Conversations

Discovery #13: Waiting in lines can be a pleasant experience.

Today we had to go to the Egyptian immigration offices to get our tourist visas extended. Even though we had already filled out the forms, each student needed to go to the office so that they could see our faces and make sure we were who we said we were. 

As with most governments, the immigration department here is a huge bureaucracy (from what I've been told), so our group had to wait in the hallway for over an hour. It was quite crowded and narrow so we were cautioned not to take up too much space. I chose one of the last available seats and ended up in between two women. One woman spoke English and she told me she was from Lebanon but married to an Egyptian man she met while she was visiting Cairo. She also helped me with the pronunciation of the Arabic numbers I was learning. 

I know this may seem insignificant but this was honestly the first conversation I had with someone here. Being a woman, it is not appropriate for me to have conversations with random men that I meet. However, most people on the streets and in public are men...and most everyone only speaks Arabic. So, being able to meet just one woman in a line while waiting for my visa was a real treat :)