Maadi

I got my first lesson in Arabic yesterday, which was fun, but a little difficult. On Sun-Thurs I go to Maadi to work with AG missionary Jennifer Day who is an RN and does medical missions. She has an Egyptian man who works with her named Moody and his father is an AG pastor in Assiout and helps run the Lillian Thrasher Orphanage. Anyway, he is giving us "survival" Arabic lessons twice a week while I'm here. It is really good and I learned a lot. Jennifer also has two Egyptian girls who work for her who are also from Assiout and both just got out of the orphanage there. Their names are Menal (24 yrs) and Aza (22 yrs) and Jennifer has taken them under her wing and is teaching them English (which is now currently my task) and also teaching them skills to use so after two years they can find jobs on their own. They are the sweetest girls in the world!

On Mondays, Jennifer does a clinic in a city called Kozzika. So, I was able to help out at the clinic by getting charts, weighing the patients, and playing with the kids while they were waiting. It was so funny because we told the kids that we wanted to practice our Arabic and they were tougher on us than our teacher:) I think I was forced to count to 20 in Arabic at least 20 times, and one boy even taught me how to write the numbers from 1-20. But it was so funny because they were so intent on teaching me Arabic and even the Muslim mothers were helping us...and laughing at us as we kept ranting off 1-20 and "hello, how are you?" conversations. It actually helped a lot and it was just so great how eager they were to help us. Apparently, they love it when foreigners try to learn their language and make an effort to communicate in their first language. These are some pictures from the clinic.