New cat friend outside my bedroom window

My flat in Golf street - don't be fooled - I have seen no golf courses here.

Meat market in Maadi

One week later...

Been having a hard time figuring out how to set the tone...

The 'high' of the first few days of being in the land of the Nile and Great Pyramids was followed by slap in the face reality and work and its been a roller coaster since.

The work is interesting, important, impossible - the people are good. The city is harsh, chaotic, polluted, but the evenings are cool and I kinda like the soothing call to prayer heard over the loudspeaker 5 times a day - depending of course on how close I am to the loudspeaker. 

Being an animal here is something I wouldn’t wish for anyone…dog, cat, horse, sheep, goat, camel. One Rosie probably equals 3-4 Egyptian cats. Coming back as a developing country donkey might be the worst fate of all.

Carbs are my new best friend as they are the most assessable and user-friendly food. 60% of the Egyptian diet is bread. Kushari is a triple threat of rice, pasta, lentils, dry-fried onions and tomato sauce – tasty and cheap but will put you to sleep after lunch.  I did find all the ingredients to make avgolemono (chicken, rice and lemon soup) this evening - comfort food to sooth my soul, which has been challenged every which way in the course of one short week, which I suppose, is a good thing.

If I have learned one word in Arabic it is “inshallah” which Egyptians use and use and use. It means “god willing” and they use it after any sentence that declares anything - such as "your plumbing will be fixed tomorrow - inshallah". I read it as a realization of the lack of certainty of anything in this place. The other thing I have heard most over the course of this week is that we are here in a historic time in Cairo, in Egypt…all measured in “before the revolution” vs. “after the revolution”.  I’ll have to figure out how to measure my own time here.  

Arrived!

The days and nights begin. Spent the first one with a Cairo-bottled Stella and a view of the Nile. Not bad.