My First Day in Cairo

So, that previously mentioned Friday thing didn't prove to be a major impediment. We definitely saw shops that were closed, but we got our shopping done fine. I went out with 8 other girls from my floor of the apartment building, and we had lunch at a restaurant near AUC (and, subsequently, near our apartments) called, I believe, Pottery Café. It was mostly Western-style food, and mine wasn't very good (I had a baked potato with sour cream, only... not really), but a lot of the other girls liked theirs. It was, as promised, very cheap (about 42 LE for all 9 of us, which is like a $7 for 9 people.

After that, we went to Radio Shack and I got a SIM card for my cell phone, so now I have an Egyptian phone number. Then we went to the Alpha Market on Zamalek, a swanky island in the Nile. It was a supermarket-style grocery store, which was nice since we were all tired and had a lot of shopping to do, although in the future we'll probably shop at the neighborhood markets. Some of the products were imports, and those were all quite expensive, but it meant that we could have gotten Honey Bunches of Oats (although we didn't). They even have my exact shampoo and conditioner, although very expensively. Anyhow, one of my roommates was with me, and we bought stuff to cook. Then for dinner tonight we had lentil soup and pita, which is a nice, properly Egyptian offset to the fact that we went to a few very Western-style places today. I also managed to straighten out my internet issues, and work Skype properly (I talked to Danny).

My friend Sarah is still staying with me because of housing issues, but she apparently has a spot in Zamalek dorm and will be gone tomorrow - kind of a drag, because we had applied to be roommates, but good because she'll have a real bed instead of having to sleep on my sofa.

I'm also uploading some photos to my Flickr album, in case you want to see. I have some pictures from Heathrow and Cairo International, around Cairo, and my apartment.