It's been an exciting, busy, tiring, stressful, fun, chaotic, excellent first month back here in Egypt. Four weeks have flown by and I feel like I've been here forever, and as a result of my ever increasingly busy schedule I've not posted an update for a little while. After spending a little while sitting on my hands, cleaning the flat and generally not doing very much - much needed after a busy last few weeks at uni, no regrets - I decided to be a little more pro-active with my job search and started ringing people, firing off more emails, and turning up unannounced at offices. Happily the first office I tried was that of the Episcopal Training Centre, a language centre run by the Diocese of Egypt. After explaining what I was looking for and what I was willing to do, I was hired as an English teacher by the director and have now been an English teacher for almost two weeks. As I'm new and my experience is limited, I only teach one class (6 hours a week) with a view to taking on more in September, but I've really enjoyed the first couple of lessons and the staff and students at the centre are extremely welcoming and accommodating.
Around the same time as I started at ETC, I received an email from a manager at
Meedan, an exciting project I've been helping out with as a user for a little while, asking if I'd like to take a paid position as a content producer for the site. The best way to find out what Meedan does is to check out the site (
http://www.meedan.net). My job is to produce the events you see on the homepage, involving a little writing and a lot of reading in English and Arabic. I'm fairly addicted to current affairs, particularly regarding the Middle East, and so the work I do for Meedan is enjoyable and doesn't neccesarily involve me leaving the flat (all things being well with my internet) which is important when it's 37-40C outside. Two jobs out of the blue in a week was nice, and I'd already set up meetings and applications elsewhere so, time allowing, I'll be able to take on more work in other places and gain as much and as varied an experience as I can.
I'm also enjoying church at
All Saint's, Zamalek, where the congregation has been really welcoming and helpful in giving me hints and tips for places to try for work. Summer is a bit of a slow time at the church as the expats head home for the summer, but I'm hoping to get involved with what's going on as much as possible when things pick up!
This weekend Andrea and I are heading back to Alex which will be wonderful but difficult, particularly for Andrea. We still have lots of friends up there who we're both excited to see and I've started craving the excellent calamari I used to eat on an all too regular basis - I'll update next week.
Love to all, I know I need to send a few emails and ring some people - working on it :)
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