The Villa with a Pool

Hello friends!
The first official week of work at ARCE is done and I'm happy to say that I made it through fairly unscathed. Everyone that I met was extremely kind and welcoming and I think this job has the potential to really evolve into some interesting things.

But, I promised you all some info and photos of where Drew and I are living, which we have been referring to all summer as "The Villa with a Pool"... we need to come up with a shorter name, I know. The villa is really beautiful and is located on a small street that runs along one of the irrigation canals for the village. The whole house is three levels, and we have the second level apartment, which is complete with a guest bedroom (hint, hint!), guest bathroom (2nd hint, hint!) and then a master. There's a large open room that you immediately enter into that serves as a living room, dining room, and then a rather decent sized kitchen at the far end of the apartment. Truly one of the best parts though is the balcony that runs the entire length of the apartment. I'll just let the picture from it do the talking...

Not a bad view to wake up to in the morning if I say so myself :-) Thankfully the house is situated so that the majority of the hot afternoon sun falls on the other side of the building, which keeps things mostly nice and cool. Of course if all else fails and you need to cool off after a long, hot day then there is this in the backyard...

Yes, so as you all can see life is terribly difficult here in Luxor... haha. In all seriousness, the apartment truly is amazing and Drew and I are very lucky to have an awesome roommate who we know on the first floor. He's the staff photographer from ARCE and has been really great in helping us settle in, meet with the landlord, etc. The house is a great example of one of the benefits of living in the third world. Clearly, this is something that probably most of us could never afford, and yet Drew and I are renting the apartment and pool for a fraction of the cost of our apartment in Cleveland. In saying that, there are certainly many challenges to living in a rural Egyptian village, but there are a lot of wonderful things about it too.

I'm hoping to write a couple posts throughout this week as it is the Eid al-Adha, and we have this week pretty much off of work. What is Eid al-Adha you might ask?? It's basically the Muslim equivalent of Christmas and the largest celebration of the year in Islam. This is also the week that Muslims travel to Mecca to perform the hajj. Drew and I saw a whole bunch of people traveling for the hajj while we were in Paris... they have to wear traditional white garments, so they're pretty easy to spot. Eid al-Adha is what I refer to as the Goat Eid, because it commemorates Abraham sacrificing a ram to God. For those of you interested in religion... in Christian teaching, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to ensure that he is a loyal servant. At the last second, God stops Abraham and praises him for being so loyal that he would sacrifice his son. To commemorate the occasion, Abraham finds a ram and sacrifices it in place of Isaac.... which I'm sure Isaac was very thankful for! In Islam, the difference in the story, is that Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Ishmael, instead of Isaac. In either case, there's still the sacrificing of a goat... hence my nickname of Goat Eid. This tradition of sacrificing an animal continues in the modern festival,... in fact Eid al-Adha translates into "the festival of sacrifice"... and most families do their best to secure a ram, goat, cow, water buffalo, etc. for the occasion. After the slaughter, families gather together and have a big feast (sorry no football) and are encouraged to share a portion of their meal with the poor. I try to avoid the slaughtering aspect of the feast, which as you can imagine is a little gory, but the feasting and sharing with the poor I think is a really wonderful celebration.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Drew and I will have a much more leisurely work week and are planning on doing some site-seeing in the area for fun. I'll be sure to post pictures and stories of these excursions for you all. For those of you in the US... enjoy some fall weather and activities for me! I would kill for some apple cider about now, haha.