This ain't Monopoly money...

Yesterday was the Big Day, the day Shannon and I signed the lease for the summer apartment (if you're just jumping in at this point, no, I am not living in sin, I am renting an apartment with 2 other ND kids for the summer). In addition to signing the lease, we'd be paying rent for the first month, a deposit, and a 25% commission fee to the realtor who helped us find the place. In total, it was just over 10,000 LE, and I was responsible for half of it (about $1,000). This was easily the single biggest transaction I've personally made in my young life.

In preparation for the deal that was about to go down, I had been withdrawing money from an ATM every day for about five days. Due to the single day limit my bank has on my account, I couldn't just take out all the needed cash at one time. Instead, I had several transactions' worth of small bills.

Before we headed down to Maadi to sign the lease, I laid all the money out on a table. There was A LOT of it. Stacks of 100, 50, 20, and 10 LE bills. Even though the money is colored funny and only has a fifth of the value its American counterpart, seeing it all before me was still pretty surreal.

We left to meet the realtor, each with over 5,000 LE in our pocket. My wallet wouldn't shut. Even though theft in Egypt, especially pickpocketing, is extremely rare, I still felt a little uneasy with all that cash on me.

We got to Maadi and met the real estate agent, Monzer, out front. Unfortunately, there had been a little mix-up between him and the owner, and the apartment that we had looked at and wanted wasn't going to be available until June 3rd. There was another flat in the same building that we could stay at until then, but I was still pretty disappointed that we wouldn't be able to move in right away. I was really looking forward to making the apartment "mine," so to speak. Oh well, waiting will only make me appreciate it even more (or something like that).

We took a look at the temporary place we'd be staying in and then sat out at a table to finalize the deal. It turns out that I didn't even need to sign, so so much for that climactic experience. Even so, it was good to know that things were taken care of. The only thing left to do is move on in.