Friday, September 07, 2007

Winding Down

"I spent a solid hour with the Verizon rep on the phone doing a series of acrobatic exercises in an attempt to get the DSL to work. They are coming to see Mister Javins tomorrow between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m."

I giggled. Craig is temporarily in my apartment in Jersey City, having left Cairo a few days ago after nearly a year here. He had to pretend to be my husband to get the phone company to deal with him and my apparently broken DSL.

The idea of being home is appealing in some ways, but home sure makes for some dull blogging. I'm heading home in a few weeks myself. Trading in Herding-Mohammeds for chasing the phone company doesn't sound so exciting. But it will be nice to go back to the gym and have my kitchen back, as living in a hotel makes for a questionable diet. I'm not sure yet how Craig feels about being home (it hasn't shown up on his blog yet). He probably has mixed feelings, like most people after a year abroad.

Before he left, Craig took me by the juice store on 26th of July Street. A store full of fruit, where a man behind the corner squished fruits into juice, then funneled the juice into plastic water bottles. I took the last swig of water from a small water bottle, handed it over, and got it back full of freshly squeezed mango juice.



Here are Craig's photos of the juice store.

Now I really want a mango juice.

4 comments:

Marc Siry said...

Does Egypt have the same issues as Mexico- i.e. the local water is full of local fauna that will upset your non-local stomach, and thus you need to be careful about eating fruits and such that may have been washed in said water?

Marie Javins said...

Either Cairo's water has so much chlorine in it that it doesn't matter, or else I've been exposed to so many different kinds of fauna that I don't notice anymore. I haven't gotten that kind of sick and I eat salad all the time.

Anonymous said...

You must value your online time highly, Marie, to pay for a DSL account even when you’re not around to use it.

With all the recent talk about crumbling infrastructure in the U.S. after the Minneapolis-area bridge collapse, people must wonder how residents of foreign cities fare. U. S. residents just take it for granted that the city’s water supply is safe to drink. But Cairo--the city’s been there since 969 A.D., I see. There can’t be much original infrastructure left (?!). Cairo’s Wikipedia entry refers to (some) people living in “Garbage Cities.”

I suppose the living conditions of a Cairene vary with the disposable income.

You don’t have to be infected with something to become ill. I work overnight (10;30 pm to 7 am), but switch back to day hours on my nights off. One problem with that routine is an occasional combination of headache, sleepiness, and nausea that seems to be caused by the metabolic disruption resulting from the change in sleeping patterns. The sickness never occurs during the workweek, only during nights off.

Steven R. Stahl

Anonymous said...

My understanding of the whole only eat veggies and fruits you can peel is that it has to do with the fertilizer....

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