After seeing a bill board for my school last night I was excited to know that my school was in fact somewhere in this town I lived in. So today I caught a taxi down the road and they took me out to the school.. It was about a ten minute taxi ride and eventually after learning my way, I want to walk. When I got to my school there were three ladies at the front desk who were there signing up new kids. But no one else was to be found. So I headed home and kind of felt like I wasted past of my day but at least I new kind of where my school was located.
Riding around in Egypt:
Like my roommate puts it "It's like a constant game of chicken." It was a little scary at first but then you get used to cars almost side swiping you, and driving so close to other cars, pedestrians and bikes that they reach out and touch the taxi you are in. If you happen to "hit" another car, which in Maadi cars here cannot go fast enough most of the time to do much damage to another car because the traffic is so bad (except for the highway) I learned that this was called the "Cairo kiss." Usually neither party stops and you just go on your way. In Maadi Traffic lights=non-existent. Stop signs= very few and far between but never even acknowledged! A car horn= used all the time! They never stop! I think it gets to the point where you almost do not even hear them anymore because you are trying to drowned them out.
Walking in Maadi:
Which is how I get most places! Was a little scary at first because the sidewalks are messed up so everyone walks in the streets with all the traffic. You get used to it after a while. People are constantly honking at you and driving really close to you.
Something I thought would be funny would be to go around and disable the car horns in all the cars and then watch people faces and the mass chaos and everyone wondering what happened! In America we drive with our eyes, here you drive with your ears!
I did find out that tomorrow I am meeting some other teachers and my boss at the Maadi hotel. So that was a good phone call because up until a few minutes ago I had no idea when I was going to meet anyone from my school!
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