“Winter” in Maadi

After our 3-week winter break in Europe, we settled right back into life in Egypt.

The mid-day call to prayer is always interesting to see, and this is the view from Blakely’s balcony the day after we got back.

Kennedie pointed out that she could see one of our bowabs, (Smiles Bowab, to be specific) just by looking at this photo. During the noon call to prayer on Fridays, men block the streets and set out their prayer mats and everything sort of stops for about an hour. Women aren’t allowed to enter a mosque so they usually sit on the curb and wait.

Another way that we settled right in was upgrading our home coffee situation. Enough bad coffee! Life is too short. I Ubered my way to the mall (which is a whole ordeal, as it’s a 30-minute drive) and purchased a Nespresso machine + milk frother. Morning coffee has never tasted so good!

Egypt continues to work hard on its construction projects, sometimes meeting OSHA requirements and sometimes maybe not.

Just past this disaster of a torn up road is a delicious breakfast spot called Lucille’s which serves American breakfast and milkshakes!

Winter has also brought a new round of sports and activities for the kids. Blakely is playing basketball and the twins are doing club soccer. Blake’s legs look a little silly in this photo because she spends a lot of time skipping down the court.

In addition to club soccer, the twins have also been playing soccer after school twice a week as part of their after school activities. For elementary, there are 3 boys teams (one team with grade 3, and two teams for grades 4-5). There is only one girls team which includes grades 3-5 and I’m the coach. While soccer is a huge sport in Egypt, it’s not popular among Egyptian girls (honestly, girls sports are not huge here. I think one reason they have girls sports at all is because of the large expat community). Anyway, we decided to enroll the twins in club soccer so they could play a bit more competitively and have more consistent practices. So far it’s been great – but Kennedie is the ONLY girl in the 7, 8, 9 division so she plays with the boys and she’s definitely holding her own. She scored a goal in their first scrimmage and that has helped boost her confidence. She’s also quite coachable and listens to everything her coach tells her to do. We are so proud of her!

In an interesting turn of events… Kannon has started gravitating towards… KEEPER! He’s quite good at it, too. It’s been fun to see him get comfortable in that role. (Kyle and I are hoping he develops better form than his dad when it comes to punching the ball out so he doesn’t tear his bicep tendon like his pops).

Every Saturday the club team hosts “Super Saturdays” where the kids are invited to come play in 3v3 or 5v5 games, sometimes for medals or treats. Kennedie has opted out of Super Saturdays, because she said she can only take SO much boy soccer in a week… but Kannon’s team won their tournament today and he played keeper most of the time.

The soccer complex has a small restaurant attached which comes in handy when Boosh is in dire need of a “hotdog.” I say that with quotes because, as pork is not a thing here, they make these strange beef hotdogs that sometimes are ok and sometimes a little weird. Anyway, you’ll notice there’s a partial hotdog sticking out the end of the bun; that’s because the bun was way too long for the hotdog so in true Egyptian fashion the chef just decided to cook another third of a dog and slap ‘er right in there! Problem solved!

Our weekends have been spent playing at CAC, hanging out with friends, and just lazing around the casa. We’re trying to get out more and take the kids to restaurants more often. Our European travel showed us that the kids can be troopers when it comes to menus they’re not familiar with, and sometimes it’s fun to go out! Here we are at a cafe for breakfast which felt FREEZING cold because it was under 70 degrees and we only had sweatshirts. Also, we were the only people there at 8:30 because Egyptians sleep in.

In other exciting news, THEY SELL GIRL SCOUT COOKIES HERE! There are a couple Girl Scout groups at CAC and sure enough, there are Girl Scout cookies available to purchase. When we first heard this glorious news a couple weeks ago, Kyle immediately bought 13 boxes. Today he bought us another 12. I’m pretty sure Girl Scout cookies are my love language.

Remember when I wrote about how impactful Rose’s restaurant was for our family while we were in Florence? In Blakely’s class the students were asked to write a story about something that happened in the past. Naturally she chose to write about her experience at Rose’s!

Here’s hoping our adventures over the next couple of weeks are as story-worthy as Rose’s!