Hit the ground running

Still the first night: So after figuring out living my situation for the next month, Amhed and I were off into the night. We picked up another stranger to figure out where the school I’ll be attending was and after navigating through some back alleys, we came across the Arab Academy just so I would know where to go the following day. As you can see people are willing to help out pretty readily, you just give out a little baksheesh (tip money). After getting all the important stuff out of the way it was on to the fun part, which in my book includes eating.

Ahmed asked if I wanted American or Egyptian and as good as the KFC signs we saw looked (sarcasm if you couldn’t tell) I opted for some traditional cuisine (even though I ate KFC the next night). We went to this place that was five stories high and had some good ol’ Egyptian cooking. One of the traditional dishes is called Koshari. This consists of a bowl of macaroni, rice, lentils, dried fried onions, and a few chick peas. It’s topped off with tomato sauce, but not like Italian, you also poor a little lime and garlic juice and hot sauce is optional. It’s really good and a big bowl is about $1. I also wanted to try one of the traditional desserts, so they brought me a rice pudding called ros with labn which is rice with milk. A very good dinner and at a very good price.

On the way back to the car we stopped at a place to smoke what I and most of you probably know as a hookah lounge. It’s called a Sheesha and you smoke Salom which is Egyptian grown tobacco and it tastes awesome. After hanging out Amhed offered to drive me around for a while so I could see the streets. Amhed also suggested I buy a phone for people to get hold of me and just in case I needed it to call him or anyone else. The new phone with about 15 min included cost me about $28 bucks or 160ep. So if anyone feels like calling me its free for me to receive incoming calls, but not free for you. So just in case you feel like calling my number is +20 01 968 11471.

That pretty much summed up my first day besides the American movie channel I have in my room that I watch before I went to sleep. It was a busy day but, I was still able to get some good food in me and relaxing moments all while experiencing some of the culture. So far so good and I look forward to what may come

Good times,
Mike






Chillin with my new buddy Ahmed




Smoking the sheesha point of view