Still Alive

Yeap, although its been a long time since I have updated this log, I am still alive!!!!

Not too much has really happened in these past few days. I am really proud to say that I am finally getting used to the place, I am catching trams, crossing the road very confidently, fighting with taxi drivers who charge me a very high price just cause I'm light skinned and have colored eyes!!! I have also learnt where to go to the beach, and not depend on other people who either have a beach house or have passes to some nice beach out of Alex!!!! Although I got a big jelly fish sting on my arm that looks like a Harry Potter mark in this beach, it is still my favorite summer hangout!!! Can you imagine lying on the beach with waiters coming to serve you, having a towel and a deck chair, having body guards protecting you from the random Egyptians which escape from the public beaches as well as having a good meal of Lebanese mezzah and calamari for only 50 Egyptian pounds which translates to approximately seven euros and Lm3.50!!!!

I have also done my first shopping of clothes and shoes!!!! yeahh even though it takes me ages to translate the Arabic written numbers into English numbers....

The Americans are doing fine too!!! One of them has already left and almost all are going to leave at the end of this month!!! Its cool in a way cause there will finally be some peace and quiet in the house, but I will miss they terribly! they are such great fun, also when they leave it means that I will have to move, and that is a nightmare!!! I don't want to move again!!! Hopefully, fingers crossed, it will only be a matter of moving up 10 floors but I am not too sure of that!! Finding accommodation in Alex is a nightmare, there is no advertising or website, its just a matter of who know who and who knows what is available!!! so I really have to depend on other people. Lets hope the flat upstairs works out, though it definitely needs some fixing up big time!!!!!

Finally I learnt all the Arabic alphabet!!! it took me two to three lessons of 3 hours each to finally get the whole alphabet!! but now I finally can!! so that means I get to read some work and pronounce them 'sort of properly'!!!

That is all the update from me for now have to get off the computer now!!!! At work they have just installed ADSL on all the computers which allows me to do some illegal chatting and mail checking every now and then!!!

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!!

More about life in Egypt

As I was telling you before, Egypt is not at all very easy to adapt to!!! especially for a white female like me. You stand out big time. You get charged the highest prices cause you are a foreigner and they think you can afford it!! Little do they know that I am a foreigner with an Egyptian salary! ;) The shops all have their prices in Egyptian numbers, so it very easy to fool me, though now beware, I have studied all the Arabic numbers and now I can read and speak them!!!!! Though unfortunately its only the big shops that have the price tags, the little ones charge as they like!!! It is reminding me of a 'little' fight I had with the little grocer down the road!!!!! I usually go and buy apple juice from this guy every day or rather once every alternate days. One fine day I went at another time and there was another shop keeper, but I took the same juice I take every day. I usually pay 4 pounds for this juice but today he decided to charge me 6, I got really angry at this cause after a while it gets really annoying when people cheat on you, so I got into an argument with this guy!!! he is shouting at me in Arabic which I did not understand and I started shouting at him in English which he did not understand. after a while I lost my temper and shouted at his and told him 'I will only pay you erba' (four) and not sitta (six)' so I threw the money at his and ran out of the shop. He walked out of the shop saying something in Arabic which I think were insults, but thank god I was close to home so I grabbed my juice and ran as fast as I could!!!! I do not really think I will go anywhere near there
again!!!

My house keeping experiences have remained as bad as in Belgium. I inaugurated my ironing in Egypt by burning two big holes in my nice black trousers, and the washing machine at home is a sight, at one point in time water starts coming out of somewhere on the floor and the washing machine shakes like crazy.

My room mates are fantastic!! As I said most of the people I hang out with are Americans, some are AIESEC members in the US and others are not. I must say we are quite a weird combination. I am the oldest one in the house, so sometimes it is nice to go away and chill out with some other people. I guess there are times when you can get an overdose of Americans. The people in my flat are all girls and the boys live on the top flat but always end up in our apartment as we are the ones with the AC and TV!!!! My room is great!! I cannot believe it is way bigger than the one in Belgium and I only pay 80dollars in opposition to 250euros a month. We all share and take it in turns which makes it seems like a nice warm family. At first I thought I will find it hard to fit in especially once I was the last to come and I am the only non-American, but nonetheless they have welcomed me heartily and I feel like one of them, though distant enough to live my own life and not get entangled with the American gossip!!!

TheAlexandria culture is way relaxed. All people do is chill out on the beach, smoke, and drink. Though the beaches can be a shock, well they were for me!!!! Unless you go to a private beach you do not find any women swimming. if women actually swim they are wearing their galabeia (Arabic dress) and veils. Otherwise there are these wetsuits where they have to make sure that their elbows and knees are covered as well as their hair.

Next time I want to make sure I write more about the women in Egypt and how they are perceived!!! I have been so shocked though amazed and I am always willing to learn more!!! I always make sure to have some interesting discussions with my adult classes on topics such as marriage , women in society, the Muslim religion etc etc!!! its very interesting to hear the perspectives of the students themselves, although I have been told that I should not speak about this issues in class, the students are very interested in telling me, like that I get them to speak English on topics that interest me and them!!! ;)

Oh by the way, have you guys every tried typing from right to left instead of left to right!!! believe me, typing on an Arabic key board drives you mad (Arabic is written from right to left) good night to all!!!!
off for a night of shisha, mint tea and walks on the corniche

Two Weeks in Egypt

This time two weeks ago I was on my nice luxurious flight to Cairo. Today I am sitting in my luxurious apartment in Alexandria, with two weeks of Egypt experience on my shoulders!!!! ;)

Gosh these two weeks have been a very eventful week, I have not no idea where to start from.

I got a NICE welcome in Cairo (please note the sarcasm!!!). Well now I think it was funny but at that time I did not think it was very funny!!! Well, AIESEC Alex decided to play a trick on me, which, Ms Naive Thea totally fell for.

Three people came for me at the airport, the LCP of Alex and two other AIESEC people. Louli the LCP told me that these people were not AIESEC people and she met them at a party and they were meant to drive us home. Well, we hoped into the car with my tonnes of luggage and right in the middle of the highway, in the middle of nowhere the car decided to stall. So Louli and I got out of the car and started pushing in the scorching mid-day sun!!! As soon as we started pushing the car started again, and instead of waiting for Louli and I to hop in, the guy sped along the highway. Well we were a bit puzzled but I came to the conclusion that they were warming the car up. We waited there for what seemed to be hours but were only 5mins, until Louli started worrying me by asking me if I had any money or my passport, which I obviously did not have cause everything was in the car. So we decided to start walking which is not the best of things, two girls walking in the highway in Egypt, one of whom is not Egyptian are perfect preys for the hungry predators so we got hooted at us and many a car stopped to offer us a lift!!!!! At that point I was a bit panicky, well, I don't think you would blame me!!!! I had all my life in that car!!!! Finally after like 10mins the guys came back, we jumped into the car and they shouted 'WELCOME TO EGYPT' Man I could have killed them at that point in time!!!

Alex is cool and the people are very nice. My house mates are great, although all American, so I guess this is my chance to take away my prejudices of Americans, which I already started doing. We have had many interesting conversations about the world, America and the middle east, the European Union etc, and it is extreeemly interesting to get another point of view, especially an American one!!!!

I am still in the process of settling in!!! there is sooo much confusion in this country that I must say I am finding it quite hard. First and foremost I have to really be careful of what I wear. I cannot wear sleeveless tops (I already got told off at work of wearing a sleeveless shirt which in Maltese standards is very conservative while here is super shameful). So I have to make sure I am covering my knees and elbows unless I want to be harassed and stared at in the streets. The driving in insane, traffic lights don't exist and crossing the roads is impossible. I have not yet overcome my fear of crossing the street where the only means of getting to the other side of the road is to run in front of cars and hope they either stop or then run between the cars as fast as you can. I still wait for a minimum of 5mins until I find the right time to make a run for it. Though hopefully this will decrease as time passes.

Work is also fun. I love the people I work with, they are great fun, though the work load is insane!!! Marianne and I are totally exploited being the only English Native Speakers in the center. We work 8 hours a day 6 days a week!!!! Egyptian kids are a big head ache, though once you get the hang of it, you can deal with them quite well. (things such as threatening to shut them in a big tank or drowning them or choking them also work!!). Yesterday one of my students asked me if I loved her, and I told her of course, then she sighed in relief and told me 'good, cause I love you a lot' I think that was the sweetest thing I have heard in a very long time!!!! The Centre also arranged a welcome group for us, who are 3 of the senior students who are meant to be our buddy. It is sooo awkward to be taken care of after 2 years of sticking up for yourself.

The Egyptians are the nicest people ever, and would do anything to make sure you are happy and comfortable (unless money is concerned!!!!). I really want to start learning Arabic, I guess that would help with my strange encounters with the taxi drivers and shop keepers who would charge you anything you wish cause you are white, and all they see is money!!!!

OHH also the funniest thing is walking around the streets and people shout out at you 'Welcome to Egypt' at the beginning I used to shout out 'Thank you' but now I only say ' I have been here, you don't need to welcome me anymore!!!!'

Well, I think its long enough!!!! And I should be heading off to another day of work. I will do my best to keep this log updated though it might be hard due to my very limited internet access!!!!