Scuba and more

Wow! Another week has flown by! It is amazing how quickly life became "normal" here.

The scuba diving last week was amazing! I went down 30 meters/100 feet! The coral was beautiful and the fish amazing! I took a few classes to improve my scuba skills...the deep dive (you do math skills and motor skills to show the effect of narcosis at 30 meters)...and the drift dive (you allow a drift current to carry you along a long distance so you can cover more ground and see more beauty)! They were both breath-taking! Sharks had been spotted in the area both days we were diving (at the Blue Hole Dahab- an internationally known diving location) but unfortunately they decided to stay away from us, so my excitement was limited to octopus, coral, blow fish, lionfish, etc. :-) too bad. I have a hard time conserving my air underwater... I blame it on how fast the guys all swim and I have to kick 4 times to their 1 to keep up...haha...so on my last dive I ran low on air and had to use my buddies alternative (don't worry at this point we were only 5 meters under water) and this is the reason for all the review and practice, so no danger just me giving myself a hard time about not being as good as the guys :-). They have promised to help me improve my proficiency so I can dive longer and not use as much air! Yipeee! Since I am still improving my diving skills I do not get to use a camera underwater yet, but I promise pictures as soon as I take the underwater photography course!

I returned back to Cairo a day early and spent a day sleeping to catch up from all the diving/traveling exhaustion...and then it was back to the normal work week. But a normal work week here is not boring :-)! Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview a fairly famous man here in Cairo and international known in France and U.K. (He is even on wikipedia- the ultimate fame test. jk) My coworker and I will meet with him again next week to continue our interview and oral history recording. (Basically it is just asking him questions to get him talking about his life and then I get to sit back and listen to the stories for as long as he feels like talking :-) such fun!) I always enjoyed biographies and hearing people's life stories of how they got to where they are in life and who influenced them.

Last night my roommate and I went to the market to go grocery shopping. Her vocab this week is fruits/veggies/meat so we took extra time in the store pointing at everything and saying its name in Arabic. This is my strongest area of vocab so it was fun because I could keep up for once.

Well time to go catch the bus! See ya later!

my job :-)

As a person who loves to learn, I was always impressed when I heard someone was a Research Fellow. It was almost as if they had acheived a status in life when they didn't have to "work" for a living, but could spend their day "googling" to their hearts content about subjects the rest of us only dreamed of getting the chance to learn about. While it wasn't on my top 5 jobs to have (honestly I never thought I would be qualified for such a job since my writing skills are not the best), I was very excited when the opportunity came up to work with the Economic and Business History Research Centre at the American University in Cairo.

My job is very much like writing a term/research paper. Only the deadlines are more flexible, and the topic can evolve more so than for an assignment that you have to stick to the outline you turn in the first week of the class and four months later realize the subject is a dead end. Currently I am researching the first microfinance NGO that was completely funded by Egyptian finances and volunteers: Fathet Kheir. As well as looking into social entrepreneurship here in Egypt, microfinance as a whole, and other NGOS. The first few weeks were slow as I learned more about my topic, but now I getting into normal routine and realizing research has its slow and busy times just like any other job. Overall...so far...I am enjoying my job!

Tomorrow is another holiday :-)! Yipee! A three day weekend! Some friends and I are going to take advantage of the beautiful weather and the long weekend and head to the Red Sea tonight. I will be taking my second scuba diving course to get my advanced open water certification with PADI! This means by the end of the weekend I will be able to dive up to 100 ft/30 m! Will take pictures to post soon!

Day to day

I have offically been here two weeks! Hard to believe!

One of the things that I love the most about Egypt is the people: their generosity, warm welcoming spirit, enjoyment of each others company, the absence of the American rush to get things done. (Life moves at such a different pace here, not that it can be described as slower or faster as in the difference between St. Louis and Kansas, but perhaps smoother, with more liquidity. There is no switch that is required from work to personal to religion to family, it all blends so closely that you don't notice the change.) Since my arrival a number of Egyptians that I just met have offered to help me with anything I need. Inviting me to their homes for weekend getaways, or over for a meal. I love it!

It took me about 10 days to get on the right sleep/eat schedule. I would be wide awake in the mornings, but by 2 pm I couldn't keep my eyes open without propping them open with toothpicks, and again by 8 pm I would be dying for sleep, but come 10 pm I would be wide awake until 3 am. But now I am back to normal, needing a coffee just to keep my eyes open all day! :-) The effects of having stayed up too late watching tv, talking with my roommate, or going out. As I write this my body is screaming Caffeine! Please! or SLEEP! which definitely sounds the better of the two :-)

My normal routine here during the work week (Sun-thur) is wake up at 5:30 am to get ready, then be at the bus stop at 7:15. It is about a 45 minute bus ride to campus. The new campus is located out on the edge of town (the old one was right in the middle). Once on campus I sometimes stop for that coffee then head to the office. My work day is from 8:15-8:30 am until 3:30 pm. (I will write more about my job in another post.) At 3:30 I climb back onto the bus for the trip home, depending on traffic I get back to the bus stop between 4:30-5. My flat is only about a 5-8 minute walk. Once home I usually crash for an hour to quiet the scream of my body for sleep or caffine :-). My roommate gets home usually around 7 and we fix supper and watch some tv. (Some of the tv shows are old reruns of House, CSI, ER, etc. but American Idol is usually that week's episode.) Overall I would say my usual routine is fairly close to what it was at home. :-) At least until the weekends come :-).

Hope you have a great day!

P.S. The chocolate chip cookies turned out half-way decent! Yipee! Just a few tweaks and they will be almost as good as my brother's!

No Room for Pride...

So I think the first rule of living in another country is having no pride-keeping a learning spirit-being able to laugh at yourself all rolled into one...

This week has been filled with humorous lessons that can either cause me frustration or I can learn to laugh at myself....

Simple things that I have done for most of my life (laundry, cooking, shopping) can easily make me look like a fool. :-) 

Okay so I will start the explanation with laundry.  My flat has a washing machine in it (Yipeee!), however it is a front loader with only one dial on the front and a drawer for the detergent. (Oh by the way, there are very faded picture instructions on how to operate this antique, but unfortunately they are so faded they do not assist me) Opening the door is easy enough to figure out, but then the challenges start....In the drawer for the detergent is three slots, which one does the detergent go in I wonder?...I choose the first one, seems reasonable enough...I put my clothes in and search the machine for a temperature gauge, finding none I assume that the machine must be cold water only. The only dial has numbers 1-17 with occasional breaks in the numbering where it says stop.  I assume these are for different cycles, but again I am not sure which is which, so I guess again...1 seems to be a good idea again since it is the beginning.  Two hours later the washing machine finally stops running.  I reach in to pull my clothes out and they are really hot to the touch, (this is a bad thing since they are darks) and I notice a few of my things are now all the same shade of purple! Okay seriously I have done laundry for at least 15 years, and none of my clothes are new enough to bleed, but evidently when you wash clothes in 95 degree water something is bound to bleed. I hang my clothes out to dry (btw if you know how to get jeans soft even when hanging them on the line please let me know :-) and go back to study the faded instructions...somehow I make out that the different numbers are indeed different cycles based on water temperature and slot one for the detergent is for prewash, slot two for regular, etc. Oh well you learn something new everyday :-)

In our kitchen we have a gas stove/oven. Like the washing machine it is ancient, but it works! The dials on the front have no numbers (acutally there are no dials on the front just metal knobs LOL!) so it is complete guess work when it comes to cooking.  Big flame=boiling, mid flame (if you are talented enough to get one)=not burning or underdone, small flame=this could take hours to finish cooking :-).  Same with the oven, but at least it is a kitchen! And I finally complete d my search of the city for all the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies so tomorrow or Monday we will celebrate with our first attempt at cookies in our temperamental oven! (Btw I must acknowledge my deep gratitude to my roommate who helped me search 4 stores for baking soda...who would have known to look for biocarbonate next to the garlic?) 

Please do not think this is how all flats here in Egypt are :-). Just like the US you have places that are more up to date than others. I chose this flat because it fit my salary and although the furniture/appliances haven't been updated since 1970 :-) it is still home for now. 

I love hearing from you! Hope you found some humor in my stories. 

Another Glimpse

LOL! Okay so it just took me like 5 minutes to figure out how to make this keyboard stop typing in Hindi (an Indian language, not Egyptian), and another 5 minutes to figure out which Arabic word to click on to create a post...yep a lot of things here are trial and error, just one of the reasons you are excited when you complete one thing a day on your to do list. :-)

Yesterday was a national holiday here! Yipee! A day off of work! Not that work is much yet, I am still learning about the project I will be working on, but still a day off is a day off! Sa7? (Right?) The weekends here are Friday and Saturday, so just 3 days left in the work week!

Back home I would be given a hard time occasionally for my tendency to run late for almost everything, here it comes in handy :-) ! An example: on Sat. I met with a guy who works with CEF (my former employer) here in Egypt. He has a car, so he was nice enough to meet me in my area of town (Cairo has a recorded population of 18 million people, so the city is quite large). We agreed to meet at 11 am at a coffee shop not to far from my flat. It is about a 20 minute walk to this coffee shop and keeping with my habit of being a few minutes late, I left the flat at about 5 minutes til 11. Just as I was leaving the flat I received a call from him saying that he was on his way but it would be another 20 minutes or so before he would be at the coffee shop. LOL! Of course you can't say this is for all Egyptians, but it definitely helps if you are flexible with time here.

I am still learning the area around my flat, but it is a good area to be in. There is a small grocier, a coffee shop, bank, electronics store, music store, veggie stand, fruit stand, juice store, etc all within a mile or so. And as I mentioned before, there is an unusual amount of foreigners in my area, which has some interesting results. :-) Aside from the clothing differences, I have also noticed that there are quite a few dogs in our area. It is strange to hear dogs barking here all of the time, because normally people do not have dogs as pets (cats are the preferred pet here). But alas the foreigner in me is strong :-) and I too would love to have a dog.

The weather here has been a beautiful 65-80 degrees! With cool evenings! I haven't made it to the Red Sea yet...:-) but hopefully soon!

Arrival and first week :-)

It is hard to believe a week has almost passed already. Wow! Time has gone so quickly! This week has already been full of stories, experiences, laughs and lessons. So many that I am afraid I have already forgotten. I will try to be more diligent in getting it written down so you may enjoy it with me. Thank you for all your prayers, emails, and postings that so many of you have already sent. This is just the beginng of the journey :-), come along for the adventure! 

All my flights went well, and I arrived in the middle of the night last Sunday, along with all three of my bags! Woohoo! With three flight connections, it has become routine to loose a bag or two along the way. Since Sunday I have settled into my new flat. It is in a very different part of town than what I am used to, many more foreigners are in the area.  Today I even saw foreigners wearing shorts out on the street.  Although it was probably 80 degrees today, you just don't see very many people wear shorts here in Egypt, except of course at the Sea :-). 

That is just a quick note of the beginning of my time here. I will post more in the following days! I hope to post some new pictures as well!