Keeping a Pet in Cairo

Pets can make you feel at home, especially in an unfamiliar place.  We ended up leaving our cat, Ruby behind, but if you are traveling to Egypt, you can of course bring your pet.  I’ve heard of people doing it, but unfortunately I don’t have any info about costs, as I never planned to do [...]

Sad news

Um Muhammad was the arabic teacher for my kids for 3 years.  They really grew to love her.  We would spent our Eid al-Adha together.  My husband would go with her husband and brothers to purchase the sheep for slaughter.  The men would all slaughter down in the courtyard, while the women waited upstairs having tea and [...]

Natural Medicines from the Sunnah

I’d been planning for a while to write about hijama, and just by chance I came across American Bedu’s blog with the same topic.  She also has a video depicting hijama, which I’ll steal post here, since it is very similar to what I do myself.  There is such a wealth of natural medicine to be found [...]

Only in Egypt

This is too funny.  I have personally seen a lot of the things in this video happening in the street.  I had myself a good laugh.  Especially from the traffic and spelling mistakes, classic Egypt.  Just realized there is music ( I usually have my speakers off.)         Here I felt bad for the donkey, [...]

What would you do?

I’ve had a number of cleaning women come a go, at least five.  Most of the women who clean house in Egypt (they are called shaggala) are not professional housekeepers.  The more well-off Egyptians will often hire women from other African countries to clean, and they are usually more expensive (and so I’ve heard, better at [...]

Third Culture Kids

I got that term from an expat homeschool group I belong to.  It refers to kids who’ve traveled/lived overseas most of their lives.  I wonder if my kids will end up like this.  Global citizens with no ‘home’ culture.  They are biracial Americans, living in Egypt.  They are familiar with three languages and somewhat fluent [...]

Ramadan Journal and pics

First day, I’m feeling good, I shopped, I prepared.  I had a menu for the entire month.  I burn the food.  Yep, and not once but twice.  So first day of Ramadan we order out from Yemen Al-Sa’eed.  Mandi, a yemen dish which is delicious.  You can order a platter or 1/4 up to one whole lamb.  [...]

Ein Sukhna

We tried to take a vacation recently to Ein Sukhna, or hot springs.  It’s a spot near the Red Sea, where mostly Egyptians vacation, as opposed to tourists from outside of Egypt.  That means it’s more affordable, and with a more Islamic atmosphere.  We basically went on the spur of the moment, because that’s how dh [...]