Put one foot in front of the other

Well, apologies for not posting yesterday as I had meant to. I was just too tired.

Saturday night we had a walk down to the Kodak store so that I could get some passport sized photos taken. It was a short walk, maybe 10 minutes or so each way, but it was nice. And as it was a bit humid/hot out, waiting inside the air conditioned store for the photos to be done was nice as well.
We looked at some of their products for sale. They have a neat video camera that is sized like a blackberry. Not too expensive, but not on my list of things that I want to buy anytime soon. However they did have some nice digital cameras, and I do want to replace mine. It's possible we'll get one in Kuwait since hubby says they're less expensive there.

When we went out walking the day or two before, I taught Ahmed about "punch buggy".
I remember it from when I was a kid and taking road trips. Whenever you see a VW Bug, you call out "punch buggy" and you get to haul off and punch the person you're with. This is a great excuse to be able to hit your siblings. lol
Hubby was not aware of this game, and though he understood it and we (or at least I) kept a watch out for VW bugs on the rest of that walk, all I could do was call it out. It would NEVER do for me to haul off and punch him, or even lightly punch him, while we are out in public. I would never hit him hard enough to hurt, but even good naturedly, it wouldn't be taken well here, and would make him look very bad.
So, I told him I was saving them up for when we were home. lol
And so it continues now that whenever we're out I call out "punch buggy" when I see a bug.
Somehow I don't think I'll ever get to punching him though.

Yesterday was a very busy walking day as well.
We went to the Mogamma building, which is a ginormous building.
The first floor handles visa processing, all sorts, for anyone who needs a visa in the country. This includes people from all over the world. It is then, as you can imagine, a wonderful place for people watching. I had a field day for sure.
We were there for a couple of reasons. The first being that I had overstayed my initial 30 day visa that I got at the airport when I entered the country.
Which wouldn't be that big of a deal except that in order for me to get the spousal 3 or 5 year visa, we have to be legally married.
And as of this moment, we are only Islamically married. Hubby never took the marriage papers to the court to register them and make the marriage legal with the country of Egypt, and now things have changed some since I was here last and we got married, and there is a different process that has to be gone through.
So, I have to have a valid visa to be able to get "married", even though technically we already are married.
There was a two hour wait for the visa to be processed. We walked across the street from the Mogamma building to visit the mother of hubby's best friend. Rather conveniently located for us since we had a wait and it was hot and I didn't want to walk around for 2 hours in the heat.
There are places to sit inside the building, but it's fairly crowded and we wanted to get out anyways.
So, we went to visit his friend's mother. She was very nice and we sat there and visited with her for close to an hour I guess.
Afterward we walked back to the Mogamma building and sat outside on one of the marble benches for a while, and then went inside and waited for about the last half hour or so.
I really enjoyed people watching there, until I thought about how easy it would be to catch some disease or whatever in a place that crowded and packed with people.
Insha'Allah it's all good. I tend to try to breath out of my nose instead of my mouth anyways, as I figure less crud (smog, dust, anything else) can get in through my nose than my mouth. lol
After we left the Mogamma, we walked a bit and then took a taxi. After a short stop at a small grocery, we went home.
I was beat! I didn't eat breakfast or drink anything before we left, and we didn't get home til close to 2 I think.
After eating a sandwich and being online a bit, I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and had to go nap. I really wanted to post yesterday but just couldn't. Too tired.

Soooo.... enter today, and there are 3 things we need to do to get officially married. The first was to go to the US embassy, which we tried going to yesterday, but they were closed because of the memorial holiday.
So we went today. They close at 11 a.m. We got there about 10 minutes til 11.
Which turned out to be good, because otherwise the wait would have been even longer. You have to take a number when you get there. Our number was 912. They were working on number ....well I can't remember and don't agree with hubby's remembrance, but there were over 40 people in front of us. It took a total of 2 and a half hours. Most of it spent standing since the seats were full.
What we had to get there, was an affidavit stating that I was free to marry. I had to bring my passport, my certified divorce papers, and we had to pay the equivalent of 30 dollars to get this form and have it stamped.
There was some good people watching there, and hubby and I had a good time with that.

Tomorrow we will go to get the affidavit certified at a different place, and then after that, we will go to the third place to actually get married. The place they marry you is kind of like having a civil service done. We have to sign some papers and put our fingerprints on the paper and we need to bring two male witnesses. From everything I have read, it's an old dingy office, and not something to dress up for. I'm hoping they'll take our first papers we did when we got married and be able to use those for our marriage date, but if not, we still think of ourselves as having been married on the first date anyways.

I know I've blathered on, and I'm not done yet. Maybe I'll save some of what I had to say for tomorrow.
In any case, time for a picture break.

Yesterday, no, the day before, mom made fish. I declined and she made me chicken instead. First picture is of the fish before being cooked, in a pot on the table with some "lemons". Which are actually limes as we know them in the States.



Next we have a picture of the fish while frying.
I would have taken a picture of them after they were done but I didn't get a chance, and I thought about taking a picture of the bones after the fish were eaten, but I didn't think anyone would want to see that, so I didn't. lol



I haven't gone shopping with my sister in law yet. I've come to understand, in general, that when people talk about a time for doing something, they mean it more of as "at some time in the future", but maybe not exactly when they said. Of course there are some people or businesses that operate with more of a strict time structure, but it seems that most people don't. It takes some getting used to.
It's almost as if people aren't putting intention behind what they're doing, so things have a way of dragging on and dragging out. The part of me that is used to the structure and time constraints in the States doesn't like the way things are done here. And yet, if you can let yourself relax and not worry about things, I guess being open is an easier way to do things. We shall see what happens.

Speaking of when things happen, still not sure about hubby's trip to Kuwait. Maybe Thursday. Remains to be seen and I guess it will change again before he goes. lol

There is a new type of bread I tried yesterday and then had again at breakfast this morning. It kind of looks like a very very large hamburger bun, but flatter and not divided in half, and without any sesame seeds. It has fennel and perhaps anise seeds in it, I can't remember for sure. But it's buttery and flavorful and quite yummy. This will do for breakfast, with some tea, quite well.

I'm picking up some words in Egyptian as time goes on. Not a huge vocabulary, but a few common words. I'll maybe post about those tomorrow.
Still haven't made it to the dentist. My tooth doesn't hurt, but I'd like to get it fixed before it has a chance to start hurting.

There are so many things I wish I could share, but somehow, like when I'm out and doing something, I write things for the blog in my head, but by the time I get home, it's gone. I wish I had a way to really record things and then just copy/paste from my head to the page. lol
Oh well.