Friday, October 29

As you can see, my blogs get fewer and fewer as we aren't living the most exciting lives lately. A great deal of time is just spent working. Sigh... However, I have had a few questions which I thought I might as well answer. I know that until I actually came to Egypt, I thought it was going to be like Indiana Jones. People would have monkeys and everyone would wear a robe and turbin. Now, I'm not saying there aren't people wearing robes and turbins, but I haven't seen too many monkeys around.

The strange thing is that Cairo is like Indiana Jones, yet at the same time it's completely modern and civilized. For example, McDonalds is only a short walk away. Oddly enough, we haven't been there yet. We've been to Hardees, Pizza Hut, KFC and Johnny Carinos. They also have Baskin Robbins, Arby's, A & W, TGI Fridays and Chilis. All of these restaurants are pretty standard. There are slight differences, usually a bummer, like the biscuits at KFC are just rolls. The ketchup here tastes different too.

But there are also bonuses. For example, you can have anything delivered. Nobody gets anything themselves. Just the other day, Joe carried the garbage down himself, and the neighbor boy treated him strangely, telling him that there was a man to do that.

One of my students didn't have her uniform pants on. I asked her why and she told me they weren't ironed. Now, having ironed my own pants that very morning, I asked her why she didn't iron them. She shrugged. I asked her who ironed her clothes. She answered, "The ironing boy." People pick up ironing at your door, and return it at your door. Grocery stores deliver. Fast food places like Hardees, KFC, McDonalds all deliver. (We decided this would be very dangerous in the U.S.) You can have your doorman run and get you anything you want, matches, sodas, cigarettes, light bulbs, food, bread, etc., etc.

The thing is that there are a million jobs for everyone. With so many people living in one small area, there have to be a lot of middlemen and women. People look at Joe and I strangely when we go to pick up our ironing or carry our groceries home.

We can get almost anything that we can get at home. Of course, there are little things. For example, they don't have vanilla extract or chocolate chips. (What I wouldn't do for homemade chocolate chip cookies.) You can't find the U.S. brands of junk food like Doritos, Ruffles, etc. They have Pepsi and Coke, of course, but Joe and I have decided they are definitely different from home, as every one has a different taste. There are no diet vanilla Cokes or diet cherry Cokes to be had.

We have found things we love, though. I am getting fat off of the Egyptian sweets that are especially popular during Ramadan. They know us at the sweet store. We are also recognized at the "alley" behind our apartment building as well. It's a very rough alley. We decided we have a love/hate relationship with it. You can get everything there cheap. There are fruit, vegetable, ironing, copy, school supply, cleaning supply, grocery, live produce like chickens (ew!), dry goods, schwarma, koshary, a gym, plumbing, electrical, etc. shops. Anything you need, you can get. It's a rough alley because there are hardly any women and the men are not afraid to stare or comment. The shop owners all recognize us now. You can almost see the dollar signs in their eyes when we approach. We know that they charge us extra, but we figure it's foreigner "tax." At least we're helping out the economy. It's almost fun now to haggle a little bit. Now that we know some Arabic, we aren't so naive either. We know what things should cost and we can read if they have numbers posted. We catch them off guard once and awhile.

We have been invited this evening to go to our nieghbor's/landlord's house for iftar (break fast). It is the meal that is had at sunset. We are looking forward to it. They have very sweet and polite kids. The oldest girl is very kind. She always kisses me on the cheeks when we meet, as they do here. The little boys always stand with us outside the apartment as we both wait for our buses. The older boy always asks me questions like, why did we come here? Why do we like dogs? (They are terrified of Leia.) He's very curious. He always shakes our hand every time we see him. It's cute, and the littlest boy doesn't know much English, so he just stares at us like we are from the moon.

Our doorman is also one of our favorite people. He always smiles at us, and he has a fascination with Leia. He's started giving her his old "aeish" which is bread. He loves to sit and watch us feed her. She loves it, of course. You know Leia and her obsessive-compulsive addiction to food. She gobbles it all up and he just keeps urging us to give her more.

We will report back on our iftar dinner. I'm sure it will be excellent. I told them I'm a vegetarian, and when we were talking to the landlord yesterday, he thought I was nuts. It's extremely rare to be a vegetarian in Cairo, extremely. I am basically a freak. Okay, not really, but it is completely uncommon and most people don't understand it, unlike in the U.S. where it is extremely common.

We'll see how it goes. We hope all is going well for everyone at home. We are wishing everyone well.