So Far Behind in my Blogs

It's not that I have done nothing this past week, I have done loads of things. Yet, I feel so guilty! Anyway, the coolest thing this week was the Blues Concert funded by the American Embassy at the Pyramids on Friday. The Embassy sponsored this for free and I had already missed the previous two earlier in the week. A friend of Kathy's at AUC who teaches math got a van together and there was a spare seat. So for 25 LE which included our driver's tip, it was off to Giza for the 4 pm concert. And once again, it was raining but not bad. You would scoff at what we called rain in PA or DC. A few cold fat raindrops for 30 minutes but after the concert, we could flashes of lightening.

Anyway, I came armed with my camera and got some photos of two little Egyptian girls selling postcards - they had blonde hair and hazel eyes. Dominique has seen them before - I guess that is their job. I swear they are only around 10 years old or so. And yes, blond kinky curly hair. One of the girls gave me a postcard of Nefertiti and Prince Ranofer and Nofret. I took her picture with her sister and yes, another portrait. So a boy with THE MOST beautiful eyes asked me to take a picture of him. Just for the sake of his gorgeous eyes, I couldn't resist - he must have been around 13 or 14. Kids seem smaller here too especially the poorer ones. Imagine Peggy having little Sarah selling postcards to help feed your family! So sad really. They were really cute and street savvy but still innocent. I wanted to save them and educate them.

Then once the music started, some older boys were jammin' and dancing' Chris and Katie would have been there in front of the stage too. I decided after a while to dance with some little Egyptian teen girls. A couple less shy danced with me. At one point we were surrounded by a gaggle of teaming teenage testosterone. I guess I was the hot foreigner, ha ha. After a while, our hostess Kathy asked me if I would dance with other girls. Apparently, most of the teeneage boys and girls had come to Giza on a big bus -from Fayoum, Beni Suef south of Fayoum and Minya whichis about 4 hours away and south. The teacher who asked was a male teacher from Minya. He told me that the girls from Minya are shy. So I did a Marshall Becker impression taking individual girls by the hand, twirling them around for a couple of minutes and then to another girl. I would say around four girls out of twenty wouldn't dance. I kind of felt like a fairy godmother of dancing. One petite girl said she loved me. And of course, no one else was dancing with the girls. They certainly wouldn't be comfortable dancing with thei male classmates.

Also, the music was incredible. The Blues Band was from the U.S. they had us singing along for the chorus of certain songs. It was truly magical with the sun setting behind the pyramids right in front of us. After that, I was so exhausted that I couldn't even manage going upstairs for dinner with the Lorenz family. I collapsed in my bed, tired and happy and astonished at what had occurred. It was a pharaonic moment - I think I was chanelling a dancing girl for the god Amun-Ra - a noble position in ancient Egypt!