goooooooood morning cairo!

hello everyone!

thanks for all the emails- it gets very lonely out here and it was
really nice to know that the blog was missed.

several days ago the internet AND the phones went down in the
surrounding area and there's no telling when they'll be back up. i had
a day off today, and as i lounged by the pool i overheard some dutch
people conversing about how they picked up a wireless signal in the
gazebo area by the pool house. well, i just came out here, and voila!
the connection is spotty, though.

it's been a very busy week. we started with that 3AM day, and we did
shoot a car wash scene and the goat rescue. we did one more day after
that in fayoum, shooting a scene where we're pulled over and bill is
vomiting. the cars were covered in live locusts dipped in petroleum
for both days. not exactly ASPCA-friendly, and pretty gross to boot!

since then we've been at the studios, which thank allah, are only
twenty minutes away from the hotel. there is an entire village set at
the studios, which in truth doesn't feel like a set. it is a complete
network of run-down buildings that looks like it was abandoned only
days before. we've been doing the vaccination scenes non-stop,
complete with 60 or so little egyptian rugrats all over the place.

for all of these group scenes, like the goat rescue, the car wash, and
the vaccinations, yuri's approach has been to run the entire scene or
process three or four times, each time filming it all with two cameras
at once, and never explaining to us where the cameras will go. so i
never really know when i'm being filmed except when i sense a camera
looming over my shoulder, or when i accidentally look right into one,
which i've done a few times! my vaccination 'station' involved
checking the kids off and inspecting their mouths with a tongue
depressor and listening to their chests with a stethoscope. MUCH
thanks to cousin karen, without whom i surely would have felt like an
impostor doing those things.

of course, there were several little ones that are so sweet and cute
you just want to hide them in your luggage and bring them home. (there
were two girls who would blow us kisses and say the only thing they
know in english over and over: 'i love you!') and, there also were the
required number of willful little devils as well. tomorrow i shoot a
scene where my character echos my own desire to steal one of the
little ones for my own.

haven't had the food poisoning back full-force, but my stomach has not
been happy with me. all of us americans and many of the russians are
dealing with the same thing. the food's pretty safe at the hotel, but
of course it's very expensive.

we've eaten a couple more times at Mom, met Mom even, and enjoyed it
thoroughly while staring at the desert sky. last night we had the
company of an incredibly large harvest moon.

i'm very homesick, but i'm having fun at the same time. more soon!