Though Egypt is still thoroughly freaked out by swine flu, school will reopen this week. We were afraid that the school might remained closed through the semester, but last week the government started capitulating- Sports were allowed to practice, AP courses could meet, etc. The current rumor is that the government will close the schools again in January, but who knows. And on a humorous pork-related note, yesterday Emily was at the Gym and Rachel Ray was on TV... however, every time she said pork they blanked out the word.
Things are going well at the church. Last week I (Ben) preached my first sermon, which was fun. We also had a high school lock-in the preceding weekend. Two weeks ago we started a Thursday Night Service with Holy Communion. It is a meditative service of silence, Taize and Iona chants, ancient liturgy, candles and the like. It has been a real joy to lead as I have much more time for personal reflection than in our Friday morning service.
Emily is doing well. A month and a half ago she applied for a job with the US embassy; she is quite excited about the position, but understandably frustrated with the very slow hiring process. We will share more details as they come in.
Emily and my arabic is coming along, albeit slowly. Emily is reading and writing (w/quite impressive handwriting), and her vocab is growing daily. I began studying arabic at something like an intermediate level, so I am a little ahead of Emily, but I have holes in knowledge that Emily doesn't. So Emily's knowledge of nouns + my verb conjugation make a quite a team when we are buying vegetables at our local souq.
And here are a few photos of recent. Unfortunately, I don't have pics of youth group- whenever I am at church I am usually leading stuff and dont have time to take photos. We will try to get some pics of church soon.
The night before our friends Luke and Aubrey moved back to the states we had a picnic on a sailboat in the Nile.
Fellucas (sailboats) on the nile at sunset. The one upside of living in one of the most polluted cities in the world is the pretty sunsets.
From our friend Jeanette's birthday party last week.
Emily and Jeanette's brother Philip.
Emily and I had a chance to go to the Red Sea over the Eid al-Fitr holiday a few weeks ago.
Every evening around sunset the tide would ebb and we played frisbee in shallows.
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