Well I have been here three days now and I guess I am finally starting to get the time difference figured out. I now fall asleep around 12:00 am local time and wake up around 7:50 am local time. On Monday Mr. Samir took me around to all the researchers and introduced me to them. The first one who I met was Dr. Gamal who is the Research Co-ordinator here and we talked for about an hour about various things. He told me that I would be surveying the different departments first and then would get to some research of my own. After meeting with Dr. Gamal I met Mr. Tawfik who is the Business and finance administrator here he was very nice and we talked for a while. He shared that he was Catholic and told Mr. Samir where to find English Catholic churches so I will get to go to Church on Sundays hopefully from now on. Mr. Samir then introduced me to about a million other people who I really need to learn the names of but have not yet. He also showed me my office and gave me a key. The office is a a 10 by 12 completely white room that has wooden desk in it with an old compaq computer on top of it that runs XP pretty well. I also got to go to the Library and was invited to take whichever books I liked from it to read. I grabbed a few on basic aquaculture and a Scientific America magazine to read. I then went back to the apartment because Samir told me there was nothing I needed to do.

When I went back over there I had some lunch and then sat down to watch a movie on the computer, the lights kept flickering on and off throughout the afternoon and I figured that this would go on for a while and then it would stop. However around 8:15 pm right as it was actually getting darkish here the electricity went completely out. This really would not have bothered me excepted that I had food in the refrigerator that needed to be kept cool. So I first looked for the circuit breaker box and eventually found one but everything was fine so I went around the campus looking for a worker or a security guard to ask to help but the security desk on campus was empty so I called Mr. Samir. He told me that he would call the people to fix it and he did, and then he called me back and told me the security guards were going to come pick me up and take me to a place with electricity. When the man came he did not speak English whatsoever and I had to show him what was wrong and rode on the back of his motorcycle to the guard station which ended up being in the opposite direction than I was looking. I then sat down and began reading Huck Finn on my iPhone and the guard taught me several new words in Arabic. These are phonetic spellings obviously but ``Mea mea'' means good and ''mous'' means mosquito. After a while the mosquitoes got pretty bad out there and the guards decided that I should move to an inside room. I moved there and then continued to read for a while until he came back to get me and the electricity was fixed. It was interesting have to try and communicate with someone who does not speak your language and hand gestures really came in handy.

Yesterday morning the power went out again and now I cannot use the air conditioning in the apartment. Luckily though its has remained pretty cool in the apartment. Yesterday I also got to choose where I wanted to go on the weekends and I choose: Giza, St. Catherine's, the tip of the Sinai peninsula, Alexandria, and a couple other places around to go to.

It still gets lonely here in the evnings when everyone leaves and I get especially lonely around mealtimes when I have to cook and and clean for myself. I miss having two little brothers running around me and I miss getting to do things to help them out. I just miss home and I know it will get better but right now for most of the hours I am awake I am alone, and that has just never been the case before in my life and its going to take some getting used to.

Will