It's been a movie-watching as study-break weekend. Friday night before I went to play backgammon, I watched "Murder in the First" that Rob gave me before I left Michigan. Kevin Bacon did a pretty decent job in this one...

Tonight, I needed to stop at the MCC office to drop off some paperwork, so I decided to watch a video. But first I got caught up in watching subtitled music videos. Yes, you read that right. It's a strange concept, but these were songs sung in Arabic, but with English subtitles. Interesting to see what these songs are really about. Apparently all the pop songs here are love songs...

So I finally got around to watching "The World is Not Enough". It came out in 1999 and I'm pretty sure I saw it, but I had forgotten almost everything about it. Brosnan as Bond, so I can't complain too much -- but some of the jokes are getting really cheezy!

On an unrelated note, isn't it odd how sometimes when you think about people the timing works out that you hear from them right away. I hadn't heard from my friend David in a week or so, but I got to catch up with him a bit today.

Erik shared with me today that he's very impressed by all the comments I get on this journal. But he gave me a hard time about how so many of them are from my mom! *grin*

Thanks for reading and commenting, mom!!!!

Based on David’s recommendation, I’m currently downloading the mp3 of Ani Difranco’s song/poem “self-evident” which discusses September 11 and the current U.S. political situation. The lyrics are really interesting…

It’s downloading slowly over the phoneline, of course. But I am now hoping for a faster connection at some point soon. How? Well, every time I walk past the computer stores down the street, I look in the window to see what their newest items are.

Well, on Thursday I noticed that they now carry D-Link wireless networking cards for laptops and wireless access points (sorry for all the tech-talk). So, I’m hunting around my neighborhood to see if anyone has a DSL connection with a wireless network set up. I thought the store selling the cards might, so I carried my laptop up there last night, but it couldn’t pick up a signal. Unless they turn things off at night. I need to check during the day and also try the area around the internet café in our neighborhood too.

Unfortunately, Netstumbler only has a map for the U.S. and no site I can find by searching has any info about Cairo...

Tonight I watched WWE wrestling on TV. I’m so ashamed. It was an accident, I promise. *grin* I was sitting at my favorite coffee place, playing backgammon, drinking Tang, and watching music videos when all of a sudden they switched it to cheesy wrestling. Silly! *laugh*

So many changes in the week since I last wrote a good journal entry…

I still need to catch up by telling stories from last weekend at the MCC Retreat, but that will wait until I get the pictures uploaded.

Last night, Darren (my roommate these past 3 months) flew home to Canada. *sniff* I’ll miss him, but I better not write too much about that, since he might be reading this! *laugh*

We had a really nice going-away party for him on Monday night, here at our place. Lots of the Sudanese teacher/volunteers from St. Andrews came, along with the Presbyterian volunteers we know, and even my friend Khaleem who I met at my Arabic class that I took when I first got here! Lots and lots of yummy food – people really brought lots of things!

So Tuesday was Darren’s last day in town so we planned to have one last big lunch. So we went to Chili’s! *laugh* Yeah, like you’d see in the U.S. – in fact, it was like they took one apart in the U.S. and shipped it over here. They’re just like the ones you can go to there! Kinda weird, but worth it to have Coke with Cherry syrup in it! And they give free refills! (that’s a rare thing here!)

After that, I spent a few hours working on my lesson with one of my classmates and then finally made it back home around 9pm. Darren finished packing and watched South Park while I worked on my lesson but at 1am I stopped so that we could play our last few games of Scrabble together before Craig picked him up at 1:30.

He should be back in Canada by now, I think. Hopefully Darren made it safely…

Today was my last day of my teaching course, so I’m DONE!!!!!!!! On Sunday or Monday, I’ll see my “provisional grade” and in about 8 weeks, I’ll get my certificate to show that I completed the certification. It was a long course and really difficult at times, but tremendously useful! I’ve learned so much.

Well, I need to catch up on some emails I’ve been ignoring for the past week and upload some pictures!

Got back from Alexandria late last night and into bed around 2.30am. What a great weekend! Pictures and stories after things calm down around here. Maybe on Thursday.

Darren was supposed to be leaving on a flight late tonight (Monday) but the flight was rescheduled for Tuesday night, so he's along for a bit longer. We had his going-away celebration tonight. Good fun and nice to see so many of his friends.

Tired, so I must go to bed. Tuesday I'll be doing a bit of preparation for my last day of class on Wednesday. I'll be taking a break to join Darren and some folks for lunch.