Quayisa (Eng: adj. Fine/Good)

Egypt is annoying sometimes. For example, I have four mosquito bites lining my neck up to my cheek. I think they bear a striking resemblance to the small dipper. Two more on my arm (approx. 2.6 millimeters apart) and another on my back and another on my ankle. Serves me right for going out into the twilight hours when clean. But I'm still OK.

I have a cold..IN THE SUMMER IN EGYPT. As I was wont to say in high school (and lifamim still...) WTF!? How is that possible? But I guess its better than having Influenza al-Chanazeer (or "swin floo" as they call it here). The authorities have quarantined a bunch of Americans kids at Cairo University. And one my friends' boyfriend in the States has it. But when we came off of the plane they thermally scanned us to check if we had a fever, and no one did (or the thermal scanner didn't catch it...), so, not to worry, I'm alright.

I went to the "suk" today with a group of friends and we were picked up by this very nice one-toothed Egyptian man who spoke relatively good English. When he found out we wanted to go to the "suk" (for the record he was perfectly friendly and was giving us directions to other places before he knew where we wanted to go), he dragged us all the way to his brother's silver shop, which was a hole in the wall. Of course, I had to buy something -- but I bargained him down to the approximate equivalent of a bit less than 10 American dollars, which is probably stilll a poor deal on my part, but now - Mom - you have something to look forward to for when I come home. And no harm was done.

In other news, a man was hit by a car -- and promptly died -- yesterday after our tour of the Biblioteca Alexandrina, courtesy of the State Department. I didn't actually see it (Alhumdu LillAh), but he was just crossing the street (like I said, its the most dangerous part of living in Egypt) and that was it. Many of my peers were surprised it took so long for us to witness something like that. I'm being careful. I promise.

So basically, the point of this post is to say to you - and probably more to myself - I'm still fine. And I probably WILL be fine as well. Though, as we are fond of saying here in the CLS Alexandria program: "You can't aarif the mustakbal!" (Eng: you can't know the future © my friend Andy). But for now, I am in what you might call a fine frenzy. Aptly, today's song is by A Fine Frenzy, and its called "You Picked Me".