Let's talk about all those accents...

Hey, American regional accents? No problem: Southern, Mid-Western, New Yorker, even a New Joisey accent are all easily grasped due to years of cultural acclimation. 

So here I am in Egypt, undergoing orientation with a group who have more-or-less the following accent patterns:  Canadian, Welsh, Scottish, various dialect areas of England, New Zealand, Australia, and South African. 

Then there are those mixed language patterns of the native French and Egyptians who learned their English in London, the Dutch English speak, and English speakers who have country-hopped so often their accents are not pure Welsh, Australian, etc, but rather a conglomeration of many.

Complicating the self-perception of being the low IQ old lady in the group because I am constantly asking the person next to me, “What did he just say?” or "What are we supposed to do, now?”  is the tinnitus (ringing of the ears) I presently enjoy thanks to an all-too-rapidly
                                                                                    aging body.

The solution on a practical level?  Of course. Sit in the front of the room so as to hear e-v-e-r-y word and hope that in a month or so, I will have acclimated to the various speech patterns.

A deeper personal reflection on the experience?  I am suddenly extra-ordinarily cognizant of the Egyptian and foreign students who will be sitting in my classes. Imagine understanding scholastic instruction in the various accent-ese described and then my own American one thrown into the mix.


Many of these kids will be astonishing one day. The future leaders of their country and in key professions of the world.

I am also struck by the participation of the educator world-citizens in my professional circle, who are amazingly adept at absorbing multiple cultures---sometimes termed as "tourist teachers."

However, the term is too simple, too trite...just not enough somehow. Two or three years in Hong Kong or China, then off to Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Nepal or some other such place. True global citizens as compared to my miniscule 37-year teaching experience in the snow-globe called Utah.

I wonder if I would have taken another path on my personal journey through this lifetime, if I had known what I know today... if I had just known.

Endings and New Beginnings

This sultry night is my fourth being in the land of the lotus flower, pyramids, and of course, the wandering Nile.

Preparing for the grand Egypt adventure included some pretty incredible groundwork: eating all the salt and vinegar potato chips I could lay my hands on and drinking a good-golly posse of vanilla flavored milk; welcoming in the dawn with my animal friends who lazily nibbled their favorite tidbits as we lounged on the deck; and there was memorizing the close scents of Chris, Veronika, and beautiful little Mira as we hugged tightly and voiced our farewells.

Shifting, shifting, shifting...

As mullahs chant from their minarets, masses of men dressed in  white gowns and crochet skull caps bow endlessly like see-saws; women drenched in heat-absorbing black, fluttering like sails as they wait patiently for their men to complete the holy ritual; and all the while, western Christmas lights are twinkling and flashing in windows and streets in celebration of Ramadan.

What a wonderment Cairo is at this moment.