Nile Crusin'

Last friday on the eve of the big England vs Germany match some friends who happen to be of the germanic-persuassion invited us on the MV Christeena with other friends to celebrate the end of school. The boat is located in town close to the Sheraton. We left at 4pm and cruised up the Nile to Maadi past where we normally hire the feluccas, eventually turning round to be back in the centre of town by sunset. It was a beautiful was to drink a beer with the wind in the hair whilst waiting for the inevitable sun going down and later the inevitable loss of England. Heres some photos of the scenes on the banks of the Nile in Cairo.......

Paintballing

last thursday night young T and 9 friends went paintballing as a belated birthday party event. The paintball arena is close to Kattameya, behind the wonderfully named Mubarak Police Academy (theres a film waiting to be made there somewhere). The area consists of a flood-lit field of large air filled obstacles to hide behind where teams of five do battle with high pressure guns shooting paint balls at high velocity - what more could 10 boys want (apart from unlimited paintball refills). P had a couple of game too and lasted quite a long time, taking out one of team Scotland before, as Forest Gump would say he, "got shot in the buttocks". Young T took one in the mouth and several other funny head shots and other body parts targeted! All good fun.....perhaps something to do with the ladies book club next meeting??

England 11 v Egypt 7, Kattameya World Cup

We invited both Ahmed and Mahmoud to watch the important England game with us as so before kick-off the boys got them to play an England vs Egypt game in the garden in 40 oC. It was a close affair, Twinkle Toes Mahmoud has still got it, a fiesty little midfielder a cross between Peter Reid and Lionel Messi he was man marked by Young T out of the game. Ahmed was more of a floating midfielder, a cross between Jan Molby and Haasan Hussein. P would have marked him out of the game but after 5 mins he started feeling the lack of match fitness - he has not played for 15 years so he said! Anyway for the record England ran out worthy 11-7 winners.

The least stressful way to be an England Supporter.

Watching England, as any fan will tell you, can be a highly frustrating business. Yet circumstances last night developed in such a way that we stumbled across a lower-stress method - not to watch the game at all, which for P is almost unthinkerable, but as it turns out was probably for the best.

The last night in the party season in Cairo was announced long ago, way before World cup fixtures, and the Queens Birthday party is held at the British Embassy Residence in the garden district of Cairo. Ahmed drove us down to a very secure area around the embassy (I say very secure as there was a load of police around, whether it was secure or not is a different matter as the only think the cops were doing was sitting around taking photos of the various party dresses (and some were indeed either spectacular to ill concieved).

A couple of photos from the trip down - an overloaded truck and a nutseller on the bridge over the Nile..

The residence garden was the venue, pretty nice (although not as nice as the pyramid ball !). Food was good and party was good, as we danced in the heat till the wee hours only stopping to get brief text updates from young T from the footy, most featuring the words, awful, woeful, disappointing. P made the prediction that our ticket number (400) would win one of the raffle prizes and low and behold he was correct, a 500 egp voucher for a restaurant at the Dusit Thani, a thai hotel close to us - a nice surprise and pretty impressive clairvoyancy!!

So husband ended up the night not watching an extremely poor england displaysomething he would normally consider unthinkable - but overall was less stressed out by the whole thing so had to admit is was probably for the best!

Heres some photos...

Catching up with the random images,,,,,,

Here are three random images I took on my camera - I would take more but the camera phone has a shutter delay of around 3 days!

Sitting in traffic the other night I looked over an there was a women in full veil driving the car next door. Now driving in Cairo you need your wits about you, eye in the back of your head and extra sensory perception. People say you need to read the road - only the road is in Arabic and the words are all jumbled up. So having to drive through this with your peripheral vision disturb looked pretty daunting. "Very dangerous" said Ahmed.

During the hotter moths in Cairo the cars, normally stuck in traffic, overheat. The buses get around this by, I think the engineering term is, "wedging open the engine door with a piece of 2 x 4'. This is a typical scene on the way back from work.....

Normally in cairo you see dangerous loads on top of cars. On the way back from the lunch time run to the garage I came across some chap with probably about 15 helium filled balloons loading them into a taxi. As he would push the last ones in others would pop out of the windows the other side. Eventually Laurel and Hardy closed the windows but the poor taxi driver was crushed up against the door by them. Only as it drove off did i think about taking a photo that does not really do it justice. Im surprised he did not float off....

World Cup Woes.....

Before the England 1-1 draw against the Old Colony

Young T starting to understand the pain of being an English supporter

Still occasional issues with Al Jazerra.....ahhhhhggghhh!

Bazaar!!!!

We had another Bazaar today at a friends house so I have been frantically making cards to sell for the Orphange. Had help from my friend Orla who helped bag whilst we were busy doing a good trade.....Made over 1200EGP, not bad for a mornings work and won a carrot cake on the tombola!!!

The girls (and Brownie the dog) who made the Bazaar happen...well done girlzzzzz