So, this is Egypt

It can be pretty amazing how quickly time can pass... especially when you are sleeping in a new place every couple of nights. I still haven't finished writing all my thoughts about France, I haven't even started on talking about Italy and I am already off in Egypt. Starting to think of things outside of a chronological framework, here's what's going through my mind at this moment.

Whoa. Egypt. Walking around, it feels like an odd mix of Thailand and India. It has the climate and look of India, but the quiet kindness of Thailand. Things are calm-ish and organized in a scattered sort of way. It's amazing that there there is a relaxed feel to even the chaos of people running about the biggest city on the continent.

Lots of oddities:

• The 'main tourist office' was a woman with brochures in French watching Arabic soap operas. She didn't have a map of Cairo. She seemed uninterested in much of anything.
  
• Somehow getting a phone number was really, really easy and cheap. While in India I had to give multiple passport photos and a photocopy of my passport, addresses, promises to get a phone card (which they ultimately canceled because somewhere in the mess someone didn't get my photos when they should have), here I was able to just walk up to a man leaning against his shopping cart full of electronics to get one.
• Good golly it's hot. I am drinking water all the time, but still rarely peeing.
• The food really tastes like the desert. Everything is pretty simple and a bit dry, but not in a bad way necessarily.
• The most notable of things to strike you right away is crossing the streets here. Cairo seems to have more cars than anyplace I have been this past year - and oddly there seem to be no traffic rules. I have been here for three days and I am still not quite sure which side of the road cars are supposed to be driving on. The way you cross the street is a great example of the notion that 'he who hesitates is lost.' You need to walk out into traffic (it never completely stops, somehow intersections manage to have traffic constantly moving with flashing yellow lights and the occasional police officer sticking out his hand to hold back the tide for a moment) and place yourself in the gaps between speeding cars. They will swerve to avoid you, but not by much more than a few inches. My first thought when I began wandering about was 'if my mom (ever the safety conscious woman) were here, she would be stuck on the block she began on.' And it's true.
• Other than crossing the street, it feels really safe here. Reports I have gotten thus far is that the brutal behavior by the police (human rights not a strong point here...) make it so that people don't step out of line much. Erm... on the plus side, walking alone late at night is apparently a-okay.