about time for a Beni Suef update

I'm here! I'm alive!
(now that I say those words, I'm laughing at myself because those are the exact phrases some tourist-vendors have used to get our attention here in Egypt...)
but really. I am here now in Beni Suef, and have been for over a week already.  And contrary to what one might assume since I haven't written a thing on my blog until now, I actually have a computer with internet access in my home! A computer with a littllllelllllllllllllllllllllll bit of a sticky "L" key issue.. so bear with me.

Let me back up though.
More important than the computer, I have a home with a host family!  Just when we thought there was no hope for living in Egyptian home settings, several of us ended up getting hosts for the service portion of our semester.
I'm living with a Coptic Christian family made up of host parents that are about 10 years older than me, Ehab and Jacqueline (not sure how she spells that in English letters, but... it sounds like Jacqueline), and their small daughter Clara--aged 2 1/2, and informally known as "Kookoo."
Their flat is on the fourth floor of Ehab's family's building, with his parents and sister one floor beneath us.  The other floors are empty due to the other siblings/their families living outside of Beni Suef right now. 

Both Ehab and Jacqueline speak English-- Ehab very fluently, and Jacqueline not fluently but much better than my Arabic still!  Both of them are also teaching and encouraging me with my Arabic, which is great and exactly what I was hoping for. 
Their home is really nice, definitely much homier than Eman House.  I have my own room with 2 double beds, because Kookoo doesn't sleep by herself yet.  Those of you who know me well will understand how great this is for me-- I really enjoy having a space that is mine, and being able to retreat to a quiet place when I've had too much extrovert-time.  And Egypt is certainly a setting for lots of extrovert time, especially when you are a foreigner in a city that barely sees any!

As for my service placement, my main volunteer work is helping at a church-run nursery school just a short distance down the road from my home.  Jacqueline also works there as a secretary and Kookoo attends, so we three go to school together every morning.  I don't have too many official duties there, but since it is a "language school" I occasionally help with the English lessons.  More commonly, though, my post is as an official lap to sit in, someone to blow up pre-slobbered balloons for all the kids on the playground, and as a funny big person participating at 3-4 year old level in the Arabic lessons and songs.  I'm not the world's greatest kid-magnet, but I really love it.  :)  Every day I can feel my Arabic improving bit by bit-- like today when I celebrated to myself being able to understand a few new baby-Arabic requests: "I want to play." (that's infinitive form grammar right there, yay me.) "I'm sitting by you!" <--(present continuous form!) and "I want a drink of water please" <--(mix of Arabic and very accented English... which threw me off for a second).  This is a vast improvement from my first couple days, in which kids asked me all kinds of things but I could only understand "I want mama/baba."  And for lack of a more helpful response, I told them mournfully..."I want mama and baba too!"  Luckily my spirits have been improving day by day as well as my Arabic skills.  This week I think I'm past the point of almost having a stressed/homesick meltdown right along with the preschoolers.  (Al-hamdu-lillah... Thank God.)

 In additional to being at the nursery school (or "baby class" as they call it) from about 7:45 a.m. until 3 p.m. every day, I am also helping Ehab teach 2 adult English classes twice a week in the evenings.  Most of these students are around my age, which is really great because up until now I have had very little opportunity to make friends with Egyptian women my age.  Same as with the nursery school and the population of Egypt in general, the majority of the students are Muslim-- which is really exciting and interesting for me since we've primarily only had contact with the smaller Coptic population before this. 

The combination of these two very different settings is really interesting and keeps me on my toes, though I think it is a lot more hours of work than I was initially expecting.  This is why they tell us not to compare our settings with other SST groups... I'm trying not to think about all my friends who told me how much spare time they had at their service location!  That said, though, I'm enjoying what I do and I appreciate every opportunity to try new things and socialize with all kinds of hospitable local people.  The people in Beni Suef are wonderful!

I already have a long build-up of stories from the past week, but I'll go ahead and post this... more of those to come.  Thanks for reading, and I miss you all!