August 25, 2005

It's been a somewhat quiet week. We've been putting in our hours at work. Not much going on, just planning for the next year and sitting around with the other teachers. We've moved to our brand new school building. The school is huge now. There are several buildings that are a part of our campus. It's like a small compound out in the middle of the desert.

We've also been doing a little apartment shopping. Joe and I have never been so indecisive before. We can't make up our mind if we should change apartments or maybe move to a different section of town. We went around to about five different apartments with a real estate agent, but the prices seemed so expensive and the places weren't much better than ours.

Last night, we decided to walk around our neighborhood and just scope out apartment buildings. We asked at one apartment, and before we knew it, we had a "simsaar" (in other words, a doorman who wanted to make some extra money) at our disposal. We walked to another apartment and picked up another man. Then, we walked around to another apartment where no one came to the door. Then, we walked to another place and picked up another man. By the end of it, I think we had four doormen type guys walking around with us. We never did see an apartment, though.

Today, we met up with them again. We saw only one apartment which was pretty nice, but they wanted 200 pounds a day, which would end up being $1000 a month. They're crazy. The apartment was just not that nice!

The funny/good thing about the whole experience is that now that Joe and I know a little Arabic, they aren't so quick to try to scam us. I caught them telling each other that Joe speaks a little Arabic. Today, they were walking in front of us and they would talk and turn around to see if we understood them. It's nice to keep them on their toes! Score one for us. It's nice when they can't get away with ripping us off too much.

We're going with the school to Ain Sokhna this weekend for a little beach time. Hopefully, it will be relaxing since next week we finally will have students.

And, I forgot to mention a few blogs ago - a felucca ride is an Egyptian sailboat ride. You just walk up to the Corniche (boardwalk) and you'll have lots of guys offering to take you sailing on the Nile. We've found a really great peaceful place further down the Nile where you can sail among the reeds and farming islands.