SANDStorm

I know that we’ve been pretty lax in updating the blog recently. Life hasn’t been filled with endless new adventures like it was two months ago. We’ve settled into our routines and daily life is now fairly predictable, in as much as it can be in this very unpredictable city.

So, I’ve outlined below our usual week for you, starting with Sunday, the first day of the work week (but not the first day of the Arabic week – that is Saturday, yoom el-sabt, the day of rest). Sunday is yoom el-Hadd in Arabic, meaning “the first day.” Likewise, Monday is “the second day,” and so on until Friday, which means literally “day of reunion.”

Sunday (yoom el-Hadd):
First day of the work week, I get up around 9am to go to my Standard Arabic private lesson. The market is usually pretty quiet when I walk through it to my class at 9:45. After the two hour lesson, I usually end up going to the grocery to pick up some eggs or pasta, or I stop off at the kushari shop on my way home and get two orders of kushari, one large order for D and a small order for me. D and I eat lunch together and then he goes to his private lesson, leaving me all afternoon to fritter away my time reading the news on the internet or watching Dr. Phil.

The front door to our apartment building.

In the evenings we sometimes go to our local coffeeshop for tea and to finish up our colloquial Egyptian homework, due the next day.

Monday (yoom el-itneyn):
We trek to Maadi every Monday for colloquial Egyptian Arabic class. The class starts at 11am, so we have to leave the house by 9:45am to take the metro to Maadi, usually a 30 minute ride spent standing. Once we are in Maadi, we greedily take advantage of the numerous amenities which cater to the large American expat community in that neighborhood. We usually feast on western food – a burger or a Ceaser salad are favorites of ours – and then sometimes we go to the Grand Mall to walk around and check out the latest fashions.

The very adorable cats which hang out in Maadi.

In the evenings, there are often lectures at AUC which interest us. A few weeks ago I learned about the ins and outs of doing work as an NGO in Egypt and this upcoming Monday I’ll go hear about astonomical observations of Egyptian monuments.

Tuesday (yoom el-talaat):
Hmmm, Tuesday. Usually I just get up late and lounge around the house all day and evening.

The lobby of our apartment building.

Wednesday (yoom el-arbae):
Maadi again. There’s usually something happening on Wednesday nights which we attend, maybe a lecture, a concert, or a show. This week it was a lecture on granting temporary protection status (TPS) to Palestinian refugees; the week before it was a concert of Sudanese music. This upcoming week we’ll have to make some hard decisions: a lecture on amending the Egyptian constitution, viewing Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” on the rooftop of a downtown Cairo turn-of-the-century mansion, or going to hear Brain Candy at a venue next to the Nile.

Thursday (yoom el-khamees):
Yay! It’s the end of the week! I start it off right at 7am in order to drag myself to my standard Arabic class at 8am. By the time I get back home, I usually just want to crawl back into bed. Thursday afternoons are reserved for cleaning the floors – a very big job when you have granite tiled floors and a constant stream of sand and dirt filtering through the window screens.

Thursday evenings are a grab bag. Sometimes we go out for dinner and a lecture (we are indeed learning quite a lot while in Cairo), or we go to our friend’s house for wine and cards on her balcony while watching the chaos on the street (her neighborhood never goes to sleep).

Friday (yoom el-gomea):
D is usually trying to finish up his work for the week, so I try to stay out of his way. I do grocery shopping, read or study, sometimes at a cafe.

Friday night is reserved for karaoke at Harry’s Pub, a ritzy “English” pub in the Marriott in Zamalek. Karaoke ends at 2am, so you better believe we are never home before 2:30am on Friday nights.

Saturday (yoom el-sabt):
I have standard Arabic class in the mornings, but in the afternoons we try to get out and do something “cultural,” like go to the Egyptian museum or the zoo. Tomorrow we are going on a walk through Islamic Cairo from Khan al-Khalili to the Citidel.

I can read everything on the whiteboard. Eeeeee!

Tags: Egypt, Tag Index

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 12:21 am and is filed under Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.