Let me preface this by stating that our days are getting shorter and shorter. I swear, I woke up at around noon today because I slept in, and its already almost midnight.

A few points. First, our third roommate robin showed up today, although she didn’t bring any luggage. She was with this interesting family friend. I felt a little put off by her because she was in her 50’s, and kinda acted like a mom to us. It is weird. It appears that she disapproved of living with us. It was weird. The thing is that apparently our apartment wasn’t up to her standards, even though this is the nicest apartment we could find.

I’m a little worried that her “standards” will still be western standards, whereas our are pretty Egyptian. I know that our Egypt experiences will be totally different. I just find it interesting. Although, I know that this woman is very nice, and really has treated Robin like a daughter. I guess its too bad I don’t have one of those in every city, lol.

In lighter news, i found tabasco sauce. It was only 10 pounds, so I had to get some. The very idea that anywhere in this big world, you can get the few drops of heaven that tobasco sauce can provide makes this world a little brighter place. It wasn’t even in a specialty shop or anything either, it was just in one of the tiny little general stores that dot the landscape here, though, I may add, in the rich western part of Maadi. I guess the western-er part, even more westernerer than my part. I wrote a long run-on sentence there, but no harm no fowl.

Also today we called up a data company to get ADSL to our location through the phone line. It isn’t cheap, but it isn’t bad, and although it’ll take 14 days until we can use it, it’ll be nice to get a constant supply of my internet here. Like I’ve written, I’m off the grid until maybe September. We’ll see. I hope no one thinks that I’ve died or anything.

One thing that I find interesting, is it SHOULD feel like I’m in a totally different place right now, but honestly, it feels about as far away as Houston felt. I’m not quite sure why, but I wish it felt (well, maybe I don’t wish it) that I was on the other side of the world, but it honestly doesn’t. People are people, and I think American culture is so pervasive, it is truly global. In Maadi, a lot of people speak English. In fact, if I was French, I’d be pissed off because everything is in English, and NOTHING is in French or German. I’m kinda glad that if one language takes over the world, at least its my mother tongue. Trust me, you never realize how beautiful your own language is until you go to a place that doesn’t speak it. Just hearing it is like cool water babbling down a smooth stream. It is just great to feel your brain pick up on the words so quickly.

My street arabic is getting better. I can basically shop with ease, which is nice. My stew has gotten better on the second day, which is also good news for me.

I think that its the heat. All the dogs and cats are the most docile creatures ever. There are two dogs and a handful of cats that live in front of my apartment building, and they are always just sleeping on the steps. You could probably walk right on top of them, and they’d just bat an eye. Really nice creatures. Obviously used to humans.

I discovered this interesting stuff. I was out looking for some butter to put on bread (I was craving), and I ran into this sweet sesame seed “spread” I guess you could say. I got the almond kind. Its pretty good stuff. It works. Its no butter though. One of the complications with food are bad translations, or lack thereof. Some foods have no english on them, and so its hard to figure out what it is unless its really obvious. The tricky stuff are the things that have both English and Arabic because the translations often don’t get you what you want.

Perfect example is this cheese. I found a place you can buy these bagels (crazy), so I’ve been looking for butter or cream cheese. Now I’ve found lots of cheese, but there is this one container, that looks like it could be cream cheese, but says “cream cheese”. So one would think its cream cheese, but then on the package it says its “feta”, but the ingredients just say milk/cream stuff. So IDK what to think about it. It doesn’t help that all the rest of that brand are like cheese cheese.

Ok, thats all for me today. Well… all I have to say are crazy Egyptian auto-erotica asphyxiation lover stalkers. Don’t worry, you had to be there. Hopefully I can post these online eventually, maybe.