April 2nd- Sheila's Version

After an eleven hour flight from New York the pilot received a round of applause for a successful landing. Descending into Cairo Jim and I thought the flat farm fields didn't look much different than Kansas. As we got closer it was clear we weren't in Kansas anymore, Totto.

After landing we bought our visas and had our passports checked. We knew we had to have cash for our visas thanks to Seth and Kristal and were prepared for that. I got my first stamp in my passport. Seth and Kristal had arranged for a driver to pick us up. He spoke English and was very helpful explaining the new sights.
The street leaving the airport is lined with plants and flowers and murals. That quickly changes to crumbling buildings topped with satellite dishes and rusty air conditioners. Cairo is a very condensed city with the great majority of buildings being multi-story. The flat roof tops of buildings are covered with rubble. The buildings may be constructed with the anticipation of adding on another floor, leaving the building with pillars and rebar sticking out the top. Brick, stucco or stone make up the majority of the buildings. Very little color is used. Laundry hanging from the balconies is predominately what gives the landscape color. Although you don't notice any underwear hanging out with the laundry. The buildings are very close together making the streets very narrow. The sidewalks seem to be of two extremes. They are either granite tile or rubble.

We had been warned about the traffic and the fact that Egypt has the highest percent of traffic accidents in the world but until you experience it for yourself, you just can't understand. And yet what seems like total chaos seems to work for them. As I see it the basis problem is that drivers don't stay in their own lanes. They travel so close together that you can literally reach your hand into the car next to you. On what we would consider a 3 lane street, they will travel with 5 lanes. Added to the cars are the pedestrians which are like rabbits darting across the street or like the game "Frogger". The pedestrians only cross one lane at a time, just standing in the street waiting until an opportunity to cross the next lane. Added to the cars and pedestrians are the merchants standing in the street selling what look like pretzels or newspapers. Added to the cars, pedestrians and merchants are the donkey carts. An upscale cart would be drawn by a horse. There is constant honking to warn of your presence. There is surprisingly little road rage and the honking is really just to inform the other drivers of your existence. Many cars carry the battle scars of too close encounters and yet a surprising number of cars still have their rear view mirrors. As we drove from Cairo to Alexandria our driver said they had just installed cameras on the desert road to catch speeders - but he knew where the cameras were so he won't get a ticket. There were two check points where the police were pulling over cars that had been caught speeding. Another fascinating fact is the lack of traffic lights. The cross streets don't have intersections as we know them. They make U turns and right turns. If you need to make a left turn you go past and make a U turn, come back and make a right turn. We did watch a controlled intersection in Alexandria with a traffic light. One officer stood in the street and determined when to change the light and then signaled to the other officer in the control booth to change the light, who blew his whistle. When the traffic decided that the cross traffic had had their turn, they started again, with or without the green light. Not that the light actually had a colored lenses to indicate the color anyway.

As we arrived at the gate at Schutz school our driver spoke to the 2 armed guards in Arabic and in that conversation we understood the word "Kristal" and the guards responded back in Arabic with the word "Kristal" in the sentence and they opened the gate. As parents it was an interesting feeling to have that conversation with armed guards and your daughters name as the only word you understood and the word that would open the gates. It is mandatory for all boys of a certain age to serve in the military. Therefore they have to create jobs for all these boys. So although the gate at the school probably doesn't need to be guarded but that's another place to place the military. Boys whose father is dead or is the only son do not have to serve.