Our new home... in three months

So on our first weekend here, which is Friday and Saturday as we follow the local workweek of Sunday through Thursday, we decided to explore the neighborhood of Zamalek, where our permanent housing will be starting in July. Ron had been hoping to get housing here as it’s closer to work, and in a more “downtown” area. Most people with kids try to live in Maadi, as it’s close to the international schools and closer to the commissary (though you still have to drive there). But Zamalek is full of single-folk and couples with no kids, and they don’t discriminate against those with felines. (Unfortunately, there are also tons of stray felines milling about as well, though I will admit that they seem quite content. However, in comparing them to Chuckles and Ricky, they are about a third to a quarter of their size! I now see what my friend's step-daughter, Matilde, was talking about when she referred to the "Fat American Cats." This is a picture of an orange-boy in the courtyard of our new home.)

Zamalek is actually an island, located in downtown Cairo, in the middle of the Nile. One website described it as, “… a thriving center for middle and upper class Egyptians, along with foreign dignitaries (there are more embassies in Zamalek than any other district of Cairo) and many tourists. It remains one of the most pleasant areas of Cairo. Indeed, it is Cairo's most fashionable residential district where one will find the BMW's and Mercedes of rich Egyptians, supermarkets that sell sushi or French pastries and always an upbeat take on Egyptian life.” Okay, so with our arrival, it may be less of a “most fashionable residential district,” but we’ll do our best not to affect it too much.

This outing was really an opportunity for me to see our potential new home for the next several years. I say potential, because had I really not felt comfortable there or just not “liked” it, we probably could have opted for other housing. However, I really liked it. It’s very tree-ey, lots of character in the architecture (see picture of tree-ey street with nice buildings), walkable, and very livable (and I didn’t find it too fashionably-threatening). It’s definitely a city, but I’ll finally get to live out my teenage dream of living in NYC… just 5,621 miles to the east (good ole, Wikipedia).

Currency conversion - math, yuck

The current rate of currency conversion for Egyptian pounds (LE) to USD is about 1LE = $0.17. So I created a cheat-sheet at home for figuring out the cost conversion, however, despite feeling like I have a grip on things, when I am faced with a shelf of items and have to decide what to buy and what the price is, I go completely blank. I know that when the hawkers yell out that something is “Only one pound,” then it’s only 17 cents, and the metro here is only 1LE one-way, so that’s great, but when in the stores I tend to just stare at the cans of peaches as I try to multiply in the air. (I've finally created a small cheat sheet to keep in my purse that I can casually pull out when I'm shopping, so I don't balk at spending 10LE on a loaf of bread, which is really just about $1.70.) The learning continues...

It may be temporary, but it's home to us

Our temporary housing is definitely not what I was imaging (and I'm very grateful for that, since we'll be in it through mid-July). It consists of a four-bedroom, three full-bath apartment, with five balconies, a full kitchen, a 12-place dining table, three couches, multiple chairs, five beds (four twin), and if I count them, at least nine closets. From our two-bedroom, one-bath condo in Maryland, which was so stuffed to the brim with, well, stuff, that we had to play the “square game” in order to move around (you know, the child’s tile game where in order to move a tile you had to move another one to free up a space), this current dwelling actually allows us to run up and down the hallway. Not that we’re doing that, of course, well, Ron does chase Chuckles up and down, but we’ve found it’s best if we exercise him daily in order to tire him out, Chuckles, that is.

Upon our arrival, we were provided with a “hospitality kit” that we could use until our stuff arrived. It held a wide assortment of household items, some very useful such as towels and sheets, pots and pans, kettle, coffee maker, paper towels, glasses and silverware, two bars of soap, an alarm clock, mop, broom and vacuum, etc. It also came with some mildly odd items, such as a cheese grater, serving platter, egg beater (though I think that may be the whisk I found). We were also given a set of dishes, plates and bowls, though the bowls we have to admit were rather small. To see Ron trying to eat a bowl of cereal out of these bowls was like handing a gerbil a thimble full of seeds. So we did opt to buy two new human-sized cereal bowls, but otherwise haven’t had to supplement it (though we did manage to forget to bring a travel mug for Ron’s coffee, so we’ll probably have to get one before our shipment of the 15 we already own arrives).

One of my tasks while Ron was at work one day was to review our hospitality kit list, and check off what we received and didn’t, just to make sure the eyelash-curler set had been unpacked (kidding about the curler, but not about the process). It was a list of over 60 items, and I checked and counted them all. It enabled me also to truly explore all the bedrooms, closets, dressers and unknown doors, in our apartment. There were only a few items I couldn’t find or identify, I mean, when you say “serving tray,” that means some type of wooden tray, right? Couldn’t find it. But I did find a laundry room, a full-sized dishwasher and microwave (neither of which I’ve been able to figure out yet – I did find a manual on the microwave, but it’s all in German and we already know my Deutsch limitations, so as a result, I’ve decided to not use the dishwasher, and just keep pressing the 30-second button on the microwave). I also found a slightly creepy storeroom that had another full-size fridge in it. When we got our delivery of water bottles I promptly and ever-so-efficiently put them all away in the new fridge. But apparently it wasn’t a fridge. It was a freezer. So by the next day we had over 50 bottles of ice blocks. Lesson #1.

All in all, our temporary housing is great. It’s safe (in a walled-compound with 24-hour guards), comfortable, more room than we know what to do with, Ron’s friends set up a TV and DVD player for us, we have Internet access and there's a sunroom set up perfectly for the cats. What else is there, right?

ID Cards – Lots of pictures (and I'm now 9'7”)

Our first full day here, after our arduous journey, we actually had to go into work and get signed-in, signed-up and all signed over. We have two friends here in Maadi, where our temporary housing is, who offered to drive us in. It was my first daylight foray into Cairo traffic and I'm pleased to say that I only screamed twice. After that, I just held my head in my hands and stared at the floor. Since then, I've gotten much better and rarely have to stare at the floor – sky works well, too.

We were told to bring sheets of our passport pictures to hand out – it was like senior pictures, minus the pearls, plus I didn't sign the backs for anyone (LYLAS and BFF). We now had commissary cards (for some reason I must have not been clear in my delirium-related handwriting and they typed up my card to say my height is 9'7” -- with my weight that makes me quite the waif), and we sat through lots and lots of presentations. Presentations on everything from how to set up DSL in your home here, to what do to when the sandstorms come (apparently we're in sandstorm season now; and if you’re curious, when a sandstorm comes the sky will turn white, and it’s best to be indoors, and if you left the windows down in your car or at home, make sure you have a sturdy broom and shovel), to how to ship packages using the APO, to how to NEVER ride in a Cairo city bus (no worries there, after seeing how crowded they are), to how to try to avoid killing someone on the road and what to do if you DO injure someone with your car (I'm telling you, Caireens have a death wish and I've heard endless stories of them running literally into cars). By presentation number three Ron and I were doing the blinky-stare when you're doing everything you can to not nod off in front of someone. By 3pm we bummed a ride back to Maadi with someone and despite everyone's advice to “Try to stay up until 9pm,” we both collapsed for a few hours.

Later that night we went out to dinner on “Road 9” in Maadi, which is where all the restaurants and shops are, and luckily is right behind our apartment. Our friends took us to a Chinese/Thai place that was really good. I was delighted to have curry with mixed vegetables and tofu (accompanied by the ever-popular "Coca-Cola Light").

Afterwards we walked around a bit, saw the local shops of fruit & veg, silver jewelry, brassware, amazing woodwork, miscellaneous chach-ka, Baskin Robbins and multiple wifi coffee shops. The streets, or sidewalks rather, were very cobbly, with upturned stones, missing stones creating potentially hazardous divets, tree roots, and curbs that Ron lovingly calls “Buns of steel curbs.” These are anywhere from 12”-18” tall, and apparently are designed to prevent cars from parking on the sidewalk. Well, they certainly do that, but they don't prevent cars from parking almost on top of each other. At one corner, we had to go several car-lengths down to even find a space wide-enough for any of us to walk between them – imagine parking rules stating, “park less than a knee's-width apart.”

We stopped in one of the local groceries to get some basics. Ron and I had a very diverse “hospitality kit” in our apartment, however it failed to come with any dish soap or detergent, laundry detergent, or trash bags. So we decided to grab some stuff. The store was very nice, like a gourmet international store, and in our continued delirium (we'll see how long I can continue to blame silly decisions on that), we managed to buy eggs for Ron, some more bread, some bananas, and some totally amazing mango ice cream. Nothing that we needed (but the ice cream had real mangoes chopped up in it at least).

Photo of cars around Road 9 and our "mango ice cream" grocery store.

Cats (suffering) in Cairo

For those of you who have asked, and for those of you who haven't, I guess, Chuckles and Ricky are doing fine and as you can see from these photos, have adjusted to the demands of living in a country with a history of feline worship as best they can. Such troopers!

CHUCKLES:

RICKY:

Ricky was a great help unpacking...