(1) Discovering...

I woke up at 6 am, local time. There is a 7 hour time difference between Egypt and the East Coast of the USA. The first thing that surprised me when I woke up was that I have really slept well. Although it was only 6 hours, but I slept without waking up in the middle of the night many times (which is my norm). The second thing was the absolute silence. There was no noise of any kind. No car noise, kids, people talking, nothing... My street in Egypt is not super noisy, but it's not super quiet too!

After staying in bed for a bit, I decided to contact my family using Skype. Afterwards, I took a shower. I know! Too much detail. But the thing is that the shower tap was very strange. It was one thing without a separate tap for hot and cold water. So, I thought that since we were in winter and it was freezing, warm was the default. I was wrong and I was greeted with a wave of cold water that made me want to scream... The trick is that you need to increase the flow of water a bit for hot water to catch up. Smart, eh?

I was hungry. I ate some stuff I bought last night, but still, I was hungry. So, I decided to leave the house and go forge for food. It was cold. Too cold outside. It was my first real walk in the streets of the US of A. I was amazed by everything: from the cleanliness of the streets, the street lights, the pavements (sidewalks for the Yanks), the architecture, the shops, etc. Some people were walking and the seem not to be bothered by the cold at all. I found mothers walking with their little kids and everyone is happy and not covered in 1000 layers of clothes like I was!!!

I bought a coffee and some bakery and went back home after walking for like an hour or so in the cold. When I went home and wanted to go out again, it was snowing then. I saw snow the day before, but it was in the street and not falling from the sky! It was beautiful.

The rest of the day passed normally in unpacking and arranging my stuff in the room, talking with John (my landlord) and looking at the map of the city in Google Maps.