[from Thursday]

Today has been a good day.

It's always good to say that. *smile* I'm definitely feeling back to normal again after 2 days of having an upset
stomach. Well, that's one way to lose a few pounds! *grin* I was feverish on Wednesday, I think but I'm certainly
better now. My appetite has returned, too.

It's now Thursday night, so the weekend is beginning. No big plans for tonight, but Friday should be busy. My
flatmate is around and we had talked about watching a DVD on my computer tonight. we shall see. Yeah, there are
many better things I could be doing in Cairo, but it's been a busy week and I just want some time for relaxation.

Every day, I realize a little more just how huge Cairo is! I fell like I commute quite a bit when I'm on public
transport 1 hr each way, but that's only getting me half-way across the city!

On both Wednesday and Thursday, I managed to make it from where I'm staying and to my arabic class without much
trouble. See, there's no such thing as a bus schedule in this city. Seriously! You just ask random people or the
busdrivers where they are going and then write down or remember which bus took you where.

When I leave the flat, I walk 5 minutes to a small Metro station. We'd think about it more as a "tram". It's
above-ground, running on rails but connected to wires up in the air. Does that make sense? Anyway, I take the
tram to one of the main bus/tram/underground stations and switch to a bus for the rest of my trip to class.

Yup, it's 7pm. I hear one of the call-to-prayers happening. We're fairly close to a mosque, so I can hear
it pretty well. I can't understand any of what they're saying, but...

Good news! I finally got around to setting up my computer to use the phoneline in the flat (the apartment where
I'm staying) to connect to the Internet. This will be my first journal update from my couch! Will this mean more
journal updates and more email. Probably not. I think I'm doing a fairly good job with that right now. Maybe
too good of a job!

What it does mean is that I should soon be uploading some of my pictures. Don't get too excited yet! I haven't
tried it yet to see how slow it is. But the internet connection is cheap. There's no monthly fee, so all you do
is pay per minute. It turns out to be something silly like 1 Egyptian pound per hour. That's about 20 cents...

Maybe I'll try now.