Still in One Piece

Hello everyone!

Well, I finally got to Egypt after some long, long flights, and we've been busy with orientation. I've toured Cairo, taken the first of many Arabic classes, and am getting to know the Agouza marketplace.

My sad story so far: last night about 12 am when I opened my suitcase to quickly uinpack the necesseties and then head to bed, I found a huge black, chunky globby mess. After inspecting the substance, I found that the plastic on my hair gel bottle had cracked, as had the plastic on some loose leaf tea that Emily had sent along with me. Other things, such as my semester's supply of batteries, had come out of their ziploc bags, and were covered in the mess. The whole miserable glob was all throughout half of my suitcase and was at least three or four inches deep. I spent the next hour and a half trying to clean everything off, but I'm not sure the glop will ever leave the cranies of my suitcase. As I continued, I found that my little mirror had broken, and there were tiny shards of glass in everything. My new flatmate Tara was really sweet and offered to give me some of her extra supplies, but it was a disaster.

Since I couldn't fall asleep on any of the flights, I hadn't slept for about 24 hours, and I finally had to stop because I kept getting really dizzy. I finally fell asleep around 3:30 am, so I'm still pretty tires, but things promise to be better. I'm excited to get to know the neighborhood and to learn more Arabic so that I can communicate better. The only word I'm comfortable using in conversation with locals now is shokran, or thank you.

Until later,
Linda