Amir at the shop

By Tim

As part of my daily schedule of homework I am required to speak with a native Egyptian for 2 hours a day. This has proved somewhat challenging for me, because speaking for that long in a language I don't really speak is hard and I'm a little too shy to make it easy to find people to talk to randomly every day for 2 hours. The other day though I struck what I see as gold when a shopkeep named Hamdi invited me to sit by him in his shop. I volunteered to help and soon he had me (trying to) sell all the various items in his store, which meant mostly cigarettes and Kleenex.  I went back tonight with Amir and he was a hit. He stayed out very late with me and ate crackers and drank juice the man from the store gave him. A somewhat typical and somewhat extraordinary Egyptian experience.

Why we should join the foreign service

Today was a great day. We woke up early, and Amir and I went to a cooking class for Relief Society (the organization of women at our church). Our host was hilarious with three adorable children (and I'm pretty sure I've read her blog before... but I need to find out how? She used to live in Arlington, so maybe from someone Lauren knows?) and she taught us how to make Julia Child-style puff pastries and croissants. And ohhhhh, they were delicious. I wish I had the time/patience to make them. The Provo Bakery doesn't come close to these things (though the Provo Bakery is very delicious, don't get me wrong).

After that, we walked over to another woman's house because her housekeeper was teaching us how to make koshari, the food of Cairo. It is so complicated a procedure, but the results are incredible. It's one of the most yummiest things I've ever had when it's made right. And boy, did Fatma make it right today. Yum, yum, yum. We ate our fill, then brought some home for "our husbands." I can't wait to make it in Provo for whoever wants to come eat it (Melissa and Casey I know will be there, any other takers?)

Which brings us to the title of the post: why we should join the foreign service. You get an amazing apartment, completely paid for and furnished. They pay your utilities. You get an American salary, but can pay Egyptian prices. All this means you have enough money to employ a full-time maid. For your huge and beautiful and furnished apartment. The government pays for your move, you can even bring a car and they pay for it. They also pay for you to fly back to the US once every few years. And every few years, you get a new post which you kind of get to pick (they said as long as you aren't picking Europe, you usually get one of your top choices). All in all, it's seems like quite the lifestyle. We'll see what happens though...

Why I will not write you emails

Dear mothers,

I will not write you emails. Do not ask again. I will post pictures when we actually have internet that is not "pay by the megabite" or incredibly slow. This is my life, not yours.

Be grateful I blog. Isn't that enough to satisfy your voyeuristic cravings?



But, seriously. I'm kidding. But I still won't write you emails.

Because that's what a blog is for.

Mother's Day

Pretty uneventful, considering it was a weekday and Tim had class all day. We concluded my first real Mother's Day by getting lost and struggling to find our way home with a screaming and very tired baby. We had gone to a wedding party that was SO LOUD I couldn't in good conscience keep my child there without fearing for the future of his hearing. I think we offended the hosts though by leaving after five minutes. I'm sure it won't be the last time we offend people here.

Maybe next year I'll get breakfast in bed (crepes, perhaps) and a scalp massage. I can't really complain though since as I write this my husband is putting the babe to sleep. Mostly every day is Mother's Day for me.

And speaking of mothers, I have a pretty great one. So here's a shout-out to Suzanne.

Smith's on 200 W and Freedom is about a 2-minute walk from our old apartment, and where I went grocery shopping every week.

This is for all those "I can't believe you're going to Egypt, that's sooooooo dangerous" and the "you are crazy to go to Egypt because it's soooooooo dangerous".

105 degrees

Today it's 105 degrees. At the moment we are enjoying our A/C and hanging out inside, but I imagine after Amir has a decent nap we will venture out to the pool. The pool is amazing, so I plan on taking advantage of it. Especially since we are paying $400* for it this summer. We paid for membership to this club, but everything costs extra except the pool and the playground. It is lame. It's fun to watch everything though, we walked around last night and there was soccer, handball, croquet, and all sorts of other random sports being played outside.

This weekend I came down with another crappy case of mastitis. Luckily, I brought antibiotics with me, so when the fever and chills started late on Thursday night I took them right away and I've been feeling better since. I insisted on going to Church on Friday (Friday is our Sabbath... weird, huh?) and I am glad I did. Although I felt pretty horrible the whole time, I NEEDED Church at that moment in my life. The other moms were really welcoming, and this week I'm going to a cooking class and a playgroup so I won't be stuck inside like the past few days. Someone in the ward invited us over to dinner and it was delicious! Shredded BBQ chicken sandwiches and BREYER'S ICE CREAM. Amazing. They are with the embassy which equals commissary privileges. Also, their apartment was huge and beautiful. Embassy standard. I'm starting to think Tim in the foreign service wouldn't be all that bad. Tim decided after dinner that since their kids drink the water, he would do it too. So far, so good. I'm not brave enough/well enough to try this yet, but I'm kind of sick of buying bottled water. It's expensive and a pain to get home from the grocery store because we have to get a taxi (which isn't so bad, taxis here are ridiculously cheap, about the equivalent of a dollar or two to get anywhere in Maadi). Grocery stores do home delivery too, and it's about two dollars. This all seems very cheap, but when you're on our budget, and when it's in pounds, it seems like so much more than that. Because ten pounds could buy us ten delicious falafel sandwiches.

* We are actually paying $610 dollars for it. BYU took that much money from us, but it turns out the married membership is only $400, but we weren't allowed to keep the extra money. OUR extra money. I was pretty annoyed by this, but "it's how the budget works." Psht.

8 Months!

Atticus loves:

- Pulling himself up
- Standing
- Bananas and yogurt
- International plane rides
- Cords
- BBC News
- Swimming
- Strangers kissing him

Atticus hates:

- Teething
- Falling on our hard floor
- Sitting still
- Being kept out past his bedtime

He continues to be a very pleasant baby. Last night, he didn't really want to go to sleep because he took a late nap after Church, but he just laid in bed with us for an hour or so while Tim and I had a long chat. He is so fun to hang out with. He still is really quiet for an 8-month-old. He doesn't really babble at all, but I wish he would because he has such a nice-sounding voice. He has six teeth now, two just poked through this week. He likes to use them to chomp on bananas and anything else we will let him stick in his mouth. He loves hanging out in the streets of Cairo with his dad, and has met many interesting characters.

Damage control

Back in the States, I'm very concerned with health and safety. Maybe borderline obsessive on some things. I had Amir's carseat checked at the health department for correct installation (twice), we don't use any chemicals for cleaning instead choosing vinegar and baking soda, we use all-natural, biodegradable laundry detergent, and Burt's Bees and California Baby products. I tend to shy away from anything antibacterial. Here, however, there is no use worrying about parabens, BPA, and phytlates. Instead there is worrying about salmonella, hepatitis, tuberculosis, asthma, lung cancer, getting run over. No use worrying about the chemicals in Clorox when the vegetables could make you very, very sick.

I feel like I'm doing damage control all day long, attempting to avoid the ever-present cigarette smoke and reckless drivers. I've realized that triclosan has its place, and that place is in your hand soap when the lady next to you walking by the metro is coughing up blood. I've become quite attached to my hand sanitizer, and it has a permanent, very accessible place in our backpack. Would it be rude to require people to use a little before they touch all over my little baby with their grimy hands? The best ones are the butchers, go straight from touching raw meat to grabbing my baby's cheeks. Mmmm. E-coli.

I think it's ironic that they are very protective of their babies, they are all wrapped up in blankets when they are out to protect them from the sun, but you see toddlers hanging out of car windows as their parents go zooming down the street. The other night we had to take a taxi to get to the Carrefour, and I thought I might have a panic attack as we sped down the highway with my baby completely unrestrained in the backseat. I'm a nervous wreck here.

This post is about sex

I will try to keep this tasteful :)

My cousin Shay has an advice blog of sorts, and she ran a recent column on sex within marriage, specifically keeping things spicy after babies. We were discussing a different topic and she said that I should comment because I probably have a lot of insight into this subject. Maybe theoretically speaking... I may? But from experience, maybe not.

Honestly, we are not really sexually "active" at the moment, whatever that means. We're on a once every few weeks kind of schedule. There are probably a multitude of factors affecting our sex life, from finals to working at 6 in the morning at the bakery to moving across the world. You can blame it on the co-sleeping, but I think it has more to do with lack of desire than anything. I don't think if we really really wanted to Amir in the bed would not stop us. Because there are other places to do it besides the bed.

I'm convinced, and I've heard from a few very authoritative sources, that a side effect of the IUD is an unbearably low sex drive. I'm blaming it on that for now, because my body/sex drive does feel messed up and whacked out, not just low or on hold for a little while.

Maybe it's the breastfeeding hormones or maybe it's the mere fact that I have a parasite hanging from my body 16.7 hours a day, but I just have ZILCH sex drive ever since I had him. Even after a romantic date (ok, maybe we haven't been on any) or a night on the town (with baby in tow) and even when I'm well-rested and feeling pretty good, I still have no desire for sex. I'd rather clean the kitchen.

I'm sure all my readers are out there thinking "oh, poor Tim!" but honestly, if he was wanting it more often I would probably oblige him. Not because I have to though, according to my mom. She is of the perspective that a wife's duty to her husband requires regular conjugal visits or else he has a good excuse to find it somewhere else. While she later recanted that statement after a good rant from me, I am firm in the belief that a marriage does not require regular sex, and I don't think a husband needs regular sex to be satisfied within the marriage. Again with the readers thinking, "but what does Tim have to say about all this?" but he is actually firm in his belief of the same principle. He actually is more passionate (haha) about the fact that sex is not required for intimacy. we've had discussions and he can pretty heated about the fact that he does not want to have sex if I don't want to and will not be pressing the issue because he doesn't think it's necessary to be content in our marriage. Don't misunderstand though, we both think sex is great and beautiful and sacred, but if one or both parties has no desire then it's none of those things, it's just obligatory and boring.

And this is why the IUD will most likely be coming out right around with Amir turns one (I would like to wait longer... much longer, but I also really want to have sex with my husband and enjoy it). But if it does come out, we WILL be finding an alternative method because I will NOT be having another one of these precious little parasites anytime soon.

An interesting series of happenings

In Cairo, it's pretty difficult to find an apartment without using a simsar, or real estate agent-y kind of guy. They take you around to different flats until you find the perfect one, then collect 10% of the total amount of your contract. Luckily we are only living somewhere three months, so this wasn't too substantial of an amount, especially since our simsar found us such a great place.

The other night, one of the simsars (we'll call him Mohammed for the sake of anonymity) came to the apartment to pick up a group of students, and in front of everyone got into an intense fight with the police, got the crap beaten out of him, and was I think arrested. We were all kind of in shock and totally confused until one of our teachers explained to us later what had happened. Apparently, he wasn't allowed in the hotel because he is a lower-class Egyptian, and so the hotel managers called the police when he came in to meet us. The whole situation was exacerbated by the fact he was acting kind of uppity about the whole thing since he thought since he was working for Americans he could get away with betraying the system. Well... he couldn't.

Then today, for some reason I can't understand, he took the whole program out to a fancy lounge place for dinner. He probably spent at least $600 buying us all dinner. The actual place we ate was sweet. It was a hookah lounge so there were all these people just casually smoking it, while studying or playing on the computer or having dinner with the family. The food was pretty good too, and my chocolate milkshake was amazing. Overall, I won't understand why he bought us dinner after we got him beat up by the police, but I will appreciate it!