Last Egypt post :(

Well my time in Egypt is officially over. This will be my last post about Egypt. It’s still not really sinking in that I’m finished with everything, even though I packed up my whole apartment and am in another country. I decided to make a list of things that I’ll miss and definitely not miss.
Things I’ll miss
~Otlob.com: call me ridiculous, but there is something extremely convenient about being able to just log in and order food instead of calling a place directly to do it. A few clicks and you have a meal!

~Pub 55 and Friday’s/Fusion: our frequent weekend hangouts. They put up with a lot from us, and I’ll miss hanging out in those places.

~My friends: I feel like this is an obvious one.

~Some of my students: While I’m not going to miss actually teaching the kids, they were adorable and I’ll miss their smiling faces.

~The conversion rate: I was living a pretty good life with my pay, and still managed to save a lot of money.
Things I won’t miss
~Dust/sand storms

~Call to prayer: not to sound closeminded, but the reason I won’t miss this one is because there was a speaker projecting the call to prayer directly outside our apartment, so we got it full blast four times a day.

~The flies

~The heat

~The garbage everywhere

~Crazy taxi drivers/ Egyptian men

~Teaching

~Slow internet (my internet in my hostel in Tokyo is RIDICULOUSLY fast!)

As you can see, my things I won’t miss list a lot longer, which is one of the main reasons I’m coming back. Well, that and I feel as though I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to.

My flight to Tokyo was interesting to say the least. I got to the gate and through security just as they had begun loading the plane. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise anyone if I said that I was the only white person on the flight. I think there was a Japanese tour group on the flight as well, and a handful of Egyptians. I was the only person that was clearly not one of those two groups. People kept giving me odd looks as we were boarding, and one of the flight attendants even asked me what my nationality was and questioned my reasons for being on this flight. We took off pretty well and were on our way when a half an hour into the flight they announced that one of the passengers was sick and they were turning around and heading back to Cairo so the doctors could check them out.

At this point I should probably mention the craziness that as erupted in Egypt due to the swine flu. First of all, they killed all the pigs in Egypt as a precaution, even though we all know that pigs don’t spread the disease and the likely hood of any of those pigs carrying a strain of the virus was slim to none. Secondly at the airport, there are tons of people wearing face masks and they stop everyone getting off the flight so they can keep track of the foreigners in the country. People around Cairo were wearing face masks as well. Egyptians are prone to panic, and swine flu was no exception. People were scared out of their mind, and if you mentioned to them that you were leaving the country, they would exclaim that you couldn’t leave now because of the disease. ‘You’ll get the disease and die!’ I’ve heard that several times. They listen to rumors like crazy, one of them being that the Israelis were sneaking into their country just to spread the disease, or that the face masks don’t really help at all but instead make it worse, or even that the pigs were all contaminated. Everyone is convinced that Egypt is the only safe place in the whole world, but the swine flu IS coming so we need to be careful.
Anyways, they turned our plane around and went back to the airport. There we sat on the runway for two hours as they paraded about nine doctors – all wearing facemasks – to the back of the plane, just to discover that all the passenger had was a stomach flu. People all over the plane started putting on facemasks and the pilot announced that this doctor visit was ‘for our safety’. I didn’t need to be told it was a swine flu emergency, you know when the facemasks come out, that’s what the panic is. I was going out of my mind with boredom, and I just rolled my eyes at the crazy Egypt ways. This whole ordeal put our flight THREE HOURS behind schedule for a stomach flu. Though I suppose I should have been surprised that we even took off on time.

Malesh Egypt. Malesh.

Pete was in Egypt last week, and it was good timing because not only did he take a lot of my stuff back with him, but we also went to a bunch of important places. It was a nice send off for me to see all the historic places one last time before I left. We went to so many places, and I had a blast having him here. I hope he had fun as well, Egypt is a big culture shock when you compare it to America. Also there isn’t much to do once you get past the big things – pyramid, museum, sphinx, Nile. A week is more than enough time in Egypt.

But in a week I’ll be back in Chicago! I’m excited to be back in the states. Right now I’ve got some Tokyo exploring to do :)