The Four Seasons

An educational poster in Arabic and English that we have on our wall:

Autumn

The storms rage and the tree leaver fall down
The pupils go to scoole
We cultivate the land and sow grains
It has three months: September, October and november

Winter

The rain fall down and so the snow.
Its fruits: Orange and tangerine
We wear wool and heavy dress.
It has three months: December, January, and February

Spring

The trees bloom and the grass sprout
The weather becomes moderate and the sky brightens
everybody celebrate in spring day
It has three months: Marsh, April, and May

Summer

the sky brightens well and the temperature intensifys
Its fruits: Grapes, Apples, Strawberry and watermelon.
They go out to summer resort
It has three months: Gune, July, and August.

Crotch Fur, and other delicacies

So last week we went to the British Consulate and discussed Crotch Fur with a nice lady from the embassy in Cairo. Not the typical conversation you'd expect over coffee and cakes, but hey...

Anyway, apparently this was a menu item she once saw in Malaysia, whilst dining out with her mother-in-law, along with "vegetables, pulpily pulpily grown."  I love these crazy translations, or spelling mistakes, or sometimes just utterly made up words.  In India I saw a "humburger" on one menu which pretty much described the meat in that restaurant.  If that wasn't tempting there was always the option of a "paper streak" (which I think was their version of a pepper steak.)  If anyone can enlighten me what "egg on a plate, raw wishing" might be (seen in Budapest) I'd be very grateful!

So naturally I have been making a list of such fabulous delicacies we have seen since arriving in Egypt, and here is a sample of my favourites so far:

Selections from "Abu Ghraib" restaurant:
- soap with chicken lever (I might try and illustrate this one)
- macaroni in haven
- bowl of soup with cows legs (We really wanted to order this, but it would have been so disappointing if it didn't arrive with whole cow legs sticking out of the bowl)
- lenition soup
- loaf of stuffed vina
- today jarret (this is my absolute favourite.  We have no idea what it means.  The word in Arabic was something entirely different that isn't in the dictionary.  I am currently using "jarret" to describe the type of cooking I do when I'm using up random leftovers from the fridge, such as the "oinksaka" that we had the week before we came to Egypt.  Anyway, back to the list.)

Selections from Marcuous Cafe
- Pizza Barcelona (4 peace): part chicks, bstrmp part, part of minced, part of sausage (yes, that was bstrmp, not a typo on my part, those exact letters)
- Each additional component of the vegetable 5LE
- Each component of meat 7LE
- Each additional component of the marine species 9LE (good use of a dictionary there)
- Kind of fish: shrimp, tuna, clemery, crab, oncojp (I'm guessing calimari for clemery, no clue for 'oncojp')
- Season juice: watermelon, peach, apricot, quintalob, Tin wire (The Arabic for 'quintalob' was 'Cantaloup', but there was no translation for 'Tin wire')
- Browns with ice (ewww)

- Builder chicks (this is a type of sandwich, dontcha know)
- Hamburger pillow
- Hamburger Paljbnp and white
- Sbit builder or roasted (I kept mis-reading that first word)
- Ice Late
- Medical Li Hookah
- Melliferous Hookah (words fail me... I wouldn't let Patrick order this one though!)

I'll keep collecting.......