The move to Maadi

We are now residents of Maadi.  I’m pleased to be here - it’s quiet by Cairo standards, it’s a short walk to Finn’s school, and in the morning we wake up to the sounds of birds in the trees.  I’m also happy with the apartment we’ve chosen.  It has good natural light, wooden floorboards in the bedrooms, tasteful tiles in the living room, and a complete set of matching light fittings throughout the apartment (highly unusual based on the other apartments we saw).  The kitchen also has a window and air conditioning, neither of which are standard, so we are lucky!   

Whilst I’m pleased to be here, the move wasn’t easy, and we have a long list of things that need to be addressed before we will be comfortable.  There are more than a few design flaws, and a number of things that simply don’t work.  After a long day of moving, with quite a few bumps along the road, the last straw for John was discovering the pitiful water pressure in our shower, and then not being able to explain to the plumber what the problem was.  I’m pretty sure his Arabic class today is going to be on household vocab.  I’m curious to see how quickly these things will be fixed -  in Egypt, some things happen very quickly, whilst other things are painfully slow.  Our property manager seems good, and so far he’s not screening our calls (and there have been many).  Over the weekend he arranged for a plumber to come in, an electrician to connect our TV, someone to look at our phone, and someone to measure up our curtains.  Nothing has really been fixed yet; it’s a multistage process, but it’s underway. 

As John is still on language training, we don’t have a budget from the Embassy for furniture, so we’ve had to make do with what the property manager could rustle up.  We have some friends who had no furniture at all for six months of language training, so I’m feeling happy with what we have.  We spent Friday at Ikea buying the rug in the picture above and a few other bits and pieces.  Ikea is more expensive than it is in Australia, but it’s still reasonably priced, and easy….so easy!!  I’m fairly certain our house will look like an Ikea catalogue once we are finished with it, but that’s a-ok with me.  

We’ve already met some Kiwis who live two doors down from us in a beautiful 1920s villa with a garden.  Their kids are a similar age, so it’s handy to have them around the corner.  On the way to their place, we also met another Australian who has a three year old.  Living in Egypt is interesting and I’m loving it, but I admit I like the ease of socialising with no cross-cultural boundaries. 

I’ll post some more photos as we fix up the apartment.  For the time being, the lounge is the only area that has proper furniture in it.  Back to Ikea we go.