I had kind of a rough night. The ‘mummy tummy’ had me up quite a few times so I didn’t exactly have a restful night. When the alarm went off at 6:10, I decided to sleep until 6:45. At 6:45 I decided to sleep another 15 minutes. It wasn’t enough, but it had to do.
I showered, dressed and went down to meet El Banna.
Back at the office, I checked mail before class and we got rolling again. We got a little bogged down mid-morning with a discussion about how Yield is calculated and how they want it to be calculated. The morning was also complicated by network problems on the EG end…the communications provider here was having some sort of problem. The network was up and down so much that it was really hard to get anything done.
That took us up to lunch time when we just hoped everything would be better after lunch.
Yesterday, when El Banna was asking what I wanted for lunch, he said I put him in a difficult place because I said, “Anything is fine. Whatever is easy.” Today, with my ‘mummy tummy’ when he asked what I wanted for lunch, I said, “A small bowl of soup, a banana and a piece of bread.” They all laughed (I think they thought I was kidding) and El Banna asked me if I liked pizza. I told him my stomach was not happy and I really would rather stick with the soup and banana.
I must look pretty bad…several people have commented on how tired I look.
The pizzas arrived at lunch time…from Pizza Hut. A little later, the office boy arrived bearing a tray with my ramen, a piece of local bread and a bunch of very green bananas. I ate maybe a third of the bread (kind of like a pita only softer and about the size of a small dinner plate), half the soup and none of the bananas.
After lunch, most of the network issues had been resolved. I sent some messages to the office back home with questions and issues from the morning. I started getting replies about 3:30 or 4:00 our time and had answers to everything before we left for the day.
Tonight’s the night I was supposed to go to Shima’s house for supper. When she was in Iowa earlier in the summer, she told me she wanted to have me to her house for traditional Egyptian food. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since but by the end of the day it was clear I should just go back to the hotel and hunker down for the evening.
I felt so bad about not going to her house! She’d bought all the food and was very excited about me coming. Her mother was coming to meet me, too. But there’s no way I can eat anything and I really don’t feel all that hot.
El Banna took me back to my hotel and said he was picking up Keith at the airport at 7 and would bring him back to the hotel after that. He said he’d call me then to see if I needed anything. His wife’s a pharmacist and could help me if I needed any medications. I have the levaquin that I got from the international doc in Iowa before my trip to Bangkok last year this time. I didn’t use it then so I still had it. I took one when I got to my room.
I could hardly keep my eyes open so I lay down to take a nap. I set my alarm so that I wouldn’t sleep for more than half an hour or so but I woke up about an hour and a half later. Apparently, I was too tired to master the task of setting my alarm for PM instead of AM.
I got up and ate a slightly green banana from the fruit basket in my room and mixed up some electrolyte powder and bottled water to drink. Keith called later to see if I needed anything and let me know his room number. He said he had levaquin too if I needed it.
It’s going to be an early night for me. I hope I’m much improved by morning.
