This is hawawshy, the first meal I had in Egypt. Mmmmm....
From left to right: Mhairi, me, and Joelle. These are the first girls that I met here.
When Bonnie and I arrived at the other girls' apartment, I was impressed once again by the housing the school was providing us with. Their apartment had a smaller living room than mine, but it had a beautiful kitchen area with large marble countertops and big, spacious cupboards.
Mhairi and Joelle greeted me with big smiles, and I knew immediately I was going to like them. Joelle is from Pittsburg and has a very sweet, pleasant personality. She looks a lot like Kate Hudson, (the actress in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days---Goldie Hawn's daughter), and has the cutest little laugh. Joelle joined the Peace Corps immediately after finishing college, and she has spent the past two years working in a very small village in Burkina Fassu, in West Africa. She has shared some amazing stories with me about her life there; living in a small hut with no water or electricity, biking 10 miles to and from the nearest store for supplies, and just differences in general about culture and the way of life living in a village where 90% of the people have never had any type of a formal education.
Mhairi is, so far, my favorite girl here, and is the most like me in her ways of thinking and her personality. She is from Scotland, but spent the past year teaching English in Turkey. She has the most adorable Scottish brogue accent, and she also has a slight lisp, which makes her even more fun to listen to. These are some of my favorite things that she has said so far...
Asked by Katie, (my American roommate).."Mhairi, do you call French fries fries or chips?" Mhairi's reply: "I was living with American roommates for the past year now, so I call chips fries and I also say pants for trousers; even though I'm well aware that pants are knickers." I say, "I thought knickers meant underwear." "They are," she says. "Well, what are bloomers then?" I ask. "For fucks sake Sarah, bloomers go down to yer knees, and nobody wears bloomers anymore, what do ya think, we're livin' in a Charles Dickens novel here?"
The other day I was talking to Mhiari about the students that I was teaching in the ghettos of Chicago and how poor most of them are, which led to a discussion of the American and Scottish welfare systems. The Scots have a system very similar to ours, where people can have multiple children and stay on welfare for years, living completely free off of the government, getting their housing paid for, food stamps, etc.
What I found the most amusing about this is she explained to me that the people who are on welfare in Scotland are called Neds or Chevs, and they usually wear track suits, love to wear fake bling, (super large necklaces and earrings made with fake gold and diamonds), live in government housing with at least 6 or 7 children, and name their children very unusual things like Channel (pronounced Chanel, as in Chanel No. 5 perfume, but they just don't know how to spell it so it looks like channel...as in t.v. channel), Tamia and Lakesha. What? In Scotland? I find this very funny. These are totally American, Jerry Springer-ish kind of names. Most girls in Scotland are named old Scottish, Gaelic names such as Agnes.
Mhairi went on to tell me that, as is common in many big cities where girls are poor and uneducated, many of the Chevs get pregnant as young teens. But, in Scotland, the girls are usually sent away while they're pregnant, and then they come back to school afterwards. When the other kids ask the teachers where they've been, the teachers make something up, but Mhairi says they all know very well the girls have been "up the duff" (knocked up).
Another favorite Mhairi-ism of mine is the following: we will be out walking, on the way to get a coffee or down the street to one of the stores to set supplies and she will say "Ugh! It's so frickin' hot here, I can't stand it! It's like Africa or something." To which one of us always replies..."Mhairi, we ARE in Africa!" She also has a habit of saying "Are you from Syria??" whenever someone says or does something that she thinks is stupid. It is her way of saying "Are you frickin' serious?" She says "Are you from Syria?" SO often than the rest of us have all started saying it now too.
I digress, back to my first night meeting these girls. We all walked to a place called Scores a few blocks away to have coffee and get something to eat. I was happy that Turkish coffee was on the menu, it's my absolute favorite, but I was disappointed to see mostly Western food listed on the men. I LOVE middle-eastern food, and was hoping to have some falafel or hummus and pita bread. Bonnie explained, (as I had already learned from the research I had done before coming to Egypt), that there are many foreigners living in Maadi, my neighborhood, so many of the restaraunts serve food that caters to them.
There was something called hawashy on the menu, which is a type of hamburger mixed with Egyptian spices and served between a common bread here, so since it seemed to be the most common Egyptian dish they had, I ordered it...and it was excellent!
The girls and I talked about things and got to know each other a little, but our conversation eventually began to taper off. Joelle had been in Egypt about 4 days and was the first teacher here, so Bonnie had been showing her around and she knew where a few things were in our neighborhood. But, Mhairi had arrived the day before and was still a bit out of sorts, and I was completely jet-lagged at that point; all I really wanted to do was sleep, so we left the restaurant after about an hour an headed home.
Bonnie said goodbye to us and took a cab home, and the girls and I walked back to our street. Once inside my apartment, I turned on the a.c., (it was literally a hundred degrees inside there...thank goodness we have air conditioning), and got ready for bed.
I found that my "bedding" consisted of one sheet that covered the mattress, two sofa pillows without pillowcases (and mysterious stains on them...hence, I wasn't about to use them), one thick, scratchy red blanket, and 1 king-sized pillow with pillow case. I tossed the sofa pillows and red blanket under the bed, and decided to lie upon the sheet that was already on the bed and just use a sweater to cover up with if I got cold, which I doubted that I would. I could have checked the other bedroom for more sheets, but I was so tired at that point, I couldn't move.
I collapsed into bed and was asleep almost instantly. This, for anyone who knows me, is extremely rare. I have "restless mind syndrome," a term I've made up for myself; I can't shut my thoughts off at night and my mind usually races with ideas and reflections from the day. On top of that, I'm a very light sleeper who wakes up to any little sound. Thankfully, the air conditioner sounded like a diesel truck, and was drowning out any other noises going on in the building, and I sank into the deepest sleep I've had in years.
