Shopping in Cairo

While our stories and trips are SO exciting I am sure to read about, I realize that our day to day life is probably pretty interesting too since it is so different than life in the U.S.

One big huge gigantic difference is shopping. Say goodbye to Wal-Mart, Kroger, the Mall, etc and say hello to "metro mart" and "carfur" and the millions of corner shops that make up Cairo. I realized today how strange it is. I feel like I can't find anything here at all, and it isn't so much from a lack of shops. In fact I currently shop at about 5 different shops selling food. There is the nameless shop around the corner which is tiny and doesn't sell very much at all, but they've got some staples like rice, boxes of milk, and most of the time bread. Then about 15 min or so walk away there is the Metro Mart which is the closest thing here to some sort of chain, Metro caters to the expats with their large well lit aisles, prepackaged food, and many imported things. (and wide selection of meat that is in glass case and refrigerated) We buy a lot of our food here because it has the largest selection of most foods. Then right on the same block there are 2 more small shops (do they have names? I don't think so) one of these shops has all their food labeled in Arabic, and the other doesn't have prices on things which scares me because i don't want them to rip me off. Then across the street is another market, pretty big actually but it doesn't have a ton of food because it sells cleaning supplies, shampoos etc. It is good though for a few things. I would try getting meat there because it probably is cheaper than metro, but I can't read the price of their meat (It is only in arabic, and while I CAN read numbers, they have a huge sign up above the meat counter with all the kinds of meat and their costs, I don't know how to spell chicken in arabic)

Those are the shops closest to us. Then about a 30 min walk away (close to a few people I tutor) is another chain store, Soudis where I buy cereal, they have a pretty good selection of things available here, including Temmys brand cereal, and sometimes I can find other things there that i wasn't expecting. Like yesterday I found these little packs of "vanilla extract". It is a powder and instructs you to add it to the flour to sweeten things. I haven't been able to find vanilla anywhere so I bought a pack to try. I'm still not sure about it.

To buy fruits and vegetables I head to Rd. 9 *the road with Metro Mart* and there are multiple "stores" with fruit and veggies in boxes around inside and outside the small shop. I am told that it is cheaper on rd 7 but I haven't been over there to find one close enough to us yet. (plus it isn't expensive I usually spend about 5-7$ on fruit when I go and I get us A TON. Fruit here is excellent, we just make sure to soak it in water with bleach before eating it.

So like I said, shops everywhere... mostly with the same selection but each one has something (usually 1 thing) that you can't find anywhere else. But it is kind of exciting to walk around, sometimes. But as our friends April and Mark say, "you can't just go pick something up here, everything you do turns into a story"

So true. With an option of a few differnt kinds of canned goods, Strained Foul, Canned corn, tuna fish, and tomato soup (which is campbells and looks extremely beat up), and with one kind of bread option, when the US cereal is 40 pounds and the Temmys brand is 8 that leaves no question as to what we buy there! But there aren't many choices really... we eat a lot of corn flakes and museli. we also eat a lot of spaghetti and chicken and rice. Actually that is basically our diet! But we try to mix it up as much as possible, I think we've had french toast 50 times in a month! Good thing that it is so delicious huh? We went through I think 30 eggs last week, amazing? I know! I think we eat at least 3 eggs each day most days.

things they don't have: real cheddar cheese (the stuff we got IS very close though), vanilla, baking soda, cottage cheese, man and cheese, parm, lettuce, (i miss salads a lot), Dr. Pepper... and a lot more. It is really strange though! But exciting definitely.