Cairo Spring

It is spring in Cairo. The weather alternates between dry sandy wind, cool and sunny, and oppressively hot. The heat does not quite lock you up and throw away the key, it is more oppressive in the way a time out is to a five year old. Time outs are also just hints at summer's future plans for total lock down.

Smells around the city tag along with the weather. Dry sandy days make your skin crawl with dust you will never get off and never stop smelling. The cool days are fresh and make the beige seem green. As it gets hotter the trash smells worse and the city’s stench is only paused when you walk past a fruit stand and over ripe guavas fill the air. I love the way they smell and hate the way they taste.

School had become a larger joke than any of us expected. Chrissie and Paul are basically done teaching their reading program because the entire national school is cramming for exams. They get out an hour early and have nothing to do at school except sub. Katie is almost done teaching the ABCs to the little ones and will also have nothing to do starting in May. Anna is leaving early; most likely around May 1st. Tom and I have classes to teach until about the second week of June, then revision, and exams. For being a pretty valuable resource, native English speakers, the school has squandered us, especially in the national school. Chrissie and Paul have been passed around from classroom to classroom, given no clear guidelines as to what or to whom they are teaching, and then expected to perform at peak. Silly, in the words of my Grandma Ehrich, just silly.

I have had the same job the whole year, but still no training. All of us are fed up and pretty sick of teaching, the school, and dealing with all the unmotivated and uniformed bossing around we get. Oh well. Almost done!