We arrived in Cairo today! The plane ride was long. We were delayed about an hour due to a scratch on the cargo door and then we had an 11 hour flight. The flight was wonderful save for a few non-stop screaming children. God bless benedryl and its amazing sleep-inducing properties! I think I got about 5 hours of sleep on the flight! Right now I am getting a bit sleepy, but I refuse to sleep until bedtime because I don’t want jetlag.
Professor Lo missed his connecting flight from Florida to JFK yesterday, and thusly missed our flight. he took a later flight and should be arriving shortly… we hope.
Once we landed in Cairo, got off the plane, and went through Customs, we met up with a representative from Al-Diwan (the language school that we’ll be taking classes from). We were taken to Al-Diwan where the two boys in our group were quickly ushered off somewhere. Apparently, the apartment that DukeEngage booked was just for us 8 girls. They didn’t book an apartment for the boys or Professor Lo.
Our apartment is a somewhat big, old place. It’s a third floor walk-up, which made carrying luggage a fun task. It is in Garden City (a neighborhood in Cairo) near Al-Diwan and a bunch of embassies. We had originally thought that since there were six bedrooms, we would have 4 pairs of girl rooms, 1 room for the boys, and 1 room for Professor Lo. We were wrong. It’s actually just for the girls, so a few girls have rooms to themselves. In our apartment, we’re short a bed (mine) and so we should be getting an extra bed from the American University in Cairo. Our landlord seems to think it is very important that us girls dress modestly, be quiet, and very respectful.
While we’ve been waiting for the boys and Professor Lo, we (the girls) ventured out for some groceries. We bought tons of big bottles of water, eggs, bread, jam, and juice. We pretty much bought just enough stuff to make breakfast tomorrow morning. We’ve decided to go out for dinner tonight, make breakfast tomorrow and then figure the rest out later. We’re going to try to cook dinner at least a few nights a week, but we’ll see how that actually ends up.
Well, I think that’s all for now! Please leave comments for me on my blog and/or send me e-mails!
-B