so, since last time i wrote jen and i have made a somewhat crucial decision. while walking along the beach front we saw a help wanted sign. we walked in and inquired and were told to come back at 8. at 8 we showed up and were told very appologetically that the boss wasnt coming that night but they would call him to see when he would be in. the phone call wet something like "hey, there are 2 american girls here who want to work..... half hour? ok." and we were told to hang out for half an hour. when he got there he called us in his office and within 20 minutes said we couuld start that night or the next day. easy as that. basically , he is desperate for foreign workers who have a basic sense of how food service works. egyptian service is generally very poor and much of the clientelle here is foreign. so now we are his new bartender and waitress or any combination of the two. fastest i have gotten a job... ever. so now we can at least break even during our stay here and spend ramadan at the beach instead of travelling god knows where and pretending to fast. also living at the beach for free for a while just sounds good. the beginning of our job idea didnt come with the help wanted sign. it started with a local man who calls himself andy... he offered us job and then made us sit with him for way, way too many hours without telling us much about these "jobs". we figured that he was just trying to get us to spend time with him and got the other jobs instead.
so, for the next little while we will be calling dahab home. it is a pretty little backpacker resort town where we can swim in the mornings, in swimsuits (yes, real swimsuits with our arms and legs hanging out for everyone to see). and then when we get out of the ocean, the showers also run with salt water. i am hoping that all the sea water will turn us gorgeous like in blue lagoon. but i somehow doubt it very much. at the very least, it is the opposite of our lives in jordan and we can people watch all day.
work so far consists of long hours of nothing and boredom filled only with the constant thud of terrible trance music punctuated by the foreigners who live here coming in after work and want to know who the new girls are. they assure us that we will want to stay forevr, but i am positive we wont. even making good money couldnt keep me here forever. but our manager thinks we are lightning fast learners and i think we have this job as long as we want it. to tell the truth i would be very sad if he thought we were too slow to pick up bartending...
we have an egyptian phone number now. i think from america it is 011.20.165309642. do with it what you will.
since we have been here i cut my hair. actually we both did. we waded out knee deep in the ocean and cut it ourselves. everyone who saw us thought we were nuts. and in retrospect i cant really think of any good reason to cut hair in a place where you cant stand still except that we didnt want to bother with cleaning it all up.
oh, and since internet time is somewhat dear these days, thanks for putting up with my lack of using spell check.
and with that, i am off to work. i'll see you all in the funny papers.