Hey! Don't Stand There Please!

Right now I am sitting on the patio behind our hotel room that I only discovered 30 minutes ago. It is warm outside, but there is a nice breeze, and I am listening to Arabic music play down by the pool for what I assume is either a birthday party or engagement party. They have a camera crew and lighting. It's pretty exciting - there were even fireworks at dinner. 

We went to Place Number Two (PNT) which was MUCH closer to our hotel (only 30-45 minutes instead of an hour and a half). We drove through a lot of other places, so the going was slow and bumpy, but we made it without much of a hitch. We did leave an hour later than planned, but I was on time for the original time...Egypt is the only place I can seem to be on time to personal things, which I suppose is better than no where. :)

Heidi wasn't feeling well, so she stayed in the hotel.

I thought I would be going on home visits with Amy again, but this is the first year we've set up a dental/vision clinic for the people that live in the places, so Brad asked me to stay and keep order in the "waiting" room. Everyone was so excited to finally have a dentist (let alone THREE) in their place, so there was a lot of gawking and random people not there to get anything done clogging up the area, but everyone was pretty compliant when we asked them to move on. 

**Side note** The music has gotten so loud that the base was shaking my table...and I'm a good 60 yards away. They must be deaf. Gracious. Anyhooo...

There was no A/C, but the windows were open and we weren't in the sun, so I'll chalk it up as a win.

There was a lot of sweating, a lot of teeth pulling, and a lot of interested on lookers. 

I had to create a "no stand zone", and started twirling little girls in order to keep them out of it. I was drenched the entire time I was in there, and I made lots of new little people friends. With all of the children minus one or two, it was pretty easy to communicate even though we spoke different languages. At camp, the children go to advanced private schools and travel frequently, so they all speak English fairly well. The same is not true of children that live in other places. They don't have anyone to practice their English with, so it's more difficult for them to retain, and a lot of them will even admit that English is their least favorite thing to learn in school. But communicating is still fairly simple when you just go with it...so I did. And we had a blast. One little girl had me tossing her in the air...she'd just stand in front of me with her back to me and point 'UP!'. Her name was Amy, but I called her Little Amy to avoid confusion with the three Amys we brought to Egypt with our group (one of which Little Amy was actually named after!)

There was a great group of girls towards the end of the visit that I took a lot of pictures with, and I let them take some with a disposable camera. Try explaining a disposable camera to a child that has never even heard of one...it's impossible. They simply could not believe that it would only take 27 photos. Each one of them tried multiple times to crank the turny thingy (here I am being all technical, I know), and try to take a picture - even though their four other friends hadn't been able to. They were nothing if not persistant...and absolutely adorable.

Part of the group went back to the hotel early, but I chose to stay because one of the girls was getting some teeth pulled and I had promised her I would stay. I went in with her, and had her hold my hand. She squeezed the life out of it a few times, and even though she freaked out quite a bit, she remained very brave and strong and was able to make it through two teeth being pulled - both of which broke off from the roots which then had to be dug out. It was rough, and even I was almost in tears by the end of it. But I was so proud of her because she was SO strong and brave. She's never seen a dentist before - and she made it through like a little champ. :) My sweet, sweet, N. She even smiled when she hugged me goodbye as she left. I will never forget her and her strength.

Dinner was a buffet at the hotel, so we didn't have to wait nearly as long (thank goodness). My room key messed up again, but was taken care of just as quickly as last night.

I hung out with Amy for a bit after dinner, and now I need to go find the sheets from our visits yesterday so I can send her the pictures we took of the children we visited in the correct order. I cannot wait to see Christen in two days. I'm over the moon about it!

Much love,

-L

PS: I would like to note that it's been at least 30 minutes since my side note, and the party is still going strong. They do like to party!

(They went until 12:30a)