The adventures continue. Today I arrived in Cairo after a 10 hour flight with more babies and children than I have ever seen on a plane. Ever. You can imagine how pleasant and quiet the flight was. It was a long and mostly sleepless flight, but this whole trip started to feel real when we flew over Giza, and I looked out the window down onto the pyramids. There they were, surrounded by dusty-tan desert, looking enormous and solidary out there in the sand, ancient and beautiful. In and instant, all of the difficult nights I spent at the hospital working my butt off, the lack of social life, the moving of my entire apartment down three flights of stairs and then 1,000 miles across the country in a U-haul, the goodbyes I had to say to my friends, all of it became worth it to be able to be doing this!
My favorite part about arriving at an airport, is to walk out and see all of the families that are lined up to greet their families and friends coming off the plane. I scanned the crowd for my name on a piece of paper by the driver sent by the hostel...there he was, and we were off. Until, minutes before leaving the airport for the highway, we got a flat tire. Most of what ensued was communicated by charades, as my driver spoke only a little English, and of course I don't know any Arabic. What followed was me sitting in the car, baking, while he went to find someone who could change the tire, then went to find a tire, then put the car up on a jack with me still in it and changed the tire.
THEN, we were off, into the wild, crowded, noisy streets of Cairo. And I have learned already, that a honking horn could mean one of many, many things. For example it could mean "hello, I'm here" or "Thank you". It could also mean "I'm about to pop this car into reverse on this one way highway because I just missed my exit please stay out of my way" or "I'm about to run you over". Also, I have learned that lanes here are not so much lanes as just suggestions for where you might want to drive. Nobody stays in the lines...there could be three lanes clearly depicted on the road, and there will be four cars staggered at various widths apart and one or two mopeds weaving in between them. The traffic here makes NYC look curteous and mild mannered.
All this business of getting here has made me pretty hungry, so I'm heading out to try some Egyptian food!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
6.29.10 - JFK
6.29.10
So I’m sitting in JFK Airport, having my traditional pre-flight beer, and I figured this is as good as any time to start my blog. But, the Irish pub I’m sitting in doesn’t have wifi, so I thought I would write this anyways, and then just post it later. A little less official, but really, who is going to read this anyways?? I’ve been working for the last year and a half, with no energy or time to write, and now my schedule is wide open; I felt this trip was the perfect excuse to exercise my writing. So readers, beware. This could potentially be the most boring blog you have ever read, but I, in trepidation, owe it to myself to continue writing.
The pre flight beer tradition started while I was traveling throughout Europe with my dear friends Molly and Ma Kelly…and I try to uphold it whether with friends or traveling alone, for better or for worse (missed flights and drunken landings being some of the best examples of the “worse”, infrequent though they were) . But I find that sitting in a pub by myself, with my bag in my lap, drinking a Newcastle is one of my favorite ways to people watch. Although, I feel I may have already passed through my most interesting portion of my airport experience. I’m flying direct to Cairo today on Egypt Air, and I’m fairly certain that I was the only non-Egyptian in the line at that point, and I was definitely one of the only people with less than 6 pieces of luggage in my possession. The line was enormous!!! It stretched all the way through the prepared lines, around the kiosk and down the hall. I thought for sure that I would miss my flight, even though I was 3 hours early. Then along came some gracious EgyptAir employee who asked me how many bags I had. When I told him I only had two, he happily told me to head to the express line, where I waited behind one other couple who had 3 bags between them. I thought for sure my luck was too good to be true. And it was; I then entered the luggage drop off line, behind 3 or 4 families with at least 15 pieces of luggage each. The whole escapade made me laugh. The men who were loading the luggage onto the x-ray belt looked exasperated; I don’t think they found it as amusing as I did.
Well, the Newcastle is almost done (and let me tell you it costs more to have a preflight beer in JFK than it does at Midway) and I should probably go sit at my gate so as to avoid the aforementioned “worse” case scenarios. Anyways, Cheers, and happy travels to me!
So I’m sitting in JFK Airport, having my traditional pre-flight beer, and I figured this is as good as any time to start my blog. But, the Irish pub I’m sitting in doesn’t have wifi, so I thought I would write this anyways, and then just post it later. A little less official, but really, who is going to read this anyways?? I’ve been working for the last year and a half, with no energy or time to write, and now my schedule is wide open; I felt this trip was the perfect excuse to exercise my writing. So readers, beware. This could potentially be the most boring blog you have ever read, but I, in trepidation, owe it to myself to continue writing.
The pre flight beer tradition started while I was traveling throughout Europe with my dear friends Molly and Ma Kelly…and I try to uphold it whether with friends or traveling alone, for better or for worse (missed flights and drunken landings being some of the best examples of the “worse”, infrequent though they were) . But I find that sitting in a pub by myself, with my bag in my lap, drinking a Newcastle is one of my favorite ways to people watch. Although, I feel I may have already passed through my most interesting portion of my airport experience. I’m flying direct to Cairo today on Egypt Air, and I’m fairly certain that I was the only non-Egyptian in the line at that point, and I was definitely one of the only people with less than 6 pieces of luggage in my possession. The line was enormous!!! It stretched all the way through the prepared lines, around the kiosk and down the hall. I thought for sure that I would miss my flight, even though I was 3 hours early. Then along came some gracious EgyptAir employee who asked me how many bags I had. When I told him I only had two, he happily told me to head to the express line, where I waited behind one other couple who had 3 bags between them. I thought for sure my luck was too good to be true. And it was; I then entered the luggage drop off line, behind 3 or 4 families with at least 15 pieces of luggage each. The whole escapade made me laugh. The men who were loading the luggage onto the x-ray belt looked exasperated; I don’t think they found it as amusing as I did.
Well, the Newcastle is almost done (and let me tell you it costs more to have a preflight beer in JFK than it does at Midway) and I should probably go sit at my gate so as to avoid the aforementioned “worse” case scenarios. Anyways, Cheers, and happy travels to me!
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