ChaseComer.com

10/30/06
Well last Saturday I got my first letter/package from home since I have been here in the Middle East. It’s funny, because I am not out of touch with home. In fact because of the internet I am in contact with someone at lest 3 times a week. So it is interesting to actually get something physical. An e-mail and a phone call is just time spent and then passes, but the letter/package is always there to remind you. Sorry for the sob story, but it’s a funny thing. The package was 2 cds from my brother. He bought me the new Beck and Weird Al Yankovic cds and I have enjoyed the music. There are only about 2 songs I don’t like. For one I don’t think I understand the pancreas song.

Well today I got fed up with not having furniture and finally bought some for my room. They brought it here and put it all together. Then we had some pieces of carpet, so I put them around my bed. Now all I need is a curtain and I am set up.

Then later this day my mind was blown away because Roomy didn’t know what a dozen was. Now that is crazy. I thought everyone in the world knew what a dozen was. Evidently, if you use the metric system I guess you aren’t blessed with having a measurement of a dozen. We argued back and forth on how a dozen can come in handy and he just said, “Well if I want ten, I will say ten. And if I want 12, I will say 12.”

Well today we moved the last stuff in. I don’t remember when we started it has been so long ago. We moved in everything. I still only have a bed. Hopefully I can get furniture tomorrow. It is the regular day off, so probably not. We will see. No I didn’t get to go with the sheikh, but after we moved all our stuff in, we put together my roomy’s closet. Then I put reinforcing brackets in our cabinets on the wall of the kitchen. It looks great now. After that we went to visit our neighbors and got to all of them but 2. I think they weren’t home or just didn’t want to meet us. The neighbors we met were nice. Now I can walk up and down the stairs and not get freaked out when the kids see me and run. That makes 5 coffees for today.

Well, today was a long day but a very good day. I got up and made a breakfast burrito, because I found tortillas in the grocery store. It was great. After that I waited around until 10 then went out to my friend’s place on the farthest part of town. I worked my way all the way to the other side of town, and saw all of my friends for Ead.

Ead is the holiday after Ramadan. On the first day of Ead you must see your family. Seeing as I don’t have family here, that was easy. So I had a very slow day yesterday. The second and third days are for your friends. I wanted to try and get to all of my friends because tomorrow we will try to visit our neighbors and finish moving. We’ll get the last things.

I show up at my friends house, and we play on his computer. Then we go together to see the rest of my friends around that area. He knew where some of them lived. I had never visited in their homes so that was good. We actually made 2 unexpected stops. Well one with him and then later I was visiting a sheikh and he insisted that I go with him to visit some other sheikh. So I went and I may get to go with one of them to visit someone tomorrow. I’m already busy, but I hope I get to go.

I then got in a cab and went to the other side of town to see my last friend. He invited me to his family’s home, so I went. There they fed me stuffed zucchini and egg plant. They stuff it with rice and a little meat. You eat it with a watery tomato soup. It was great–a nice home cooked meal. After that I headed to the ballad and there was no one open. It was kind of eerie, but I did find a hardware store open and bought what I needed for tomorrow.

After I returned home, my roomy asked, “Would you like to go out?” “Why not?” I said. “Lets see what else I can do today so we bought some furniture, a table and an office chair. They didn’t want to deliver the office chair so we said forget it. I am amazed they come out to were we live anyway.

We left there and decided to “celebrate” our new home. So we went to Applebees and I spied some ribs and some cheese dip that looked good. Neither one did they have but I did have a steak. It was delicious. It makes me want to build my own grill so that I can cook some myself.

So looking back on the day I drank 9 coffees ate 14 date cakes and 4 nut cakes 20 pieces of candy and 3 meals including one steak. I would call that a good day.

Well 2 days ago I was talking with one of my friends and asked him if I could use his car for 30 min. He said yeah. So that day in about 40 min I moved all of my stuff to my new house. My roommate said he would move tomorrow, so I spent the first night in my new house with all of my stuff which consisted of clothes and bags. I slept on the floor that first night, and the next day we spent all day just moving all of his stuff that you would put in shelves. Today we will move the shelves. Little stuff yesterday and big stuff today.
Oh I went to a garage sale and found an old old old Risk game older than the one I had at home. I bought it for 50 cents. Score!

We got most of the stuff moved, but of course, after the first load they started to complain. So we just took one load with the guys. We hired 2 Egyptians and a truck and driver. We agreed on 4 hours and it only took 2 hours but they still complained about how long it took. I wanted to say it took half the time. We just let them go and all we needed was half a load. We decided to do it later. It was all light stuff left in the old house. Tomorrow I hope I can go and buy the furniture I need. All I need is a desk, closet, wardrobe, and a shelving unit. I am going to buy them all the same color. They will match my bed, carpet, curtains and bed spread.

Speaking of spreads I had dinner the other day with a Norwegian and we had bread and all kinds of spreads to put on the bread. It was the first time I found a use for a butter knife. It was the only utensil we had besides a plate. It was great a cultural experience.

Well I have done all that I can do to the house to move in so all I am doing is waiting for my friend to move because he has all of the appliances like fridge and oven so as soon as he does that I will be in.

In class the other day I heard that we were to learn the vocabulary so I learned all 40 of the words. Then the next day we didn’t use them then the next day and then finally today we did so by this time I had them down and it felt so good to know what was going on in class. I wish I could feel that way every day.

Well today, my day off, I headed over to the new house with Rush Limbaugh downloaded on my computer. While listening to him, I put in a new hot water heater, but with no electricity, because the electrical store was closed today. So “maybe” I will do it later. Then I mopped the entire floor and peeled, rubbed, and scraped the last bit of paint off –I hope. So now all I must do is get the bidet or bum washer thing out of the bathroom. But when I put a wrench to it, the porcelain started to crack. So I will just left it for now. I hope we get to move in soon.

Well today I convinced a few of my friends to help me out and what took me 4 hours yesterday to do we got done in 1 and a half. Go team work.

Today I didn’t get to go to the Boy Scout meeting because I am behind on my homework because of trying to move in to my new home. But we are going to go camping soon into some caves. I hope I get to go.

Well today I was off cleaning by my lonesome and around the time of breaking of the fast. I knew I better get the stuff I needed to keep going. Well I just needed some drinking water and some more sponges because I have already used up the 2 we bought. Well while I was out I went by the shop owner that I haven’t seen for about a month and a half he usually always gave me something to drink but because of the fasting during Ramadan he insisted that I go home with him. So I reluctantly said yes. pppppbbbb… heck yeah I will go. Free home cooked meals I will take it any time. So we went to his home and again being a party crasher they were ashamed that we only had rice bread, yoghurt salad, and the Egyptians favorite dish mulaqia. That is the bone marrow and spinach soup. After that we had tea and then immediately after that we had coffee. I took the hint knowing they want me to go so after an hour I got up to leave. It was great. Well it was 7:30 and I forget it I did enough today. Got a room and a quarter done so left the sponges and went on home.

Well we got our house painted and since I was lazy we hired some Egyptians. They did a great job of painting but they didn’t do a good job staying clean so there is paint all over the floor and now we have to scrape it up off the floor. Well we spent 6 hours today and got the 2 big rooms done. Now I have to go back and do the other 3 bed rooms but we will see how that goes.

Well when I was ready to leave today I lost the key in the house. Now I ask you, all that is in the house is me my backpack sponges and scrapers and a plastic water bottle so were could it be? I spent 10 min trying to find it and then I got mad and kicked the bottle and low and behold there it was underneath the bottle…well now I have my key back.