Some of these things are not like the others

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Coming here, I expected many cultural differences, but there are many that have managed to surprise me. Every single time I go to the mall, I hear Kenny G. He plays that sax over the main loud speakers, in the coffee shops, in the grocery store... Often times it is the Kenny G Christmas CD, which makes my ears bleed a little. Also, ketchup and hot dogs are ubiquitous. At the grocery store the ketchup section takes up an entire aisle, and while I can't for the life of me find just plain salted potato chips, ketchup flavored potato chips are readily available. And I'm pretty sure that the room service pizza uses ketchup as sauce. Speaking of pizza, you can get hot dogs as pizza toppings.

The primary method of cleaning here is something that I've never seen before. To clean the floor (unless it's carpet, obviously) they pour mildly soapy water on it and then push it out the door/into a drain with a long-handled squeegee. If there are tough spots that need to be scrubbed, you wrap a towel around your squeegee. This cleaning method is done every day.

In other news, life on the new campus continues to be chaotic. The dorms are not going to ready on November 1st like we were told (and honestly, no one should be surprised by this), and the university finally admitted this about a week ago. As we are staying in military hotels currently and there is going to be a huge military conference held there, we need to vacate by the 1st. The options given to us were to get our own apartment, move to another hotel across town, move into a hotel about 2 minutes from campus surrounded by desert, or to stay in the current hotel. However, we still have to move ourselves and our stuff out from the 1st-3rd, so ResLife is offering to take us on a free vacation to the Red Sea...and miss two days of school. While everyone loves a free vacation, I don't want to miss two days of school, and as I'm electing to stay where I am, I may have to relocate myself for three days.

Today my history teacher told me that if you go early in the morning and pay off the guards, you can climb the Great Pyramid. Dangerous? Yes. Tempting? Absolutely. This requires further contemplation.

In other, other news, happy International Talk Like Sarah Palin Day! Can you see Russia from YOUR house?

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