Wow, I've arrived and survived. Was prepared for a fairly daunting first experience of this city which hasn't always had the best reviews but can happily say I have been pleasantly surprised.

The Nile flows like a throbbing vein through the heart of the city and the life and ambience of the place resounds around it in the Meuzzins that ring out the call for prayer five times daily.

The senses are over awed in some respects, the sounds, the aromas, the air heavy with the desert sands which linger in the haze over the Cairo depression.

The smells of sheisha waft out from the coffee houses on every street corner as the men deliberate over the days goings on in the community.

The donkey drawn stalls selling roasted sweet potates while holding up the streaming lanes of traffic but not the clear cut reverberations of thier car horns.

But before i had a chance to get too enraptured by the excitement of being in a new environment i was bought back to reality and sent straight to the office on day one, despite 3am arrival, for the start of a fairly intense training programme.

Luckily a proportion of this has been allowed to be self initiated. So in every spare momment that i have been able to escape the office i have been out exploring. The mosques, the coptic christian churches and the emporium of interlaced alley ways that form the Khan al Khallili Bazaar.