttons dangling from his uniform. He was not much older than they were. They see each other every day, but know nothing of each other. They share only a space. He protects them until the green truck arrives and fresh policemen drop to the pavement as he climbs aboard and the back door closes for the long ride home, over the bridge and far away from the jacaranda and magnolia.