Uncle Ryan

From time to time there are certain things that I have been required to do that were not included in the description of my internship. Today another one of these instances arose. As you may recall in a previous post, the youth pastors wife was in labour on Saturday. Naturally that means that by now, there is a baby who has joined the scene. Let me tell you something about myself: I don't like babies! Babies are loud. Babies are annoying. Babies are nothing but work. All they do is poop, puke, and cry. So there you have it, babies suck.

So what is it here that wasn't a part of my ministry description? Well! Let me tell you! This morning we had our youth meeting at the youth pastor's house because his wife had a C-section and can't yet handle the baby on her own. So I get to his house, and as much as I was hoping the baby was out on the balcony or something (people get outdoor dogs, why not outdoor babies too?) there it was, sitting in Heidi's arms. Now, I go and sit down as faaar away as possible from this ticking time-bomb, but wouldn't you know it, everyone else thinks that I deserve to hold this little ball of slobber and skin. No matter how much I tell these people I don't want to hold the thing, they keep coming towards me with it. Next thing I know, I have this nasty little poop-machine sitting in my arms. As if that isn't bad enough, they start calling me UNCLE Ryan! Dissssgusting! I sat there awkwardly holding it, trying to figure out which way to dive if it blows up with barf or who knows what, and everyone else sat around saying how good I look with it and how many girlfriends I would get if I just carried it around with me. So there I sat, not knowing what to do with it. You don't pet it, it's got no fur! You don't play with it, it's too dumb to fetch. So I just sat, counting the seconds until my internship was over and I could go home. Well, at long last, the youth pastor came along and took the little mess away from me. I feel like I'm a stronger person, having lived through that experience. But I also feel like I never need to experience it again. It's kind of like falling off the roof of a house and living to talk about it. You feel good that you lived through it, but you don't feel the need to do it again. Now that I've successfully lived through this experience, allow me to impart some wisdom to those of you who do not know as much as me (I am somewhat of a connoisseur in the area of babies now):

1. All babies are cute. No matter how much they resemble your butt, for some reason you still say they're cute.
2. Babies are not footballs. Although you hold them in a manner that is similar to cradling a football, babies are not as resiliant as a football. Babies do not do well when you throw them towards the ground and do a funky little dance (I do not speak from experience, here, I'm just so knowledgable about babies that I know this information)
3. Babies are ticking time-bombs. If you are planning on holding a baby, prepare yourself by covering your body with a garbage bag or a raincoat. It's only a matter of time before something spews from some orifice of the baby.
4. Don't expect much. Babies are boring. They don't DO anything. As I alluded to earlier, a football is a much wiser investment.
5. Stay away from babies. Babies are good for nothing but making you feel awkward. As if we don't have enough awkward situations in our lives already. I know I do.

In summation, babies are bad, and nobody should ever have one. There you have it, folks! These 5 simple steps should save you a lot of money, and probably get you out of a few lawsuits as well. I hope you enjoy these rules as much as I enjoy holding a puppy in my arms (*sidenote* puppies are good).

Ok, moving on... let me tell you a little more about the Egyptian culture that I'm living in.

Sometimes a youth event will require a trash can full of ice to keep the beverages cold. In Canada, you might stop by a store and buy a couple bags of ice and dump them into the trash can. Not here in Egypt. Well, you can, but it's way more expensive to do it that way. You can also fill a bunch of ice cube trays and dump them into the bucket, but that's a lot of work, and a lot of ice cube trays (not to mention it requires the use of a freezer). So what is a guy to do if he wants a bucket full of ice? Well, here's what I usually do.
I grab a big plastic garbage can from the church, and hop into a taxi. After a short ride, we arrive at a fairly busy road that is packed with all sorts of shops. Among the shops is a little shaded metal shack. It looks as though it's made out of corrogated metal roofing material... or whatever it's called. You know, the wavy metal sheets? Whatever, it doesn't matter! So there's a shack standing there, but there's never a guy standing there. So you just start yelling "ICE!! ICE!!!" and look to see if anyone comes running. Usually people will shout back the location of the ICE MAN. Then you go look for the ICE MAN, and upon finding him, head back to the metal ice shack. At that point, you tell him that you want the... oh wait, this is me doing everything, not you. At that point, I tell him that I want the bucket filled with crushed ice. He then opens up a flap of the metal shack where there are stacks of massive ice blocks just chillin out. He pulls out those massive ice blocks one by one and then grabs a sledge hammer and bashes them to bits. It's fairly refreshing if you're standing within 10 meters of him... kinda feels like it's snowing or something. Actually, the sledge hammer broke when he was crushing ice for us one time, so now he's moved on to an ice pick. Now he just stabs the ice into little pieces. This is fairly entertaining to watch, and even seems like it would be somewhat therapeutic if I were to try it. Anyways, after the bucket is filled with bashed and stabbed ice, I hand the man 10 pounds and then hop into another taxi. Taxis often charge you more when you have a trash can full of ice. One guy seemed quite distraught over the ring of water it left on his ratty old seat, even though we could pretty much watch the ring evaporate before our very eyes in the sweltering heat. But yeah, that's how Uncle Ryan gets his ice. Interesting side note: This bucket of ice makes for a great game at youth group when things are winding down and people are looking for more action. You simply stick your entire arm into the bucket of ice water at the same time as another person, and see who can endure the pain the longest. Now, usually this game works quite well... but last week the water was at such a temperature that it didn't hurt enough to take out our arms, but was so cold that it actually froze the muscles in our arms. It was quite an interesting sensation, and after 20 minutes, we decided to call it a tie game. It tooks a good half hour before we could feel our arms again. My contender was a girl from Germany, so I picked up a bit of German while we played our game. Now, it appears as though this blog entry is starting to ramble on, so I should really bring it to a close and get to work. Ma Salaam!

Hey, an update!

So what's been going on here lately? Lots of stuff! Yesterday I had to do a kickoff skit in front of the church (I think we have about 1500 people each week now, so that's pretty cool). Yesterday we also had to teach middle school Friday School (which is the equivalent of Sunday School), and in the evening, help out at middle school Breakaway. Breakaway is what we call our weekly youth church events.

Today, the youth pastor's wife is in labour, so any time they'll have a brand spankin new baby boy. That probably means a heavier workload for Heidi and I now. Also going on today is a big country fair. I'm not sure what all it entails, but included in it are 14 game booths that we have to help run. That should be fun, I hope.

Now, on to the slightly humorous cultural observations for this week:
At nighttime, Egyptian drivers are sometimes reluctant to use their headlights, this is apparently because they think it will use up their battery.

When a parking lot gets full, things get very creative. Typically you will have a row of cars parked side-by-side, just like anywhere else in the world... but in addition to that, people will park behind those cars (perpendicular to them), blocking in two or three cars that are parked side by side. BUT, the car that blocking the other cars in, is parked in neutral. That way, if the people who are blocked in return to their cars before the other person, they can simply push the vehicle out of their way! Below is a diagram of this situation to help you understand more clearly.
Click to englarge!

And that's all I have time for today! See you later.

Kick-Off Weekend!

Hello again! It is Kick-off Weekend here at Maadi Community Church, so that means busy busy busy. Just wanted to let all of you know that I am doing well these days. Our various ministries have almost all begun and they have been quite successful and encouraging thus far. I have slowly been getting to know a few of the students and that's been lots of fun. There are so many interesting people here. When I find some time this weekend, I will tell you about more of my cross-cultural experiences (with both Egyptians and Dutch people). Until then, have enjoyable days, and send me lots of pictures from home! Bye now!

Humorous Quirks *Updated*

Here's a funny observation about Egypt: Egyptian entrepreneurs are famous for copying Western products, and simply changing the name of the product just slightly so that it doesn't fall under copyright laws. For instance, a family here once bought a Blak and Deker toaster (rather than a Black and Decker), and it promptly broke their first time using it. Looking through our cupboards today, I came across some cookies... here is a picture of them:

They were actually pretty good, considering many copied products usually come out less than perfect.

Another humorous observation about Egypt, (which I can't remember if I've already told you about) is that Egyptians can't differentiate between the sound of B's and P's. To them, Bizza is the same as Pizza! This fact is often proven by the misspelling of various words containing B's or P's.

Here is another thing I found interesting. It's not a rip-off, it's just neat. I'm probably gonna use it to help me learn Arabic. It is none other than an Arabic dubbing of VeggieTales!!


In more serious news, the presidential elections are taking place in our city this week! After today, we are supposed to steer clear of downtown, just in case anything happens during them the elections. This is the first time there have ever been any permitted contenders for elections. In the past, it has been a ballot with only one name on it. Since people's jobs may be at stake depending on who they vote for or campaign for, it is pretty much a sure thing that the currect president will be re-elected. Anyways, enough politics for today. It's time for supper! Oh yeah, and I promised I'd show you another excerpt from that Egyptian magazine of mine. Today's excerpt is "How to get out of a relationship".

Click the picture to enlarge it!

Today for lunch I opened up a bag of Ketchup chips. Inside I found plain chips with a package of Heinz Ketchup.

Gas is probably cheaper than dirt here. The price of gas is 1 pound per litre, which brings the price to about 20 cents/L Canadian!

What I have learned this week

We all hear the term time and time again, “When it rains, it pours.” For me, this past week acted as a reminder to that fact. As I mentioned in the previous blog, this week was very busy for me. But in addition to being busy, a number of other things culminated together to leave me feeling ‘at the end of my rope’. During the days that I was running around attempting to set up for our kick-off events, I began to fully realize how far from home I was, and how long I would be away from it. In Egypt I don’t have a large support network of friends that I can run to when I’m feeling stressed or lonely. That fact didn’t hit me until I needed the support of my friends, and couldn’t find that here. In addition to that, this past week has been a week of criticism and negativity from some parties. When that was combined with everything else that was going on, it seemed almost unbearable. I felt like I was in way over my head, being stuck here in Egypt for the next year. At the same time, Heidi (the other intern here) found out that her dad’s cancer had spread to his lungs and that they couldn’t operate on him. This complicated things more-so and brought even more emotions into our already emotion-filled week (Please pray for the health of Heidi’s dad). All of this happened in a matter of two days. I began to pray desperately to God, admitting how out my league I was and how He was the only way I could ever successfully get through the year here. The next day, a large portion of stress was lifted because our kick-off event was completed successfully. That same day I received encouragement from people who were previously somewhat unhappy with me. Not only that, in the past few days, I have connected with a number of students here and have been very encouraged in that regard. Although I still feel very far from home, I am now living with a very kind family who cares about me, and who is sensitive as to how I am doing each day. So, although I feel like earlier this week I tripped and fell face-first into the mud, I feel that God has pulled me out of the mud, wiped me off, and is now walking alongside me, steadying me as I falter.

This weekend at church, the salvation message was delivered to the congregation. I helped out in the sermon by providing a visual representation of what God does to sinners that call on His name. First, I walked onto the stage wearing white coveralls that were covered with black Velcro blemishes. Then the pastor pulled off each blemish (sin) from me and proceeded to nail them to the cross. Following this, he pulled a purple cloth down from the cross, and clothed me with the robe of righteousness. This happened three times over the weekend (once for each service), and I think that it was the perfect end to my week. Although my sense of helplessness is not entirely gone, my sense of hopelessness has begun to deteriorate. I think that my year here will end with Christ carrying me out on His shoulders… not because I deserve it, but because it is the only way that I will successfully get through the year.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

Hello again! You may have noticed that I have not had the time to write a blog entry in the past few days. This is because the busyness factor went through the roof here for the week. First, Heidi and I had to go hunting for a roll of plastic, much like the kind you lay on the floor when you are painting. A task such as this is quite simple in North America, but it took up a good portion of a day to accomplish here in Egypt. First we had to search through random shops, trying to find one that sells plastic sheets. It took quite a while before we found even one shop that carried it. The first shop we found that had it wanted 2.50 Egyptian Pounds per meter. Seeing that we needed 75 meters of this stuff, it would've ended up to be over our budget, so we had to keep looking. Eventually we found ourselves on "the other side of the tracks" (which is much more Egyptian and much less Western) where we came upon a household items store that just happened to have a roll of it sitting inside. After lots of explaining, arguing, and waiting, we walked out of there with a garbage bag filled with plastic. Wonderful!

For the next two days, Heidi and I worked on constructing a cube shaped greenhouse-type structure out of PVC tubing and plastic. This was a very frustrating project for us because: A) We had to build it on the roof of an apartment building with no elevator B) It is boiling hot up there (yeah, I'm sunburnt now) C) It is windy up there, the plastic catches the wind, and pulls the whole structure either up into the air, or smashing down to the ground. D) There were only two of us building it. After two days of toiling in the heat, attempting to build this, I laughed at how simple the pyramids were to build. They're made out of heavy blocks that do not blow in the wind! How simple! How elementary. Anyways, the reason we built this structure was so that we could have two have two people at a time enter the "cage" and have a massive food fight with each other. It was pretty crazy, and maybe a little bit wasteful, but it was the kickoff for our highschool ministry year, so we had to go big! Tomorrow we kick off the middle school ministry, but it won't be as ridiculously big and stressful.

Somewhere in these past couple days, I also packed all my things and moved in with my host family. They were a very nice family from Holland. I haven't had much time to stay at home and spend time with them, but they have been very kind and welcoming towards me. Today I did lots of cleanup from last night's event, did a little Arabic learning, and now I'm about to head to church. I'm helping out the pastor with the sermon. I have to stand on the stage and do some stuff. Not really sure on the specifics yet. Should be interesting. I will try and return later to share some of my deep thoughts with you, and what I've learned in the past couple days.