Cultural Shock

Alright so I'm sitting at work and I just remembered another cultural shock that I had. I was in Cairo and in a taxi when all of a sudden I looked out the window and there was a man on a bike with something attached to it. The attachment was a container that read "McDonald's Delivery" I couldn't believe it when I read that. Apparently McDonald's is the place to not only get food delievered but people go on dates there. It's a symbol of status here.

Hardees is also pretty popular here. There's also Domino's, Little Caesar's, Pizza Hut and KFC. I've been advised not to eat at KFC tho' cause someone got major food poisening there and was sick for about 5 days and ended up getting sicker later and losing almost 30 pounds. The start of the chain of events began at that particular establishment, and I'd rather not find out what could happen to me if I eat there. Which I think is a shame cause I love KFC's mac n cheese. I'm highly disappointed.

I'll post if I have any more culture shocks!

And then there was Alex...

So it's taken me a little longer than I thought to get this next post out. I haven't had as much access to the internet as I'm used to. I'm really tired so this is gonna be somewhat quick. I've had a lot go one the past week or so. Here goes...


During my time in Cairo:

I got to explore this city quite a bit during my stay. There wasn't one night were I went to bed before 5am. Between partying with fellow AIESECers or waking up to learn of the events surrounding Lebanon and Israel, I got to see the sun rise everyday. I was able to see some of the people I had worked with back in the states here in Egypt plus make new friends.

I visited the bizzare (the real name I can't pronounce or remember) where there are tone of shops full of beautiful scarfs and sheeshahs. I sat at a cafe and ate pizza by a mosque. And I quickly picked up the habit of not using a side walk while trying to dodge cars. One friend describes walking and crossing the street here in terms of playing frogger.

I finally got a cell phone, yay! Though I don't really use it to call internationally. Email is definitely the best way to catch me right now. If you have a gmail account, I can chat using that. I can't use AIM here. So if you don't have a MSN or gmail account, we won't be chatting :(

I visited Cairo University. The campus is absolutely amazing. It used to be a palace so you can image what that looks like. I've noticed that most of the college campuses here are gated.

I SAW PYRAMIDS!!! I went to the ones in Giza which is actually where Nisrin leaves. She lives about 20 minutes away from them. It was kinda odd to be sitting in the taxi and then all of a sudden, there they are. They are partically surrounded by a residential area and desert. I've got pics and video of the trip including ones of the Sphinx. I don't have my camera with me right now, so those will have to come later. I didn't go into any pyramids or tombs because I was only had so much time until my train for Alex was leaving. I'll probably go to the ones in Luxor for that.

Alex:

I slept most of the time during my train ride to Alex. There was a lot of agricultural land along the trail. I was kinda shocked not to once see desert, but then again I was only awake for about 30 minutes!

I have two room mates. One from the Czech Republic (Esin) and the other from Turkey (Jana). The one from Turkey is leaving in about 2 weeks and the other leaves at the end of September. So I know I definitely have another person to interact with on a daily basis for about 2 more months.

We have a two bedroom apartment. Right now I'm sharing one of the rooms with Jana. We've got one t.v. with a dish. Everyone here has a dish. We've got over 2,000 channels and I can watch about 4-5 of them. One movie channel, two sitcom, etc. channels, BBC, and one that shows Tom & Jerry (no language required!) I've been told that our apartment is really good compared to others in Alex, which makes me feel better about it.

We live off of a main street which is completely lite almost everynight til at least midnight. Driving through that street is absolutely crazy. I describe it as driving through the taste of chicago. We're in a pretty good location because that main street has everything on it - mini mall, mall, vendors, and a hell of a lot of shoe shops (if you have a shoe fetish but are broke, you don't need to come to my neighborhood) My street is two blocks parallel to another main street which has the tram running through it. From this street, I'm two main streets away from the Mediterranean Sea. So it's pretty cool arond my place.

Since I've been here I've gotten to know the area pretty well. I've been to a sporting club to go swimming, been to kareoke night at this coffee roastery, walked along the corniche (kinda like a boardwalk) a few times, been to Buffalo Steakhouse (I needed some American food), two malls, several cafes and to the library (it was closed tho' so I'll have to go another time) I've gotten around a lot within this past week. I've mostly been chillin with Jana and two Alex AIESECers Bahaa and Mustafa (my buddy who's been showing me around). Mustafa is actually American and Egyptian so it's been kinda cool cause I can relate to him because of our shared nationality and at the same time he's able to school me about Alex since he's been here for a few years now.

This weekend a bunch of people from Cairo came to town while both my room mates went out of town. Some how everyone ended up staying at my place which included 3 guys which thankfully, I don't have a doorman because that would have never happened. There are many places where you aren't allowed to have the opposite sex spend the night. It was crowded too. There's three beds and two coaches. Every bed had two people and both coaches had someone. It was crazy! Everyone stayed up late both nights. I believe 3am was the average time of going to bed both nights (though there were people who didn't go to be til 9am - you know who you are!) It's kinda understandable though cause most Egyptian families eat lunch after work around 4-5pm and dinner at 10pm.

People keep asking me if I've experienced any culture shock yet. And there are a few times that I have. I was at the mall and noticed that people were smoking inside. You can smoke almost everywhere here. Right now I'm so tired that I can't even think of anything else, but I know there's more.

I finally started work today. I was supposed to start last Tuesday but because of some communication problems and geographical issues that didn't happen. So I ended up starting today because yesterday was a national holiday (Revolution Day, the day the country won it's independence from the British). Work was cool. I actually did something productive on the first day working with the company's corporate offer.

My job isn't far at all. I could walk it if I wanted, but I don't! Compared to one of my room mates job location, mine is practically right next door. I can take a taxi or tram. If I take a taxi it's somewhere between 2-5 Egyptian pounds (it's changing right now because gas prices went up for the first time in I believe 15 years without warning. It used to be 1 ponnd/liter and now it's 1.30/liter - I have no clue how to convert that!) So if I took that method everyday, it would take me about 10-15 minutes to get to work or home and cost approx 10 pounds a day or 200 pounds a month OR I can take the tram. It takes about 10-15 minutes to take the tram and then a 10 minute walk to my job from the tram. The tram costs 25 piasters. To give you a better perspective of how cheep this is, 1 pound is less than 20 cents. 25 piasters is a fourth of a pound. So it's less than 5 cents for one way on the tram, 2.5 pounds a week both ways and 10 pounds a month. A huge difference in my opinion. So I'll walk a little and use the 190 extra pounds a month to go travel or something.

Today was my first day venturing by myself! I made it to work and back home safely. So I think of this day as my first real day of being in Alex because so far I've been able to do everything on my own. Tho' I still gotta go eat, so we'll see how that turns out!

Now that I've started working, I'll have a better idea of what my routine will be like in about a week or so. The internet cafe that I'm at right now is on the next block from my apartment, so it won't be too hard for me to access the web anymore. Plus I have a laptop that I use at work that has internet. Once I figure out how often I'm likely to be online, I'll have a standard time/day when I'll be online if anyone wants to chat.

Aight, I'm bout to go. I'm exhausted and I still have to go to the mall tonight. There's a BBQ tomorrow and each trainee has to make something that would be present at a BBQ in their country. Just imagine how much longer this post would be if I was well rested!

Arrival

I have been in Egypt now for almost 24 hours now and can't really believe it. The time has gone by so quickly. Here's a little snap shot of my first 48 hours out of the country. It's going to be pretty detailed b/c I know certain people that want to know everything. The headings should help out with the info you truly wanna know about. (Sorry no pics yet)

Flight #1:
The flight from Chicago to Amsterdam wasn't bad. I didn't really become annoyed at being on the flight until about 6.5 hours into it. The movie was 16 Blocks and some random shows from America and I think the UK.

Amsterdam Airport:
I arrived in Amersterdam at about 7am and didn't leave until about 10pm. My flight to Cairo got delayed about an hour because the air conditioning wasn't working. I basically slept the entire time I was in the airport. The first 5ish hours that I slept were completely uncomfortable and ended up finding one of these areas the call comfort zones. This is where I spent the rest of my time before I went to check in at the gate. No I didn't leave the airport to go exploring. I was too tired to do anything really since I hadn't slept on the flight at all.

Flight #2:
Flying from Amsterdam to Cairo wasn't all that much fun. I think by that time of not having too much sleep and being annoyed at the delayed flight I was anxious to get somewhere. We watched Ice Age 2 (which made me think of one of my sibs cause she loves animal movies) and of course I was exhausted but once again couldn't sleep on the plane. Once we landed, It took about 45 minutes or so to get out of the airport. Getting my visa and then my passport stamped wasn't bad at all besides the waiting in lines. Both transactions were surprisingly quick. I got help with my luggage (which were two 50 pound bags w/ rollers and a carry one and heavy purse) and went looking for the people who would pick me up.

Egypt!!!:
I was so excited to see that my friend Nisrin and two other AIESECers came to pick me up. I was hoping that Nisrin would come to the airport. She was my president when I joined the org and was actually the one who interviewed me to get into the org. It's crazy how we both ended up in the same country. I'm actually do the same traineeship she did last year just for a longer duration.

The ride from the airport was fun. I don't know exactly how fast we were going on the road, but New Yorkers have nothing on a driver from Cairo! It was awesome too cause we drove over the Nile. It was too dark tho' to really see anything.

Before we went to Nisrin's apartment, we stopped to get some food (it's about 4am at this point). It was interesting because we drove up to a curb and as I thought we were about to get out to go inside some restaurant, there was a mad at the window of the driver's side giving us menus. It was kinda like Bruno's on High St in Oxford but without having to get out of your car if that makes anysense. I had some kind of beef wrap; I'm not really sure what it was called.

As we are driving to Nisrin's, she informs us that she lives on the sixth floor and there is no elevator! So we have to take all of my stuff up all these flights of stairs. That's when I realized that I would have to transport all of this heavy stuff on a train to Alex. I'm interested to see how that turns out. Being the wonderful gentlemen that Egyptian men are known for, the two male AIESECers carry all three of my bags to Nisrin's apartment. If they hadn't been there I don't think those bags would have ever made it.

It's about 5am when we get into the apartment. Nisrin and I ended up hanging out on her balcony talking until almost 8:30am. We had so much catching up to do since we hadn't seen each other in well over a year. It was great. I got to see the sun rise in Egypt for the first time.

I went to sleep until about 4pm. It was soooo hot and for some reason I didn't change out of the clothes that I had worn while traveling. So I was sleepin in sweats and burning up. (I really have to work on my laziness). After I got dressed, we went around the neighborhood. We were out an about until about 9pm.

During out time out, I got to go to a different markets and made my first purchase...bottled water! We went to a computer mall in order to get some burnable CDs and then ate at a restaurant called Chicken Tikka. It has Mediterrean food. It was really good. My entire meal -chicken, rice, veggies and a pepsi came to about 22 Egyptian pounds which is less than $5.

After the meal we headed to the Silverkey office. There I got to see 3 people that I know from the states. One was a Salaam trainee who came to Chicago about two years ago. Another is the person that helped me out with the reception of another Salaam trainee in Chicago and a alumni. And the third was a Aiesecer from the Bay Area and a former member of the the US National Staff of AIESEC. All of them work for Silverkey, which is the company that runs this site.

After visiting the office, we came back to the apartment (9pm) to have dinner. Nisrin's room mate made an authentic Egyptian meal (she's from Alex). And there there about 10 of us, one of which was another Salaam trainee that I had met during my trip to DC in May. We all ended up sitting out of the balcony until 1:30 am. Which is when I came inside to start checking my emails and writing this post.

Thoughts:
It's crazy how fast everything went by today. I can't believe I've been here for a day. There were times when I didn't even feel like I was in another country. I'm already starting recognize some Arabic. I can read 0-10, know the letter b and recognize the word Pepsi. I can already tell that I am going to have a great time here. I was good to see the other trainee I had met in DC who has been here for a little over a month and how well she's doing.

Everyone keeps telling me that I'm going to love Alex and how wonderful it is. I know there's at least one new trainee coming to Alex; actually she's being picked up at the airport right now.

Coming up:
I'll be in Cairo until Sunday. I know I'll be doing something everyday but it probably won't be any of the touristy stuff. I actually get to see how people live and go about their daily lives. I'll be taking a train to Alex and then finding my way around. I'm already getting peer pressure talks about taking scuba lessons; we'll see.

That's really it for now. Just wanted to post what my first day was like here. I'm sure within the next week I'll have plenty to share. I mean, it's only been 24 hours! Alright it's 3am and I got a long day tomorrow. Night!

Egypt!!!

I can't believe it's finally happening. In approx. 4 days I will be leaving the U.S. for the first time and traveling to Egypt! Most people know that I've wanted to go to this country for almost three years now. Monday, that goal will be accomplished.

Since the spring semester of '03 I've been involved with AIESEC and have had the opportunity to experience most of what I wanted to. This traineeship/internship is one of the last things I have to do before my time is up with the org. Going to an international conference is the last. I still would like to have more amazing experiences, but I'll be satisified once these last two events have been completed.

With that said, here's a lil info on what I'm about to get myself into. On Monday, July 10 I will be flying out of O'Hare for a 7+ hour flight to Amsterdam. Then kickin' it in the airport for the next 12ish hours until my flight leaves for Cairo, a 4+ hour flight. It'll be Wednesday morning (2am to be exact) when I arrive in Cairo, however it'll be Tuesday night for those in the States. Egypt is 8 hours ahead of the U.S. I'll be staying in Cairo for a few days for my reception. Then I will be taking a 2.5 hour train ride to Alexandria. Alex is the location of my traineeship.

I will be working for a company called AMIDEAST and doing marketing for them. There are a lot of different aspects of marketing involved in this traineeship which is great because it'll help me decide what I want to do when I come back home. I won't be starting the traineeship for almost two weeks though because of my reception and getting settled into Alex. I do know that I have a room mate from Turkey, but that's about it for the moment. I'll find out more before I leave.

The traineeship is for 5 months but I will be there for about 6 because of the reception week and I'll be staying in Egypt for 2 weeks after the end of the traineeship. Right now, my returning flight is Jan 2. It's kinda wierd that when I see people for the last time now, I say "see you next year" and it's only July.

For the next few days I'll be running around trying to make sure I have everything before I leave, packing and saying good-byes :( I'm super excited. This is going to be an opportunity to do a lot of things I've been wanting to do. Well that's it for now. This is my official blog for the trip so I'll be posting on here hopefully at least once a week depending on how much computer access I have. But don't worry, you'll be able to hear about all the amazing adventures and experiences I'll be having plus gorgeous pics.