So it's been almost 2 weeks here in Egypt so far. I should have updated this thing much earlier, because now, sooo much has happened already that I don't know where to start. I'll just tell you the story, take some time... :) If you don't want to read it all, read the summary in the end of the post. :)
I arrived in Cairo and we (the new team and 2 of the old team) left Cairo straight away to do 2 days of team to team transition. It was 43 degrees hot that day. We had the choice of going to Marina on the north cost or to an oasis in the desert, Fayyum. We went to Fayyum. :-) Apart from the fact that all the mosquitoes on this planed happened to gather that weekend at exactly that place it was totally cool. We had small extremely cute houses we lived in and a pool. Because of the heat, we held most of the sessions in the pool which is quite a new experience to me. :-)
After the extremely stressful time I had before coming here, this weekend was the perfect thing to get my mind settled in the whole Egypt thing. I had conversations with everyone from the team and our predecessors and I just knew, and still know that I'm really looking forward for this year and to working with them.
Here they are: (from left to right)Me, Bahaa, Abdo, Hossam, Ash, Annika, and in the back Fawzy and Sami our predecessors.
We came back from Fayyum and since at that point I didn't have an apartment yet, I moved into Abdo's house. The day after we started to work. The Muslim weekend is Friday and Saturday, so you start work on Sunday which is strange, especially if it gets to Thursday, and you think you still have one day to finish your work for the week and you suddenly realize, ah, no, actually not, because the week is over... :-D
So after having worked for one day, Abdo and Bahaa went to Alexandria to meet up with their VPs. And spontaneously I joined them, since I had to meet with mine anyway. So we took the train (...isn't that funny? For the Swiss people at least. You think that the train is such an important factor in a Swiss live and you believe that in Africa it would not be. and then on the first week you ride the train. :D)
Boa, arriving in Alex, what a cool thing. Alexandria is an awesome place to be. It's not that hot, there is fresh air, you can get anywhere in a short time and there is the beach! The plan was that Abdo would stay in Alex and Bahaa and I would take the last train in the evening back to Cairo. Hm. It turned out that we had a cool relaxing night and at the point of time we started to care about train tickets, they were sold out. So we decided to take the first train in the morning and spend the night at the beach cabin of one of the AIESECers. We slept for some very short hours and got up at 6 to catch the train as early as possible.
Back in Cairo we designed the agenda for the upcoming conference, met up with VPs did other work. In between my body tried to adjust to the Egyptian food and failed terribly at it. It's still failing. :S Unfortunately, with the heat, the packed days, the small amount of sleep and other stuff, my body went on strike twice so far and I spend 2 nights sick in bed. :-(
Ok, back to the story.
On Friday there is the birthday party of a friend, outside of Cairo, in this extremely unbelievably huge house with pool. What Abdo and I did not bring were the bikini and swimming shorts. :( So we could not go into the water although it was unbearably hot. This led us to the decision: Let's go to Alexandria the next day to have some good sea food, smoke sheesha and of course go swimming in the sea. So that's what we did and that's how I ended up going to Alexandria twice within one week :D.
So the next day, we wake up early (because I volunteered to go help out at this event of a friend of a friend...) and afterwards we made our way through the Cairo traffic jungle to the station. Oh, surprise: the train is sold out. We decide to take a Project (extremely random name for a mini bus, don't ask). This works out just fine. Until we notice, that this Project is actually not going to Alexandria. So we get out of the Project at the highway somewhere in Egypt. Fortunately it was not that far away from Alex after all and someone came to pick us up after we had time to contemplate on the dirtiness of the water that is running next to the highway and generally about all animals on the planet.
We go to Alexandria, I love it, we had the best sea food ever in my live and did all kinds of random funny activities. It would be too long of a list to actually go into them, but it was a very cool night. We even managed to go swimming at night.
Next morning, of course we don't get tickets for the train, we don't get a project eighter and we arrive back in cairo for work 4 hours late and without sleep...
And since then I was busy working, I got sick and I wanted to move to my appartment, but I didn't have time yet. So I'm still staying at Abdo's which is cool. But at some point I will move.
Summary: It's awesome here in Egypt. I love it a lot and I'm not having second thoughts if this was the right decision, I know it was. I have had the most intense week in a long time, with so much happening that I cannot even believe it has only been a week. My work is exciting and I have a good team, Egypt is an awesome place to be at and there are a million things to do and discover. I'm very happy to be here.
and some more pics:
Take over night. The night when the new MC officially became the current MC
Abdo and me. He is the one I'm staying at at the moment.
Our office
and more will come soon...
