Made in Egypt

Today I went to the store with my host dad. He was telling me that this is the biggest store in all of Cairo. I expected something like the Lamb’s Thriftway on Scholls back home. The place is huge. It’s like a Mega Super Wal-Mart, with more stuff.

It was fun wandering around. They are starting to get ready for Ramadan which begins September 13, so there were sparkly stars, moons and lamps hanging up. Pril, a popular brand of dish soap, was being sold in lantern-style squeeze bottles. Plus, school starts next week, so all the back to school stuff was out. The cheese counter was heaven. They have every kind of cheese from every country you can imagine. The cheese section was about the size of a regular meat area, with about 4 guys behind the counter helping customers. And that’s not counting the pre-packaged cheese. We had to take a number.

This is also the place where all the foreigners shop. I saw Asians, Europeans, Americans, and of course, Egyptians. In addition to the store, they have attached a mall. So the wall where the registers are (more than I’ve ever seen in one store) opens up to the mall corridor. There are the regular mall stores – Levis, Claire’s, and of course, a food court. They are in the process of adding 42 more stores, including a Starbucks. Yippee!

I was reminded today that other countries don’t abide by the same copyright rules the U.S. does. For example, we were in the cleaning supplies aisle. There was Clorox, but right next to the Clorox, for much less, were CloroMax, Clorotel, and Clorita. They all had remarkably similar blue and white packaging.

In unrelated news, apparently I look like I was made in Egypt. Almost every day, someone comes up to me, yakking away in Arabic. I tell them, mabakelemish araby (I don’t speak Arabic). It doesn’t seem to faze them, as they continue on with whatever they were saying. I try to look clueless (not too difficult), until they get the point that I really don’t speak Arabic. Once they realize that I’m not joking, they get a little embarrassed. One lady went on to tell me that I look Egyptian.

Tomorrow my schedule gets crazy. No more 3 hour trips to the store!