[by Christine]

Tonight Jake and I ate at McDonalds, again. I am not really sure how many McDonalds trips that makes for us now, but the truth is we have both had quite a nasty bug the last day or so and so we needed somewhere that we could trust the food. It is a sad thought when McDonalds is the healthiest thing for you to eat.

Tomorrow is my last day of children's classes, and I am so thankful. Really, I thought I would love it by the end but now the whole lot of them is making me mad. However, I did have some really good lessons with them -- the loved reading about George Washington and singing along to Yankee Doodle on the Fourth of July. They also really dug the lesson on superheros where I taught them 'stretch,' 'elastic,' 'invisible,' 'villain,' and finished the class making paper masks. Less than 12 hours to my last class with them and I haven't quite figured out what our last lesson will be about.

As much as I will not regret no longer having children's classes, I have to say that I will miss my adults. While a few of my male students have asked me to teach them in the next level the real compliment was when a group of girls came up to me after class. With the boys you don't know if it is a compliment to your teaching or just a marriage proposal. Four of my female students (who are all about my age) came up to me after class last week and asked if I would teach both a level ten and a conversation class that they would take.

I am really proud of the girls in my adult class. The second day of the course one of my students told me that she was worried about her participation grade. She was sorry but she would not be participating very much because there are so many men in the class. Today she raised her hand three times - once to read in front of everyone. In the beginning I was having to get creative trying to devise ways to get them speaking English, but now they are competing for talking time in class. It gets me really excited to know they are out of their shell, even if just a little bit. It is shocking how much of a feminist I have become in Egypt.

While I told the girls I would not be teaching next session, I mentioned that if I come back to Alexandria I will need friends -- an idea they were all pretty excited about. The truth is, I am not sure if I want to come back to Alex or not. Even though we have been here almost a month I feel like I have hardly spent any time in the city. Sunday - Thursday we spend with pretty intensive teaching and then on Thursday night we are off on a train Cairo-bound as soon as our classes end.

Alright, I have got to start figuring out what to teach tomorrow -- nothing is worse then being unprepared, but add that to exhaustion and I can be promised a rough day.

In other news, I do want to point out that Jake got hit on today. Actually, it was more like accosted, but as I am harassed constantly it was nice to see him get a little attention from two older (much older) Egyptian women.