quiet and safe again

After the previous post's described misadventure, I needed a break from the city. I am not used to city living, so three days was very overwhelming when dumped right in the middle of downtown Cairo. I slept in, well as much as you can when woken up by traffic. And once awake can't go back to sleep because of those horns.

My roommate took me to gad. It is a cheap place to eat fast food of the Egyptian variety, I guess it would be considered. We got fiteer and ful and french fries. Fiteer is a pancake sort of substance, and the kind I got was of the drenched in creme variety. The french fries were very salty and covered in grease. I am finding it hard to eat healthy here so far. After eating, we walked around to try and find a water filter for our sink so we can drink the water from our tap. We fruitlessly searched for about an hour or two. We ended up in the poorer section of town which got kind of dirty, kind of like to poor sections back home. We didn't know where the shops that sold this gizmos were since unlike in America, one shop sells one product or one type of product. Therefore, we need to walk around and discover these shops. Here is the thing that I have discovered to be true about Egyptians, and I actually read this somewhere before I think. If you ask for directions, they will give them to you whether they know or not. One guy my roommate asked said go straight, turn right, and ask again. Pretty cool.

We returned home, I feeling not overwhelmed with the city because I was with someone who was both Egyptian and spoke Arabic. I even helped us find our way back because I remembered the way that we came.

Then the afternoon was spent relaxing. We played around on our computers, watched Desperate Housewives, Friends, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in English with Arabic subtitles. We both ended up taking naps too, much needed I must say when dealing with this city. My roommate disapeared, I thought to go to the bathroom and when he didn't come back, I closed my eyes and well you know the way of it. We both slept around five or six hours. Got up, got more food at Gad this time ful and ta'amiya. I must digress and tell you the awesomeness of these two dishes. They are both served in small pita breads. Ful is beans that you can get with tomatoes and such, ta'amiya is something fried with parsley. Very good and possibly a little healthier, at least the ful.

Then talked with some folk back home and slept. Like I said easy and safe. The kind of day I needed after yesterday.