Testy moods in the City of Sand.

In my previous post, I had neglected to mention one downside of this communal home life with women: coordinated ovaries. Collective PMS can be a formidable thing.
Yes, all of the Egyptian women in our humble apartment building are suffering through the feminine plight this week. It's a bit like coming home, expecting all of the warm, happy faces you're used to--only to find that all of your friends have turned into cowseals, beached and bellowing on the seashore.
Luckily, this has provided ample opportunities for cross-cultural exchange and commiseration. Last night, Gigi and 16 year-old Sara were hanging out in our room, escaping for a few moments from the clamoring babies and cramping women next door. We were on the subject anyway when Gigi spied my stash of 800 some tampons.
Tampons, near as we can tell, simply do not exist in Egypt—not even in the ex-pat import stores full of peanut butter, white bread, and brie. I can't provide an educated answer as to why that is, though it serves me well to remember that tampons were still fairly scandalous within my parents' lifetime, reserved for tarts and floozies and bra burners.
"What are those?" Gigi asks me with alarmed curiosity. I open one to show her, and try to explain the mechanics a bit. Gigi's eyes bugged out. "But why?" she gasps, as if she were staring at a paper-wrapped medieval torture device. My explanations were not terribly convincing.
Heat pads were a huge success, on the other hand. One of the girls was complaining of terrible cramps. One of us had brought these disposable, one-time heat pads that relax your muscles and reduce cramping. It was a hit. We explained to her that they also have electric ones in the States, which you can use over and over again. She immediately put in a request to have our friends bring some over with them to Egypt, that she would pay for them, no matter what the cost. If we were wondering what a good "thank you" gift for the family would be, we just found it!

In other health news, my sissy lungs have once again succumbed to the dust and pollution. It's not exactly that I have a cold…. It's more like I have the black lung. Everyone here has a different suggestion for a remedy—from the strong, cheap drugs the pharmacies dispense by the fistfuls, to a spoonful of black honey 3 times a day, to taking a vacation outside of Cairo every 10 days to de-dust my lungs, to only taking showers in the evening (you might catch a chill in the morning, apparently).
My roommates think that I have Cairo-induced asthma. My real concern is that I'm developing an allergy to dust. That would cut short my career in the Middle East pretty quickly!

The black lung has dampened my mood here slightly. Two nights ago I woke up around 2am with a coughing fit. I couldn't find any water nearby, but scrounged around in the fridge until I found a pineapple juice box. That should do the trick. I finally stopped coughing and laid back down to go to sleep....only to realize that the family of shrieking children that lives across the street was still up. And not just up, but outside, playing in the streets. Normally, I think this is kind of a funny--and cool--cultural phenomena, that people here stay up all night because it's so hot during the day, and that the kids are part of that, too. The downside is that I actually have to wear ear plugs in order to sleep through them. At 2am, hacking up dust and smog, I was not having any more of this. In my head, I believe I actually said the phrase "Put your kids to bed, you old coot." I called the father a coot. A coot. It was one of my more juvenile moments here. But hey, I'll appeal to extenuating circumstances.

In other news, we officially signed a lease on our new apartment over the weekend. We'll move there on the 1st of August---it's a block away from the Nile in a really pretty, green neighborhood, (fittingly) called Garden City. It was the headquarters for the British colonial community back in the day, but there really aren't any foreigners who live there now. It's just a nice, ordinary Egyptian neighborhood—but within walking distance (kind of )to downtown!

If you want to send any letters, my address is:

6A el-Diwan Street, Apartment 16
Garden City, Cairo
EGYPT

No packages yet…I don't know how that works, so hold off for the moment. But letters would be most welcome!

Take care, my friends.