Name your own price

Painting done on papyrus paper

Today, we went out with our tour guide for the first day and he took us to the Egyptian Museum and Coptic Cairo. Coptic Cairo is where Christianity can be found most. There is also a large Roman Catholic graveyard here along with several churches. Our guide he showed us two Christian and one Jewish. On our way back, we stopped by all the small shops along the slim alley ways that date back centuries. We walked into one and found these paintings that were hand painted on papyrus paper. Papyrus paper is what they used to write ancient scrolls on before they started just writing on the walls. So Miranda saw this and fell in love with it, as did I, seeing I had already bought a smaller one earlier. In Egypt you quickly learn, minus the department stores, there is no set price only a starting price. From there you haggle what you wish to purchase, whether it be a taxi drive, fruit on the street, earrings, and many many other things. With this piece of art we wanted to buy the vendor was asking 130LE which is about $22. When he said this, Miranda and I looked at him funny and he immediately lowered the price to 120LE. Being in Egypt this when the "Name your price game" comes in handy. I looked at him and said "80LE" he looked at me and said "90LE" we went back and forth and then said, "fine 80." He was rolling this up for us and I gave him 80LE and walked out with my first official haggle item. So I paid only $13 for a hand painted papyrus painting, rather than the original quote of $22! It is such a beautiful piece! It was an interesting experience to haggle something besides a cab. Especially since I don't have to very often.  There is usually a set price on the taxi's or a meter. This was a very cool experience for me and there will be many more to come this week when we visit The Market.

An Egyptian Emergency Room Visit

My third night in Egypt took me on a downward spiral that led me to the hospital. I wasn't feeling well before bed, but I just thought it was the infamous Cairo belly that everyone tells you about. The difference in food and air/water quality makes most expats sick in the first few months of coming. So throughout the night, I couldn't sleep at all because my body called me to the toilet every 30minutes like clock work. Throughout the night, I started to feel progressively worse. I knew I had a fever, but was still freezing cold. Our flat was super hot and I was sweating, but I also had goosebumps. And my body was very achy.

I woke Mike up around 7am to see if he would go to the pharmacy here to get me some meds that everyone recommends for Cairo Belly. He left and came back with some meds, thankfully. I took them and I think I was able to finally fall asleep for a few hours. When I woke up, I still wasn't feeling well and I started to feel super nauseous. I decided to text one of the teachers who had been here a while and ask her if those symptoms were normal.....she wrote back, "No, call Dalia."

So I called Dalia and she arranged to get the bus to come pick us up and take us to the hospital. I was a little nervous to go to the hospital but I really just wanted to feel better! And the other teachers had told me it was fine.

When we walked into the ER, there was a doctor waiting right there to greet us!!!! Can you believe it? This would never ever happen in the states. The doctor motioned for us to follow him into a room, where he then proceeded to help us! It wasn't---wait two hours for a room, get to your room, and wait two more hours! It was so fast! Oh, and they spoke perfect English.

When we got into the room, the nurse and the ER doctor took my vitals, asked my symptoms , felt around my belly.....and then told me I had food poisoning....probably from 2-3 days ago. Sooo that would have been something I ate on the airplane or in the states...Crazy! The doctor told me they would give me an IV with some meds and then give me some prescriptions to keep taking over the next 3-5 days and he gave me a strict biscuit and soup diet to follow for 3 days.

The hospital was clean. A little different from the states. Gave a white room a whole new meaning! But it was effective. The nurse took the needle for the IV out of a sealed package, wore gloves, the whole shabang. It was great service. This is what health care should look like!

My health insurance from the school doesn't start until Sept 1st, so the school actually paid for my visit. I don't know how much it was, but I am sure it was not much at all! The doctor gave me 5 prescriptions to take over the next week. When we got home, Mike took the script to the pharmacy and came home with the pills. For 5 prescriptions he paid less than 60le....which is less than $10!!! Crazy.

I will not fear the hospital here any more. It was so great. And don't we live in what some people consider to be a third world country? or even second world? I will take the health care here any day over what I would get in our first world country!

Stamped!

I have a stamp in my passport!!!!!!!!!

That is all. :)

Niagara Falls Day Trip

When we were in Rochester, NY visiting Mike's mom and step-dad, we decided to take a trip up to Niagara Falls. And since I had yet to leave the country at the time, we decided to go to the Canada side and see Horseshoe Falls. Mike's uncle suggested we drive over to Buffalo and cross the Peace bridge and drive around that way because it was a more pleasant drive. So that was our plan.

It was beautiful on our drive to Buffalo. The clouds were sooo low!

Since we were going over to Buffalo, we decided we HAD to go to the the place where buffalo wings originated! So we stopped off in Buffalo to get some delicious wings before crossing the border!

Anchor Bar, Buffalo, NY

Delicious Buffalo Hot Wings! Yum!

After a delicious lunch, we made it to the Canada border. I was so excited to be able to cross the border finally!!!! I considered asking if they would stamp my passport! Haha. The border was an interesting experience. They totally interrogated us, but we made it through! 

Canada Border!

After that, the Falls! It was a pretty hot day. The falls were beautiful! We didn't really do anything else there but visit the falls and look around the shops. The mist from the falls was crazy. It's amazing that it travels so far. Within seconds, we were dripping wet! Here are some good shots from the day. I also discovered the film grain on our camera, so there are some fun shots with the film grain setting. Visit our youtube page for videos of the falls too. http://www.youtube.com/pyramidstofourlives

Horseshoe side of the falls

Niagara side of the falls

A rainbow in the mist

Wowza!

We have been doing so much and been soo busy! We plan to do some serious catching up on the blog today, before our life gets even more chaotic. In the coming days, we have tours around Cairo, and then I start doing meetings at work. 

Just wanted to share because the next few posts are going to be jumbled and a bit out of order. 

We miss everyone!

--Miranda

Our Egyptian Paradise

So we have been here for sometime now. We have our apartment now. Living here has been incredible so far. There are not very many words to explain it. The first night we were in our new place, we were showing our place to a coworker of Miranda's and then went out to show her the balcony. That's when I saw one of the most amazing sunsets I had probably ever seen. I have seen sunsets from Hawaii, Seattle, Las Vegas, both Atlantic and Pacific Ocean sunsets but nothing compared to the sunset I saw the first night at our new place. It took a few days before I finally had the chance to take video and some pictures of the sunset to share with everyone. The original video of the sunset is 20 minutes long so here is a more condensed version of it. Also there is a few pictures below that I included.

Mike's First Impressions

My first impressions started by just the landing. Coming into Cairo the first thing I noticed was the amount of dust in the air and it was hard to see the ground at the sunset. This made me start to think "Great, this is gonna be fun to breathe here." After landing we learned that we were not going to be dropped of at the terminal, we were going to be dropped off about a mile away from the terminal on the tarmac. When I got off the plane, I was surprised to find out that my first thought was wrong. Although it was warm, the air was fine, had a somewhat of a different smell than the states. But that is no different than when you go to someone's house and it smells different than yours.

The fun truly began on our way to the terminal where I saw how they get our baggage to the terminal, they do it in truckloads. By what I saw they don't have many baggage cars. As we were driving over we saw a truck fully loaded of bags that was unstable. As soon as we rounded a corner I saw him pulled over because a bag had fallen out of his truck. Going through the visa and customs was a wlalk in the park!! It was actually waiting for our bag that was insane!! We sat and waited for our bags to show up.... and we waited...... and we waited. Finally after about a little over an hour our bags finally showing up.

After the assistant from Miranda's school met us and the driver took our bags, whew thank goodness because i was tired of caring around all of the bags. Even the bag carts were free here, rather than every other airport it cost $5 for a baggage cart. This made it much easier to manage bags. A random man helped load our bags when we got to the schools bus. This seems to be a trend here. Strangers helping you do things, and if you them even a dollar they are excited seeing the exchange rate is so big here for a USD.

Driving to our hotel is when you really start to notice the massive differences between Egypt and the US. First of all, all the talks of the driving are totally true. The driving here is very crazy. They have 4 different speed limits for cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles. So a car will go flying by while we are just putting along. They come within inches of each others bumpers when changing lanes, and the lanes are there more for guidance rather than control...lol. On the way to the hotel is when I got my first laugh if the roads here, when not once, but twice we saw a carriage on the highway here being towed not by a truck but by donkeys!!  This was a shock because that is one thing that I hadn't prepared for. The next thing is the motorcycles here, I saw one that had 4 people on it. The rules here are obviously quite different. The woman sit sideways on a bike here instead of straddling the driver. They also don't wear helmets, including the kids that I saw on the bikes. The other thing I saw was something that I used to see all the time growing up. People driving in the back of trucks. There was one truck that had 7 people in the back of it. The one thing that is different is that they are also standing in the back of the truck, I even saw one man walking on top of a truck load of dirt.

The road conditions here are dirty and the roads are full of potholes and mini speed bumps from wear. There is a lot of dust and debris on the side of the road along with people walking along the highways. When we crossed over the Nile River on the highway the bridge was littered with people sitting at tables and fishing enjoying the night. It was really cool to see this. I can't remember the last time I saw a person fishing from a bridge back home. When we got to the hotel we were greeted by 2 bellhops and they got our baggage for us and brought it up to our rooms for us. The assistant from Miranda's school helped us get checked in and left at the hotel to finally relax!!

The hotel room is amazing. King size bed, modern bathroom with two types of shower heads, nice flat screen TV and  internet. Back home this would easily be a $150 a night hotel room. The school paid for it so I have no idea what it cost. We had Chicken Shawarma for dinner and it was amazing!! It basically a chicken wrap with onions, pepper and a tahini sauce. Pizza was an option but I decided lets try some local cuisine :-). Miranda was happy about this.

So after my first impressions it seems to be so far so good. I am very excited about being here and a lot of my concerns have already been dismissed. I'm excited to go out and find our new home today but first thing is first...... BREAKFAST!!