Being a tourist - the Pyramids

Ok fellows ... long time, no .. posting!! I guess i've been busy with school, plus other uninteresting things called cultural shocks ...

So, i was on MSG/MSN/Skype with many of you and the first question was "Did u see the pyramids?" Well, let me tell you that i didnt get to see them until after 2 weeks.

Now that we had everything sorted (kind of) with our flat, me and Nichole decided to go and see the pyramids. The way to do it is not that easy - i usually think i'll get on a bus, get there, visit, take pics and 'halas' (finished). The way to do it is hire a car with driver included - pay him 100 LE ($20) to take us from Maadi to Giza. Ok, fair enough - a nice car with AC, nice driver ... we leave early in the morning (that's the way to do it) before all the tourists get there; aaaaaa, i forgot to mention - we don't feel like tourist anymore!! Once we got there, we get the "Welcome to Egypt" phrase from one man who wanted to give us a carriage ride aroun the pyramids; he was asking for 100 LE/person but we managed to get it for 50 LE/person.

The carriage driver was a nice guy and we had a lot of fun with him!! He knew exactly where to stop for us to take pics .... we gave him a good tip at the end.

We did not go inside the pyramids because we didnt want to, plus we had the driver waiting for us and we didnt want to make it too long - otherwise he might've asked for more.

One embarassing thing we did was leaving without paying the carriage guy - we completely forgot about it!!!!!!!!! We were on the motorway and Nichole turned to me and said: "guess what? we didnt pay the guy!!!!!!" I am like:"what????? what do we do now?" The net second the driver's phone rings - it was the carriage man asking to talk to us. So, i get him on the phone, apologized a million times, told him we are leaving the money with our driver and said ma'salema. He was a bit annoying on the phone, kept asking how much we tipped the carriage driver - which i didnt tell him anyway.

I got to 'drive' the horse and carriage, which was kind of fun - i forgot the horse's name ...

It was a short visit to the pyramids - we stayed there only 2 hours - but we will definitely go there again, with all the friends wanting to come and visit us.

The best part was at the Sphinx!! We had fun there, taking pictures, making videos .... That was hilarious!!!

Another funny thing is that you have to pay an entrance fee to the site (that is not hte funny part) - it usually costs 50 LE (10 $); if you are a student you pay 25 LE. So, both me and Nichole took out our student cards, gave it to the man, he went and got us tickets for 25 LE. Well, later on, you have to go through some things, just like at the airport, where they check your ticket again. So they asked for our Student ID. I took mine out - it was an international student card, but expired; Nichole's was valid, but not international, so we kind of bribed the people to let us in (we gave them 25 LE). Never do that!!!!

Now, for the end, enjoy watching "Live from the pyramids" by Nichole Book! (or me fooling around when i am not at school)

For Cristina

Cristinq...special pt tine ...

Scuze pt accent ..am fost SURPRINSA cand am vazut filmuletul... nu mi-a venit sa cred ca am asa un accent.. insa vorbesc engleza non-stop aici.. Nu m-am americanizat deloc, insa s-a intamplat atunci pe loc... k am mai vb la telefon cu oameni de pe acasa si nu mi-au zis nimic de accent.... Crede-ma k e numai in filmuletul asta.

Sper sa iti placa!!

te pup!

ps: promit k o sa iti trimit mai multe poze plus u[pdates de aici.... nu am avut timp, k sunt mereu la scoala de la 7 la 4-5.

Wha do you do when...?

What to do when ...

• you had a bad, long day at work wt endless meetings
• you are trying to teach smth and the kids don't get it
• you think you will enjoy a nice walk home, but every single man that passes you stares at you
• you think you will go home and relax but you won't because...
• you come home and the garbage is still in front of the door just like 3 days ago when you took it out, waiting to be collected
• you have people coming to you just to complain about smth, without coming up with a solution
• you realise that the new stove you just got is not working properly and you can't have baked potatoes tonight, just as you planned
• your cat is still wild and dirty (especially after you cleaned him the day before)
• the supermarket is closed at 5 pm, just because it is Ramadan and people need to go and eat, travelling for 1.5 hours home and then coming back (i wonder why they don't pack some food and stick it in the fridge)
• you have huge ants everywhere in your kitchen
• you are craving for some goodies/chocholate/sweeties/biscuits but you have nothing in the cupboard
• you can't help the tears coming out
• ... you don't know what to do...
• ........
• .................

Well, i guess i can't answer any of the questions above; as a friend would say, you just have to ignore everything and get on with ur life or whatever you're doing. This was my life in Egypt today .... I might agree with John and say i will end up hating the country and the people, thought i don't want to...

At this point, i am struggling to love them ... but it is a bit impossible... I need a break away from this place, away from Cairo, Maadi, expats ....

What i could do is to put on some nice music hoping that will calm me down and praying for peace to rule in my heart.

Meet MeshMesh

Dear folks,

Me and Nichole decided to get a cat; we were thinking of getting one but we were unsure of the time and what cat to get (there's plenty of homeless cats here at every corner).

So, last week one of our friends asked us if we were willing to adopt MeshMesh. I have met him on my second day in Egypt, i knew the way he looks and how big he is ... Nichole did not hesitate to say yes, and i was ok with him too, as we've kind of known each other before.

He arrived at our place on Thursday evening or Friday, i cant remember now; we were warned he is a bit wild, but he's been for the first few days. Now he is getting wilder - he runs around the flat, likes to play a lot, eats our food; earlier i caught him with his nose in Nichole's bag of dried apricots (he loves those plus raisins - he attempted to our raisins bag too last week). Btw, "meshmesh" in Arabic means apricot. :))

He is a cute cat and very special in his own way; i guess we needed a man in our house, so MeshMesh came at the right time. :)

Ps: he is playing with an ant now.

Ramadan ... getting used to it

I guess it's been more than a week since Ramadan has started, and just before it, the time has changed - meaning that 7 o'clock became 6 o'clock. The whole reasoning behind this is that Ramadan is a time of fasting, from early morning untill the evening when the sun sets; so they turned the clocks just to make the fasting period shorter.

To give a brief overview on Ramadan i will say that it is a time of fasting for God and a time of prayer; there are about 5 calls to prayer every single day and al the mosques have speakers, so everywhere you are you can hear them - especially the 5 am ones (they always wake me up!).

So, Egyptians fast all day and supposedly pray more - which they do - i've seen them praying and in a way i admire their dedication to this. Once the sun sets, they all go and eat - they call that "iftar". The funny thing is that at that time there are no cars on the street, no shops open .. absolutely quiet; imagine a big and crowded city like Cairo being in silence. Me and Nichole went out for a short walk towards the Grand Mall last week and it was so peaceful!!

Well, once they start to eat they don't stop until next morning - they have a lot of food - it's more like a celebration! People go out and most of the shops reopen after "iftar" and remain open for pretty much a big part of the evening. I think Ramadan is a little bit like our Christian Christmas. They have nice decorations, especially some sort of fabric in bright colours and their Ramadan lamps, which they sell everywhere!

Ramadan is also a time of helping others and doing good deeds - foreginers are usually expected to give bigger tips or to give more to the poor, or to pay the boab more money - but honestly i avent been doing any of that - first of all because we dont have a building, secondly i don't feel in my heart that i should give, because most of the people on the streets are part of a 'begging network' and if i give them money, it will all go to somebody else.

Well, Egyptians are pretty good during Ramadan and they do care for the poor - they set up some kind of tents in different parts of the city for poor people where they can come and eat (food being provided).

From everything i heard before with respect to Ramadan i had a very nasty feeling, thinking: "oh my God, this is going to be terrible!!" Well, it is not that bad! The only thing is that they close shops earlier (around 5 o'clock) until 8 or 8:30, so you rpetty much need to be very organised and make sure you do your shopping before that time, or go to places earlier. Me and Nichole had to get some groceries and by the time we were out of the supermarket, everybody went home for "iftar" so, we had a hard time finding a taxi.

The weirdest thing that happened to us so far during Ramadan was that one afternoon, after school, we decided to go and eat out; so we went to this nice place on Road 9. We ended up sitting outside, as it was quite nice - not too hot and just enjoyable. Well, it turned out to be a bad choice as we had an old Egyptian woman passing our table a few times and probably cursing us in Arabic, as we are not suppose to eat, but fast. The waiter had to chase her away every tiem she came and starting "talking" to us; at one point i turned and i told her: "yes, i know it is Ramadan and we are not suppose to eat, but ... we almost finished now!". I am sure she did not understand a word of that, but in the end, it was our mistake - not being sensible to the culture. Next time we'll know to sit inside!

SHOCK SHOCK SHOCK!!!!!!!!!!

One of the biggest shocks so far were not of cultural nature ...

(i just felt like i need to write a special post on this). After spending so much time cleaning the kitchen, especially the stove and the fridge, something happened. The fridge looked much better, the stove as well - i was quite proud of how well me and Nichole did to clean that. Well, we were ready to put the stove into function when somebody came to visit us, and while i was asking for some help with the stove, they lifted the top part of it ......... Not even in your worst nightmares you could imagine what layed in there.

If you can't figure out what it is in there i will give you a close-up:

If you still have troubles to see what is in there i will tell you - fish and crab skeletons + rat excrements and some other things like plastic bags, but those get in to the 'can be ignored' category, when u have other major stuff.

So... Action Plan - call the landlad + get her to do smth about the situation. She came in... appeared to be petrified when she saw that. We said we cannot cook with that stove, so she promised she will bring in another one. I got a bit frustrated, because we have spent a whole day cleaning that thing and i tried to make sure she is bringing a new one in (NB: 'new' in Egypt means, new to that place, not new as in brand new, just out of the factory). So, even though i might've sounded a bit rude, i asked her to make sure the new stove is going to be clean, because we spend so much time cleaning that one and i had no intention on cleaning another stove again! Well, half an hour later, she brought us this new stove, much bigger, with a nice oven (Nichole can now make cookies) and CLEAN!!!!!!!!!!!! I was happy.

Well, we are still waiting for somebody to come and hook it up for us, so we've been eating out, ordering food ... which i am kind of fed up with; the guy was suppose to come today at 3:30; i had Nichole hurry to get home, because i had an assessment at school at that time, but nobody showed up. It is Egypt!!!!

Flat!!

Ok folks... too much fun lately! So, both me and Nichole headed to our flat, 6 days after signing the contract decided to move in asap. The landlady called me one afternoon saying all furniture is in and that we can sleep there that night; we were impressed on how fast things were sorted.

So we went to the flat that afternoon, to have a look ... We had a bit of a shock... seeing the furniture in our living room, which is very Egyptian-style.

We had a look around … I was not very impressed… maybe more in awe, coz my expectations were very different and I guess, when you have expectations, the disappointment is bigger. I cant say I was waiting for fancy things, but just a comfy sofa that I can curl up on and watch tv with a cup of tea/cold drink. The sofa is just impossible to sit on … u cant really be comfortable when sitting on it.
But hey, we decided to accept it and go from there. There was a washing machine in the kitchen, that we were happy about; not a new one, but at least there is one; we decided to try and see if it works and we’ve put something in. In the meantime, we decided to spray the stove, which was kind of "degolasse" (fr. disgusting). We kept laughing as we were spraying it, saying it is winter and we've got snow bla bla ...

We spent all day in the kitchen trying to clean it … the fridge was actually the same old one, that they did not replace.. they just painted it on the inside, with white paint over the dirt and put stickers on the front door. We decided to go on with our work …Later we discovered that the bottom part of the fridge has a a little part that comes off, so we took it off. Big mistake!!!!!!!! That was so dirty that i would not even allow my worst enemy to clean. But did we have a choice?? Not really!! So, take the gloves Gaby and start cleaning!!

We washed the walls with Detol (local brand for disinfectant), cleaned the sink (it looked “degolasse” under – covered in a 1 cm layer of …. you name it. Nichole did a great job cleaning that sink!!

The funniest/most dangerous thing happened when we were washing the walls - water went into the socket; what followed?? well, first of all.. funny noises, then a smell of smth burning, then noises again and then something like an explosion. I got so scared and had no idea what to do.

Later after the "explosion" the washing machine started leaking and it kind of jumped off, as if it wanted to do one of Michael Jackson's dances. That was scary too ...

I almost started crying, thinking that nothing works properly in this house and how on earth will we be able to live here?

The stove looked absolutely disgusting, the fridge more or less the same, the washing machine was dancing and leaking .. and all of that only in the kitchen!!! Not to mention our ceiling fan!! By the way.. how to you open the door to your cupboard?? Usually you just take the door handle the move it towards you to the right /left side and there you go!!! Well, it doesnt work like that for ours!! First you need to remember to turn the ceiling fan off, otherwise there will be an accident between the fan and the cupboard door, which will give you the impression that something is going to fall on your head! Secondly you need to move the fan so that you can open the door!! It is not that easy!! you need instructions for this one! Nichole knows!!!!!!!!! I guess i knew too, after her little accident, but i instantly forgot and it happened to me today too... and i couldnt stop cursing ... in a nice way.

It turned out to look better at the end of the day … when we were just so tired…. And not really ready to start over again next day… but we did…. We started again in the kitchen and managed to finish the rest of the flat with some help from friends...

Now it does look much better, since we had Mohammed to do some more cleaning the other day .... I guess is hsould take the 'after' pictures as well... It will come soon!! But not before another interesting post!!