Good Buys!

Haha. I bet some of you who did not read the title closely thought this would be a sappy post about how hard it is for me to say good bye to this place.

Nope.

Not yet anyway.

As I pack to prepare for my July 1st departure, I am struck by what a good packing job I did almost 9 months ago.

Come on, I have my own blog and delusions about the multitudes who read it I can be a little conceited if I want to be. So indulge me for just a few more posts.

There are some things I wish I brought with me. Like I wish I brought more of my wardrobe here. I get tired of seeing myself in the same shirts all the time. And some nonperishable foods like stove top stuffing or canned cranberry sauce would have been a nice treat every once in a while. But, I learned to do without, or at least wait patiently for a shipment from home.

Very little of what I did bring with me went to waste. There's one pair of shoes I brought that I wore only once or twice. So they will remain here as a gift to the bawaabs wife. If you don't wear'em in 9 months you don't need'em.

However, there are three purchases that stand out as particularly smart and useful.

1. Travel Bags. These ziplock wardrobe bags to pack and store your clothes. You can fit like 10 dress shirts or 6 pairs of pants in there then roll it up and squish all the air out and save a ton of space. They are really great and cheap.

2. Swiss Army Knife. Despite the number of self-inflected injuries and scars I have from this tool (too embarrassing to enumerate here) it was really a great and one of my smartest purchases. I cannot think of a week that has gone by that I have not used at least one of these cleverly stored tools. Scissors, screw drivers - Phillips and flat head, knives, and a cork screw.

What other tool do you need?

3. My Egyptian wedding ring. My ring of choice the ubiquitous Bostonian piece of Americana (at least for us Irish girls) the claddagh ring.

This ring served dual purposes for me here. (1) It successfully fended off advances from taxi drivers, bawaabs, "security" guards, waiters, street urchins and other undesirable men as the Egyptian men really only show respected to married women. Everyone else is "unprotected" and therefore seems to be fair game. I tried my best to have fun making up fake husband stories, but honestly it got exhausting at times. I'd forget his name or profession or how many kids we had. It was tough to keep straight. FYI, having a fake Egyptian husband is more respectable here - i.e. stops harassment quicker - than having a fake American husband. (2) My choice of the claddagh ring won me favor and attention from the hot ex-pat men of Celtic decent from Scotland, Ireland and the occasional American who knew the ring.

It repels undesirable men, attracts desirable ones. Again I ask you, what other tool does a single women need?

For the uninitiated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claddagh_ring

Cheers!