Hard Day at the Office

Today, being Tuesday, means we are over halfway through the week. We left school at 2pm, stopped in at Grand Mall for a falafel sandwich and ended up with foul, eggplant & egg. Not sure what happened there ... lost in translation I suppose. Anyway we made it home and plonked ourselves on the sofas and haven't moved since. Tony is now snoozing away, with his tablet on his tummy, spread out on the sofa. I think I might have worked him too hard today :-) It's very easy to just collapse on the sofa in this climate.

The last couple of days have tested my patience with "the Egyptian way". The man from the bank came to sign us up for bank accounts yesterday so our pay can be direct debited at the end of the month. As usual we needed 2 copies of our passports, which no one had because the HR department has had our passports since last week, so we all had to line up at the photocopier and wait while they copied them for us. Tony isn't able to get a joint account with me because he doesn't have a work visa neither do I yet) so I had to fill out the 3 page form which in the end only allows me to have a debit card - no cheque book or Visa because I am not Egyptian. To add to the experience we were then told it would take up to 20 days before the accounts open ... inshallah.
Today we had a full staff meeting at 9:30am which went til 10:15am. The meetings we've had so far have been very short but I'm not going to expect them to stay that way. The rest of the day was spent talking to people about inventories, lining up for blood tests (they check for Aids), lining up to sign off IT equipment that I use in my room, and making resources with Tony. The best part of the day was finally meeting Katie who is the other Grade 3 teacher. I'm sure she's slot straight into
Gladstone really easily. She reminds me of the Americans you have on staff - great attitude!
No lining up tomorrow and no red tape ... hopefully. Am off to get some more passport sized photos just in case.