First viewing

It's been a non-stop couple of days in Cairo. We were met by some lovely people (representatives from Larissa's new school) at the airport and taken to the hotel which acts as our temporary home whilst we search for somewhere to live. We arrived with a group of about twenty other British and American teachers and this week provides a great opportunity to forge some friendships and become comfortable with our new surroundings.

We had a tour of the school yesterday, where Larissa was informed that the start of school has been postponed until the 26th of September due to swine flu! Apparently, a vaccine is being worked on, and what with it being Ramadan too, the executive decision was to wait until it was all over before bothering to drag the kids back to school (according to my sources, the same thing is happening in Oman.) Later in the evening, we had a dinner so bad that we were refunded half the bill after the people looking after us decided it was an embarrassment to be associated with such a terrible meal!

Today, our group were taken to the Maadi area to look at apartments. With twelve of us all wanting somewhere nice, it could easily have become a bit stressful but in the end we all took to different places and are happy with what we got. Larissa and I found our place just after lunch (it was tenth on the list of twenty for today). It's pretty modern looking (by Egypt standards) which compensates for the smaller size and lack of outdoor area. We were advised to go for the first place that made us feel 'ahhh, we could live here' and our new apartment did just that. Hopefully we should have the contract signed with the landlord tomorrow and begin the process of having our shipping delivered (to say we have our fingers crossed on the latter would be an understatement).

As promised before we left, Cairo is huge, dusty, dirty and very busy. The traffic is mad; there don't seem to be any rules other than 'go forward' and 'steer left or right if something gets in your way'. It also seems compulsory to beep your horn every four seconds. Scary stuff. On the way back from flat-hunting, and careering down the highway in the school bus, we saw the pyrmaids for the first time.

If you click large, you might just be able to make them out!