Our lives are finally getting into a bit of routine. We have a spacious, beautiful “twin house” or “twin villa” as they are called in Uptown Cairo’s compounds. A twin house means there are two units joined by a single shared wall. We have our own garden and pool wrapping around three sides of our house. In the US it would be called a semi-detached house or duplex. The house came unfurnished and we have pretty much completed furnishing it. This week natural gas was installed and our oven and stove top is now working. The living and dining room looks great as well as two of the bedrooms. We are working towards unpacking everything in the third bedroom. We have not explored yet the third floor and roof top patio yet.
We finished our third week of school and both of us, Nadia and me are getting used to the new school culture. We have friendly and helpful colleagues who have made the transition much easier. Nadia went swimming in the community center pool and we worked out how to reserve the tennis courts. Neither of us are golfers, but I am using the golf course to run and walk with Obi. There is a Carrefour grocery store and an Orange store inside the compound that takes care of internet, phones, and groceries. We also found a dog washing and haircut service that drives their van right to the house as well as a laundary/dry cleaning service until we get some domestic help.
I found a great bicycle shop in the nearby New Cairo district of Mokattam. The name refers to the low range of hills and a plateau and this area was a limestone quarry for the ancient temples and pyramids. Emaar Misr, a subsidary of the Emaar Properties, a Dubai-based real estate company, is building a series of residential developments around our school here in the Eastern Desert, about a 30-minute drive away from the Nile River. Uptown Cairo looks like Spain or Tempe, Arizona, outside, it looks like many parts of Cairo, an Arab version of Mumbai or Delhi. I am looking forward to exploring more of the plateau the New Cairo district of Mokattam.
