Merry Christmas!

I added a few new photos into Flickr today. They are from our Christmas celebration at school. The school has essentially taken that materialistic aspect of Christmas and transformed it into a odd celebration for everyone. Basically they tell the parents to send in a wrapped gift worth about L.E 20 and then Santa hands them out on Christmas Eve. Santa in this case is Ms. Maha, one of the teachers at the school. She was a terrific Santa, but she has to do all of the Kindergarten, Preschool, First grade and second grade classes. pretty much, she is in the costume all day which kind of stinks for her. She was tired at the end. But the kids loved it! One of the funniest things after the kids got the presents was in my next class. Even though there were explicit instructions to BUY BOOKS for the kids, it was obvious that message didn't get through to half the parents. A lot of coloring books instead, and there were a bunch of big gifts too. One parent gave her son Ziad a Spiderman Monopoly game, which he promptly opened in class (of course) and started to pass out the money to the other kids in the class(!), which cracked me and my assistant up.
Tomorrow the two Scottish girls at the school are hosting Christmas dinner, which should be fun/interesting. I find everyone else's versions of the holidays I celebrate incredibly fascinating. Interesting factoid: In Australia, Santa wears shorts and sunglasses, and his sled is pulled by eight Kangaroos.

Merry Christmas!

A few other random things to tell:
- Recently all of Cairo lost their internet connection for the weekend. The reason being that the main source of internet runs through a cable at the bottom of some canal. That cable was severed by a boat, and it hasn't been working up to full capacity since then. This happened last year too, so you would think they would put the cable somewhere were A BOAT COULDN'T RUN OVER IT!
- Our elevator was broken this week, and for some reason, since its been fixed, now has a bell that rings when it hits our floor.
- our water heater is broken AGAIN. I don't know why. Our charade game with the landlord leads me to believe that the gas was not hooked up properly when we got the propane tank refilled. The whole apartment has smelled like gas for weeks, so i think its on too loose. I think it should get fixed tomorrow.
- I'm definately coming down with something, and yelling at my kids to be quiet doesn't help. But its funny because some of my girls get concerned and yell things like "be quiet!" for me when I can't reach full volume.
- There is about a month until break and I have no plans yet. I'm going somewhere...I just don't know where. I'll let you know when I do.

PS: Congratulations to Jamilyn and Sean on their wedding! (thats for 12/26).