the early shift

More Ramadan news: I am going to have excellent work hours. At my company, everyone will work 5 hours a day in one of three shifts: either 8-1, 9-2, or 10-3. I know it seems obscenely early (or maybe just to me, who has been arriving at work at 11:00 for the last two months), but this is so people can wake up and eat breakfast before sunrise, do some work, and then go take a nice long nap before iftar at sundown. That also takes care of the lunch question -- I will just wait until I leave work.

At first I optimistically thought I would take the 9-2 shift and then be productive, but I think we all know that neither one will happen. I will oversleep and arrive for the late shift, and then when I am done I will take a nap instead of doing something productive. But hey, at least it's a culturally appropriate nap. Woo!

Anyway, this week... well, a new girl, C, arrived from the U.S., so I am no longer the newbie in my group of friends. Yay, now I feel very officially integrated. It's kind of cool that I am now in a position to be giving advice on Cairo when I still feel like I could use some. But then, I don't know that that feeling ever goes away when you live in a foreign country. I have been here for two months now, so that's something. Otherwise it was mostly a chill week, though last night I went with my friend N to see Cronicas, a Spanish movie. I heard that the Cervantes Institute was having Ecuadorian film week with free screenings and N also speaks a little Spanish, so that was cool. The movie was good, though a bit depressing.

As many of you may recall, the apartment I live in now is meant to be temporary since apartment prices in Zamalek went up for the summer. Well, my flatmates and I are hoping to move sometime in the next month, so we have started to look for a new place. Of course, nothing is ever that easy in Cairo; generally, apartments come with a simsar, a kind of real estate broker. They help you find an apartment, then ask for a percentage of the rent as a "tip". But if you find an apartment on your own, the simsar attached to that apartment often still demands a cut because they don't want to be left out of the deal. So we are trying to find an apartment as well as a simsar who won't screw us over. M knows someone trustworthy and we know which building we want to be in, so hopefully that will work out soon-ish. The apartment I live in now isn't so bad -- it's huge, in a great location, fully furnished, air conditioned, new-ish washing machine -- and I have definitely seen much worse. Still, there have been some problems with it (namely, it is also a bit rundown and not particularly well cared-for), and I am looking forward to the move.

In a moment of weakness, I went to Diwan, my favorite overpriced English-language bookstore, to see about buying Eclipse. And they didn't have it. Gah! Will beg parents to buy me a copy in the U.S. and ship it to Egypt. BTW, if you want my address to ship packages, they will be greatly welcomed! I don't want to post it on the blog, but let me know and I will e-mail it to you.