WE HAVE INTERWEBS!

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

As the title suggests, this post is primarily to celebrate the fact that we finally have the internet at our flat! Ten long days arguing with technical support, a visit from a technician and a visit to the office later, it is finally shaghaal (working). A word of wisdom just in case anyone finds themselves looking to purchase wifi from LinkDSL - and again for those who missed it that is service provider LINKDSL, ahem - in Egypt, don't do it. Unless you are prepared to withstand their so-called 'installation' period which apparently lasts ten days as standard, but they won't tell you that at the beginning. Meanwhile, as polite and friendly as their technical support team are, their concept of time leaves a lot to be desired; 'within 24 hours' generally refers to a duration lasting between 48 hours to one week.

Anyhoo and more importantly, we started our formal lessons today. After the placement test last Thursday I was put into the advanced group for fusHa (Modern Standard Arabic) which is alright if a little challenging. Especially after focusing on trying to understand 'ameyya (colloquial or dialect) for so long, it's more of a struggle to adjust back to the formal language again. Our Monday morning lesson every week will be based on Arabic media; television, radio and print while our afternoon classes feature things like role plays in the Egyptian dialect.

Speaking of dialects, I met a lovely Libyan family yesterday on the train back from Cairo to Alexandria. I hope to blog more about my train adventures and include pictures later, as I absolutely love the journey through the Nile Delta region; it is a very interesting contrast to city life here. If you take a direct train which uses Spanish carriages, the journey takes roughly two and a half hours, while the journey time for a train with several stops using French carriages is closer to four hours. Tickets are cheap, so far I have only used 2nd class which costs 36 EGP (=£3.60 ish) one-way for a service which includes a lot of leg space, comfortable reclining chairs and a food trolley. When I come back to the U.K, the first thing I'm going to do is go to First Great Western and tell them what's what! Like I said, I'll try to compile a more train-specific blog in the future because I really like them here.

Back to the lovely Libyan family... a couple and one of their (four!) sons bought me a bottle of water and shared their lunch with me, chatting away the whole time and although I found it quite hard to grasp the subtle differences of their dialect, I managed to make a bit of conversation. I asked about how things were in Libya now and Ahmed, the father, was very optimistic and even invited me to come and stay with them. He said that Tripoli now is fine, there is stability, security and things are back to normal but there may still be a few problems in some rural areas. I was sad to say goodbye after they gave me their number and address - truly the kind of people you feel lucky to meet in life. Many people here have been really great, such as Kareem the doorman who I mentioned in the last post and more recently the security guy at Alexandria's Misr station, who bent over backwards before literally taking a running jump off a departing train, in order to convince the train inspector that my ticket WAS valid despite the fact it was on my phone and not printed out. Internet has obviously not yet made an impression upon the mofattisheen (inspectors) of Egypt's train service.

Enough of t'internet for now... I'll leave you with a sample of the delicious seafood which Alexandria has to offer; crab, prawns, mussels and calamari!