Getting sick in Alex...

I've been pretty sick for the past two days with severe stomach pains.  At points it was so bad I couldn't even get out of bed.  So last night I called the director of the program and she in turn called the nurse at the dorms and they decided to call a doctor in to see me.  

It ended up taking the doctor over an hour and a half to get here, partially because everything in Egypt runs slower, and partially because they had to inform ALL the girls in the dorms that a man was coming so they could either stay in their rooms or put on their hijab.  In the mean time, all the women at the dorms are bursting into my room every five minutes to ask me the same questions over and over, because they are convinced I must have swine flu and just not telling them all my symptoms.  Anyway, when the doctor is finally about to arrive, the women have a panic moment because of how messy my room is!  I had just done laundry and because there are no dryers here and only a couple drying racks I had to hang my clothes around my room to dry them.  They found this entirely unacceptable, so as I was writhing in pain in bed, they told me I must clean my room and make it and myself presentable because "the doctor is a man and he is very handsome."  Then once the doctor got here, he spent about five or ten minutes just having a conversation with me and my roommates -  what our names our, where we are from, what famous people have the same names as us, what we are studying, everything.  I was not amused by this gesture because I really just wanted him to diagnose me and give me medicine.  It turned out I just had colitis (similar to food poisoning I think) and he prescribed me a medication that worked instantly.  It will be a few weeks before I'm fully recovered, but as long as I stay on the meds it's not too painful.