Sunday, December 9, 2007

Christmas preparations in Egypt; a challenge

There are only 15 days left until Christmas, and I’ve only bought one Christmas present, a book on learning the hieroglyphic alphabet for August. I may have the grocery shopping down (I’ve already concluded that I will have to make a lot of the Swedish Christmas food from scratch this year, such as pickled herring and paté), but buying toys, clothes and gifts is something I still haven’t figured out. I know it’s going to take time and effort, and right now I don’t feel that I have either; I wish somebody would show up at my doorstep and hand me the things I need, so I wouldn’t have to go through the whole search and shopping process.

Toys, as it has turned out, are quite cheap here, but of very poor quality. There are a couple of toy stores in Maadi, Pony Toys by the Grand Mall being the largest one, but everything we’ve ever bought there has either broken or didn’t work at all. There’s a Toys’r Us in the Arcadia Mall downtown on the Corniche, but there the toys are double the European price and we didn’t think they had a very good selection. I’ve asked other parents that have been here in Egypt for a couple of years what they do for present shopping, and everyone I’ve asked so far have told me that they buy all their presents - everything they could possible need throughout the year, including birthday and Christmas presents - in the US when they visit in the summer. At the AUC Christmas party the boys got candy canes in their goodie bags, and when I asked the organizer where she got them, she told me they were bought in the US last January, and that she has kept them in her office this whole year. “You just can’t get them here”, she exclaimed.

Put all this together, and I’ve concluded that preparing for Christmas will be a bit more challenging this year, however I know that, in the end, the boys probably won’t even notice that our Christmas tree doesn’t have candy canes in it, and no matter what the sill tastes like or what Santa Claus brings, they will have a great Christmas!
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Lovely Lady of La Leche, most loving mother of the Child Jesus, and my mother, listen to my humble prayer. Your motherly heart knows my every wish, my every need. To you only, His spotless Virgin Mother, has your Divine Son given to understand the sentiments which fill my soul. Yours was the sacred privilege of being the Mother of the Savior. Intercede with him now, my loving Mother, that, in accordance with His will, I may become the mother of other children of our heavenly Father. This I ask, O Lady of La Leche, in the Name of your Divine Son, My Lord and Redeemer. Amen.