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!
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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)
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)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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!
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!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
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. ;)
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. ;)
Monday, September 8, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
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.
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.
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