Egypt Update

Ahhh...my rank list is finally turned in (see prev post for explanation) and now I can relax relatively stress free until March 15th when Match Day comes along!

In the meantime Cairo has been going well. I am living in an area of the city called Ma'adi, which is about 70+% expats...mainly embassy, oil, and military people from US and UK. I was expecting at least a small amount of adventure in my day to day life which I am sorry to report does not really exist. To put it into perspective I am closer to a McDonalds, Quizonos, Pizza Hut and KFC than I am to a single Egyptian or Lebanese food restaraunt! Oh and here all the fast foods joints deliver to your door...come to think of it I think you can get pretty much anything delivered here including beer and groceries!

As for my daily routine I get picked up everyday by one of the Navy people, go to work in my nice cozy climate controled lab. I work with three lovely Egyptian girls, one of whom I have become pretty good friends with named Myriam. Then I work out at the NAMRU gym and then am driven back home in my bullet proof glass vehicle. When I go out on the week nights it is either with one of the Navy people of one of my Egyptian co-workers and usualy consists of shopping or going out to eat. Otherwise I stay home and watch Sex and the City on DVD...my preferred activity of course = ) On weekends there is usually an embassy or house party to go to with the young and beautiful Egyptian scensters and expats from all over the world. Don't get me wrong...it is a nice comfy life, but certainly not full of daredevil adventure. However I did have to cross the corniche (aka, the deathtrap anarchic highway that runs along the nile) a few times on foot the other day which was actually the closest I've come to death in a loooong time! Take the thrills where you can get them I say!

As a nice change I finally got out of the city last weekend. My friend Myriam and I went to Ain Soukhna on the Red Sea close to the Suez Canal. It is basically just a resort are with no real town to speak of. We stayed in a big resort complex with multiple hotels and a private beach with half board (b-fast and dinner) included. Not my normal thing but it was definitly cushy and relaxing.
Here I will swallow the urge to get preachy about responsible tourism and my belief in supporting the local economy instead of pouring money into the fat pockets of an Italian Mega Hotel corporation because in this case, that would make me a hippocrate with a mild sunburn...
Unfortunatly it was still a wee bit chilly for the beach so most of the time we were fully clothed on the beach chairs with towels wrapped around us to stay warm and would then quickly shed down to our swim-suits when the wind would die and the sun would fully present itself for a few precious minutes at a time.

Then on Monday I was able to go with someone from the lab on a site visit to Alexandria and to another rural hospital in the Nile delta region. The project we were going for is an acute febrile illness surveillence project which tests blood samples for Rickettsia, Lepto, Brucella, and the nl blood pathogens. The site visits themselves are not that exciting, mainly you go in greet the hospital admin people, talk about bird flu and drink tea (of course), then I try to stay awake as everyone chats in Arabic and then finally we pick up our samples and replace their supplies. On both visits, some friendly person would offer to show me around and then some not nice person would inevitably get mad that some foreigner was walking around without them being informed of it...there is a lot of petty self important power tripping in medicine all over the world I suppose...oops, am I getting jaded already???

But in the end I made it through unscathed and full of tea and was able to collect on my reward which was a night in Alexandria at a VERY lovely hotel perched above the Mediterranean in the gardens of the last kings summer palace. The key to Alexandria is to not go in with and grand expectations and just enjoy it for it's simple charms...like eating incredable fresh caught seafood next to the main city mosque...walking along the waterfront to watch seemingly half the population out fishing out on the rocks...or sitting for hours in one of the period cafes smoking a sheesha pipe and drinking mint tea...

Or as in my case, you can spend most of the time sitting on your balcony eating apples, enjoying the fresh sea air and admiring the ocean view to my right and a palace view to my left!