january is boring

For some reason, Egypt has the best fruits and vegetables in the winter. You can't really find things out of season like you can in the US, so sometimes you just can't get certain produce. Metro (the market we go to) has a small but mostly reliable section, so things like onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples and bananas are available year-round. But ever since I got back from traveling in January, they have magical things like avocados, strawberries (we have been buying these by the kilo), mandarins/clementines, and more.

This might not sound all that exciting to you, but this comes from shopping at a supermarket where finding tortillas, refrigerated milk or basil are causes for celebration. Normally when someone cooks they make enough for multiple people, operating under the assumption that someone else will show up to help eat. Or that if you are too tired/lazy/etc. to cook you can show up at someone else's place and be fed. Or sometimes just make plans to cook together. So we all tend to buy more or less similar things, just because there is not a huge selection. Anyway, there's not a whole lot of opportunity to branch out, which is why more choices make me happy. Also, they had tortillas, which I don't think I have seen since I got here (please see earlier complaints about finding Mexican food), so that was pretty exciting also.

In other news, this past weekend, A1, A2 and I finally inaugurated (see what I did there?) our apartment with a belated housewarming party. We had a fun theme of Hollywood/Bollywood (Cairo loves a good themed party), and overall had a good time being good host/esses. It was a good excuse to have everyone over because, let's face it... January is boring.