Hey, Wendy actually shows up in a Sister Visit comic! About time!

‘Tourist tax’ is not unique to Egypt, I know. But I did learn to play the ‘I live in this country’ card and sometimes that knocked the price down a bit. Wendy got the hang of bartering down quicker than I did. If I’m thinking about it, I do okay, but I really have to be in the right mindset. It doesn’t help that I’m well aware I have more money than they do and I don’t want to underpay. It’s tricky.

One thing that both Wendy and I had to adjust to was calling the USA ‘America’ and not ‘the United States’. In our high school Spanish classes (and later, Wendy lived in Brazil for a few months during her undergrad), it was drilled into our heads that the USA was not to be called ‘America’ because the countries to the south consider themselves to be a part of America from the continental perspective. But here, that’s the term they’ve learned for the USA, so had to break that habit (it still hasn’t been totally broken).

As for the romanized Arabic, habibi means ‘sweetie’ (there is a famous song called as such, which Moustafa sings very well!) and la’a means ‘no’; it’s one of the most useful words to know in tourist areas!

In other news, after four months (almost to the day) of being in Alexandria, I finally went to see Pompey’s Pillar and sphinxes (which appear in the Spoofy Randomness logo). Wendy and I had a heck of a time getting there (the Uber drivers had no idea where it was), but we got there eventually and it was quite the archaeological site. Didn’t make a comic about going, but thought I should note it.