You might as well turn on the Avett Brothers, because that is all I wanted to listen to during the three or four hours we spent in the sand. We went to the beach at Mountazzah - which I could write out in Arabic script in two seconds but am definitely struggling with how they spell it in Roman letters. It is a beautiful private beach, and definitely what I needed on my day off.
Moataz, the IT guy who has become our tour guide is becoming annoyed with Jake and I, who for whatever reason fall silent when we are with him. He gets rather self-deprecating at our silence. I guess I just do not have too much to say about anything here yet.
However, the beach was perfect - and I went without a swimsuit because I knew I would much rather just sit in the sand and enjoy the wind. It was amazing weather, and I could have sat for hours in silence as if it was some sort of religious experience - which of course drove Moataz mad and so I eventually declared that it was, in fact, time to build a sand castle.
We had a water bottle and two empty ice cream cups -- which meant we were a little short on the supplies but I was ready to make it work. Running back and forth to get water for our castle, the three little girls (all in the same style but different colored bikinis) whose parents an umbrella away and had been smiling at me all afternoon finally called out to me.
Apparently, I look like Sara - and so our conversation starting something like "Come and play with us in the water!" When I declared I didn't have my swimsuit they were shocked, "Why would you come to the beach with out your swimsuit???" and I told them I just wanted to sit in the sun. That is when they started calling me Sara and I laughed, the bottom of my skirt falling into the water and telling them that my name was Christine.
Emptying my water into the moat Moataz and Jake were building, I went back to the water, where they asked me these questions:
"Which one of them do you love? Which one is your husband?" I explained that I had no husband or love so of course the next question was why I kept filling up a water bottle and ice cream cup (and why I wouldn't play with them in the ocean).
Where did these little girls come from?
The next thing I knew, we had a whole little crew filling up pretty legitimate sand pails with water and dumping them in the castle for us. Of course, they gave Moataz a pretty hard time everytime he just tried to wash his hands in the water, and it only took a few minute of my new friend's help before both Jake and Moataz had given up.
At one point a whole pack of boys ran over with balls of sand in their hand that were the equivalent of snow balls. When I made eye contact and smiled and them, however, they were completely discouraged and ran twenty feet away where they began working on their own castle.
I eventually gave up when the girls started getting sloppy with their water dumping - I was getting it in my hair and on my back... and with out me their to direct the water dumping and castle forming, they hand jumped on and crashed into its walls in three minutes time.
Our quest for food after beach time brought us to what I have been holding out on for ten days now: McDonalds. I had apple juice with my chicken nugget combo (juice is so good here!) and felt incredibly satisfied when I had finished my meal: Jake and I haven't quite figured out the food thing here in Alexandria yet.
After the beach we were both exhausted (and dirty), so we showered and then spent a few hours laying around the flat reading. We somehow ended up sitting cross legged on the daybed playing Guess Who - which our revised rules to make the games last a little longer (no repeating questions, no gender questions, no shirt color questions)... and then I downed the fruit and nut bar I had been saving in the fridge while we recounted our love lives. You have to love the roommate bonding experiences.
Oh! I almost forgot to mention a car drove by us in Mountazzah with a few of my lovely students in it. They hollered out the window to me, and I just can't wait to hear what they will tell me on Monday.
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