Fights, crushes and dressing downs

Hey,

Well I'm back, little bit of a delayed one I know but things have been a bit busy at work and they've only just started to wind down, not a moment too soon.

I trust you all had an enjoyable, memorable(or not depending on the amount of alcohol consumed) New Years. Mine was spent at a british club full of Egyptian girls letting their hair down Western style and old English drunks who really should know better. I managed to avoid the temptation of being one of those guys and stayed away from the booze all night. I was with two guys who didn't follow me down that road and I must admit it was amusing watching someone else stutter around the dancefloor cozying up to the nearest girl available attempting to grind away to Timberlake only to be rebuffed on a continuous basis.

Though looking at this from a serious point of view a sober eye really exposes the stupidity of those around you who have indulged in one too many. This i'm sure has been the thoughts of many a designated driver looking over my past behaviour. In fact i'm pretty certain i made even the drunk people with me think like that. But anyway I'm pleased to say that I haven't touched alcohol for three and a half months and more importantly, I haven't missed it. Whether that is still the case once I've spent a few minutes in the company of you reprebates will be an altogether trickier task.

Anyway I touched on it a bit earlier but work has been seriously fucking stressful the past month culminating in a bit of a set too with my co-ordinator who I have no problems calling a total fucking bitch at this time! Basically they forgot to give me a few ridiculously vital forms and pieces of information at the beginning of the year. This culminated in the students missing out on some work they needed to know before the mid year exams. This was solved no problem, but what got to me was the fact I was thrown to the lions that are the mothers so the school avoided any accusations of their own incompetency. It wasn't very fun for me though, when it comes to angry Egyptian mothers, I'd prefer to take my chances with real lions. The justice in it all is she was taken to task by the School director about it and has been sporting a permanent scowl on that butters face of hers ever since. The downside is she clearly blames me and this means I am going to seriously have to watch my back for the next few months and not make any mistakes. Which is going to prove difficult.

In other school news you will probably find it hilarious to know i am the subject of some schoolgirl crushes. Why you may ask? well i do consider myself to be the coolest teacher in the school so i think that certainly helps. Seriously though there are a group of 14 year olds i am having to avoid and one 12 year old. she is sweet so i dont forsee any problems with that one, the type of girl you'd like your daughter to be personality wise. However the 14 year olds are a bit more dangerous. I'm sure i dont need to remind you what sort of thoughts raced through your head at that age. I've already turned down a facebook request and have had to tighten up my personal security on that website. I dont think they are bunny boilers or nothing but you have to be careful when it comes to young girls feelings. A friend of mine told me that her colleague in Tanzania had a student unbotton her shirt in front of him! Thankfully no incidents like that have occured here.

On the social aspect of things I went to see the Cairo football derby a few weeks ago. I dont want to say too much as i've discovered you never know who could be reading this but i'm afraid it wasn't as enjoyable as I'd anticipated. My friend was refused entry as he had a camera and i have no pictures for you for that reason. my scarf was confiscated at the gate and a flag that i bought two minutes before was snatched off me and put in the rubbish tip along with thousands of others. As I said I wont say anymore but it definitely has put me off attending anymore, or at least any as high profile as that one. Al Ahly and Al Zamalek were the teams by the way.


I've also decided to take my arabic a lot more seriously, everyone here has commented that i've learned a lot in my relatively short time but if i really think about it i haven't tried as hard as i would like. if i did, i mean really put the effort in i could get the progress that i crave. make no mistake about it, its fuckin hard. Just a few moments before i wrote this i had to order a takeaway using just arabic. i am waiting with baited breath exactly what it is i end up with. The thing is my vocabulary is improving daily. the problem is when i am listening to them speak i might understand between 50 and 75 % of the words they are saying. however by the time i piece them together to actually come up with a sentence structure they've either walked off and given up on me or translated it to English if they are able to. I do have many friends who are helping me though, they try to only speak to me in arabic which although frustrating can only benefit. Others insist on only speaking in english to me despite the fact i try to speak in arabic to them. This results in what must be a hilarious conversation to anyone watching. i say something in crap arabic and he answers in crap english and it seems to go on like that until we run out of vocabulary. bizarre.

As some of you are aware, actually i think two of you, im returning to england all being well in june, just for six weeks though as i plan on visiting some new countries for the remainder of my holiday. I'm weighing up my options between Lebanon, Sudan and maybe Syria. I know what you're thinking, not exactly tourist hotspots. I might as well spend a peaceful weekend in Gaza City or a backpacking trek in The Afghani mountains while I'm at it. Seriously though these countries are within a few hours of here so I feel i should take advantage. I like to be original as you probably know. I mean how many people do you know who spent a summer drifting between Damascus, Darfur, Khartoum and Beirut. Sounds more like the scheduled workload of an international arms dealer.

Work in the last week has been essentially a piece of piss and we've resorted to having daily football matches amongst the staff in the afternoons. As ever i've managed to make myself the centre of attention though mostly not in positive ways. I said previously with regards to football and tackling that the Egyptians go down easier than a female guest at a Premiership Christmas party but its resulted in a few altercations between myself and my colleagues recently. I'm no patriot but i play football like i've been brought up to. The old English way of playing hard but fair, winter matches on mudbaths in West Yorkshire as a teenager taught me that. Here, they are more like the 7 year olds in our old school playgrounds who pick up the ball as soon as they've decided things havent gone their way. They've also come up with a new tactic directly with regards to me. I'm not an arrogant person(ahem!) but i think i wouldnt be lying if i said that on my day i'm a pretty decent footballer, in contrast I wouldnt be too harsh on myself if i said i had a pretty volatile temperament at times. Well, my dear colleagues have cottoned on to this fact and have installed a tactic of just basically trying to wind me up through the entire game both physically and verbally. The verbal aspect im not worried about nor the fair physical one but i have taken exception to being taken out in full flow on numerous occasions just because they realise they have no chance of catching me, one such incident ended with me in hospital have an x-ray on my wrist(nothing broken thankfully). Anyway I lost my temper in the latest match yesterday when I justifiably, at least in my opinion, called someone a 'fucking pussy'. Now normally i would be ashamed of using that kind of language if it wasn't for the fact that I said it in arabic, a feat im actually pretty proud of.... Anyway we'll see what happens next week, suffice to say im learning a few more swear words in anticipation of another explosive encounter!

Anyway I think thats enough from me for now. My old man is heading out next week and we're doing the tourist thing for the next couple of weeks so im sure ill have a few more tales by the time I'm next in touch. Hope you all are enjoying life and i'll see you all for my triumphant return in The Black Bull/O Neills/Compleat Angler/The Shepherd and Flock (delete where applicable).

Laters

Michael

Oh and just too prove my point about the difficulty of mastering the arabic language, its now been an hour and a half since i ordered that takeway. the call i'm about to make to them should be interesting! i wonder if i can use the 'fuckin pussy' line again??