24 Hours
The last 24 hours have been slightly crazy and extremely eventful. I woke up early yesterday to go get my ticket back to the states only to be greeted with a mass of people waiting at the place already. After standing around for about 45 minutes I had to leave to make a meeting at the Marriott on time. After a few meetings and mass of emails that I still haven’t made my way through yet :-( I left work in hopes of taking a much needed nap since the theme of this month seems to be lack of sleep but unfortunately that just wasn’t in the cards for me and start catching up on some news back home and emailing.
Finally decided on a date of some get togethers back home – March 10 for the fam and March 31 for my bday party; this will be the first time I’ll be celebrating my bday in Chicago since I was 14!
Later in the evening I headed to this Yemenis restaurant with May, Farzina, Kent and Mustafa. Kudos to Kent; he’s always trying to further my education about the world and made the suggestion to go to this restaurant a few weeks back since the country of the month for me is Yemen. If you ever feel the need to learn more about Canada – I kinda wanna make a joke here but I won’t – then u should definitely check out Kent’s blog. He hooks me up with some pretty interesting info about his country.
Anyways, the food was good. A big bowl of yellow rice with some chicken and lamb plus the awesome bread (pic to come later) and according to Kent some random pieces of animal hair – it’s good protein! And a very nice waiter who was more of a gentlemen than most of my boyfriends.
Afterwards I went over to Nisrin and Luli’s for a sleepover with them and Kait. It was lots of fun; after watching Luli kick Kait’s butt in Scrabble, we watched this clip on how incredible ignorant Americans can be. Then we played Cluedo – I believe the British wanna be version of Clue. It was a seriously intense game. Between Luli, Nisrin and I, we were playing our strategies hard. I just needed one more round. I was soo close but between Nisrin wanting to be funny and move me half way across the board and Luli beating both of us to the punch, I didn’t win :-( It’s all good tho’; next time!
I woke up early this morning to attempt once again at getting my ticket. Got to the office, a five minute walk from Cinema Tahrir, and thankfully didn’t have to wait too long before I could talk to an agent. Gave her all my info and debit card. Then the words, “It was declined” came out of her mouth. I’m saying to myself ok, that’s odd and asked her to try again. “Decline” Now I’m a bit annoyed. I have to say one thing about Egyptians, they don’t seem to care about others hearing your “sensitive” news cause the lady said really loudly, “You must not have enough money in your account.”
I’m standing there trying to figure out what was the problem. I’m asking if she can just manually type in the numbers b/c maybe the strip got demagnetized but she was very persistent in not taking that suggestion. She once again claimed that I didn’t have enough money. So I took my card and told her I’d pay in cash. Walked out the door and headed to the ATM and withdrew the money. I was already a little bothered that the price was a higher than I original had thought and then to have to go and withdraw money from my American account which charges me a nice little service fee every time I take money out here. Not very happy. But after figuring out how to change the payment from credit card to cash – a task that shouldn’t have been that difficult but it apparently was for her - I got my ticket!!!!! It’s official. February 23 I will be back in the states (I’m grinning heavily right now).
I walked home happily taking random pics of Dokki for my mom and was greeted warmly by my one and only doorman who speaks enough English to have a small conversation. I guess he was really please to see me cause he likes to practice his English on me and called the lift (another effect of living with Farzina!) and shook my hand. I was kinda shocked by that one but it’s all good.
It’s a good morning with lots of potential for the future. AND I’m going to Lucielle’s for breakfast; what more can I possibly as for right now ;-)
Finally decided on a date of some get togethers back home – March 10 for the fam and March 31 for my bday party; this will be the first time I’ll be celebrating my bday in Chicago since I was 14!
Later in the evening I headed to this Yemenis restaurant with May, Farzina, Kent and Mustafa. Kudos to Kent; he’s always trying to further my education about the world and made the suggestion to go to this restaurant a few weeks back since the country of the month for me is Yemen. If you ever feel the need to learn more about Canada – I kinda wanna make a joke here but I won’t – then u should definitely check out Kent’s blog. He hooks me up with some pretty interesting info about his country.
Anyways, the food was good. A big bowl of yellow rice with some chicken and lamb plus the awesome bread (pic to come later) and according to Kent some random pieces of animal hair – it’s good protein! And a very nice waiter who was more of a gentlemen than most of my boyfriends.
Afterwards I went over to Nisrin and Luli’s for a sleepover with them and Kait. It was lots of fun; after watching Luli kick Kait’s butt in Scrabble, we watched this clip on how incredible ignorant Americans can be. Then we played Cluedo – I believe the British wanna be version of Clue. It was a seriously intense game. Between Luli, Nisrin and I, we were playing our strategies hard. I just needed one more round. I was soo close but between Nisrin wanting to be funny and move me half way across the board and Luli beating both of us to the punch, I didn’t win :-( It’s all good tho’; next time!
I woke up early this morning to attempt once again at getting my ticket. Got to the office, a five minute walk from Cinema Tahrir, and thankfully didn’t have to wait too long before I could talk to an agent. Gave her all my info and debit card. Then the words, “It was declined” came out of her mouth. I’m saying to myself ok, that’s odd and asked her to try again. “Decline” Now I’m a bit annoyed. I have to say one thing about Egyptians, they don’t seem to care about others hearing your “sensitive” news cause the lady said really loudly, “You must not have enough money in your account.”
I’m standing there trying to figure out what was the problem. I’m asking if she can just manually type in the numbers b/c maybe the strip got demagnetized but she was very persistent in not taking that suggestion. She once again claimed that I didn’t have enough money. So I took my card and told her I’d pay in cash. Walked out the door and headed to the ATM and withdrew the money. I was already a little bothered that the price was a higher than I original had thought and then to have to go and withdraw money from my American account which charges me a nice little service fee every time I take money out here. Not very happy. But after figuring out how to change the payment from credit card to cash – a task that shouldn’t have been that difficult but it apparently was for her - I got my ticket!!!!! It’s official. February 23 I will be back in the states (I’m grinning heavily right now).
I walked home happily taking random pics of Dokki for my mom and was greeted warmly by my one and only doorman who speaks enough English to have a small conversation. I guess he was really please to see me cause he likes to practice his English on me and called the lift (another effect of living with Farzina!) and shook my hand. I was kinda shocked by that one but it’s all good.
It’s a good morning with lots of potential for the future. AND I’m going to Lucielle’s for breakfast; what more can I possibly as for right now ;-)
posted by Nay-Nay at 2:33 AM
1 Comments:
Sounds like you guys had fun babe.. I am glad that you did!
I am not so happy that you got the ticket.. just makes the fact that you're leaving so much more official! ;o(
Well.. that means that we have about 1 month to have the time of our lives here!!
See you at Lucille's!!
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