The views from my balcony...

I realized that after I put up pictures of my flat I forgot to show you the views from my little balcony… yes that’s right folks, I have a balcony. It’s not huge, but it is good enough for two chairs and a little table. Its nice to sit out there at night when it cools down and have a cup of iced tea and relax. Which is essentially the reason to have a balcony, no? Anyway, as you all know, I am not a big one on sleep and instead of staying up super late here in Cairo, I tend to fall asleep earlier and wake up at the crack of dawn. Does create some productivity though, which is a positive. Most mornings I am up before the sunrise. Sunrise has become one of my favorite parts of the day. Egyptians are not ones to get up early, so it’s pretty quiet. I have a pretty amazing view of the sunrise beyond the buildings, which you can see for yourselves below. In case I neglected to tell you, my flat is directly 5 floors above Kimo market, which happens to be one of the bigger markets here in Maadi. The store is pretty busy loading and unloading and with general hustle and bustle, so these quiet moments are pretty cool. (especially since I know once I get to school I won’t get a quiet moment until I get home for the night!) So beyond the photos of the sunrise (and yes da, I did copy the panoramic sequence shot from you, even though my camera can do panoramic shots!) I also wanted to show you my neighbors. All different kinds of people live around us. Kimo, the building I live in (aptly named after the marked on the ground floor) houses fellow CAC teachers, Egyptians and random business and corporate folk who buy multiple flats neighboring one another and knock down the walls!) The building next to me may look rather beaten down, but actually it’s the norm here. Most of the buildings don’t have ceilings on the top floor, just rebar and plywood or woven sticks. I made mention of this to my buddy (the person who looked after us when we were fresh off the plane) and she told me that in Cairo, if the building doesn’t have a roof, you don’t have to pay taxes on it! Also, as families get bigger, they just use the rebar as a base and add more and use cement and make another floor. It might look odd to us, but it saves the people tons of money and as a college student, I can definitely appreciate the art of living cheap(ish) (okay, I’m more of an extravagantly cheap college student). Also, the construction out here makes me laugh. You will not see metal scaffolding and cranes here. Nope, here they make wood scaffolding that is roped together and use advanced systems like tying a rope to the handle of a bucket and hauling up stuff that way. There is an apartment being renovated right by my flat, so I’ll have to take pictures and show you. Basically I just fear for the lives of all the workers when I walk by, but they are totally unconcerned. So that’s about all for now, just wanted you to get the whole picture of my surroundings. (and yes, almost all the buildings are made of brown cement, shaped like a giant rectangle with some windows. Simplicity rules here in the would be burbs, and I must admit, I like it.)