Well, I taught this afternoon.
(much to my surprise!) *grin*

One of my classmates was sick today, so she couldn’t make it in. So, I was given the “opportunity” to fill in for her. *laugh* I joke because at first, I didn’t know how to react when they asked me to help out. The first thing I thought was, “no – are you crazy? I don’t have any time for preparation and I need to do handouts and…”

But right away, my instructor told me that it was really just an opportunity for me to have a bit of unofficial/unobserved/ungraded practice. I’d just be up there on my own and doing what I could but I wouldn’t get a grade for it or anything. She added that I should “have fun”, so I decided to go for it.

I felt a bit unprepared while teaching and the lesson didn’t feel as good as some I’ve done, but my classmates who were observing me said that it looked great to them and the students were into it. I’m really glad that I was able to do this. I definitely wouldn’t do one of my graded lessons with so little preparation, but this let me find out what areas are really coming naturally to me now. Giving instructions, monitoring the students, and changing from one task to another just work out ok for me now…

As a treat, one of my classmates brought in a poppy seed cake that she made. I don’t need to take any drug tests soon, so I tried it. Very yummy!

Speaking of food…my friend Lisa asked me about what food you can find and here’s the answer I gave her:

Many N. American and European items are available in Cairo. There's a chain of "supermarkets" that carry all sorts of crazy things. They just added Quaker granola bars and Quaker Oats to the shelves 2 weeks ago. Pretty expensive, though. $8 U.S. for a small box of granola bars or a medium-sized tube of oats.

Most things, I try to buy the Egyptian version that is similar. I could pay way too much money for imported Kellogg's Corn Flakes, but it's much cheaper to get the local "BiscoMasr" Corn Flakes.

However, with all that said, it's random little things that don't exist. For instance, you can get cake mix in vanilla, orange, and chocolate flavors. That's it. There's Jello, but for some bizarre reason you can't get Lime (not that I care). Only Strawberry and Cherry, plus Mango

I guess there's an even bigger supermarket somewhere in the rich/ex-pat part
of town, but I haven't been there yet.

UPDATE: The quest for shoelaces continues. I haven’t looked in a couple of days, but I need to get out there tonight and check out the situation. *grin*