Hazel Nut Breaker

Merry Christmas to everybody!!!! Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We are having a great time watching a friends home with a cool dog named Pumpkin. We have made some wonderful friends here in Egypt. We have a very close branch and it's a lot of fun to spend time with our church friends. We have had quite a few dinner Christmas dinner parties and have forgotten to take adequate pictures!!!

Yesterday Santa came and fill out stockings...It was nice to wake up to so much candy and presents. Overcourse many of the presents were Egyptian which is a lot of fun. I'm not sure if opening Egyptian presents or buying them at the markets is more fun. I enjoyed buying presents for Casey. I wondered into a shop down a small side street of off Rd. 9 here in Maadi and found a really awesome custom furniture shop with lots of really nice Egyptian stone sculptures, furniture, and pictures. I tried to speak in all Arabic as I usually do and the guys owning the shop were enjoying my attempts. We chatted for a while and they brought me Hibiscus Juice and after I spent some time making new freinds I bought a phot album, picture, and jewlery box for Casey. It was an ejoyable shopping expereince. It's nice to be able to communicate and Egyptians are always willing to correct my Arabic and teach me more.

Casey was very thoughtful in her gifts to me. She bought me some children's books in Arabic. I'm having fun reading them and the words I don't know I'm going to write down and get translated to build my vocabulary. Casey is right about me being a little school nerd. I love to read and study. I always have but Arabic has forced me to do it constantley, so now I have this hunger for knowlege of the world, so I enjoy reading and it's rleaxing to read what many call dry and boring history books. I'm seriously concidering doing a joint PhD in International Politics and History, but we will see there are many options for me to consider.

Later after we exchanged gifts we went to dinner with some friends--Lidia and Spencer Penrod. since our ward is so small, our church is not offically reconginzed in Egypt, or for some other reason we don't seem to call on another brother and sister very often. We go by first names. The missionary couples are not allowed to go by Elder and Sisiter, so they prefer their first names be used, and most of the members here go prefer to go by first names. I remember in South Africa the Elder people went by Mamma and Babba which is respectful in Zulu, Xhusa, and Sutho cultures. It's interesting and endearing for me, we will have to get used to the brother and sister protocol when we get back home or we may offend people. Spencer Penrod is the Elder Quprm President and speak beautiful Arabic, so he also leads the Arabic Sunday School we have in our home. It's a great help to me to be able to hear classical Arabic of the scriptures and here the Egyptian Arabic in another setting. We have a Sudanese member and 2 Egyptians they are all great people and are so nice and helpful to me. Spencer works at the Embassy with computers, and has 4 smart and energetic children. It was fun to have Christmas lunch with them and play with the kids. After we left we went to the nutcracker ballet at the Cairo Opera House.

I guess in Arabic the Nutcracker is called the Hazel Nut Breaker. It was a bit funny to me. I have fun with translation in Arabic. Languages are really fun sometimes.

Speaking of languages I got all A's in my 4 arabic courses!!! First time in my life to get all A's! there is usuallay a b or two that creep in there...However, I did get one A- in my egyptian arabic course. I don't like A- b/c I can't stop staring at the - sign. It is like an annoying syble attached to such a happy letter. Oh well I should be pleased and my hard work paid off. Sometimes I feel I'm so far behind in my language learning and I'm not moving forward fast enough--it's nice to see my grades and relize according to my program I'm right on track and right where I should be.

anyway, the Nutcracker was fun and we went with 2 couples we have become good friends with. There are a lot of fun and we get together often. Mark and April are about our age. He is finishing up his Masters in Middle East History at AUC and she is teaching here in an international middle school. Patrick and Melissa are here b/c Patrick is teaching American History at AUC. He has some interesting stories about that, but I may write about that later.

we have good friends and good times here in Cairo Egypt, but Casey is excited to go home. I'm not sure how I feel about that I'm excited to start next semester and learn some more Arabic. She sure does love me and is very supportive. I don't know many girls who would fly across the world to support their husbands the way we did. It hasn't been easy and she has had her fair share of challenging days, but she has been a great help and support to me. It's fun to be here with a best friend to come home to and go out on the town with. It's fun to have friends to get together with and play Settlers of Catan(One day I will win a game!!!) and it's great to have such a close and affectionate church family. For me, I enjoy the hustle and bustle of Cairo, the nose, the people and all the fun stuff to do, but I am glad it's not indefinite and i'm glad I have Casey I know it wouldn't be so fun for me without her.