So far, my travels have gone smoothly. Other than being completely exhausted due to lack of sleep on the plane - I don’t know whether to blame this on the screaming baby in front of me, the anonymous farter in my vicinity, or the simple fact that my bum kept falling asleep and going numb thus creating extreme discomfort - I can’t complain about a thing. We landed in Amsterdam safe and sound and took advantage of the 12 hour layover by doing some sight seeing. And let me just say I have never seen so many bicycles in my entire life. Not only is the city covered with bikes parked everywhere, most people opt for them as their primary mode of transportation. The US really could learn a thing or two about economic efficiency, but we’ll save that topic for another day.
By the time our flight to Cairo took off, I was so worn out I slept almost the entire four hours. We finally landed here around 2:30 am, and couldn’t wait to get to our hotel rooms and get some rest. After all, we had been awake for nearly two days straight at this point. Couldn’t we just get through customs quickly, pick up our bags, find our driver, and head straight for our hotel where we were long awaiting those comfy beds? Well, that would be nice, but it’s not the Egyptian way. Things could never be that simple! It didn’t take too long getting through customs and finding our bags, but once we met with our driver, the chaos began. He met us in the airport and helped us get our luggage outside to the curb where his sidekick had the car parked. Come to find out, the car was no longer there. And before we knew it, there went our guy running around aimlessly through the crowd of people trying to find out what happened, leaving us three girls stranded on the curb with our luggage wondering what was going on. About 20 minutes later we think the car has been towed but quickly find out otherwise - the other driver got his license taken away...? We don’t ask questions. At this point we hussle up a few cabs and get our luggage loaded and off to the hotel we go. We finally arrived about 30 minutes later and got settled into our rooms, crashing asap without passing go and without collecting $200. Sleep was no longer a fantasy, but a reality. (Huge sigh of relief.)
The next day we had to be at the learning center by noon for orientation. We decided to wake up at 11 and that hour came much faster than we desired and needless to say, we were all suffering from severe jet lag. However, we had things to accomplish so off we went. The entire day was spent going here and going there trying to get our living accommodations finalized. In Cairo, when you are looking for an apartment, there are typically two ways to go about doing so. For one, you can walk around the city and when you see an appealing building, you may ask the doorman if there are any vacancies ready for move in, and if so may you take a look. Or, you could opt to use a boab like we did. A boab is a man who takes you around the area to show you different apartments (sort of like a rental agent). When we met with the boab we were under the impression that we would be able to see several different places, but instead, we saw two. After seeing these, Michelle and I head back to the center where Patrick and Haley were to discuss the options. Little did we know, our boab took us to see the exact same two places Patrick and Haley saw. After much confusion, we decide who will take which place, and begin the paperwork. The landlord tells Michelle and I we can move in the next day, once they have a chance to clean... THANK GOODNESS. The place was pretty dirty. We go back to the hotel for one last night, get up early today and head towards the center with all of our luggage, ready to move in to our new digs. We walk in and the place looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. Michelle and I were confused. Cleaning? What cleaning? Who cleaned? Oh yeah... no one did. Nor were they going to. We attempted to discuss the issue with the landlord but apparently that was offensive because she thought the place was spotless. “You want me to clean? This flat is very clean. You think it’s dirty?” Those were her exact words... At this point Michelle and I knew we were going to end up cleaning it ourselves. Long story short, we finished up the paperwork and took over the keys. Then we just looked at each other, looked around at the apartment, then looked at each other again and asked what in the world did we just do. So without wasting any time we set out to the market and got all the necessary supplies to come back to apartment 5 and begin a deep cleaning process from head to toe. We scrubbed all the floors and countertops with disinfectant, through out the loose trash, took the stained floral curtains down, removed the heinous paintings from the walls that were crooked anyways, and scraped the scum from all the surfaces. Four hours later we lost steam and decided to shower and wind down. We got a lot done and our place looks much better than before. Home sweet home for the next six months!! Ha.
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