At Khan il Khalili market

The situation of women in Egypt is every bit under the thumb as I expected and could get worse – more and more seem to be in full hijab which is very weird.

Mohammed Ali Mosque, Cairo

Good to be in Athens where you don’t see the walking tents. But we also saw lots of loving couples and women out smoking in the coffee houses too – plus lots of younger women working, but they tend to stop when they marry except for the elite who do what they like.

Our guide (male, they are all male) had the perspective that men have a very hard life because women “have” to stay at home, so men have to do most of the work, all the women have to do is cook, sew, wash, clean and look after the house, look after the children and of course look after their husband.

This is Angie listening attentively to the Iman…

There was nearly an uprising a couple of decades ago when the govt made a law that a man had to inform his wife if he was divorcing her or taking a second wife. I think the imans are still outraged by this. The whole country is held back by religious conservatism – and can’t improve until the women are free, which will take a revolution.

Al Hussein Mosque, Khan el Khalili, right where the bomb went off recently.

But the mosques are beautiful.
The best books I read on this subject are
Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire, eg http://www.islamfortoday.com/9parts.htm
and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidel_(book)

Room 301 at the Metropole

Journey to Alexandria
Feeling smug about avoiding ground transport and taxis, we boarded the Metro for Mubarek and walked into Ramesses Station. King Hotel to platform in 35 mins, carrying light packs and handbags. Train itself took about 2hr 20mins to cover the 200+km, would have been hard to have been one of Napoleon’s troops doing this through the desert on foot. From Iskandreya station we walked down Danial to the beautiful Metropole Hotel, a total joy with fabulous breakfasts, elegant furniture, the antique and slightly vertigo inducing central lift, and our gold gilded room was fit for minor royalty. Everything in the marble bathroom worked, a first for Egypt.

Most time was spent aimlessly wandering, though we did get to the musty catacombs of Kom el shoqafa, Quaitby Fort and the splendid Bibliotheca. We loved Iskandreya, but the “faded glory” cafes in guide books are hopeless and overpriced, best to strike out and find your own.
The 2nd class express was comfortable good value at 29LE, but on our return journey the minor disaster was finding the ticket office in Cairo made a mistake with the date which we didn’t notice at the time, meaning we had to buy duplicates, this slightly took the edge off budget train travel. But got back to Cairo without hassles, we’d like to stay in Alexandria for days longer, weeks, months…

Most college teachers now take five academic classes, an increase from four. This means that there is far less time for lesson preparation, at the same time as the assessment task has increased. Unlike in larger states to which the government is fond of referring, there is virtually no central system curriculum support for teachers on the ground, they have to do it all themselves. For the students, the cuts mean that their teachers are virtually unavailable for individual help outside class hours, and their opportunities to take sport and other non-academic classes have dramatically diminished. Similarly, students are far more restricted in their choice of courses, timetable and teacher.

Our secondary college system is no longer the pride of Canberra and the envy of the nation. Those elements which made for the definitive college experience such as innovative curriculum, student choice, and individual learning have been vandalised again by the current government. Teachers in both colleges and high schools are still endeavouring to provide an excellent education for their students, but they are heavily handicapped. Claims by the ACT to run the best education system in the country sound like a script from the spinmeisters of “The Hollowmen.”

Current and future parents should ensure that politicians committed to restoring adequate staffing to secondary schools are elected. Currently only the Greens have made such a commitment. The Liberals have promised to restore 35 positions in high schools, but mysteriously have ignored the plight of colleges; previous Liberal governments made cuts which have contributed to the present problems. Labor politicians continue to boast about the “tough decisions” of 2006, seemingly oblivious of the damage they have caused. However, voters will be aware that millions plundered from secondary schools have since been squandered on a variety of frivolous projects and election sweeteners.
As a secondary teacher in Canberra for over thirty years, I hope some of my former students read this letter, and think about voting against those sitting MLAs most responsible for harming our schools, and replace them with people who will keep faith with Canberra’s high educational aspirations.