(For a few photos, click here)<\/a><\/p>\nThis was a huge relief. we had changed our travel plans
\nand our big fear was that we would show up and there would be
\nno one to meet us..<\/p>\n
Anyway, Abdul met us and one other faculty member and
\n~16 students that all were on the same flight.<\/p>\n
He collected our passports and said “wait here”.
\nHe disappeared for a few minutes and when he
\nreturned he said
\n“Follow me and stay together”
\nand we went _around_ the passport control area
\ninto the baggage claim area.<\/p>\n
He then instructed us to collect our luggage and then
\ncongregate at point X and he disappeared again
\n(with our passports)<\/p>\n
Kaddee and I got our luggage pretty quickly
\nand a quick examination indicated that nothing had been
\nopened by the helpful folks at TSA.<\/p>\n
The students took quite a while to get their lugggage.
\nMeanwhile Abdul returned with passports stamped with visa’s
\nand handed them out.<\/p>\n
One of the students lost a bag somewhere in the travels,
\nso we waited a bit for him to file a report and
\nthen we were ready to exit.<\/p>\n
Abdul said “follow me”.
\nKaddee and I each had a luggage cart. We had 5 checked
\nbags, 2 rolling carry-on bags, a laptop briefcase and a large
\npurse.<\/p>\n
We followed, we were waived through a check point by a gentleman
\nin plain clothes (though nicely dressed) through a gate.
\nHe was not at a table or desk or booth. He was just standing
\nthere at a gate.<\/p>\n
After the checkpoint we walked out into the arrival area.
\nI looked around and realized “the gentleman” that just waived
\nus through WAS customs!<\/p>\n
Now I realize we kind of get some special handling because
\nAbdul was there and AUC has an “arrangement” with the government,
\nbut I saw no one else having their baggage searched and there did not
\nappear to be anywhere to do that thta I could see. Maybe if one was
\nunlucky enough to get the treatment, they took you to a room?<\/p>\n
Anyway, we then went outside. The heat hit us fairly hard. I would
\nguess it was in the low 90’s. It wasn’t intolerable by any means,
\nbut we had been in over-refridgerated planes for 2 days.<\/p>\n
We met our driver who had to go fetch his car.
\nWhile he was gone, I wondered off to duty free.
\nI was very disappointed because they had nothing that I was
\ninterested in.<\/p>\n
We waited some more. I went for a walk to find some bottled waters.
\nWhile looking for that (unsuccessfully) I found (what I have since
\ndeduced) is a competing duty free shop.<\/p>\n
*This* one was verra nice. I grabbed 2 bottles of scotch (glenmorangie
\nsherry wood finish, one of kaddee’s favorites, and glenfiddich 15yo
\nSolara reserve), a bottle of vodka and a bottle
\nof tequila, thus filling my 4 bottle limit.<\/p>\n
(We have 48 hours upon arrival to buy our booze. We will be
\ntoodling off to the local branch of the duty free to get Kaddee’s
\nalotment)<\/p>\n
When I returned to our waiting area, Kaddee was gone. !Gulp!
\nThe driver had arrived and loaded up all our luggage.
\nKaddee had a minor panic attack cause I was still missing
\nand went in search of me.<\/p>\n
Abdul found me and hussled me into the car and he then went
\nlooking for Kaddee. She showed up and was only slightly pissed
\noff that I had disappeared. I promised that when we got to the
\napartment, what I had in the bag would make up for it.<\/p>\n
We were then off to our new home.<\/p>\n
What to say about the traffic. It was densely packed and there
\n_were_ lanes painted on the roadway. Not sure why they are there
\nbecause no one was using them.
\nWe were on a four lane road, and there were never any less than
\n5 lanes of traffic.
\n6 lanes of cars was not uncommon.
\nAt one point there were 7. I closed my eyes and braced for impact.<\/p>\n
But we arrived with no drama.<\/p>\n
We got hussled upstairs. We hooked up the computer, called Kaddee’s
\nmom using skype to say we were otay!<\/p>\n
We were settling down with a dram
\nand our “welcome buddy” showed up.<\/p>\n
Nice guy named Matt who is the Arabic Studies department.<\/p>\n
We chatted for a bit and headed out for a quick recon around
\nthe neighborhood and a snack.<\/p>\n
There is a good size grocery store about 2 blocks from the house,
\nopen 24 hours. I think one could do very well buying
\nalmost everything you need there except meat.<\/p>\n
Then back to the aparment and collapse.<\/p>\n
more later<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Departure: We left house around 1 am to head to SeaTac. We hung out there for 2 hours to wait for the counter to open, and then checked in. We flew First Class (using upgrades to “Envoy” class which is USAir’s business class. However, they don’t have First Class in the states, so we got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photographs","category-settling-in"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}