*** Calling all budding photographers ***
IH Cairo ILI invites students past and present to celebrate the diversity of Egypt by taking part in our photography exhibition.
Find your best snapshots from around Egypt and submit up to 2 photos per category, choosing from: People, Natural History, Heritage Sites, and Fun!
YOU DECIDE! All the photos will be put on our Facebook page - IHCairo International Language Institute, so that you, the public can ‘LIKE’ the best photos. Your choices will then become the exhibition!THE EXHIBITION! The best ‘liked’ photos will be exhibited in ILI, and also at ElAlsson International School, so students, staff and the public will have a chance to see Egypt as you, our students, do!
THE FINALISTS! We will be printing your photos big enough to look good, professionally displayed. The runners up in each category, plus an overall winner, will be chosen by a panel of judges, including the ILI’s very own artistic CEO (!) and Egyptian artist Mohamed Abla.
THE WINNERS! Both the winning photo, and runners up, will join the ILI’s permanent collection of artwork, displayed around the school and in our residences. So, join in and have your photos become part of us!All runner-ups, and the overall winner, will have their images incorporated as part of the ILI’s permanent collection of artworks, installed in the ILI residences as well as around the school. So, join in and have your photos become part of the furniture!
Entry RequirementsOnly past and present students of the college are allowed to enter but anyone is allowed to vote! Simply become fan of the Facebook page and keep your eyes peeled for updates to the competition album.
Please provide us along with each photo: Your name/the category the photo is for/the location of the photo.
The minimum required size/quality of a picture is: 300dpi or 2MGClosing date for submission: End March 2012
**Please note: Images will not be used for marketing purposes without gaining prior consent**Now for the main blog.
This weekend was the third of my Christmas Days! Never has the phrase ‘all your Christmases come at once’ seemed so poignant!
After celebrating my (Western) Christmas in the desert and Egypt’s Christmas (New Year’s Eve) in a swanky hotel, Rami and I settled down for a low key celebration of the Orthodox Feast on Saturday 7thJanuary.
Lots of people, including myself before I started dating Rami, are probably only vaguely aware, or totally unaware that Christmas is on a different date for many Christians across the globe. It is like that because historically Copts follow a different calendar to the West. It may interest some to find out a little bit more about the difference between Western Christmas and Coptic Christmas. It certainly interested me, and I have already done a little bit of research on Coptic Christmas , parts of So, is Coptic Christmas very different to the Christmas that a vast majority of the students in IH Cairo ILI know and love? Well, after many years of British rule in Egypt along with a heavy influence of French and English missionaries who built churches, schools and hospitals; the celebrations are a real blend of Western and Eastern traditions.
Firstly I can say that the celebration is not exclusively called ‘Christmas’. Other names include ‘The Feast’ or ‘Eid’. Furthermore Coptic Christmas is certainly nowhere near as commercialised as the holiday in places such as the United Kingdom or America. The Christmas celebration is far more focused on ‘The True Meaning’, or religious foundations, of Christmas (Jesus’ birth and baptism as the Son of God) and a trip to the church for a long mass is one of the main activities of the Feast.
Admittedly for one reason or another none of Rami’s family except his brother made it to the church this year, so I will not yet be able to blog about Coptic mass. Perhaps it was for the best however; I hear that the men and women have to sit apart which would have left me in a very awkward situation with regards to protocol and generally following what was going on! I will one day take a trip to the church, to learn about this integral part of my boyfriend’s upbringing… but perhaps I will wait until I have made an English-speaking Coptic girl-friend to sit with!
The biggest difference apart from the date is that Coptic Christians will fast in the weeks leading up to the 7th January. Fasting for Christians involves eating only vegetarian food such as bread, beans, vegetable, rice, pasta and also fish. They go to church ‘en masse’ on the night before Christmas and many will eat a meal which has meat in, to break the fast afterwards. We ate a rather tasty rabbit.Many families will eat turkey on Christmas Day although this has derived from Western influence. Duck and chicken are also eaten in some households. I can safely say that on our Christmas Day I consumed what was by far the biggest turkey I have ever seen; a fine endorsement for home-rearing if ever there was one!
For those interested in the economics, I asked Rami’s mum how much the turkey, or ‘roomy’) رومى) had cost to buy alive and her 2kilo purchase was 200LE (£20). To buy one the same size but dead and prepared it costs in excess of 400LE (£40). Buying the turkey alive means that you have the chance to rear it how you like and feed it what you want, in the knowledge that it hasn’t been filled with chemicals or kept in a dark box and then exported from goodness knows where over goodness knows how long. As a result of feeding, our 2kilo bird ended up at 7kilos! I am not good at maths but I think this is a bargain! Of course, if you chose this option you would have to have the stomach to be able to kill, pluck and prepare the meat prior to enjoying it. To be honest I would rather risk the chemicals and pay the extra than endure this! Call me squeemish but the thought of chasing some poor bird around the roof then chopping its head off and tearing it apart somehow taints the romantic and yes, sanitized, image I have of Christmas Day! It was bad enough when the poor bird that has been warbling around happily on my roof just feet above me since my arrival back in October, ended up being stored in my freezer in the lead up to the day! Still, if you are capable of doing so, a live bird adds a certain rustic feel to the celebration I suppose.
Just like those who celebrate on the 25th, Coptic Christians adorn their houses with decorations including a Christmas tree and Nativity Scenes. In Western establishments carols are sung and the celebrations are far more akin to those of Western Christians. They exchange presents and of course, Santa arrived in Egypt along with the foreign occupants so children across the city find presents waiting for them on Christmas morning. The actual celebrations over the weekend were very similar to what I am used to. I did lots of lazing around eating and watching funny movies (in Arabic, worse luck for me!). Rami’s brother and uncle cracked open the backgammon set whilst his other uncle enjoyed one too many beers! The difference was that with the vast majority of the city being Muslim, everything from cafes to shops and the cinema were still open and running as usual so Rami and I were able to escape the family household for a while and leave them to enjoy visits from guests whilst we went out and took in the nightlife – a bonus that doesn’t often happen in England because everything is shut all day!
I am fully ‘Christmasd’ out now, so next week I will resume writing about some of the more practical aspects of life in Cairo that students coming to IH Cairo ILI may be interested to hear about.
Enter your 'holiday snaps' in our competition - details above
Sounds like fun interesting reading your blog deb
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