The Numbers

We've been here for two and a half weeks, and in that deceptively short period of time, I have:

- Settled into a new apartment
- Started a new job
- Paid for internet service
- Bought groceries 11 times
- Vacationed in Alexandria
- Dipped my feet in the Mediterranean
- Had an AC repairman repair the AC
- Eaten kunafeh 4 times
- Eaten baklava 2 times
- Eaten ful 9 times
- Eaten falafel (known to Egyptians as ta'ameya) 5 times
- Eaten koshary 4 times
- Drunk Nescafé 22 times
- Ridden the Metro 6 times
- Ridden a microbus 2 times
- Wandered a suq 3 times
- Laugh/cried about bureaucrazy (TM) innumerably
- Said "inshallah" innumerably

OK, so you can see where my priorities lie. I know what you're thinking. I know you can't imagine what else I could possibly have left to do here in Egypt for the next 11 months, but I can assure you there are a couple things I still need to do:

- Befriend and ride a camel (for research, you know? I've hung out with some in Morocco and some in India, but I'm trying to increase my sample size here)
- Hang out with Khufu in his crib
- Swim in the Red Sea
- Eat Ftir and Umm Ali

There could be a few other things I'd want to do if I really had to think about it. Maybe you can give me some suggestions to help me pass the time.

Seriously, though. The amount of times I have had to ink my name in completing paperwork, the amount of dust caked on our shoes, the number of Ramadan cookies, kahk, that have somehow disappeared from their cardboard container that's falling apart from having been opened too many times--all of these simple quantities deceptively indicate to me a level of settledness, a feeling like we've been here for a month, maybe two. But, when I think about everything we haven't done yet (the mere tip of which I alluded to in the latter list), my perspective settles more comfortably into the knowledge that we have been here for so short a while to have already started our stable 8:30-4 jobs.

I have many thoughts and none that are clear enough for me to be able to write about them meaningfully yet. So, for now, I will leave you with these pictures, a small fraction of the 400 or so I've taken thus far:



The closest I've yet been to The Pyramids (al-ahram) is a city length away, in a car on the highway. There is something utterly surreal about seeing them loom spectrally behind the city, forming the ultimate skyline. I feel a strange sense of voyeurism, actually, posting this without having seen it really up close. As though I've done something illicit in photographing a Wonder of the World so casually though intentionally.



The only good thing about pollution is that it makes every sunset here look like that.



Ohhhhh, Koshary. I start salivating whenever I think about this particular Coptic-origin street food, made of macaroni, rice, black lentils, fried onions, garbanzo beans, and a tangy tomato sauce. It's served with a lemon garlic dressing and some kind of chili sauce on the side. It only hurts my feelings to think about it and not be eating it. Constantly. The best we've had so far is a at a place called Bunduq in Alexandria.