"I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends"

So I have made some pretty great friends here. They range from 4 to 11 and they play outside in what they call the “garden” (it is the courtyard for the apartment buildings). It started with a smile to one of the girls and quickly turned into running to each other when we catch a glimpse of each other every night and evenings full of broken Arabic/English/the universal body gestures (and all the misunderstandings that go along with that) Egyptian versions of Hide and go Seek (a lot of yelling) and Stella Ella Ola (with the painful twist of having to hit the person so that they make some sort of noise to indicate pain) and house (which turns out is pretty classic around the world…except that they empty out things from their house and we play it in the “garden”). It is nice having some to hug you when you are so used to constant snuggles back home (expecially from Meghan and Serena)

The other day one of my friends celebrated her 11^th birthday so I made a card and a birthday crown and went to the market to get her helium birthday balloons. We had a lovely little party.

At some point though I realized that my homemade keychain (a present from a student I taught at home) had opened and I had lost my key to my locker at school. So of course I was devastated. I was running through having to tell the school that I lost it and upset at how irresponsible that would make me look. I figured out that it should have been in the courtyard so I start searching in the dark – it was totally unrealistic to think that I ever would have found it. Immediately I had a search party – about fifteen little children searching the grass using the screens from their phones to light the way. They also went and got the guards and some got older siblings (I was somehow able to convince them not to get their parents) involved so add in a few of those looking for this needle in a haystack – in the dark. Anyway I searched for awhile and was pretty upset and the birthday girl kept saying “you are not sad” by which she meant “don’t be sad”. She was nearly in tears because I was upset…very sweet. I kept trying to cheer them up and stop them from looking. They would run over with the saddest little faces to hug me and then they would set off looking again. Very touching. It got to the point where I had to give up for the night, (andthey kept telling me to go to bed…they know that I go to sleep hours before them) so I set my alarm to wake up with the sun and left my friends.

Just before 1:00 am I hear knocking on my door. I don't answer my door here because I am always nervous that someone knows where I live and the hallways are always empty so I get scared that I would be alone (this has gotten me into trouble when my director stopped by my house one night to make sure I was ok). I don’t even look through the peep hole – as if by getting that close to the door they will sense that I am home (note that I am not overly paranoid about everything here…just this). So the knocking gets louder and at some point I notice that there is more than one person knocking and I figure out the it is likely children, check the peep hole and there are about ten of the happiest kids you have ever seen outside my door. I open up and they hand me my key! So after I went to bed they refused to give up and kept looking – in complete darkness. Of course, I was THRILLED to have the key back and relieved at not having to have the very uncomfortable conversation with my school but mostly I was so touched by the commitment to keep looking after I left and by how happy they were to have made me happy. True friends.