Early Entry - Wednesday, September 03, 2008

There has been more settling-in going on, including a few forays into the actual neighborhood I live in. I’m just amused that I probably know Midan Ramal better than my own neighborhood, but then again my neighborhood is kind of working class, so less cool. I did discover a very useful little store a street away with most food necessities, of which I promptly took advantage. This also included buying my lunch for the next few days which, because almost all cafes/restaurant type deals are closed/not in service during the day, I have to provide for myself. I’ve grown accustomed (useful verb that I now know in Egyptian Arabic) to the food more or less. Lunch will be light, and consist of cheese, olives and assorted pickled vegetables with bread – and if I’m feeling ambitious, add a fresh fig or two.
Pleasant enough, though I’ve found on the whole the Egyptian food kind of boring. It isn’t that it’s bad. It just isn’t very interesting if you’ve ever had Middle Eastern food before. Especially if you’ve had Lebanese (ahem), in which case Egyptian just doesn’t compete. Speaking of which, I had some of the best ice cream ever at a Lebanese ice cream place on the way to Montazah the other day. Also on the way to Montazah was a Lebanese restaurant. I am definitely rounding up a posse to check it out, because it will probably beat most Egyptian food without trying. I’ll stop being Lebanese-centric, but if you know anything about Middle Eastern food then you’d agree.
What’s rather frustrating is the state of my internet. It’s not as though I want to spend my time in Egypt sitting behind a computer on facebook. Far from it. I just want it available when I need/want to use it – to communicate with people from home and abroad, to keep up with world events, and maybe occasionally to zone out. But the company’s sales department keeps shutting it off for some reason, and I keep calling and they keep turning it back on, the result being that we have internet in the evening but almost never in the daytime. So Phil and I were convinced that the internet is observing Ramadaan. We tested our theory today, but it did not (alas) hold true, for the silly internet was still not functioning after IfTar.
Tomorrow is the IfTar party at Anne and Alex’s apartment in Sporting. Should be fun, though I have to find some drinks to bring. A nice way for the students to unwind after the first week of classes. Speaking of which, translation is a real pain. Mostly just Arabic-English. But everyone attains their peak level of nit-pickiness (myself included, which isn’t very hard when language is concerned) – even people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, unfortunately. But it was a good example of how essentially one phrase could start the whole class arguing for fifteen minutes.
On the whole, it looks like classes are going to be fun and quite helpful. I need to create a system so I can retain all of the vocabulary I’m randomly absorbing, but the content seems quite useful. Maybe a semester of being here will be helpful after all. I still have to decide whether I want to be here for the semester or whole year, but I have about a month or so to choose, so no hurry. I do have to get started photographing/being photographed before the weather turns bad for winter. It would be a real shame to leave without documenting the city well.