Live Like an Egyptian

Today I thought I'd take you on a tour of the house! Unfortunately, I can't convince blogger to let me upload it here, so I uploaded it on my youtube page (amongst other videos of my cats):

http://youtu.be/H9uMdH6OfP0

Sorry I move so fast, but I wanted to keep the file size small so that I could upload it for you.

I started on the roof, where you can see our wonderful clothes dryer and the puppies that live up there (don't get me started about the pitiful state they are in). Downstairs, that first bedroom is Kat, Lindsey, and Susan's. The big table where Tasha (in blue) and Lindsey are sitting is where we eat. The next bedroom is mine and Tasha's. My bed is the one on the left with the stylish "rabbits in love" sheet and the red-luggage end table. Next is the kitchen where Muhammad works his magic. The closed door is the bathroom, but someone was in there when I took the video. That last room is Nadine and Greg's. That's our house! We're on the second floor and our men live on the first across from the owners. On our floor, there's also more of the apartment across the hall (a bedroom and a common room), but it's full of junk right now so we don't use it yet. When we get visitors later in the season, we'll clean it out so they have somewhere to sleep.

The walls are a bit dirty, but overall it's large and airy and seems to serve our purposes well for the time being. Sure, it'd be nice to have a second bathroom, but just that second sink outside the bathroom means that we can brush our teeth while other people use the bathroom, and that's a huge help.

In case you're curious about what that green thing on my bed is (under the sheet), it's a camping sleeping mat and I'm so thrilled I brought it. The mattresses here are about 4 inches thick and stuffed full of old rags. This means that they are super hard and super lumpy. Stick that mattress on a frame that is literally planks of wood and cardboard between a wooden frame (no box-springs or metal frames here) and you've got our beds. Not a good combo for someone with a sore back. Thankfully, my in-laws gave us a ton of camping equipment a while back, so with a little creative packing, I've been able to sleep quite well and my back is very happy. The travel pillow was a must, as well. The beds come with pillows. The pillows are a lot like the mattresses, though. They are rock hard and would probably break your neck if you laid down too hard. They do make a nice barrier between us and the nasty, dirty walls, though.

- Realtor

PS. Did you happen to catch those beautiful paintings on the walls? They seem to be printed on cardboard, then glued to the wall. It is surround by what looks like sprayed-on stone look-alike? We have several throughout the apartment, including a large view of the Swiss Alps next to the kitchen, Italy near the dining table, two creepy little kids dancing near Greg and Nadine's room, and... some landscape on the back of the main door.

PPS. The dance party last night was a lot of fun- we got to see what music we all knew (though to be honest, we were a little ADD with the music, since we had people ranging from mid-20s to mid-30s and 3 of them were foreign). It was an odd collection of music, but we all danced and had a fun time. Of course, since we were up at 5am that morning and our normal bed time is usually 8:30 or 9, we were pretty much done by 10pm.

Hello from Edfu

I promise that not every blog post will be a minute-by-minute account of my, but these first few days are exciting, guys, exciting!!

We spent last night in a pretty nice hotel in Luxor (it’s called Iberotel if you want to Google it for pictures). Their breakfast was tasty, the beds were clean, and the showers were hot and well-pressured. Wake-up time was 5am, which meant I was able to get about 6 hrs of sleep, even if I did wake up several times. Our van picked us up at 7:45 and we were off for Edfu.

Edfu sits about 2 hrs away from Luxor by car. Unlike the other girls, I wasn’t able to sleep or read on the ride, so I stared out the window, which gave me some nice reflection time. I was too awed by everything to think about this the last time I was here (Dan and I went on our honeymoon to Egypt last winter), but it is so cool to think about the fact that other people, people from thousands of years ago, not only built huge monuments, they also used to look at the exact same things I was staring at out the window! Sure, the buildings are new, we now have cars, and the population has quadrupled (at least) since 2000BC, but the desert features are still fairly consistent. After a long day of travel and a rough night of sleep, I needed the energy that history gives to my soul, and there’s no better place for that than Egypt.

Anyway, once we got to Edfu we headed for our residence. Or at least, we went to the place we thought we were going to stay. Last year’s house too small to hold the expanding team (there are 7 of us, then 1 will leave, then we’ll gain 3 more at different times, but each for only a week or two, plus we have several workmen that we house- got it?), so Nadine thought we’d stay in another place that had 3 apartments, each with two rooms. It was extremely tiny. If you’ve been to my Chicago apartment, each apartment was about that size and expected to hold 6 members or a few members and have a room for eating/working. Yeah, not going to work. So after much hemming and hawing, we heard of yet another place. It is quite large, really, with 4 bedrooms, a large area to eat and work, and another area that can be either a bedroom or workplace. Plus we have access to the roof (which area typically flat in Egypt, as they serve as the base for upper stories). There are ceiling fans and balconies in each room. Sure, the bathroom (1 for the whole team) is pretty crappy, but overall it’s nice. The travel pillow and sleeping mat are so nice to have, as the mattresses are basically just sacks filled with really hard rags and the pillows are something like body pillows filled with concrete. That sounds like hyperbole. I wish it were.

We’ve spent the afternoon unpacking and cleaning and just generally getting settled. I also had my first Egyptian lunch, which I’m thinking will be a blog post all its own in the coming days (hint: it’s koushari). No idea what plans are for dinner, but we have our own cook who is apparently really decent, so we’ll see!

Here’s the only downside: many of the outlets don’t work. This isn’t a huge deal, since Nadine brought a few power strips that we can plug things into to charge when batteries get low. We also don’t have the landline that they ran from a shop next door last year to get internet. We’re going to look into getting sticks which will let us connect via the cell phone network, but that means no skype or downloading anything (like Netflix movies). It might also mean, depending on what plan we get, no uploading of photos. We’ll see what the plan is, but I might just tell you all about everything, then do a massive photo blog once I get back to the states.

Tomorrow we head to the site to look around, see what the state of things are, and, for those of us that haven’t been there, get acquainted with the site. Apparently, the paperwork for Lindsey, Susan and myself does exist in Eygpt, they just couldn’t find it the other day, so we should get official permission to touch (we can look now, but not touch) in a few days. The weekend is Friday and Saturday here (Muslim holy day is Friday), so we have a shortened work week anyway and shouldn’t miss too much.

Are you sick of reading yet? Well good, because I don’t have much more to say. I apologize to my loved ones who might not hear much more from me than via this blog. I also apologize to anyone that comments to me on facebook and twitter. I’m guessing I won’t be checking those often. Send me an email (egypt22@uchicago.edu) or comment on here if you want to talk to me.

Extreme traveler, signing out.