Author: Robin Chartier

While Josh is out fighting the Evil Empire, otherwise known as T.E. Data, I thought I’d post some pictures of ….

 

a happy and healthy baby — someone I haven’t seen in a few days. She saw the dr this am though, and she just has a nasty cough. Too bad that nasty cough makes her gag and choke and throw up on me regularly.

 

the boys doing their daily journal writing. Calvin likes to write about the things we do, while Carter always tries to sneak in sentences like, “Calvin is a butt-head” because he knows it will make Calvin crazy.

 

Caleb during journal entry time. I thought he was writing, but he really was just playing PSP. *sigh*

 

 

If you ask the boys what their favorite thing about Egypt is, they’ll say, “our backyard.” I love it too. Yesterday they were running up and down our hallway and I was able to send them outside to play basketball instead. Most people here don’t have that option.

 

 

Hoping to have some good news about the internet soon. The latest update to the epic saga was that Josh supposedly had to go to the office in person, with his passport, to get the cancellation number so we can set up service with the new company. Crossing my fingers . . .

Josh is trying to set up satellite TV here at the house because he needs to be able to watch Arabic news and other shows as part of becoming fluent, keeping up with current events here in the Middle East, and so they can watch soccer, of course.

So Josh calls the satellite company that everyone uses and they say, “we’re switching over our system right now and aren’t taking new customers.” He asks, “so when will you be taking new customers?” She replies, “hmm, maybe one month. Maybe two. Call back one month.” (I have the sudden urge to say, “No soup for you! come back one year!)

Instead Josh is going to get TV “the Egyptian way” and he is currently out with our boab (the guy who maintains the property, washes the cars, sweeps the street, carries groceries up for us, etc.) to buy a satellite dish and decoder box so he can get the free Arabic channels. We won’t have American channels, but I’ll catch up with re-runs when we get back. Besides, watching TV is almost painful without my DVR.

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Josh was successful with the TV hunt. He went out and bought a dish/receiver and had someone come and install it all for about $80 (American). Now we have 525 channels of Arabic speaking goodness. And as a bonus we have about 5 English language channels. One that seems to play all the Terminator movies on a continual loop and another plays The Simpsons, Alias, and The OC pretty often. Maybe I’ll have to start watching those. When I turned on the TV, Caleb asked if I was going to watch Judge Judy. Ah, he knows me well. Unfortunately, Judy will have to wait until next year.

On the internet hunt he is still coming up empty. He got a call last night saying he had to get our phone number released from the previous company. After calling them they said, “wait an hour and we’ll call back with the cancellation confirmation.” Um, that didn’t happen. So he called again this morning and they said, “wait one hour and we’ll call you back with the cancellation number.” Hilarious.

Update: He waited a few hours and called back: “We’re having technical difficulties. Call back one hour.” Several hours later he keeps calling back and all he’s getting is a busy signal. Maybe they disconnected their number and fled town . . .

at least that’s what Santa’s riding around on here in Egypt.

We went to have breakfast with Santa and after breakfast he came riding in on a camel, tossing candy out of his bag to the crowd. Then the kids got to sit on his lap and each got a gift and a candy cane.

 

One of the things about Egypt is that nothing is as easy as it should be/would be in America. For example, setting up our internet has taken 2 phone calls, a trip to the embassy, a short and a long visit to the Etisalat store and we still don’t have internet at the house. (I have internet because the first day we were here, Josh bought this cool USB drive that provides internet to the device that it is plugged into and you can recharge it – kind of like a pay as you go phone).

So the first time he tried to order internet service, the company told him that in order to begin service, he would have to have the name and cell phone number of the last person to have service in our apartment so he could “take over the account.” The last date they had service listed was in 2006. Um, OK. Next! So he tried a different company. This one needed a copy of our lease agreement and they could proceed. So Josh goes to the embassy, gets a letter verifying that we are authorized occupants of the apartment and is ready to go get internet. Or not.

When he gets to the store, they decide they don’t like the letter from the embassy, they want the actual copy of the lease agreement. The letter even states that the embassy will not provide that info for security purposes. *sigh* After a 5 minute “discussion,” they agree to accept Josh’s paperwork.

Oops, it turns out that they can’t provide service to our phone number, even though when he was there 2 days ago they said they could provide service. Something about their circuits being full – or not, since after several back and forths with the manager, they agree to proceed.

Next, long, long time inputting info in the computer. Thankfully, I was not there. I was punching and kicking my heart out at NT while Josh had all the kids with him, running a “quick” errand. Camille was not happy that I was not there and screamed her heart out the entire time, but I won’t blame that on the Egyptians.

When they finally got all of the info processed and Josh went to pay, their card swiper wasn’t working. After many attempts, Josh gave up and hiked to an ATM . . . that didn’t work. So he hiked to a different one and returned with cash. Now we’re waiting for a phone call or a visit from someone who is supposedly going to install it sometime in the next two weeks. “Insha Allah.”

** ( it means God willing – basically the Egyptian equivalent of “we’ll see.” )

So the other day when we were taking the “drive of death,” our eventual destination was Carrefour (pronounced “car – four”), the Egyptian version of Super Wal-Mart. We needed to buy a shower curtain and some other incidentals and figured that it was time to experience Carrefour for ourselves.

We had heard horror stories about how crowded it is and the pushing and shoving that goes on, but we must have gotten lucky because it felt like shopping in a normal Wal-Mart (if you consider that lucky).

Checking out the flat screen TVs. All the electronic items cost more here than they do in America. 

For example, you could buy a Wii here, but it costs 2222 Egyptian Pounds (LE) — about $385 American. Almost twice as much as it would cost at home.  

They had several aisles dedicated to Christmas decorations.

 Caleb liked Egyptian Santa.

Ah, Aquafina. How I love thee.
We found that the only thing that was truly cheap at Carrefour was the bottled water. Normally a bottle this size will run $1.50 – 2.00. Here? Only about 40 cents. (and no extra recycling fee tacked on either.) Even our shower curtain ran about $12 (70 LE) for a thin one that will just last the year.

Now over to the grocery side of the store:

 

Anybody want some cabbage?

Carter was happy to see red lentils (he really does like them!)

mmm . . . spices!
(although buying them out of open containers like that seems a little bit sketchy, especially seeing the way my kids were sticking their noses in each one and smelling them . . .*shudder*)