Its dark outside and one would think that the construction crew would have packed up by now and gone home.

 

Not on your life!  The banging, knocking, grinding, building and welding will go on until 2 am at least.

 

Here life does not start at 7 or 8 am and stop at 5 pm. At least not in the building industry.

 

And that led to one of my meltdowns.  Every expat will tell you that they have at least one or two meltdowns when they first arrive in a new country and go through the settling in period.

 

We arrived in Alexandria, Egypt in May 2011 (I can’t believe it’s been 16 months here already).  It was all new.  The madness on the roads, the inability to understand most of the people around me, the confusion of where to find what and no support system to fall back on.

 

Then my darling husband had to go to Argentina for 10 days which turned into a month and it was during that month of August 2011 that I had my first meltdown.

 

Across the shaft in the middle of the building, on the same floor where we had the apartment, the occupants decided to do some alterations.  Afternoons and evenings up to early mornings were spent chopping and hacking out the floor tiles.  The first week I told myself that it didn’t bug me at all, the second week I told myself that it couldn’t last much longer and by the third week I convinced myself that they would finish soon.  They did! 

 

The first night after the tiles where all gone, it was blissfully quiet.  The second night I slept for a full 8 hours.  The third afternoon they were back, breaking out a wall for a window.

 

Hope against hope I watched the clock.  10 pm, 11 pm, midnight, 1 am, 2 am, 3 am finally they packed up.   I was still wide awake an hour later, exhausted, the hell in and missing my husband.  I went into the bathroom, opened the window which was opposite that blasted apartment and proceeded to bang it open and closed half a dozen times, all the while muttering loudly “Let see if you like being kept awake” – bang.  “I hate this stupid place” – bang.  “I want to go home” – bang.  “I miss my husband” – bang.  “Stupid bloody people that don’t know about working hours” – bang and double bang.

 

I stumbled to bed, cried for a while and fell asleep.

 

A few hours later, the English teacher on the other side of the apartment saw me getting out the lift and said “Did you hear that crazy woman shouting this morning?” “No” I said – “I was trying to sleep after all the construction.”  “I don’t know how the occupants manage to sleep with all the noise”. 

 

“Oh no” she said “That flat has been empty for at least a month”!

 

And just then I had my second meltdown………..