Be Grateful.

I saw a man get killed today.

I was driving to work. I has just passed my office and was waiting in the left lane of the main divided street in Nasr City in order to make the U-turn (which is legal and encouraged) to pull into my garage. A handsome boy, about 25, clean shaven and smiling, in a business suit and tie, passed in front of my car, on his way across the street. He gave a thankful half-wave to show appreciation that I made a full stop for him, and once he had safely hopped up onto the median, I inched forward.

Then, for one moment, the whole world stopped.

Everyone saw the ancient white car barreling down from at least 300 feet away. The squealing brakes did nothing except draw everyone's helpless attention. Women screamed. I screamed. Except for our screaming, everyone was paralyzed.

Then came the worst sound I have ever heard, and the boy was suddenly airborne--he was thrown--and I'm not exaggerating--about 25 feet straight up up up, his body rolling and rolling in midair.

He landed on the median, arm's reach away from the car that had hit him, and no more than five feet from mine. The moment he landed, the world re-started in triple speed.

People jumped out of and over cars, the traffic vanished, and before I could process what was happening I was parked, in my garage, shaking.

I waited until I had regained the manual dexterity to take the key out of the ignition, dry my face, and walk out of the garage into the street.

The street was packed with people gathered around the scene. Traffic on the normally 6 lane wide road was inching past on the right side. AND THERE WERE NO AMBULANCES AND NO POLICE AND NO ONE WAS CALLING THEM.

I crossed the street--cautiously--to continue on my way to work. A mere 50 feet past the scene of the accident, life was exactly normal. Girls were drinking sodas, guys were being lecherous, and people were zig-zagging their way through traffic, completely oblivious.

Once in the office, I sat down with my coffee to read the news and calm down before getting down to work.

277 People killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza...
37 voters killed in a polling station in Pakistan...
24 hitchhikers killed in a truck crash in Bangaldesh...
14 Children killed by a car bomb in Afghanistan...

And I pulled out my notepad and wrote my one single New Year's resolution:

Be Grateful.

Never enough time..

I never seem to find enough time to blog. Work days are entirely devoted to eating, sleeping, and working. Weekends and holidays seem to be even busier. But right now, at 7am on a Weekday, I have found a few minutes between sleeping and working.

Last week we had the whole week off for the Eid holiday. We had big plans - and hotel reservations - to go to Dahab and hang out on the beach. But a couple of sinister glasses of village tap water intervened, and I spent most of the holiday in bed at home.

We did manage to buy a Christmas tree. It is a pathetic little thing - about 3 feet tall and scrawny - but it is a REAL TREE, it is still alive, and is covered in lights and shiny bits of plastic. And that's really what counts.

Unfortunately, that Vacation last week was the only winter time vacation that we get, so I'm going to take off Christmas day myself, and work on Christmas eve.

Getting into the holiday mood has been difficult here. Not counting the 80* weather, nothing about Egypt feels like Christmas. Stores don't have decorations, holiday offers, or gift wrapping done by girl scouts. I haven't heard Jingle Bells sung by cats (or any other Christmas songs) once. I guess the biggest hindrance to the christmas spirit is that I am the only person who cares about 'christmas stuff' like a great meal, lots of friends, gifts, decorations, music, and decent champagne, and I'm just too busy, too tired, and still not familiar enough with Arabic or Cairo to do anything about them. At work, while my computer is restarting, I'll make lists --buy gifts, buy paper, people to invite, meals that are both christmas-y and possible -- and then the list gets folded, put into my handbag, and instantly becomes "purse-clutter".

One shouldn't complain too much about missing Christmas, when faced with 75* days while her family and friends are facing ice storms. But a little variety would be nice. I'm getting a little stir-crazy, actually. I can't wait until Wahied gets his visa and we can go visit all of the places I so desperately miss. (New York, Connecticut and Chicago). I'm squirreling away my holidays so I can spend as long as possible there. The moment we get that visa....

Looks like I've run out of time again. I'll do my best to post whenever I can.

I feel better

I usually make a point of not posting when I have nothing interesting to say, but I didn't want to leave you all on my previous (cranky) note for days on end.

I feel a lot better. Yesterday was a fine day at work. Nothing in particular happened there at all. I left early because I had a follow-up doctor's appointment. Even though my eyes look a lot better, apparently they're not, so I have to keep at them for a while. After the doctor I met up with Anita and Omar, and after playing with Karim and Ramy* for a while, we all headed over to Omar's father's house for dinner. There we saw Sherine and Shaggy and Zak, and, of course, Omar's father.
Karim and Anita's maid, Sabah, both agreed that they liked my car.

*Karim, 4, and Ramy, 1, are Anita's kids and my playmates. Karim loves me, and asks his parents when Auntie Lisy is coming to play with him. We also have our own special language. Karim is quad-lingual. He speaks Arabic, English, German and Polish. He favours his Arabic heavily, and speaks it about 95% of the time that he's not at school (where he speaks only German). In an effort to help him learn English, Anita has convinced him that I don't understand Arabic, and he can only speak to me in English, which he does for the most part and can surprise even me with how much he knows. When he does get lazy or forgetful, and speaks to me in Arabic, I usually tell him to speak to me in English or just respond to his Arabic in English. Unfortunately for both of our linguistic development, however, sometimes we both get lazy and forgetful and revert to our own special arabic-english mix. (E.g. "Where's the tayara, Tauntie lisy?" "The tayara is stuck fil shagara, yaKoko".) Ramy and I also have our own language, but it mostly involves making 'geeeaaaaah' noises at each other, as he's not old enough to speak yet.

Wahied is coming home today! I'm pretty excited, because I've missed him a lot over the past THREE WEEKS, and can't wait to see him. Hopefully tomorrow will bring all of the progress and problem resolution that we need (gas company is coming, Wahied can duke it out with the parking guys, perhaps we can convince the doorman to clean up our hallway). In the meantime....breakfast.

A rant

Let me tell you about my day, anyone who dares to read.

If you don't want to read rambling ranting, I suggest you stop reading now.

I got to work early today. The client sent a ridiculous e-mail telling me how "Gravely disappointed" she was that I was unable to provide any analysis of the data at this point in the project. I tried to explain to her that there IS NO DATA at this point in the project, but that didn't make it less irritating. She also was sour that I hadn't gotten back to her yesterday (I wasn't in the office) even though she wasn't in the office yesterday either, and didnt check her e-mails until after noon today (well after I had sent her everything she needed that I could provide).

Anita and Omar did me a HUGE favour today, and drove 1/2 way across Cairo to sit and wait for the Gas company to come and install my boiler. They waited and waited and waited and the Gas company never came. They both wasted their entire day for me, and I still have NO HOT WATER. It's coming up on 2 months now, and this is the 3rd appointment the boiler company has missed. (Each time they claim that they came to the apartment, knocked, and no one was here. Riiiiight.)

I ordered a coffee at 9am sharp this morning. My co-workers arrived at 9:45. At 10am the office boy (who is female) brought 7 coffees---for my 7 co-workers---and then announced to me (I'm the only one who speaks any arabic, and she doesn't speak any english) that they ran out of milk, and she can't make me coffee until more comes. More came at 5:30pm.

It might have seemed strange to put coffee on someone's desk at 6pm, but I guess the office boy (girl) knew something I didn't---I was going to stay at the office until 9pm. I managed to mangle the codeframe I was working on (it was the first one I've ever done) and needed to re-start the whole process at about 3pm. Apparently I'm not so good at those.

I left the office just before 9pm, and much to my surprise, MY COMMUTE was the highlight of my day. In that it only took 45 minutes (to go 11 miles) and I only fought with one other driver.

Then I got to my parking spot. Except it wasn't my parking spot, because someone else had parked there. And my parking guy didn't have the keys. Or the keys to ANY OTHER CAR PARKED IN MY LOT. But he told me the guy was coming back in 5 minutes. So I waited, and then I waited 30 minutes more. Then I called the head parking guy, made a stink, and waited some more. After an hour (to the second) of waiting, I still hadn't parked. SO I ventured around to find a new spot. I parked my shiny new car in some much-too-small space in a heavily traversed alleyway, in front of a bakery.

Fair Enough, because now it was 10:40. 10:40, almost 2 hours after I had to put in more eye-medicine and they were THROBBING.

So I came into the building and tried my elevator. Stuck. I tried the second Elevator. Stuck. So I hoofed it up 6 flights of stairs, in heels. When I arrived at my hallway, I almost decided to hoof it back DOWN the stairs.

The cats have returned. They brought friends---a swarm of nasty (flying!) cockroaches. They also left me some really, really gross excrement-related presents on my doorstep. But I didn't flee. Instead I managed to step over the poo into my apartment without letting any flying cockroaches into my apartment. I let one flying creature, roughly the size of a dragonfly into my house (by accident) and it is buzzing and flying around like crazy. And making ME crazy.

By the time I got to put my first batch of medicine in, my eyes had all but crusted completely over. I had to scrub my eyes with warm water before I could even put the drops in. As soon as I finished that, I decided that I needed a little R+R. A Bubble bath was right out, as I have no hot water, so I decided to make a cup of tea and start dinner. But I had No matches. Not a single one. So I can't even light my stove.

So I put the heels back on, and hoofed it back out of the apartment, past the roaches and the poo, back down the stairs, across the street, bought some cheap little matches and hoofed it back up here.

Last night, after wahied managed to wrangle that woman into her ambulance, and he boarded a bus with his group, his saga continued. His bus broke down on the side of the highway towards Suez. Shortly before that he discovered that his wallet, ID and license were missing. He then got to stay up all night dealing with police (in relation to the bus incident).

Needless to say, he is a bit stressed out at the moment, and distinctly didn't want to hear about any more problems that he's unable to solve. But I have managed to convince myself that SOMEONE wants to hear about how bad my day was. Actually, I'm aware that no one wants to hear how bad my day was, but I feel a whole lot better now that I've written it.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. I'm going to go back to the doctor to get my eyes re-evaluated, then I'm going to relax, because tomorrow is Thursday. And we all know what "Thursday" means in Egypt. It means the same thing that "Friday" means wherever you all are. And it also means that I'm one day closer to seeing Wahied (Friday) the Gas company's next attempt (Saturday) and the beginning of another long work week (Sunday).

But now it's after 11pm, and I need to make and eat some food, un-goop my eyes, and go to bed. For those of you who have made it this far...thank you. I promise I'll be back to myself and out of rant-y mode next time. Cheers, Lisy.

In my eyes...

...there are infections. That's right, both of those things are plural. I have both a bacterial and a viral infection in each of my eyes. Yum!

I won't go into details of my eye-infection saga because it's gross, boring and I'm not supposed to be using a computer. (I am typing this with sunglasses on, in a dark room, so it's all good). Let it suffice to say that I and my stubbornness were all parts of the problem, and Anita was part, if not all, of the solution. After inappropriately dealing with the problem all day, in a final act of desperation I called her and she fixed it.

There is nothing in the world quite as important as good friends, who are there for you in the most inconvenient (and disgusting) of times. I only hope that someday there is a way I can re-compensate her for what she did that doesn't include driving her and her oozing face halfway across Cairo on two minutes' notice during rush hour and back.

Needless to say, I didn't go to work today. The doctor was really really good, and whatever he gave me has been working miracles, but I still felt it was better to give myself some time. But without books, the internet, or going outside, things can be a bit slow. Luckily, food is still tasty.

Wahied is having a bit of trouble. One of his older tourists fainted while he was out in one of the Oases. She has been in the hospital for a couple of days now, and Wahied, who was working with them alone, has been trying desperately to manage all arrangements with the 17 people not in the hospital, without leaving the sick woman's side. While they all see a 'difficult situation being flawlessly handled by an attentive guide and tourist company' I see a scared, exhausted, 29 year old boy, desperately trying to handle an extremely difficult situation, who has only a mobile phone and no help from the company. After a full night of negotiating, which was his second night without a minute of sleep, Wahied managed to get the woman into an Ambulance to Cairo, and then promptly boarded a bus to go give a tour of some pyramids. Worried is not the right word for what i feel for him right now, but unfortunately the emotion I do have at the moment is not one that can be eloquently described in words. The closest I can come is "Gaaah!".

I'm going to go shut my eyes for a bit. I'll write more soon.

The best thing about living in Egypt..

...is that moment, just around noon on a Thursday, when you're sitting at work, rubbing your temples thinking "I'm not entirely sure I can make it through the next two days...there's no way I can come to work tomorrow...." when suddenly, like an out of control micro bus it hits you----I don't have to! (In Egypt, the weekends are Friday and Saturday).

After that point, you can spend the rest of your Thursday afternoon counting down until 6pm, making your shopping list, making your to-do list, making plans to go to the park with your friends' kids, and making plans to do things you know you won't actually do (like go to the gym, clean out your closets).

Alternatively, (one of) the worst thing(s) about living in Egypt is that moment, just around noon on a Saturday, when you haven't yet started tackling your hundreds of lists, drinking a coffee and still wearing pjs when you think "I don't need to get dressed right now, I have a whole day left to do my errands...." when you remember that, in just 20 hours you will be stuck in traffic on your way to work, nearly getting hit by far-less metaphorical micro buses.

But since Saturday is really really far away from now.....Happy Thursday everyone!

When it rains it pours...

It's winter in Egypt, everyone!

Unlike winter in most places winter doesn't mean snuggly warm clothing, colour changes in the foliage, or, well, anything much at all. But today we had a ferocious sandstorm followed by 'rain'. The sandstorm came on suddenly. It was a quiet, lazy Friday afternoon (which is the same as Saturday afternoon in the rest of the world), and then the windows began to rattle. Then our lungs started to rattle. Then the windows, shutters and doors began to bang. Then we lept up and continued to bang windows, shutters and doors, but all in the same direction---shut. Then we watched as our normally slightly-less-beige view became completely beige. This lasted for about half an hour, during which time Wahied and I desperately tried to warn our friend who was out at the pyramids that, there is a sandstorm happening (ya know, in case she didn't notice) and she probably shouldn't be standing outside in the middle of the desert in the middle of one of those. (Later, after the sandstorm cleared, she called us back and somewhat briskly thanked us for our warning, but suggested that she might have appreciated it 15 minutes earlier, BEFORE she had been caught outside in the middle of it).

At some point sitting inside watching NOTHING got really boring, so I stopped doing it. Moments after I stopped looking outside Wahied eagerly exclaimed that it was RAINING! I hurried into the only room that doesn't have shutters (we had closed them all) to have a peek out, but I apparently missed the rainstorm. After accusing Wahied of lying to me and/or being crazy, I decided to go outside. Other than a surprisingly small amount of filth considering the recent sandstorm, there was no evidence of this imaginary 22 second rainstorm.

Then Wahied and I decided to drive out to Carrefour, a short trip away on the ring road. The road was completely flooded. There were huge puddles everywhere, and any patch of road visible above the pools of water was covered in a thick red mud.

We found out that, in addition to ::ahem:: "heavy" rains, the sandstorm had somehow mysteriously caused the major water pipeline in Maadi to burst, flooding the ring road.

It was a disaster! The pools of water were so deep that the water came midway up the car doors. The traffic was terrible for two reasons. 1) Water baffles Egyptians and 2) The water broke the spark plugs on every single car older than mine, and cars would break down mid-puddle.

On the way back, they had actually closed the road on that side, because the flooding was worse (the flooding on the other side of the road would have been enough to close any American highway, so one can only imagine that cars would literally be underwater on the side that was closed). The problem was, once stuck in traffic in Egypt it is nigh impossible to get un-stuck. So Wahied and I were stuck in traffic (on an 8km journey) for about 2 1/2 hours. And we both had to pee. Badly.

About an hour into our traffic-blockage, I was already at the undoing my seatbelt and jeans stage, and by the time we broke free of the first major blockage (about an hour and a half in) I was actually shaking. As soon as we passed the re-entrance to the highway, I pulled over, and Wahied and I both lept out, jumped over the concrete barrier, and peed between some "trees".

Then, greatly relieved, we promptly got stuck in more traffic, which had been stopped due to flooding on the road so deep, it was mid-door level.

We finally made it home to a wonderful surprise waiting for us--a beautiful hot-pink bougainvillea tree (bush?)! We had bought it on our earlier walk and it had been delivered during our loooong stay in traffic. It is absolutely lovely, and I may (don't count on it) post pictures of it later.

Now, Wahied and I are slightly damp, drinking tea, and about to go to bed (in preparation for another sand and rain storm tomorrow!).

Six Months

Four days ago, Wahied and I successfully neglected our 6-month anniversary. When I remembered yesterday, Wahied vehemently denied getting married in April. This may seem odd for a man (his wife claims) is blissfully married, but, then again, we are odd.
See, Wahied and I were officially, legally, married on the 10th April, but we didn't have our Church Wedding until three months later, on 25th July. The gap between the two is so large because the marriage of a foreigner to a Christian in Egypt is actually (unsurprisingly) quite complicated, and it took months and months (both before and after) to get all of our paperwork in order. But now that everything is in order, our only problem is agreeing about at which point in the process we were married.
For me, the 10th April is more significant, because a) it's the date we have written on our marriage certificate, and b)it was the point of no return for our marriage. We were fully committed (Wahied uses the less elegant term 'stuck') at this point.
For Wahied, the 25th July is more significant because it's the date that we celebrated in the church and the date that everyone (all of our friends and family) acknowledged our marriage.

Either way, it is amazing to me how quickly these past 6 months have gone by. And it is even more amazing to think how our lives have changed so drastically in the two years that we have known each other. We've gotten through so many difficult things, and here we are now alive (though that nearly wasn't the case), together in Egypt (also at times not guaranteed), and happy (never a doubt about this).

Bas dilwaqti, kulu tamam, guys.

A place called home.

During my trip to London and France I felt a kind of longing that I had never felt before. It wasn't homesickness, I was much too busy for that, and it wasn't solely missing Wahied either. It was a feeling that I'm sure a lion would feel if someone took him out of his natural habitat and set him loose in Hyde Park--not desperation, but rather a jarring sense that it wasn't where he belonged.

Even knowing that I wouldn't see Wahied for at least another day (he was in Sinai) the sense of relief (comfort? excitement?) I felt when I landed in Cairo was so overwhelming I nearly kissed the ground like the Pope and skipped through the terminal. (Thankfully, I managed to appear more composed than I felt and kept the kissing and skipping to a minimum)

Much to my own surprise (and Anita's horror) I realised that I love Cairo. And more than that, for the first time I realised that I belong here. I had missed everything around me.

I had actually missed the way the air smells, even though I know it's disgusting.
I missed the traffic and the bustle that was overwhelming, even at 1:00am
I missed how the outcome of any situation depends on how you want it to turn out (and how nice you are and how much you're willing to pay)
I missed the people and how warm, curious, and unconventional they are.
I missed the weather, which is warm but never too warm.
I missed the sand and the garbage in the street, just because I'm used to them.
I missed the children playing in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night, because neuroses and over protectiveness don't make better kids.
I missed seeing sedans full of sheep, bicycles carrying lawn mowers, children carrying gasoline, men carrying babies, and women carrying more babies.
I missed having to wait 45 minutes to park my car before eventually driving off and parking somewhere else, because my parking guy wouldn't interrupt his lunch for me.

I missed all of the chaos and disorder and dirt and incompetence as much as I missed everything wonderful here.

I'm home.

Guitars

Last night (this morning?) Wahied and I repeated the midnight picking up of Asian tourists drill that we've become so good at. This time there was added excitement for several reasons.

The first is that the bus that takes Wahied to the airport and brings tourists back from it never showed up. So I did what anyone would do....I abandoned my husband, and let him take a taxi to the airport and sort things out himself there.

Then the hotel was different. And not only different, it was a brand new hotel in a completely isolated place, the exact opposite side of Cairo from all other hotels. Which is fine, of course, except when you're driving through Cairo alone at 4:30am, and are trying to read the road signs, but are hindered by the fact that you read like a 5-year-old. (I still can't tell the difference between "Mohammed" and "Mahmoud", which, being the two most popular names in Egypt, lead to a lot of road names, and sometimes seemingly identical streets with seemingly identical names can lead you in very different places.) But I found it, and I found it quickly.

Wahied and I were in the car, both pleased with how quickly I had found the hotel and that we could get home for a glorious 3 hours' sleep, when his mobile rang. One of the tourists in his group NEEDED a guitar. And he needed it as soon as the group met in the morning. It was 4:45am on a Sunday in Cairo. Wahied had 3 hours.

At 7:30, after hours of Wahied's frantic phone calls and my stupid questions ('Why does he need a guitar?' 'Why does he need it now?' and 'Why don't you tell him no?') We were just about to fall asleep when Wahied received a phone call. Someone had located a guitar! Relieved, we had the most refreshing 25 minutes of sleep EVER.

Then I drove him to the hotel, and met his group. They seem like normal human beings, but I still have doubts stemming from a refusal to visit the Egyptian Museum and an insistence on attaining a guitar at 4:30am while on vacation in Egypt. Indonesian tourists get a huge kick out of me, and though these spoke little English, they were intrigued nonetheless. They repeatedly asked me two questions: "You, live?" and "Christian?" but didn't understand the answers "Here" and "Yes".

We're planning to have another brutal night tonight. Tonight Wahied has a dinner cruise with the group, and it would be a miracle if he came home before 1am. I have a business trip to London and France, and my flight leaves at 7:15am tomorrow. So I have to leave here by 4:15. My company is flying me to London tomorrow, where, on Tuesday morning, I'll have another 5am meeting, and I'll travel with my colleagues to France where we'll be working on a big project together while in a Chateau. I'll get back on the 4th, but I won't see Wahied for another 3 days, as he will have left for Sinai the day before.

Since I wanted to see my husband once more before not seeing him for 12 days, I decided that I would join him and his tour group for lunch today. I came home to "pack" (though I appear to be blogging instead) before meeting him at the restaurant. When I just spoke to Wahied I asked the name of the restaurant so I would be able to find my way there. He checked his itinerary for a moment and said "It's the......Hard Rock Cafe."

So I have busy, exciting 8 days ahead, starting with an excursion to the Hard Rock Cafe, Cairo. I probably won't post while in France (I'm not bringing a computer) but I hope to have nice things to tell you all when I get back.

Au Revoir!

Friends

Again I find myself starting my blog post with an apology for not posting sooner. Either I have to start posting more regularly, or I have to stop feeling guilty about not doing so. This post is decidedly un-funny, but was created to give an honest update about what I'm up to and what life is like now.

I've become friends with a group of girls who are all 22-25, un-veiled (all but one are christian), and have had private french educations their whole lives. They all work or have worked at the bookstore in the Museum. None of them speak very good English, and I speak very very bad Arabic, but that doesn't stop us from communicating, and we're learning from each other. The ones I'm closest to are Rita, Sarah, Maha, Heidi and Iman. Of the 6 of us, 3 of us are married, and 3 are not.

Last week Sarah, who is recently married to a man who doesn't live in Egypt and thus lives at home with her mother, invited 10 of us over to her (new, un-lived in) apartment for dinner. As Wahied was the only man surrounded by 11 women, and I was the only person whose husband actually lives with her, we got a lot teasing and mildly lewd attention.
After a great deal of teasing, Rita took this photo of me and Wahied with her mobile:

It was a fun evening, and the girls told Wahied that they're going to take me out for girls-only events.

With the beginning of September Wahied has started working a lot, particularly on overnight trips to Sinai and Alexandria. Since he's been away I've started spending time at the bookstore with the girls, chit-chatting in 3 languages (two of which I don't speak), drinking coffee, and selling books. On Friday the girls who were there (Heidi works elsewhere and Maha had a day off) came to my apartment after the bookshop closed. We sat on my balcony until Wahied came home, who, dismayed that I hadn't been the perfect Egyptian hostess by overloading them with food and beverages, took us all out to Pizza Hut.

From left to right: Rita, Sarah, Iman and me. (Note: Sarah is the one giving the bunny ears to Iman)

Last night, when Wahied was in Sinai, I went to Rita's house after she finished work. She, Heidi and I went out for dinner and for a stroll around the neighborhood, and then I stayed at Rita's house.
Rita, Heidi and Sarah all live within a couple of blocks of each other in a predominantly Christian neighborhood in the middle of downtown Cairo. Not knowing the word "neighborhood" Rita called it her "village", which is the perfect word for it. It was exactly like an Egyptian village and was totally alive. In Rita's building, directly underneath her apartment, was a shop full of live Chickens. Many were in cages, more were not. People would come up outside the shop, pass in some money, there would be some wild clucking and flapping, and a plastic-wrapped package of fresh chicken meat would be passed out of the shop. The streets were very narrow, and were in a state of permanent traffic-jam because the cars couldn't squeeze past the donkey carts selling fresh vegetables parked along them, and would be blocked in by an infinitely long line of cars behind them. There were nearly as many donkeys as cars (though the mean age of the donkeys was probably 30 years younger than the cars), and, most importantly, everyone knew everyone. We stopped to talk to maybe 10 or 15 girls our age who had known Rita and Heidi for years, and at one point even ran into Sarah and her mother!

Rita's family was lovely. Her mother was very very sweet, very cute, lovely, attentive, and funny. At one point, when Rita and I were playing cards and listening to music she burst into the room and started shaking her booty--egyptian style--better than any belly dancer I've ever seen. Rita and I clapped and cat-called as she danced through the whole song, and at the moment it ended she said "I'm sorry" and ducked back out of the room. Rita, her mother and I spent hours gossiping and teasing, and her mother's questions were made all the funnier by the language barrier which led her to ask (using some of the few arabic words I know) if I enjoyed my "southern Egyptian cucumber".
Rita's younger brother (who Rita describes as 'very sexy' and I'll have to disagree) was also a blast, and he, Rita and I stayed up playing cards until nearly 1:30 in the morning. Though his English was also limited, he surprised me by pronouncing "You LOSE" and "p0wned!" perfectly. His game-speak is perfect, apparently, because he is a hardcore WoW player. I can't escape them anywhere!
I was incredibly good at politely declining invitations to food and beverages, yet they still managed to feed me an incredible amount of food (seriously, I don't know how these Egyptians do it!) Throughout my stay I drank lemonade, water, nescafe, tea, hot spiced milk, and peach juice. And I ate a chocolate roll, 4 guavas, a fajita sandwich, chocolate and nutella filled crepes, biscuits, sunflower seeds, two cheese sandwiches, and a pastry with dates in it. And I was only there for about 16 hours!

This morning Rita had to go back to work, and I got to come home and blog about how much fun I had, and plans have already been set for handbag shopping expeditions and more sleep-overs. Yay friends!

(Sorry! I don't have photos of Maha, Heidi or Rita's family)

Baking cake

After a mere 4 months of living in our apartment, we finally figured out how to turn on our oven. Actually, to be honest, Wahied's friend's ancient mother came 2 hours across Cairo to teach us how to turn on the oven. The secret, we learned, is to turn the gas on BEFORE trying to light it.

In celebration of our new-found appliance, I decided to bake a cake. Those of you who have experienced any food I have prepared in the U.S. already know that this is risky business for me. But, I did once bake a nice cake, and riding high on the remembered glory of a cake 2 years in the past, I decided to give it a try.

First we needed supplies. Getting a pan was no problem, nor were many of the common ingredients. Baking soda was more difficult because it doesn't exist here. But baking powder does exist, and provided a reasonable substitute (the internet came to my rescue in terms of just how to do it). Baking chocolate exists, but the kinds I've seen before were 50 or 60 LE per bar, so I opted for something on the shelf next to it that was covered in Arabic writing and only cost 6 LE. I couldn't find things that are 'nice' to have, like vanilla, so I did without. Measuring cups as we know them don't exist here, so I made do with what I have.

On to the baking. I got out my ingredients, I buttered and floured the pan and set to work. I made Wahied light the oven, because something about throwing a lit match into a box full of gas doesn't really sit well with me when I factor in my propensity toward disaster. I was able to calculate the temperature in *C (175) but the oven only measures in funny units (the evenly spaced lines go 125, 135, 150, 190, 210, 220), so we put it somewhere between 150* and 190*.

Then it got to measuring things....I decided that a small juice glass is about a cup, and that 2 teeny weeny eggs equal one large egg. Egyptian sticks of butter are square, and I'm pretty sure they're much larger than our sticks of butter, but I put one in, because the recipe that I had patched together from a series of internet recipes called for "one stick" and I'm not about to let my recipe down. (Also, 'one stick of butter' was probably the only ingredient that all of the recipes I saw agreed on)

My first true slip-up came when measuring the chocolate. It had asked for 4 oz of dark, unsweetened baking chocolate. The 6 LE chocolate I had bought was certainly not dark, and was actually kinda rubbery. And, of course, it did not come in neatly measured out ounce or two ounce squares. I checked the packaging and it didn't say anywhere how much the entire package weighed so I couldn't even reason it out. I figured I'd ask Wahied.
"YaDode, how much of this is 4 ounces?"
"What's an ounce?"
"You know, a unit of measurement we use in America?"
"Er....yes. That much."

I should probably have guessed that whatever amount of chocolate I did end up putting in, it was NOT 4 ounces, because instead of turning the batter into a black color, it was beige at best. But I chugged along, put the cake in the pan, and put it in the oven, which, to be honest, didn't feel quite as hot as I imagined 175*C to feel like. (I could comfortably put my hand inside the oven without a glove)

While the cake was baking I made a really successful mocha butter cream frosting, using Nescafe and instant hot cocoa powder as flavouring.

The cake's allotted 25 minutes came and went, and the cake still needed some time. So I gave it 5 more minutes, then another 5, then another 5 and then decided that ready or not, the cake had to come out.

It has risen mostly, and the outsides looked passable, but the middle was still droopy. I fork-tested it and the fork came out clean, but the cake was still a little....wobbly and sticky?

After letting it cool for a while, I tried to gently take it out of the pan. Despite careful buttering and flouring, the cake wouldn't budge. So I left it upside down on a plate. After a few moments, the cake made the exact same sound people's legs make when they stand up after sitting in a very hot car with the fake-leather seats while wearing shorts, and a couple of chunks of the cake flopped out.

I rescued them, stuck them on a tray, and frosted them. Then I pulled out the other pieces, plopped them on the tray and frosted them too.

Wahied, who at this point was in stitches over my really disgusting cake, and had long since abandoned any effort to hide what he truly thought, miraculously was willing to taste the cake. He took a large (and oddly shaped) chunk, and took a big bite. There was a pause, he made a face, another pause, and he said "you know, this cake actually isn't bad. I like the cake part a lot. But that hard sugar stuff on top..." "the frosting?" "yeah, the frosting, it's disgusting. You eat the top part and I'll eat the bottom."

The system works well for me, as the cake is truly the worst cake I have ever seen, and the frosting (which is impossible to get wrong) is perfect.

In the future, I will order baked goods from the bakery down the street. There they have an oven that gets hot, experience in Egyptian products (and baking in general) and a more complete knowledge of the metric system.

I'm going to go try to choke down some more of that cake (we're 1/2 way there!), and I promise to post more as soon as something reasonably funny happens to me. Cheers!

Married Life

Marriage comes with a great deal of responsibility. It also comes with some very daunting titles. In English there are "Mr. and Mrs.", in Arabic there are "Ustez and Madam", and the word for "my wife", "Mirati" sounds like a death sentence. If someone said to you "Mirati will be there," you probably wouldn't go.

With such a great deal of responsibility and such heavy titles comes a certain level of maturity. The relationship invariably develops a degree of gentility and reservation. Of course, the level of maturity and the degrees of gentility and reservation attained vary from couple to couple, and are influenced by a number of factors.

Keeping that in mind, I will recount an example of one of Wahied's and my marital interactions:

At about 6am yesterday (certain parties have trouble reading digital clocks, and mistook the 6 for an 8) Wahied exhibited an unusual amount of exuberance. As I exited the kitchen with a bottle of mineral water in hand, Wahied decided he would woo me with tales of past great accomplishments. "Did you know that I used to be able to vault over my friends' heads? While they were standing up? Really, I could jump over 3 or 4 of them at a time! AND they were taller than you. Here! I'll show you!" Despite objections ranging from "It's 6am" to "No, please it's really ok." Wahied turned me around so my back was to him and ran towards me from the other end of the hallway. When he pushed down on my shoulders, in order to vault over them, my feet, which were in flip-flops, slid out from under me on the alabaster floor. The back of my head hit the marble with an audible crack. A second later Wahied, whose collapsing vault had interrupted his jump, landed in a belly flop on top of me, hitting his head on the alabaster floor between my knees. Both of us managed to sit up momentarily, before collapsing in a heap of giggles.

Like I said, different strokes for different folks. But, if this is what the next 60-70 years are going to be like, sign me up. :P

Why I'm the Best Wife Ever; or Why Wahied Needs a New Job

For those of you who don't know, the Egyptian governmental monthly salary for a museum curator doesn't really enable someone to provide the kind of lifestyle Lisy is accustomed to. (To be fair, it can't cover groceries). So Wahied also moonlights as a tour guide--a really good one. While he obviously has a great deal of knowledge about Egyptian Antiquities, and the level of English that can only be attained by speaking English at home (and which has enabled him to engage in conversations ranging from why the washing machine doesn't like him to whether or not giant white lizards will gnaw your fingers off while you sleep), his true gift for guiding lies in his unshakable charisma. Even after multiple days of not sleeping, being called 'Mr. Number One', 12 hours in the sun, and a day full of incredibly stupid questions ("why would they build that pyramid so close to that hotel?" "The Egyptians had beer? But I thought this was a Muslim country!") he still manages to be witty, charming and engaging. This skill will be tested today.

Wahied is spending the next month working with big bus religious tours from Indonesia. He does one day in Cairo, then two days in Sinai before leaving the group at the Israeli border, riding back to Cairo, showering and rushing off to the airport to pick up the next group.

There are two irritating things about these groups (other than the silly questions and the Mr. Number One business) 1) From the moment they land in Cairo to the moment they cross the border into Israel Wahied must be present at every second. He has to stay at their hotels until they are asleep and must be there when they wake up in the morning, and 2)their flights get in at 2:45am.

2:45am!

Here's how it works (or, at least, it worked last night)
At 1:00am I drove Wahied out to the gas station on the highway towards the airport, where he met the tour bus to go to the airport. At 3:30am he called me to let me know that they were 'on their way' and I left to go pick him up. At 4:15 am I picked him up at the hotel (out by the Pyramids). The two company representatives, one of whom I know quite well, were impressed at what an amazing wife Wahied has. One said: "I can't believe you drove all the way out here to pick up your husband at 4am" And the other said: "You can drive?!? ... Sorry, it's 4am."
At 5am we cooked and ate pancakes and then both fell asleep with our shoes still on, and at 8am we were awake and driving back to the hotel so he could be there before they had noticed he had gone.

By 10am I was back home, regretting the fact that it was now much too light (and I had much too much adrenaline from rush-hour Cairo traffic) to sleep, and spent the next 4 hours semi-comatose alternately thinking about what a great wife I am and worrying about my husband's chances of survival for the rest of the day.

In conclusion (and before I pass out)I think one thing is clear: I am the best wife ever. ;)

Books!

Did I just say that I had read 13 books this summer? Make that 14.

The other day Wahied and I went to the Egyptian equivalent of Wal-Mart. This is not some cheesy analogy for a souq where people are selling live chickens, don't speak English, and haggle, this is a REAL big box store at its finest. It's actually a french chain called Carrefour, and Wahied and I go there frequently (at least once a week) to pick up bits 'n bobs and to get most of our groceries.

Our last trip was primarily to locate strips to put on the doors of our car in an effort to minimize further damage caused by people aggressively opening their doors into ours. We were unsuccessful in finding this particular item but the trip was not a loss. As Wahied was explaining what we needed to a salesman I wandered off to the next aisle, which obviously was books (I mean, duh, guys). They had a fairly impressive selection of books, including Harry Potter 5, 6, and 7 and what I'm sure were romance novels, all in Arabic. Their English selection, which fit easily onto one shelf consisted of no more than a half dozen different books including "Cooking Made Easy" (more of a pamphlet), The Koran, "Men are from Mars and Women are From Venus" and......"Freakonomics".

Freakonomics? By Steve Levitt? The one that made people realise that I wasn't studying to be an accountant? The one written by a professor I would later have? The one everyone and their mother had read and felt the need to discuss at every dinner party I'd been to since?

I bought it and just finished re-reading it this morning.

3 or 4 years and my U of C education in Economics (the Public Policy didn't hurt either) really changed the effect that this book had on me. It was so much, well, less unusual than I remember it being, which is probably because my U of C education taught me that unusual thinking isn't so unusual and is usually the best kind of thinking to be doing.
It reminded of many of the things I learned at the U of C. For example, the page 2 mention of the name "James Alan Fox" conjured up images of a rabid, out-of-his mind lunatic, which, though I'm sure Levitt didn't expressly teach us, has stuck in my mind since his class. Any mention of 'costs' as defined by an economist had me thinking about all of the problem sets and exams I ever took in any of James Leitzel's classes. And the very word 'regression' conjured up loooooong nights on the A-level with Stata during Econometrics.

Wahied asked me about what I was reading this morning, so I told him about Levitt's main points in the book, including Roe v. Wade as a factor in the reduction of crime in the 90's. This didn't seem to shock him, but I could see he was thinking. "But we don't have crime in Egypt, and abortion is illegal here." So I tried to explain that there were lots of other factors at play, and that the abortion argument holds in the US because of things that are fundamentally different between the US and Egypt. (For example, due to the fact that it is illegal for unmarried women to get pregnant, and that families here prize lots and lots of children, fewer born babies are unwanted in the same sense. Also, crime here is low for a variety of reasons including severity and ubiquity of punishment). Wahied again turned this over in his head and finally said: "Is this how they teach you to think at that University you went to? I mean, you can't order from a menu but you can have a serious conversation about Sumo wrestlers and teachers cheating on standardized tests?"

And I thought about it, and all of my friends from the U of C, regardless of what they studied--Nelc, Science, languages, etc...and the answer is pretty much yes.

Bringing this post back around to Egypt and me living here ... other than the fact that I found a book that I totally wasn't expecting to find here (I've just started reading a Dave Sedaris book I found at the AUC bookstore) things here continue to be boringly unusual or very unusual depending on what you think I usually am.

Tonight I'm going to go have dinner with a bunch of girls my age (and Wahied) who all speak varying degrees of English and are very very nice at one girl's apartment in Nasr City while, simultaneously, I'm supposed to be picking up an Orthodox Priest with a broken leg from the train station and feeding him dinner because he's staying with us tonight. I suppose details will follow tomorrow.

Lizard!

One would expect that after a two-month absence from this blog (the cynics among you may call it neglect) that I would have plenty to write about. After all, my hiatus from this blog stems from the busyness that surrounds getting married, having family and friends coming to visit, going on a trip of all of Egypt, a honeymoon on the Red Sea, numerous trips to the village, and everything that follows from those. Let it suffice to say that they were all more fantastic and unusual than even I had imagined they could be. Those of you on Facebook have already seen some wedding photos, and for those of you who haven't.....you can see the wedding photos I have posted on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2073133&l=bf47c&id=2902097
I have lots of other lovely photos of the wedding, the henna party, the trip down the Nile, my family and friends who came to visit and my honeymoon, but I have learned not to promise to do things that I have no intention of doing, so I recommend that none of you hold your breath waiting to see them posted here. I do, however, beg those of you who both read this and were in attendance at any of those events to post (or send) whatever pictures (and glowing reviews) you have.

But.....I'm not going to write any more about any of those things on this blog now. I would rather write about (and I'm sure you would all rather read about) the mundane occurrences of my current everyday life. (If I am overestimating the excitingness of my everyday life and it is, in fact, tedious, tell me and I may actually post pictures of all of the exciting things that I have not promised to post pictures of).

Last night, when I walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water from the refridgerator, sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor was a terrifying pure-white lizard. In my recollection and in the interests of good storytelling he was roughly twice the size of godzilla, breathed fire, and had a german accent, but in reality was closer to about 6 inches long and promptly scuttled behind the refridgerator. I did what any brave and unphasable woman in a pink nightie would do. I calmly exited the kitchen, stood in the hallway, and screamed for my husband to come and kill it.
The killing of the lizard was the stuff slapstick comedies are made of. Wahied decided that a lizard is no match for "crawling insect spray" and managed to produce a can from inside the pantry. The can was empty, save for one single spritz, which Wahied sprayed behind the refridgerator before retreating into the pantry to locate a second can. Though he had clearly not sprayed enough to kill a lizard, he had sprayed enough to enrage one, and my (now furious) creepy white lizard scuttled out from behind the refridgerator and....straight into the pantry after Wahied. As I gave an incomprehensible play-by-play of the Lizard's actions Wahied found himself weaponless and alone in the pantry with the Lizard.
As I could not see what went on, I will give the dialogue instead:
Me: "It's in the pantry! Kill it! Kill it!"
Wahied: "How?"
Me: "With a shoe!"
Wahied: "But I'm only wearing ship-ship" (flip-flops)
Me: "...."
Ship-Ship "Smash! Bang!...Thwack Thwack"
Lizard: "Neiiiiiin!"
Wahied came back, triumphant, claiming that he had knocked the lizard through the grating leading out into the elevator shaft and that the lizard had fallen to his doom.

Despite a severe lizard infestation, consisting of a singular lizard sighting, life here has been excellent. The apartment is mostly furnished and looks gorgeous. Ramadan has turned out to be excellent, rather than terrible, as every morning is like a Saturday morning, and there isn't a single person or vehicle out between 5:30 and 7:oopm, which has made shopping trips, if well planned, incredibly easy. The weather has cooled significantly, and for the past week has been exactly perfect. Wahied and I have been more social too. We were both sorry to see Britta back to the U.S., but managed to spend some time with her before she did. We have also been seeing a lot of Anita and Omar recently, which has been really really great for me in particular, as smart, english-speaking friends with a sense of humour are relatively hard to find when you're effectively unemployed in a non-english-speaking country.

As for my effective unemployment---it has been a godsend. I didn't realise just how much time, effort and energy moving in, getting married, and getting settled in Egypt would really take. There's no way I could have done it without this time off. It has also let me relax a little, enjoy my first months of married life, and get comfortable driving around Cairo. I have also read 13 books this summer (17, if you count the books I re-read during my early summer book shortage) and could happily get through another 8 or 10 before needing alternate forms of entertainment. My only source of unease is the very real sense that my vacation will end, and very, very soon I will have to return to work.

I'm sorry I've been so delinquent over the past couple of months. I have never been particularly adept at keeping in touch but I'm hoping that this blog, for those of you who read it, will at least let you know that I'm alive, happy and I haven't forgotten about those of you whose only form of communication with me is via the internet. I miss you all, and will write more as soon as I can.

And now for something completely different: a non-pictoral post.

Hi All,

One reason that it takes me such a long time to post is because I have to take photos from the photo-taking device to the computer before I upload them. Wahied currently has great photos that I want to post on his mobile, but doesn't have his memory card to transfer them to the computer. As soon we get them over, I will have stories and pictures from my recent Orthodox baptism (which was a hoot) and last night's tea at the Vietnamese Embassy with the Vietnamese Ambassador to Egypt and the Vietnamese Minster of Culture. I won't give away the fun surprise, but I challenge anyone to keep a straight face when they see the photo of that event.

Despite little photographic evidence to prove it, Wahied and I have been keeping extremely busy. Over the past few days few major purchases have been made, though we've spent a great deal of time and energy doing research into all of the subtleties of car ownership, country club membership and home furnishings. The real difficulty comes from the fact that Wahied is Egyptian and I am not, and different options are available (at different prices) for foreigners and for Egyptians. The same question asked by different people yields extremely disparate results.

This morning was the third morning in a row that a truly remarkable thing has happened: I've woken up cold. Snuggled under my blankets, this is a wonderful thing, but it is quite unusual. I am in Cairo. In June. All plans for purchasing an air-conditioner (which we certainly haven't needed) have been abandoned.

Last night, after our meeting with the Ambassador, Wahied took the Vietnamese diplomats out to dinner. They objected strongly to any restaurant where they could sample "traditional" food (like any normal tourist restaurant) and demanded either Vietnamese or Thai. After much sniggering among those of us who speak Arabic we suggested Chinese food. This was my first truly magical cultural experience.
The restaurant, Wang Fu, was painted red with red lanterns hanging all over the front. The stairs up to it, the outdoor entrance, and the inside floors were covered in parquet-themed peeling linoleum. We were ushered inside by an extremely Egyptian-looking Egyptian boy who was wearing a traditional high collared Chinese silk shirt with dragons embroidered on it. The entire wait staff (all glaringly Egyptian) were in identical outfits. They spoke neither Chinese nor English.
The only major upset was their lack of alcoholic beverages. The Vietnamese very worriedly told Wahied that it was a physical impossibility to eat food and not drink beer. Wahied ordered a round of Birell (a not-very-nice wheat-based soda) and convinced them that it was, in fact, Egyptian beer. The food we were served doesn't remotely resemble anything I've ever eaten before. Highlights included something I could only describe as "black pepper and egg soup" (it looked like egg drop soup but tasted only, and overwhelmingly, of black pepper) and "the beef" (which, despite appearing to be beef and vegetables in brown sauce, was actually just a gelatinous combination of salt and MSG). It was an adventure.

I'll end this post with a shameless plug for HSBC. I went to the bank today to pick up my bank card and they had everything for me. They helped me set up my Egyptian online banking and walked me through how to quickly, easily and for-free transfer money between my HSBC accounts in different countries. We discussed my imminent car purchase and the bank will help work everything out for me when the time comes. Fantastic! I am really impressed with the way they've been treating me.

Thats all for now!
Lisy (in Egypt)

Exciting things are happening....in my bathroom

Hi All,

I had intended to update this daily, but as you may have gathered from my apartment pictures, things are still getting settled in the Helmy-Shahat household. Over the last couple of days our home has had some extremely notable (and positive additions).

After 14 days of constant searching, that twice would have led to fights between a very exasperated Lisy and some very sassy salespeople had Wahied not intervened, we found white bathmats. The euphoria I experienced upon finding them led me to become greedy and I purchased every single white bathmat that exists in this city of 25 million people. We now own five. (For those of you who are underwhelmed, please refer to my previous pictures and the picture below for the before and after shots of my hideous pink bathroom.)

Next, as you might have noticed in my 'after' shot in the pink bathroom picture, we have a washing machine. The box it came in confirmed what we had been told: that this washing machine is "Number 1 in Egypt". We actually purchased it last Tuesday, but it took them a week to deliver it, then we had to wait 2 days for someone to come to install it, and then, when it still didn't work because the power source it had been hooked up to wasn't good enough, waited another day for a new cable. But it works now--it works fantastically! And it is currently just finishing its second load of laundry.
The washer does a fantastic job of washing but it is not a dryer. It produces very clean, slightly damp clothes that I then take out to the second balcony (the one with the ugly view) to hang on little tiny strings with cheap clothespins, 7 stories above the courtyard below, desperately hoping that I don't drop my trousers on an unsuspecting sheik's head and that strong a strong breeze will not leave me underpants-less. So far, so good.

My last great improvement is my new Nokia E51. For those of you who know me well, this is perhaps the most drastic change for me. I am notorious for basic, inexpensive, technology. Sure it's nice that my phone has a great camera and excellent sound/video playing ability and speakers, but I really got the phone because I need a phone that enables me to communicate, and this one does that really well. It has notoriously amazing internet capabilities. The browser is fast. It has bluetooth, wi-fi, and super-fast normal internet. It has e-mail, adobe reader, a 2mb memory card, and internet phone. But best of all---it's really, really easy to use, not-flashy looking (though it is very very slim), and has a 5 day battery life. I feel like a really well-connected career woman. Now, all I have to do is set up mobile internet service with Vodafone Egypt.

Those are the only photograph-worthy improvements of the moment. Other, less photogenic improvements, such as "order" "relative cleanliness" and "groceries" are making their way into our lives, but those need little explanation.

I will update more soon, hopefully with stories and pictures of the world outside of our apartment. In the meantime, all of you be well, and to those of you finishing school and/or starting your summers---enjoy! and keep me posted about what you all are up to.

Photos of My Apartment

Hi All,

After promising many of you that I would send pictures of my new apartment (and keep you all updated on my life in Egypt) I have finally gotten internet installed (about an hour ago) and have created this blog for you to all keep track of me.

Here are some photos of my (still largely unfurnished) apartment.


These are photos of my living room taken from either end. (left) facing my windows, which have a spectacular view. (right) view from the windows in. The white door on the left is the door to the apartment, the hallway to the front leads to the guest bathroom, and the hallway to the right leads to the rest of the apartment.




(left) guest bathroom, off of the reception room
(right) view of the main hall. The room at the end of the hall is the master bedroom, the room to the right is the 'third bedroom', 1st room on the left is the kitchen, 2nd is the bathroom and 3rd is the second bedroom

These are pictures of the 'third bedroom'. It may become the dining room or an office. It is unlike the other bedrooms in that it has alabaster floors and a, um, magnificent chandelier.



This is my kitchen. It has a huge pantry/balcony thing through the door to the back right and granite counter tops. Please note the colour of the refrigerator which also matches the stove.


















The one truly unforgivable choice the owner of the apartment made was this bathroom. The colour offends me immensely. We added the white toilet seat, white towels and a white shower curtain to tone down the pink but it is still a notably pink bathroom.







This is the not-so nice view from the balcony off of the second bedroom. It has laundry strings off of it, though and does get nice breezes.
The next two photos are views of the second bedroom. (the photos without the bed in them)









Two views of the master bedroom. This bedroom is HUGE, though the pictures don't convey it. It is extremely cool and can be downright windy when the window and door are open.
The rest of the pictures are the views from the balcony and the windows. The brown-ish looking trees up close are mango trees, which have mangoes that are about to be ripe!

















There is a close up of the mango tree closest to us. If you look at the top, just left of center you can see a green mango on it.

















































That's about it, really. I will take pictures outside of the apartment soon and send photos of the neighborhood, the neighbors, and things in Cairo. In the meantime, enjoy and let me know what you think!
Lots of love,
Lisy (in Egypt!)