Life in Alex

Life in Alex is great, I am starting to get used to the city, the Egyptian men who stare at you when you walk in the street, exploring on my own, and most importantly I am slowly overcoming my fear of crossing the road.

I have finally got the opportunity of eating fish in Alex!!!! It was the best meal I had had in ages!!! It is unbelievable. Mongy (Egyptian, Ex AIESEC International director) decided to take me out for fish. We drove across town until we came to this really dodgy place full of raw fish and fish still moving. Mongy leads me in and tells me to choose the fish I want to eat and how I wanted it cooked!!! I was really shocked and asked him if we were going to cook it at home. He started laughing but I was still a bit under shock so I chose a couple of shrimps, calamari, a kilo or so of clams and this weird fish which Mongy chose for me. After that Mongy took me across the road where there was a great restaurant with loads of people, fish all over the place. It was fantastic!!! It was really cool to go and choose your own fish and also choose the way in which you wanted it cooked. Something like 10mins later the fish came. It was divine!!! Anyone coming to visit me is to expect a visit to this place. hopefully by then I would have mastered the Arabic language and could be able to communicate to the waiter on how I want the fish cooked!!!!!

After 3 weeks of pushing the Center I have finally started Arabic classes!!!! It is harder than I thought, we are also learning how to read it and write and guys believe me its not an easy task!!! for me all the shapes of the letter look the same and I cannot really find the difference between one and the other, especially when they are all joined together in a word and look something like this

شىش هسةهىه لإاثش

which means my name is Thea.

There are quite a lot of similarities between the Egyptian language and Maltese, my colleagues at work are always surprised at how much of their conversation I understand!!!!! He everyone wants to go to Malta to see how much they can understand from our language!!!!

On the whole all is fine!!! I am getting on well with my house mates, thought the house is very often in a disaster thanks to the guys who are always in our apartment!!!!! you wake up in the morning to find the living room full of pizza boxes, mc Donald leftovers, glasses with vodka or beer remains and cigarette butts!!! Though I love them all very much in their different way and would not change
them for anything in the world!!!

Work is also doing fine!!! Had a couple of little arguments with my bosses but nothing serious, I guess its culture and they are not used to a woman to stand up for her rights, while I was not used to being submissive, so I guess it was culture shock both ways!!