9.17.09

So I came here for school, right? Well that doesn't seem to be happening. The Egyptian Health Ministry has shut down all international schools due to a swine flu, sorry President Obama, I mean an H1N1 scare. So school is closed until at least October 3rd. I've already been in Cairo for 2.5 weeks with nothing to do, I couldn't do another 2.5 weeks here with nothing to do so I bought a ticket to Morocco. Not sure what I'm doing there yet, but I leave next Tuesday Sept. 22nd and have 10 days in country! I'm trying to set up a hiking tour into the Atlas mountains, spend 2 or 3 days in Fez and 1 day in Ouarzazate.

I have more examples of Egyptian inefficiency. Our toilet had been coined "the best toilet in Cairo." It flushed, didn't clog and only leaked a little as the bowl refilled. When hanging out at the nearby cafes, friends would ask to borrow the key and use the facilities. Well this quickly changed when the toilet stopped working properly. It only took a plumber 1 week to stop by and when he finally came over to play in his element, he spent 20 minutes jiggling different parts (the same things I had been doing) and didn't fix anything. He said he'd be back the next night to fix it. Well he came back, played some more and ended up breaking a piece of the toilet. The third straight night he came it was finally fixed and once again we have "the best toilet in Cairo," although it leaks a little more when refilling now, but at least the leak is on the side of the toilet where the bathroom drain is!

The other night I decided to cook dinner here for the first time. Of course this led to a fiasco. I wanted to use some minced garlic in one of the dishes and since I don't have a garlic press here I did it the old fashioned way. Placed that clove on the counter and crushed it flat. Not going to the gym for the past 5 months must have somehow made me stronger because I managed to break the counter. As I was pressing the counter snapped in half, literally, the only thing keep the counter on the wall was that it was attached to the sink. After breaking the "stone" slab, I looked underneath it. Here I discovered the brilliance of Egyptian inefficiency once again, although this time it may have been efficiency. Underneath I notice that there's metal support beams on the side of the counter that is blocked by the stove/oven, but on the side that is accessible, there was NO support. Seems like inefficient engineering, but at the same time seems like a totally efficient idea. The man who installed the counter basically insured himself of a future job. I found the fact that I broke the counter pretty hilarious, in fact my real estate broker and landlord had a good laugh too. Unfortunately they were speaking in Arabic, but from what I could understand I think they were slightly laughing about how I'm bigger than the average person here, but really laughing because a man was in the kitchen cooking dinner (a man that lives with two women).