A day in the life of a trailing expat spouse

Today was a work day for me.

Sunday is the first day of the week in Cairo. This totally threw me off this week because we went out last night for dinner with some friends. It wasn’t until 12:30am that I realized that I needed to get up to substitute teach today.

I substitute teach at Cairo American College in Maadi. Here is a breakdown of the name of the school:

• Cairo. Because it is in a suburb of Cairo.
• American. Because courses are in English and it follows the American educational system. AP tests, PSAT prep, etc. Don’t underestimate this part of the name because it extends to other aspects of the school too. For example, there are a couple of American style electrical outlets in the chemistry labs. And there is student council, chess club, a track, a gym, bake sales, the works.
• College. K-12. I don’t understand either.

Anyhoo, here is was today, roughly:

12:25am – Realize I need to teach in 7.5 hours

1:04am - Finally in bed, after setting out clothes, etc.

6:00am – Alarm goes off & I get in the shower

6:25am – Boil water for coffee (NesCafe)

6:42am – Head for closest metro stop. Metro is mostly empty! Woohoo! Half of the men have scarves wrapped over their ears because it was a cold night. It must have gotten down to 45 degrees F or something. “Colder than a witch’s ___” as my grandpa would say

6:53am – Transfer to other metro line. Too crowded! I can’t fit. I’ll wait for the next one. Surely it’ll be here in 5 minutes, as usual

7:15am – Next train finally arrives. Its crowded too, but I push my way on this time because I am late

7:40am – Get off metro and grab taxi

7:47am - Give the taxi driver 3LE and walk the rest of the way because there are WAY too many SUVs dropping off kids

7:49am – Give the security guard my AZ driver’s license and get a “high school substitute” badge

7:53am – Get to math office. First class is a study hall. Mrs. L’s instructions say “Do not let them leave for any reason unless they have a note from Mr. Pleasants”

8:03am – 3 of the 5 students show up. 2 say they need to leave for PSAT counseling. I tell them they can go but need to bring me a note.

8:45am – I dismiss the (one student) study hall & spend the next 55 minutes trying to find something worthwhile to do on my computer that doesn’t require internet because the non-faculty wifi isn’t working. I give up and open up Music, Language, and the Brain but I keep falling asleep.

9:50am – The first real class starts: Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry. Easy class. They have busy work. And the wifi is working on this side of the building. I check my email and Facebook. I edit a video from frisbee on Saturday.

10:17am - Student A says “The area of a circle is ’2 pi R squared’, right?” Eeg! Area of a circle? How long has it been? I can determine the velocity profile of blood in an artery, but the area of a circle? “Yeah, that sounds right.” Student B says, “No it’s not, its ‘pi R squared’” Oops. “Right,” I say, “because ’2 pi R’ is the circumference. I always get those two mixed up.”

11:14am – The class is dismissed one minute early for lunch. I realize that I forgot to get money when I left this morning. I only have 7LE on me and the closest place with cheap street food is a 30 minute walk away. I decide to wait until after school, when I get paid.

12:00pm – My last class starts. This is “IB HL” which means “International Baccalaureate, Higher Level” These are the smarty pants kids. They have an exam the next class so this class is just reviewing on their own, but I tell them I can probably help them with whatever they are working on.

12:12pm - I take a look at what they are working on. Infinite series. I hated infinite series in AP Calc. So boring. One student says, “This stuff is useless. Its just monotonous and a lot of work. We’ll never use it again.” These were my thoughts exactly back then. “No, it’s not,” I reply, “It sucks now, but what you learn with this will be really useful when you get to more advanced calculus and you need to get a computer to do the work for you.” “Then I’ll just use the computer,” a second student says. “But you have to understand the logic behind these if you want to program the computer to do the math for you.” One student’s eyes light up. I recognize him because I had him in a Chemistry class I subbed for. He had hooked his laptop up to a mic and a amplifier and had figured out how to capture the resonant frequency of a wine glass and play it back in order to get it to vibrate and sing. If he had had a bigger amplifier (and some ear protection), he could have shattered it opera-style.

12:23pm – My stomach is growling. I check my email and upload video featuring a sweet frisbee catch during the call to prayer onto Youtube. I chat with Cara online and she scolds me for not using my 7LE to buy some chips for lunch.

1:30pm – Class is dismissed. I am technically “off” but need to stick around in Maadi until 3pm in case I am needed to substitute for another teacher in an emergency situation.

1:37pm – I go to pick up my pay slip. No pay slip. “The woman who signs them is absent today.” Sigh. This is the “Cairo” part of the school’s name.

2:03pm – I finally get to the street food place by the main metro stop. One fuul, two taamiya, 3.75LE. The taamiya at this place has a slice of bell pepper in it. But, for some reason, they have no tables, so I join the Egyptians lined up on the curb in from of the place. I don’t have enough money to sit in a coffee shop with wireless, so I wander down Road 9 (the main commercial drag in Maadi), looking for our local bank’s ATM.

2:07pm – Walking along Road 9, I resume my latest project: a photographic catalog of Cairo’s bicycles. I’ll post on that later.

2:25pm - No ATMs. I sit outside of a snack stand and enjoy a locally bottled Coca-Cola in the shade.

2:50pm - I reach the next metro stop and decide to head on home. When I transfer trains, a woman forgets a bag on the train, so the other on the train try passing it through the window after the doors are closed. It won’t fit all the way through the bars, despite their pulling on it as the train starts pulling away. She starts screaming and her husband starts yelling as her 7 year old daughter holds on to the bag and starts getting pulled by the train. She lets go and falls. Luckily, not between the platform and the train.

3:50pm – Walking home from the metro. I grab a photo of a Dokki bicycle.

4:15pm – Tim is supposed to be coming over Roasted Eggplant Tomato soup, then shisha before heading to Cliff’s house for the Superbowl at midnight. So, Cara and I walk over to Alfa Market to get some food for dinner and to get her a desk so she can have a “study zone” in our sunshine filled spare room.

4:45pm - Desk is assembled. Woohoo!

5:00pm – I gotta take a nap.

5:30pm – Cara rouses me. Tim says Cliff has a cold, so no Super Bowl party in Dokki. We’ll have to do soup some other time.

5:37pm – More water for NesCafe. I get to work on website stuff I am behind schedule on.

7:45pm – Mmm. I can smell the warm tortillas Cara is making fresh.

8:35pm – Dinner in honor of the Cardinals: Bean burritos with fresh tortillas. We’ll check the score in the morning cause I can’t do a no-sleep night this week.

9:05pm - Back to work on websites.

11:00pm - Chat with Cara’s family for a few minutes. Dale is excited about my potential hiking trip in Sinai.

11:45pm - Start on a blog post about my day.

Good night!!