Interesting Tidbits About Alexandria

The city is absolutely filthy, but every driver has a box of tissues on the car dashboard. These can be purchased for about a pound (20 cents per box) from men who wander between the cars when they are stopped in traffic.

There are no traffic lights or signals - men in white uniforms, who are not intimidated by the ongoing traffic step into the flow now and then to halt traffic in one direction so the other direction may proceed across busy intersections or into circles.

I'm not really sure why there are lines painted on the roads - no one stays in their lane - in fact, most vehicles straddle 2 lanes in case a better opening should occur that they can squeeze through. (None of us likes to sit in the middle seat of the front row of seats in the van because that is the seat where you can best witness the near brushes with death on the long drive to and from school).

There is no recycling of anything. You have trash? Just toss it in the street. Same with the beach unfortunately. The only part of the beach that is kept clean is the section that contains the foreign tourists. That, and the fact that the women in that part of the beach have decent, more modern bathing suits, keeps me coming back. When the chair/umbrella guy asks to see my cards, and then tells me in Arabic that I am in the wrong section, I just pretend I don't understand him (who's pretending???) and eventually he just leaves me alone.

Yesterday, we found the mother lode in Phillipe & Kory's apartment - a washing machine!!! Good thing because I was running out of underwear. All of us are establishing records for the total number of consecutive days one outfit can be worn. In this heat, and with no A/C in the apartments, this is a definite challenge.

At the beginning of the week, we lost power in the apartment complex for 7 very long, very trying hours. Try sleeping in a room that is at least 90 degrees, with no working ceiling fan. Talk about a sauna! Then the power went off at school - we were very hopeful that class would be cancelled, but we only were without power for about 5 minutes.

The computers at the apartments and school make the schools' computers at home look like state of the art. They are ancient, slow and cumbersome.

I am compiling a list of things to never complain about:

1. overcrowding at Upton Hill pool
2. poor water pressure in the master bathroom shower at home
3. my laptop or desktop running slowly

I'm sure there will be more as my journey continues...............