Jenyfer Matthews

The cats above have more holiday spirit than I do this year. I am glad the big day is nearly here – only so that it can all finally be over.

I did not do any baking this year. None. My children didn’t ask about it and I didn’t offer. For their sakes, I have made sure that they have gotten to participate in the appropriate seasonal festivities. I have spent more time than I anticipated going back and forth to our rec club, but the children were able to make gingerbread houses (with graham crackers) and make and decorate cookies. They ate most of their efforts before I got any pictures. When I saw the reckless use of icing and sugar, I was more than happy they enjoyed themselves in a place other than MY kitchen.

I did at least do some decorating.

I made this Christmas countdown calendar a few years ago. The pattern started out as a wall hanging, to which I added 25 pearled buttons upon which the children hang a bell each day until they reach the top. There are more bells at the bottom than anywhere else because it was the only way I could fit the required number of button-ornaments on the tree! The children dearly love hanging a bell each day and watching the tree fill up. I love that 1) it doesn’t require (yet more) candy to be interesting (as many of the Christmas calendars rely on) and 2) it pretty much keeps them from constantly asking me how many more days til Christmas?

(Geez, I do sound grumpy, don’t I?)

This is our first year in our new apartment and I finally, finally went out and got myself the candle holder I have been wanting for our fireplace ever since we moved to Cairo (we had a fireplace in our last apartment too)

I like the idea of a fireplace more than I like a fireplace itself. Most of the time what a fireplace seems to be is a huge source of drafts. They can be pretty though – but this is as much of a fire as I ever intend to build!

I had intended to buy some poinsettia to set on the hearth but never got around to it. By the time I thought about it after I returned from Germany, it just seemed pointless. The ones I had from last year only just died! The “odd” stocking on the far left is mine. No, it doesn’t match the rest, but it is the stocking that my grandmother made me when I was little (4? 5??) and I have used it every year since she gave it to me. Tradition means more to me than matching or color coordination.

So, other than the last few presents I need to stuff into gift bags before I set everything out later tonight, I suppose I’m as ready as I will ever be for the big day. In spite of sounding as if I am channeling the Grinch, I sincerely wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

I’ve gotten up early the last few mornings to wrap presents before the children wake up because I can’t seem to outlast them at night anymore!

I used to enjoy wrapping presents. I remember asking my mom to let me wrap her presents for her, which she was only too happy to let me do. It was fun to choose complementary paper and bows. It was something of an artistic process for me, creating a beautiful package, though I was never very good at tying pretty bows – I relied more on stick-on bows or curly ribbon or a combination of both.

So why is it that wrapping presents now is such a chore? One problem is perhaps the lack of inspiring wrapping paper. My mother had a huge selection as she bought a few new rolls every year. Nice quality wrapping paper is hard to get in Cairo and the few nice rolls I bought from a friend (who imported it from England) is fast dwindling. It doesn’t help that my son, in his early Christmas enthusiasm, got into my supply and used way more than was necessary to wrap his sister’s present and cut it badly besides. Sigh.

I do have pretty ribbon and tags, thanks to a friend in America who shipped them to me via a friend of hers at the US Embassy, but I’m still not much good at tying bows. Did you know that you could split wider flat ribbon and curl it with scissors? Maybe you already did, but I just learned that trick and used it to my advantage this morning.

I could of course just use gift bags; however, while convenient, bags are just not as tactile or fun. Children like to rip paper. Also, bags are hard to pile under the tree. A tree with only bags standing in groups under it just looks…odd.

I ran out of boxes to wrap just about the same time I ran out of patience and tape. I still have a few more things to wrap but those items will go in bags…

I LOVE this song. I will never hear Roxanne by The Police again and not think of Rudolph.

I am not sure what I was thinking, but I finally did my present inventory over the weekend and found that I was woefully unprepared for the big day! I fooled myself into thinking I was ahead of the game by having bought each child their WOW gift and a few of the harder to get items in the US this summer. That might have still worked out okay, except that three different sets of relatives prefer to deposit money in our bank account and let me do the shopping, which is safer than mailing things. It’s not as if this is a new system so I am not sure why I blanked on that aspect of things so completely this year.

Then I “lost” a week in Germany. I did get my husband’s presents while I was away, and a couple of things for my daughter, but did not find anything that inspiring for my son. As luck would have it, the children were invited on a play date yesterday afternoon so after dropping them off, I headed straight to the mall!

It’s always a toss of the dice here in Cairo as to whether you’ll find anything worth having or whether the items you want will be in the size you are looking for, but usually if you are willing to pay enough you can find something to buy.

This is the only time of year I will just close my eyes and pay whatever shops are asking to get the job done. Really, what choice do I have? $60 for a sweatshirt? Okay. $50 for a child’s sport watch? Done – next. The beauty of this system is that 1) I’m mostly spending money from the family so it doesn’t “hurt” my thrifty bone so much and 2) since I spend all year saying “NO” to the children, they usually don’t realize that I am the one who has actually purchased all these previously denied items!

At least this time I am truly finished! Now, to find a quiet hour (or two!) to wrap things up!

I stole the post title from an email my German friend sent me, which she in turn stole from a horror movie. It seemed appropriate as my last two trips via Amsterdam have not been uneventful.

I flew from Cairo to Amsterdam and then took a city-hopper flight to Cologne. I decided to stop for my waffle cookie supply going because 1) I had time and 2) I wanted to put it in my checked back on the return flight. As it happens, it was a good thing I did.

I nearly missed my flight going to Cologne because of a long line at a snack counter. I think I was behind some sort of class trip. By the time I got back to my gate, they were preparing to start calling names and making threats on the terminal speakers. I was one of 5 who straggled up last minute, but I felt better that I had my snack and I wasn’t alone. It would have been embarrassing to get on the plane dead last because of a sandwich!

Coming back, my flight from Cologne was delayed by an hour because the plane coming from Amsterdam was delayed due to ice. Since I only had a little over an hour gap to make my connection, my only hope was that my Cairo flight would also be delayed by ice. It is the first time I’ve ever actively *wished* for a delay!

The pilot announced that anyone with a flight scheduled for 8:50 should expect to miss it. My Cairo flight was scheduled for 8:55pm, boarding to start at 7:50pm. The flight attendant I asked about my chances suggested that I run. We landed at 8:30pm. I made it into the terminal (by bus) and through passport control by 8:40pm. Then I grabbed a cart for my bags and ran from C hall across the entire airport to F hall – I even ran on the moving walkways!

I arrived at my gate breathless but in time. I am grateful that the airport staff took pity and kept the gate open longer than usual for me and a handful of others that galloped up last minute. More amazingly, my bag made it as well.

Settling in back to the routine is another story. Germany is only an hour different than Egypt, but there is always a price to be paid for going away. My price is apparently laundry…

We have lived in Cairo for nearly five years and do not own a car. A few years ago a friend was preparing to buy himself a new car and offered to GIVE us his old car and we declined. I love the freedom and independence that having a car gives you and love driving, but I have no interest in driving in Cairo. It wouldn’t be fun here at all.

There are approximately 20 million people in Cairo and probably as many cars. The traffic is pretty much gridlock at any given time and there are few if any lights or signs to regulate traffic flow. Imagine a road designed for three lanes of traffic, both side lined with parked cars, and people jockeying for position and creating four or even five lanes across? When traffic is thick, it doesn’t flow or even creep, it lurches. Car surge forward a few feet and then screech to a halt. Add in the fumes and exhaust from the many decrepit vehicles on the road and you have a recipe for motion sickness. There are frequent accidents, ranging from minor fender benders to pedestrian fatalities as people throw themselves into the road attempting to cross and drivers run them down, either unable or unwilling to slow or swerve.

The roads in all of Egypt are poorly maintained and it is even worse outside of Cairo. There are parts of Egypt where the paving suddenly stops and becomes a gravel track. There are parts of Egypt where foreigners are not allowed to drive period due to security concerns. Many of the roads outside of the city have no street lights. Given the fact that many Egyptians believe that using the headlights on their car runs down their batteries and will drive as fast as possible once they find a bit of open road, flicking on their lights only as soon as they sense the shape of an oncoming car in the dark, there have been some horrendous accidents on the roads connecting the major cities. I can remember a few which have killed entire families and one which involved a bus of Australian tourists. The employees of the US Embassy are not even allowed to drive outside of Cairo after dark.

Now think back to my recent trip to the beach. The place where we stayed was only two hours outside of Cairo and we left at 8AM. The longest part of our trip was on a large highway, at least three lanes across, but the last 10KM or so was on a two lane road that followed the shore of the Red Sea, some parts of which curved around the rock faces of the hills across from the water. Because we went a few days before the official holiday and it was early in the morning, traffic was light and we made the journey in good time and with a minimum of thrills.

I was not so happy or confident in our return trip however. Because we don’t have our own car, we were at the mercy of the schedule of our driver and he was unable to pick us up until 5PM. On the one hand, we had the entire day to play at the beach. On the other hand, 5PM is dusk.

The curvy two lane road was the first bit we had to travel and it was much scarier on the return trip since it was both dark and we were on the outside edge of the road. Traffic was a bit heavier as well because people were traveling for the holiday the next day. Our driver was doing his best to be careful, but there is only so much he could do when there were idiots passing buses on curves. Is it so important to get anywhere that you have to risk your life and the lives of everyone around you to take such risks just to gain a few feet?

I didn’t truly relax until we rejoined the main road – which though it is poorly lighted and cars kept zooming past us at ridiculous speeds it is at least straight, wide, and flat!

There are times I wish we had a car because it would make getting out of Cairo more frequently an easier option. Then I get out of Cairo and once again, I am glad that we don’t. It’s scary out there!

You can’t always get what you want when you want it in Egypt. That particularly applies to holiday foods for whatever reason – perhaps because there are certain foods that seem to be so tightly associated with the holidays that we don’t miss them much until that very moment when we desperately want them?

I had only been married about five years when we first moved abroad and during that time my husband did most of the cooking. It was a very happy time for me I wasn’t working when we moved so it made sense for me to take over some of the cooking at that point. It wasn’t necessarily an easy process because I had to teach myself to cook with actually ingredients, from scratch. There weren’t many convenience options available and the ones I could find were absurdly expensive. Who pays $10 for a brownie mix or a can of pumpkin? Sometimes even what seemed to me to be basic ingredients were hard to come by so over time I had to get good at substituting and improvising.

I didn’t make a Thanksgiving dinner this year, and the dinner to which my family was invited featured many dessert options, but no straight-up pumpkin pie. I do not do eggnog-pumpkin-pecan. I could happily skip the rest of the meal but the one thing I do want is pumpkin pie. I could eat pumpkin pie any time of the year – my daughter is the same way and often requests pumpkin pie for her birthday, which falls in July!

Sadly, there was no canned pumpkin available in the local groceries this year (as yet!), and I have gotten so used to being able to get it that I didn’t bring a can home in my suitcase this year. There were a few actual pumpkins around but frankly I wasn’t up for dealing with an entire pumpkin. Instead, I decided to get a jump on my recipe resolution for December and make a sweet potato pie.

Yes, technically I made the pie in November, but I’m counting it for December. Sue me.

It was infinitely easier to process one large sweet potato than it would have been to process a pumpkin. I microwaved the potato for five minutes before I boiled it for twenty minutes. Then I skinned it under cold water as instructed and since I don’t have a mixer, I popped it in my food processor with the butter and the rest of the ingredients. As suggested in the comments of the recipe, I used evaporated milk instead of regular and added a bit of flour to the filling. It looked a whole lot like pumpkin pie to me when it was finished.

I also made my own pie crust. I admit that for as few ingredients as are in pie crust, I am terrible at making it. It requires a fine touch and I usually handle it too much. I must have done something right this time because this one actually turned out nice and flakey.

The verdict? My husband declared he liked the sweet potato pie better than pumpkin pie and both the children liked it every bit as much. We ate it room temperature the first day and I liked it – but it didn’t seem to me to be quite as rich as a pumpkin pie. More like a diet pie – a “lite” pumpkin pie. I liked it much better the next day after a night in the refrigerator. Then again I like my pumpkin pie cold better too. It would have been better yet with fresh whipped cream but without a mixer, I think I’m out of luck on that.

All in all, I declare the sweet potato pie a success – but not a successor to pumpkin pie. Just an understudy, waiting for an opportunity to snatch the starring role in times of pumpkin famines. It’s always nice to have a back-up plan.

The same day I also made Moroccan Chicken Stew, another success. I pretty much followed the recipe but next time I will up the amounts of all the spices and toss in a bit of chili powder. It was flavorful, but could have used more zing. I’m sure it has more zing as prepared in Morocco!

I imagine that I’ll get to at least one more new recipe in December – I’m really hoping to be able to make my step-mother’s truffle recipe and also have plans to make salt dough ornaments with the children (does that count??). I have to say that my recipe resolution is perhaps the most successful resolution I’ve ever made and I’ll probably continue with it in the new year as well.

At least in my world.

I hate holiday shopping.

Correction: I hate shopping at the holidays. There isn’t a Black Friday sale yet devised that could tempt me out of my house on the weekend after Thanksgiving.

I worked at Kmart when I was in college (and they were still solvent). During my time there, way back when the store was closed on major holidays, the store management came up with the brilliant plan to be open on Thanksgiving day. Even then I could see the writing on the wall. I used to volunteer to work on Thanksgiving day just so I could have the next day off. It only sounds like a sacrifice – I was paid time and a half plus holiday pay to work on a day when the store was empty and I was let off the hook for working the mad rush the next day.

Even then, I avoided holiday shopping as much as possible. I might have to spend most of my time working in a store, but they couldn’t make me shop. I did my best to pick up things throughout the year and stash them away, whipping them out on the proper occasions as needed. Keep in mind I was a poor college student – organization and planning were my greatest assets at the time.

Perhaps working retail all those years is what put me off shopping during the holidays, but I truly embraced online shopping in the earliest years of the internet. It was so easy! No traffic, no crowded parking lots, no lines. Just click, click, click, done. I like a sale as much as the next person, but my time and mental health are worth something too. And I don’t know about you, but my email inbox is increasing full of sale offers these days so who needs to go out and fight the crowds to get good deals?

Because I’m in Egypt, online shopping works best for shopping for family back in the US. I have to plan ahead for everyone else. Don’t hate me for what I’m about to admit: I did nearly all of my Christmas shopping for my children online before I went home this summer and picked it all up at my father’s house. That’s right – I’ve been nearly finished with my shopping since July. I’ll fill in the gaps with things I find here in Cairo, but I can deal with holiday shopping here. In Egypt, it’s simply November.

What are your plans for holiday shopping? Do you like to plan ahead or last-minute shop?

The children have the entire week off of school for the Eid holiday, the second big feast after the Ramadan season. A week plus two weekends is a significant chunk of time to have off – enough to go away somewhere, which is what most of the population of Cairo seems to have done.

I’ve been planning a trip to the beach with some family friends for a little over a month. Initially I wanted to go from Monday to Thursday both to minimize the amount of time the children would miss their tennis lessons but also to eat up as much of the week as possible. Who wants them bouncing off the walls at home all week? My friend, who was actually organizing our accommodation, arranged for us to go from Saturday to Monday. Initially I was a bit annoyed because it meant we’d return to Cairo and still have the whole week in front of us. As it turned out, it was a blessing in disguise.

Because we went a few days before the official holiday and many people actually had to work on Sunday (poor slobs!), we had the place to ourselves. Isn’t it lovely?

(click to enlarge)

We rented a two bedroom chalet in a community of holiday homes. Look at it now, serene and peaceful, and then imagine it crawling with people…

Just in case swimming in the Red Sea doesn’t appeal, there are also large pools scattered here and there – and some of the bigger homes had private pools too.

This was the beach midday on Saturday. We had the place to ourselves!

My daughter spent most of her time in the pool but we couldn’t keep our son out of the Red Sea. The beach was rocky, as was the sea floor. He spent a lot of time face down in the water looking at the pretty fish. His reports were so enthusiastic that I actually decided to give it a try in spite of lack of a snorkel.

It was surprising how buoyant the salty water makes you – floating on the top was nearly effortless. Holding my breath wasn’t nearly so easy, but hey – salt water is a great nasal rinse, right? At first all I saw were rocks, but then suddenly there were fish everywhere. I didn’t see so many colorful ones as my son – he told me there were more closer to the dock. I was reluctant to go there at that time because there were some fishermen there and I did not wish to be their catch of the day. My plan was to go back the following day and launch myself off the end of the dock. The bottom was so rocky that it was incredibly hard to just walk in from the shore.

My plans for swimming on our last day were thwarted by wind. Not only was the water a bit too rough for snorkeling, but the wind was cold! (To me!) It had been difficult enough to get out of the water the day before – I knew I’d have turned into a popsicle getting out into that strong wind.

It didn’t put my children off however – we found a sandier bit of beach and they rode the waves in their inner-tubes!

More people started arriving on our last day at the chalet. Soon, we saw lots more scenes like this.

The beach was huge and we still had lots of space to ourselves, but it’s amazing how quickly you become spoiled. I was very happy to be packing up to leave because even those few people were disturbing “my” peace and more and more cars kept arriving.

We left in the evening on Monday, just after dark. Next post: the dangers of night driving in Egypt.

I saw this car on the morning after Halloween, when I was walking around looking for egg damage. The car itself is nothing special – there are old cars like this all over Cairo. It was the sticker in the back window that drew my attention:

(click to enlarge image)

Really? I’m thinking that if the owner of this car truly has a “need 4 speed” the first thing they need is a car made in this decade!

People often ask how I like living in Egypt. My standard answer is “some days are better than others.” There are days when the sun is shining and the sky is clear and I’m exploring an ancient site or a souk or lolling on the beach – those are great days. Then there are days when the water has been out for hours or the electricity keeps going on and off. There are also days like yesterday, when I need to make a withdrawal from the ATM and what should be a simple errand becomes a major headache.

There are three ATMs in fairly close proximity to where I live. One of them is in front of the American school and getting money out of that ATM is like getting money out of a slot machine – most of the time it’s empty or out of service. There is also a machine in a small grocery store around the corner from me. I’ve learned to time my visits to mid-morning – that’s usually late enough that the bank has serviced and re-filled it. It doesn’t however always guard against the odd messages the machine returns to me. There are times when it tells me I’ve reached my daily limit, even when I haven’t used the card that day. I’ve deduced that is ATM code for “don’t have quite that much in me, try again tomorrow.”

Yesterday after yoga class, I stopped by one little grocery to pick up the particular bread we like and on the way home I stopped by the grocery with the ATM to get some money, only to discover that the entire ATM machine had been removed. That was a new kink. So far as I could discern, it will be replaced at some unspecified point in the near future, but that didn’t help much with my immediate need.

I ended up having to do what I didn’t want to do and go home to drop off my bags before hiking around the neighborhood looking for a functional ATM. I was disgruntled about the extra stop because I was already sweaty and tired and coming up on very hungry. I did not want to go back out, but I did need money – especially as most of the ATMs in the neighborhood will be emptied for the holiday next week and who knows when they will be refilled?

On my way back out, I ran into this beauty on the stairs. I assume it was somehow injured or stunned as it didn’t even flinch when I walked down right next to it, stared, went back upstairs for my camera and then came back and started taking pictures.

The third ATM I tried dispensed money – but only after it told me “nope, can’t do it, some of the notes are reversed” and I tried again for a lesser amount. The bird was gone when I returned so I hope that means that it collected its wits and strength and found the water source it looked best suited for.

Speaking of which, I’m taking my family to the beach for the weekend. Here’s hoping that I can relax my shoulders and come back with a few nice pictures to share next week.

Have a great weekend!