Back In Alexandria!

I've included some pictures from Alexandria while Brent was here that I didn't get to post before and pictures of my apartment.

So after two weeks in America visiting family and friends and eating as much pork as I could get my hands on, I'm back in Alexandria!! I have to say, at first I wasn't very glad to be back. Being home reminded me of all the people and things that I missed, but slowly I'm remembering all the people and things that I love here too. Although unfortunately I was reminded of all the things that I dont like first. For example- when I arrived at the airport, there was a huge globe of mass confusion at the passport control. Lines are not really Egyptian's thing. If you're at a McDonald's waiting in line, people will totally just walk right up to the counter and cut in front of you. Lines- not so much. So getting through the mess of people pushing and shoving took over an hour. One woman was trying to shove me out of the way, but I held firm, and she started complaining to the man next to her about me and I turned around and responded in Arabic. The man just laughed.

Then of course the taxi driver I found was trying to marry me/ get my phone number. Even after I told him I was engaged to try to deter him. He then tried the approach, "Oh, I'm like your brother, I'm just worried about you being alone in a big city. You should call me when you arrive safely in Alexandria." Yeah. Right. He also kept getting to stop and have lunch with him. Luckily I had a good excuse that I had a train to catch.

I arrived at the train station just 15 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave, so I rushed to the ticket counter and bought my ticket and rushed to find my car. I got on with what I thought would be 5 minutes to spare, and then the train left 45 minutes late. Of course.

Then the night I got back, one of my roommates, Hannah, and I went over to our friends' apartment because they were cooking us dinner. We arrived early while they were still grocery shopping, so we sat on the Corniche on the sea for a while and just talked about break. Ramadan is clearly over, because Egyptian men are back to their old selves- trying to talk to us as they walked by, sitting like 10 feet away in a group and talking about us, walking by us and then turning around 5 feet later to walk by again. Seriously guys? Then on our way home we were walking back to our apartment from the tram and a boy about the age of 13 ran up and groped Hannah all over, like a crazy, violating hug, and then ran away. We yelled and yelled after him, but he didn't seem bothered.

Welcome back to Egypt.

But there have been good things too. It's nice to see all of my classmates back and to start classes. I like being busy with classwork. We're all working our way back into speaking Arabic again. We've also gotten our apartment all set up (minus the toilet which is in the process of being fixed and we now have to use a hanger to flush). Hannah and I even have an awesome new roommate- Her name is Elizabeth and she is doing study abroad from Western Michigan. Since we finally have 3 people living in our two bedroom apartment, I've taken the living room area and converted it into a bed room. I set up a sheet as a kind of curtain room divider and i have an awesomely comfortable (way better than my bed in the dorm) couch to sleep on. I also have my own door to the balcony. Sweet. I've included pictures in this post of our apartment and the views from our balcony.






Tonight we are actually having a house warming party and while it was supposed to be for all of the students in our program, it's turning out to be a girl's night because most of the boys in our program live in the dorms and have been in quarantine the last few days. Apparently one of the guys in our program came back from vacation with the swine flu, so they were supposed to be in quarantine for seven days. From talking to them on the phone, it sounds ridiculous. Workers and teachers are allowed to come and go as they please. So, pleople are coming in and out of the building, thus defeating the purpose. Cigarettes were being used as a form of currency by the students. There were rumours of having to share thermataters for temperature taking.

Apparently last night some of the guys broke out and went and had a beer on the beach. I don't know the whole story, but the term "hole in the fence" was used. My question is, did they dig a tunnel and was Steve McQueen involved??

This morning we heard that they are being let out today. Hopefully that won't happen again!

Meanwhile, while we've started our language classes in our center, University classes have been delayed to give the University time to prepare the buildings for swine flu. I believe that means installing new airfilters or something. With all that is going on. I hope we don't have an actual outbreak of swine flu this year since the officials seem to a) overreact to all things swine flu related and b) not really know exactly how to conduct real health safety measures.

The Egyptian government is actually really regretting killing at the pigs earlier this year because now there is a severe trash build up in Cairo. The pigs used to eat all the organic waste, and apparently other animals, such as goats are being used to a small degree, but can't consume the amount that the pigs were consuming. Hopefully next time they'll make a more informed decision.