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.

ahlan wa sahlan

While I only created this blog in Egypt, out of a desire to share my thoughts and experiences here, I don't want this to be just a travel blog / being somewhere else blog (though, perhaps I will end up using it like that in my life), and given the ambiguity of my speech, generally including the use of "things" and "ones" to mean anything I need them to mean, I thought this would be an appropriate title for a blog that I hope will contain some of my thoughts going forward. To give it somewhat of a travelish flavor, I customized its title to be in Arabic, the language I'm currently surrounded by, and in doing so, I encountered a truly jarring problem: how the heck do I translate the word 'ones'? How do I communicate this linguistic idiosyncrasy? Perplexed and delighted, I decided this was an excellent starting point for me to be navigating new ways of communicating and expressing myself in a (somewhat) new language and culture.

ahlan wa sahlan ila Misr, "welcome to Egypt" has been a standard greeting we've received here upon meeting someone new.

And, while I am not meeting most of you for the first time at all, ahlan wa sahlan ila Misr min tajribati -- welcome to Egypt from my experience! I hope you enjoy every bit(e). I promise I won't try to sell you perfume, papyrus, or other pharaonic goods.