Days in Cairo and Cairo Days

We haven’t posted for a while, and so I thought I’d better put something up!
We’ve been busy with various things and enjoying ourselves, but also having quite a few Cairo Days.

Some things have been really great – we’ve found some nice restaurants and been over to a friend’s place for a few BBQs and drinks. Scott’s also managed to get himself in a band, so they’ve been having rehearsals. While Scott is at rehearsal I go to the gym to work out and enjoy the steam room for a few hours – this works really well as then we can meet near by afterwards and go out for dinner. We’ve got our post-rehearsal/gym restaurant sorted – Lucille’s because it is close and they do great burgers. They also have booths for you to sit in – which means space for the guitar!

On the other hand though baksheesh things are still hanging over us and living in the culture here is difficult. We’ve tried to keep it simple this week, by just sticking to places we know and not venturing out, because we don’t want any hassle or things to be complicated. But the culture is hard to get along with. It’s frustrating because one of the reasons we wanted to work abroad was to experience a different culture, but I just think it is going to take some time before we can really enjoy it all here. We can’t even go to the pyramids, for example, to remind ourselves of what an amazing country we are in – because of all the hassle you get there that really pulls us down.

Yesterday we had a really lovely day. We just hung around the apartment during the day and then in the evening there was a Jam Night / Open Mic Night at the Boss Bar. We hadn’t been to the Boss Bar before, but had heard that it was a nice place for a drink and more “bar-y” than other places in Cairo/Maadi. When you go in there is a row of booths, so we think these would be good when coming for a drink another time. It was quite quiet when we first got in, but just after 8pm when things were meant to start it got really busy. There were a fair number of friendly faces there, and it was nice to have a drink and chat with everyone. Scott and a few from the band got up to play a few numbers and they went down well. This is where One For The Road are playing next week too, so that looks like it will be another top night and we’ll definitely go back to there just for a drink sometime. I just hope we can keep things simple and get our heads down for the rest of this week and try to pull through.
We’ve been cleaning the apartment a bit this weekend too. Basically the owner decided to give it a lick of paint before we moved in. This worked as it has brightened the place up, but they got splodges everywhere on the floor. So yesterday morning and this morning I have been on hands and knees scrubbing away at the floor and skirting boards to tidy it up. I think it looks much better and I have jus two rooms left to do!