I realized yesterday, or was it the day before, that I have stopped marking the days off the calendar since we moved to Cairo. Perhaps life is becoming a bit more normal for me, however "normal" is described by Egyptian society, and perhaps I'm really beginning to realize that we're here for awhile, so I might as well enjoy it.
Yesterday, Hassan and I dropped off Mira at Aunt Olfat's so we could do some shopping. We went into Cairo - an accomplishment in itself -- and met his friends, Ehab and Shabaan, who took us to a downtown shopping area. Our intention was to shop in a very famous area called "Attaba" for low-priced, high quality housewares. Needless to say, we never made it to Attaba. Instead we settled (unbeknownst to me) for shopping in another nearby area close to Attaba. We ended up purchasing one adult bicycle which Hassan and I will share, along with two cotton long sleeve tops for me which cost 15 LE each (equivalent to $3.00 each). We also managed to buy one chandelier for the living room, and two light fixtures, one for each bedroom. We desperately needed these lighting fixtures as we were tired of looking at raw lightbulbs hanging out of the sockets in the ceiling.
We ate shrimp sandwiches at a small cafe (seafood is everywhere here in Egypt), and then went to an ice cream shop for dessert. I've never seen two grown men eat ice cream so quickly as Ehab and Shabaan. Luckily the restaurant was air conditioned.
It was about 7:00 p.m. and as I was people-watching, which I love to do, I noticed that more and more people surfaced on the streets and sidewalks as the sun made its descent into the horizon. Sure it's great to go shopping in the late afternoon such as we did, but it's much smarter to start shopping after sunset.
Peace,
Marian
Saturday, July 09, 2005
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3 comments:
You are right about after sunset shopping. We did a lot of that when we were in Egypt in the summer. Actually I was surprized to find how late things were open to accomodate this practice. I don't think we ever got going out of the house before 3pm!LOL Of course there was no air conditioning in our cars, and we had one installed in the house... So maybe that was a factor too!LOL
Yes, it's a completely different way of life -- doing everything after sunset with stores that keep sporadic hours, nothing like the US where everything is so regulated - weird how I find myself loving regulations AFTER I leave the US. And AC in the car doesn't help when the sun is scorching hot, so AC really isn't an issue during daylight hours; and the evenings are relatively cool compared to the daylight hours. I think we learned our lesson about shopping after sunset. Love, Marian
damascene,
Thanks for reading my blog. I hope it goes well for the amount of time that we're here. There are many ups and downs. Luckily the ups are now outweighing the downs.
Ma'salaama, Marian
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