Cairo- Week 4: My new (sometimes yucky) routine

Saturday, February 13, 2010 at 11:12am

This Tuesday I will have been in Egypt for exactly a month. I can’t believe it, time goes by quickly. It will probably continue to go by quickly since I have started my class. I was initially afraid that they may have placed me in the wrong level but level three is appropriate for me at least vocabulary wise. There is sooo much vocabulary. I am busy looking up every word even the instructions to the assignments. There are 9 people in my class. I don’t even know all of their names. The class is all women (the women have a separate building near the men’s building). Five of the girls in the class are between the ages 18-24. There is one American girl (the only other American besides me) who is in Egypt with her Aunt, she is 13. Then there are two middle-aged women in the class (like mid-forties). So besides the Americans, there is one Nigerian, and the rest of the class is either Asian or from some place like Russia or Tajikistan. I have gathered that the most of the people at the center are from Russia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, or some country that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. Then there are a lot of Asians (i.e. Chinese and Indonesian). Actually I think this is my first time ever meeting a Chinese or Russian Muslim. Apparently there are a lot of Muslims in eastern Europe. My teacher is Egyptian she is very nice. Her name is Afaf and she is 29 just like me!

My class is at 2:30 pm in the afternoon. I wanted an 8:00 am class so I could avoid being lazy and waking up late in the morning. Surprisingly I have been doing good staying up after Salatul Fajr (5:45 am). I walk about 6 minutes to the bus stop and take about a two minute microbus ride to the stop near Al-Fajr Center. I walk back home though because we get out of class at 5:30 pm and the buses are packed and there is no point in standing and waiting for the bus. If I walk really fast I can get home in 20 minutes before it is really dark out. I can tell from walking home there are others that go to Al-Fajr Center that live in this neighborhood. There seems to be quite of few non-Egyptians in this neighborhood. It is very easy to spot the Russian and Asian men. They are usually the ones in the thobes with the high water pants and the really BIG beards (the Asians have smaller beards). Most of the women who attend Al-Fajr Center wear niqab (face veil) so really I never know if I am passing someone familiar on the street. I can only hope they wave if they recognize me.

All-in-all things are going well. I am just developing a routine. One unfortunate routine I have now is spraying Raid every night. Yep, we have roaches! I have seen at least one roach a day since I moved in. The first roach I saw was crawling across the mattress as I was putting new sheets on my bed the first night I was here. Thank God I decided against using the bedding that was already here. So, now I check my bed every night. Since then I have only seen roaches in the bathroom and the kitchen. It is very disturbing to see a roach crawling across the towel you use to wipe your face or in the drawer with the cooking utensils. Needless to say I went online to find out the best way to kill roaches. My answers so far are raid, Clorox, and a boric acid mixture. I spray raid then dump bleach down the drains. I now have this boric acid mixture that is supposed to really work. Since I have been spraying I haven’t seen any roaches in the day in very obvious places. Now, I only see them at night right before I go spray or right after I spray (running from the fumes). I just started with putting out the boric acid. They say it takes about two weeks to work. The roaches are supposed to eat the boric acid mixture then take it back to their nest and poison all the other roaches. We’ll see, Inshallah. I read online the two sure ways to get rid of roaches is boric acid or burning your place down. For the sake of everyone who lives in this apartment building I really hope the boric acid works! Until next time peeps.

Me singing: The Roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! We don’t need no water……