2/5

2/5/09

Annieck and I have breakfast at the hotel and head to school via taxi with luggage in tow. After classes we meet our roommate, Halla, and Mohammed at the school’s registration office to pay his commission and get copies of the flat keys made. Halla, Annieck and I then head with luggage to our new home!

 

Halla has already settled in, but Annieck and I take a few minutes to deposit our things and then the three of us sat down to make a joint shopping list. The flat is very limited in some of the very necessary daily supplies. The bedding is sparse and we all feel we need an extra blanket, along with a desk lamp and towels. We also make common grocery list. Halla has lived in the area before and knows where the grocery store is. Mohammed told us of an inexpensive department store nearby that would have all the household things we would need. When we finished our list we headed out to see what we could find.

 

The first stop was the “department store.” It is several stories high with no elevator, so you have to take the main staircase to each floor. Each floor has a specialty: men’s clothes, women’s clothes, baby & children’s clothes, bedding, and household items. All the merchandise is neatly shelved to the ceiling along the outside walls and the rooms must have 12 ft. ceilings. There is some merchandise clustered in the center of the room- stuff too difficult to shelve.

 

On the bedding floor we find towels (40-50 EP) and extra blankets (100-122 EP) to purchase. On the household floor we find desk lamps (25 EP ea.). With the help of a salesman (yes, man, not person or lady) you select your item form the shelves, they write you a ticket. Then they deliver your items to a checkout desk. On the first, main, floor you take your copy of each ticket to a casher in bank teller like stalls and pay for your merchandise. Then you take your stamped ticket to another set of bank teller like stalls and where they bag your order and give it to you. It is quite a different experience than Target or Macy’s!

 

We decided to stop at a restaurant for dinner just to grab a pizza before heading back to the flat to drop off our purchases and then to the grocery store. Dinner gave us a chance to chat and get to know each other a bit;

 

Halla is 24 and from Iceland. She has a boyfriend that will be coming to see her in April. She will be staying for 4 months and was here 2 years ago at another language school nearby. She has a twin sister who is also interested Arabic language and culture. Not many people in Iceland specialize in Arabic language and culture, so she is sure this will help her find a job later. It is quite amazing to be sitting and talking with these young women in good English, their 2nd or 3rd language, my first, and we are all learning Arabic from English at the school.

 

Annieck is 19 and from a small town in Holland. Her boyfriend is a chief and is currently studying/working in New Zealand for 6 months. Annieck will be here 3 months. Annik has also been to Egypt before, but is not as sure what she will do with it. She and her boyfriend would like to move from Holland but not sure were, and Arabic is getting to be a much needed skill for better employment. It will be especially helpful to her as she was not on the college track in Holland.

 

So my new roommates are all younger than my children!! They knew I was older, but didn’t expect me to be 56. I promised them I wouldn’t play “mom”, but the first cut and I was the only one who had Band-Aids, they said having a mom around wasn’t so bad.

 

After dropping our purchase at the flat, we then trekked to the grocery store. There is a supermarket just a few blocks down on Gam’at al-Dawall St. called Metro. It is much like a small supermarket in the US with a produce, meat & deli sections and a mixture of frozen, boxed, and canned food items along with paper products and household cleaning supplies. We have fun finding thins we know and things we don’t. We get a few basics to get us through a day or so till we learn our schedules and needs. Then we head back to the flat.

Before we even unload our groceries, the first task is to clean the kitchen and bathroom. We didn’t even want to put anything in the refrigerator or cabinets with out a through cleaning. In cleaning the cook top, we found that most of the burners fell apart and only one seemed to be workable…that is if we could figure out how to light it- it is a gas stove. We will wait to ask the landlord or her assistant for instructions tomorrow. With three of us, we made a dent in some of what needed to be done and at least it is livable for the time being. By 11:30 PM we were all ready to call it a night.