Diving on the ancient city

Today I'm going diving on Cleopatra's city!  There is a boat that goes out from the Eastern harbour in Alexandria and I have been in touch with Dr Ashraf by email and phone to organise it.  My biggest immediate challenge is getting a taxi from here in el Agamy to the harbour which is about 40 minutes drive away on the way to Stanley where the school is.  The actual kilometres are not very much, but the roads and the traffic are so chaotic that it takes a long time.  This will be the first time I've hailed a taxi on the street.

I'll post this while I've got a connection and add to it when I get back from the dive.  Tried to add a photo but it's still taking an age from the wireless at the apartments

I had a great day!  I managed the taxi tango at both ends of the day and went to the new Alexandria library after my dive and lunch.  When I arrived at the "world famous" Tikka grill which was the landmark given to me by the dive operators and was unknown to the local taxi driver, I found the dive company easily.  I was greeted, kitted out with dive gear, completed safety forms, had my guide check out my diving status - I suspect with some anxiety as he noted my age and the fact that I hadn't dived for 20 years - and sat at a table chatting to the young women who helped with the gear and occasionally went on the dives.  One of them was to be engaged in a few weeks and wanted to know about my sunscreen so that she could remain pale for the event!  Both of them were keen to practice their English and chatted about life as a young Moslem woman in Egypt.  One of them had the beautiful blue eyes of the women who come only from a particular village in Egypt.  The boat was well organized and I had a skipper, a dive guide and two male assistants to myself.  So although I was a bit worried about stepping into the water with full dive gear and a 10 kilo weight belt, I managed it with only a slight increase in my breathing rate!  The dive site was unique.  Visibility was poor and there was a strong current so my diving buddy held my hand most of the time - he told me before the dive that he was a Christian so I think that makes it OK for him to touch a woman in public.  

The first thing we came across was a world war 2 fighter plane crashed on the seafloor.   The guide carefully took me around each section pointing out the guns, ammunition containers, the wing flaps.  In the cockpit, he even picked up an old face mask.  At first I thought it was an octopus but then picked out the face shield and breathing tubes.  All this time my guide is pointing and giving me the OK signal and as my confidence grew, I was able to signal back and even start noticing things myself.

I assumed that the wreck was the highlight of the dive, but then we moved away and suddenly we were noticing amphora and other drinking vessels just lying there encrusted on the seabed.  There were also column fragments and even the remains of an old road with paving stones.  We moved around the sea floor inspecting the remains of an ancient city as though it was just an everyday occurrence to find a lost world under the sea.

That first dive was 45 mins at only 5 metres depth, so when we returned to the boat, we rested for a while and my dive buddy, who was skinny without any insulating fat, warmed himself up in the sun.  Then we moved the boat to another site and did a second dive for about 20 mins.  This time there was a huge column with carved hieroglyphs and the top of a granite table and also I think, a scribe's small table as far as I could interpret the guide's signaling.  We also went deeper to about 7 metres and found several tumbled large blocks of sandstone that were good habitat for fairly large fish.

On the short drive back to the jetty, I went up on the top deck to chat to the skipper.  I quickly became his friend when I commented on the sweet note of the engine and asked if it was a Gardiner.  I think he launched into an impassioned lecture on the merits of different kinds of motors that he had worked with!

Back at the dive base, I was ushered to a shower and told that they would be serving lunch.  It turned out to be a delicious small, whole grilled fish with rice and salad.  Hand shaking all round and the presentation of a stamped sticker for me to take away as a memento!

After leaving the dive base, I walked along the Corniche to the new Alexandria library.  There were lots of people out for their Saturday strolling and the cafes were full.  I passed the tomb of the unknown warrior and then called in to Koota markets - a large covered area with a variety of market stalls including kaftan stalls where I bought a pretty, sand-striped kaftan for myself.  At the library, I was in time for an English-speaking tour of this remarkable space with an ancient heritage.  There are also some great exhibitions including one of images and maps of old Alexandria and another of the work of an Egyptian film maker.  I found a small portrait of Laurence Durrell sketched by his artist friend Clea who inspired the last book of his quartet. Their bookshop is also good and I bought a couple of English translations of short stories and a novel set in Alexandria.  I used a passage from the short stories to teach one of my grammar classes in the following days.

Afterwards, it was easy to come out of the library, cross the road and hail a taxi to go back to Agamy.  

Midway

The pace of the TEFL course is getting so intense that it is taking all my focus and everything else is dropping by the wayside.  The only exercise I am getting is carrying my heavy bags of books and laptop up and down the stairs to the school and to my apartment.  I also walk down the lanes to the supermarket or the bank or the travel agent.  But I'm not eating much and have cut out alcohol all together because it is frowned on here, so I am hoping that I am not putting on any weight.

As for my  blog, I can only find the right conditions every few days - a few minutes between school commitments when there is an ethernet connection available and I have a bit of energy left!  

After school today, I am getting picked up at 5.30 (I have brought my backpack in with me to class) to go up to the airport in Cairo and fly up to Luxor for two nights to go on a tour of sites.  I would have loved to go on a Nile cruise but the minimum requirement is four days and I need to get back for classes on Sunday.  So it will be a flying visit to the kings and queens.

Almost lost connection but managed to publish and am now editing but I had better publish this and prepare for my next class before I get stressed!

Seeing the sites and sights

The weekend passed in a blur.  Friday I needed my own space so went to the beach early and then pottered in and out of the apartment completing my first assignment - a journal of our foreign language learning experience - and catching up with chores like picking up my laundry, buying some vegetables and moving the furniture around in the flat.  I'm starting to learn a few things like where the laundry is (I rapidly discovered there was no laundromat and no working washing machine in the apartment building).  I'm not sure why washing clothes is not catered for publicly here, but suspect it is because women are expected to stay home and wash by hand.  

I went to a vegetable shop that I have been to a couple of times before and this time I was greeted and invited into the inner shop where there were better vegetables.  It seems that all the vegetables and fruit you want to buy can be put in one bag and they weigh everything together and give you the price with a quick glance inside the bag.  Every time I work something out, I feel a little more confident about being in public.  I think my challenge for next week is going to be to flag down a minibus on the Corniche and travel down to the famous new Alexandria library.  Today in the lunch break, I walked down as far as the bend in the bay where you can see a fort on the distant headland and I know from our sight seeing tour yesterday that the library is on the nearer side of the curve of the headland.

Our tour yesterday gave me a much better sense of where things are in Alexandria.  We went to the standard tourist sites here like the catacombs, Pompey's column, the sultan's fort and a palace area.  One of the drivers from the school took us around and allowed us half an hour at each place.  It was very hard for us to work out the processes for getting in and how to interpret the site because our driver spoke very little English but we all helped each other and worked things out.  There seemed to be a lot of policemen at the different sites and sometimes we were expected to give them tips.   We also had to pay to go into the sites but as with all other things it was fairly cheap.

I'm writing this in a break between classes and have run out of time so will add one of the photos from our tour later.

TEFL in Alex

We have just finished the first week of our course and it has been very intensive!  Our daily routine involves catching the mini bus to Stanley in Alexandria at 8.45, starting our classes at 9.45, then four one hour classes through until 5.05 with a one hour lunch break.

On top of that, we are all struggling to work out the culture and customs.  The roads appear to be impossible to navigate as there are few explicit rules and so many diverse players from mule carts to articulated trucks.  Most people seem to get about in small minibuses which they hail from the side of the road but I still haven't worked out how they tell where they are going and it seems that sometimes they stop and sometimes they don't.  Also sometimes someone, who has hailed a bus and it has stopped, will get on but other times they will turn away.  I sat at lunch the other day and watched the people on the road outside and I still don't know what was happening in terms of getting a bus.

I'm going to try and add a great photo of a woman on the Alexandria front fishing and if it posts, I'll add more.

The ethernet at the college appears to be much more reliable than the wireless at the apartments, and I'm managing to post photos and longish text, so this seems to be the way to do my blog.  I will need to stay after classes and wait for the later buses at 7.00 or 9.00.  But I will also have to fight for the only two ethernet connection points that seem to be working.  The week here runs from Sunday to Thursday with the weekend on friday and saturday, so most people have gone straight away tonight and I have been able to grab a connection.

On Tuesday night some of us were able to get dropped off from the 5.00pm bus at a shopping centre called Carfour.  I needed to buy a few items of clothing so that I could make my wardrobe into a suitable presentation for our school teaching practice.  We have to wear sleeves below the elbow, knecklines up to our kneck and skirts or trousers below the knee.  We also have to avoid joggers.  Women wear a range of clothing on the streets from full covering including the face to modest western wear.  I have been coming to college in jeans and shirts but the sleeves are too short and we can't wear jeans so I wanted to get what people call a body stocking which is a bit like a long-sleeved leotard that many women wear to satisfy the covering requirement but also enables them to wear fashionable garb over the top.  It is hot but most of the buildings are relatively cool.  I also got a pair of trousers that weren't jeans and a little jacket that can be worn over short sleeves.  So with the longer skirts that I have brought with me, I should be able to dress appropriately.

The 5.00 bus has gone now and the evening is starting to cool down so I think I will go for a walk along the corniche to get my exercise and find something to eat.