SoRy Mi Englash iz no Gud

Day 40 June 30 – SoRy Mi Englash iz no Gud

Before I start I actually saw a calendar and realized that today was the 30th, that means two days have disappeared from my blog. Don’t worry I’m sure your not missing anything interesting, I probably just slept the whole day and didn’t bother to write about it.
Well I found out the town I am living in is named Fayoum, it has a few restraints and a salt factory.
Today I woke to a knock on the door, room service brought me breakfast, cool! It was a very typical Egyptian breakfast. It was that round flat bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, white mystery goo, and eggs. It was ok but I would pay good money for some honey nut Cheerios and milk. I went down to wait for the car at 7:58, I came back up at 8:45 after getting bored. The car eventually came and Mr. Akmed Shariff took me to the farm he was advising that day. As usual, before we started work, we stopped for 30 minutes for tea.
Akmed told me how he is hired to come to this farm twice a week, he does everything from testing the water to changing feeding levels. As you might have guessed from the title, Mr. Shariff’s English was not great, but I am grateful he tried so hard. At the end of our work my notepad was covered in drawing used to communicate.
I found that on this farm they don’t feed the fish on Friday, the hope is the fish will better utilize any natural food present. This would save money is the short term but I am not sure that the longer growing season would make this profitable over the long term. They only run the paddle wheels during night, they rely on plankton to create oxygen during the day. Sandy bottoms are better than muddy bottoms. He told me that during the climax of summer the salinity is much higher because of increased evaporation in the watershed. Their growth/feed ratio is 1 to 1.3-1.5.
After checking all the ponds we went back to the little one room building for more tea. While there Akmed suggested I visit a city on the coast, a nice tourist destination. The conversation eventually lead to the fact that there is a sanctioned Egyptian price and a tourist price. After I made a sour face he asked what problem I had with this. I told him that I thought I was unfair that for the same services I have to pay more money. He argued that Egyptians are poor so should get a better price. We agreed to disagree.
There are some cultural differences that I have mentally classified as un-American ideas. For example: Baksheesh, a poor person believes they are entitled to your money, they deserve your money because they are poor and you are rich. In the US poor people must beg for money, they must acknowledge that they are at the givers mercy. Another is this foreigner/Egyptian price difference. If in the US there was a sign saying “Entrance Fee” Americans 5$ Mexicans 2$ Europeans 10$ Africans 3$ people would be outraged. There would be a racial discrimination lawsuit in the blink of an eye. As I said, to me, these ideas seem distinctly un-American.
I finally found a good place to eat dinner, had shrimp and tilapia. Turns out is was also a chicken farm, he invited me in to see the chickens. Realizing, as they climbed all over my shoes, that getting Avian Bird Flu would probably suck.

Once again I took my afternoon swim in the giant lake.
Ants seem to have a strange fascination with this laptop.
Ants seem to love the inside of my socks…yea not cool.
Dinner cost 34 pounds ~ 7.50$
I guess guests at Egyptian hotels don’t need toilet paper.