Days 18, 19, 20 & 21: Overtime

I’m not going to lie. I’m far too tired right now to be writing this, but I’ve finished my homework for the night, I still have 4.75 hours before I have to be awake in the morning, and I don’t want to fall even further behind in my blogging than I already have because I know I’m starting to forget things. And important things at that. So I will make myself spare half an hour to fill you in on a few more days.

Last Wednesday was my second day back from the wedding. The day itself was fairly uneventful. I discovered that one of the stores I pass daily on my way to the University sells fresh juice, which was exciting.

In the afternoon we had our weekly Flagship meeting in which Robyn discussed some of the problems in the dorms. Apparently some of girls have bed bugs, which freaks me out. I still have a lot of mosquito bites from the country, and every time I lay down in my bed I start imagining there are more than are actually present, and that they’re itchier than they would otherwise be. On the topic of bugs, there are also a few cockroaches and a lot of ants. I’ve been trying my best to keep the room clean, and I haven’t found more than a few scavenger ants searching for a food source, but there’s a new dead cockroach on the stairs every morning and it’s all I can do to not let it get to me.

Wednesday evening was the World Cup Match between America and Algeria. It was a big deal in here because Algeria was the last Arab team in the Cup, and also the team that knocked Egypt out of the competition. I’d been wanting to see a World Cup Match, and Moutaz, one of the Flagship employees at the Dar, had reserved a giant room at a café for anyone who wanted to watch together. As such I went, even though I was exhausted. I don’t like to turn down opportunities here, I never know when I’ll get another one.

Going was definitely worth it. On my way out the door, Hadir decided she wanted to come with me, so we cheered and drank juice, and in case you haven’t heard yet America won in overtime. Going with Hadir gave me some extra insight into Arabic culture because before she could leave the dorm, she had to call her fiancé and get permission. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing except he didn’t want her to go because there would be men there. She wasn’t going to be talking with them, she wasn’t even going to be sitting particularly near them, and she was going to be fully veiled, but her fiancé didn’t want her out. Eventually she appeased him by assuring him that other Egyptian women would be there too, but it was a close call.

After the match, before heading back to the dorm, Hadir and I want to visit her fiancé’s sister, Sifaa’, who lives near the café. She’s a very sweet woman with three children; Ahmed, Judy, and Asser. We had chocolate cake left over from Sifaa’s birthday and talked about how I liked Egypt and what her children had been up to in school. It was all very homey and I felt quite welcome. The view from her apartment balcony was gorgeous as well, overlooking the entire neighborhood of Sporting.

Once we’d left Sifaa’s, Hadir didn’t really want to go back to the dorms, so we walked along the beach, taking advantage of the fact that she has a later curfew as long as she’s out with an American. Unfortunately, this later curfew also meant that we forgot about dinner, so on the way back to the dorms we stopped at the McDonalds that’s just a block away.

Now I know what you’re thinking. McDonalds? For Lauren? The same Lauren who would rather starve to death than eat McDonald’s in the states? But honestly, horrible or not, it’s heartening to have something as American as a McChicken Sandwich and fries. The same sandwich that would have made me gag in America was my favorite meal this week. It’s also worth pointing out that said sandwich was incredibly expensive.

If you translate it into dollars, the McDonalds here is about the same price as in America. They even have a five pound menu, to match the dollar menu. But that means that you’re paying twenty-five or thirty pounds for a meal, and when you consider that to an Egyptian one pound is like one dollar you’re bordering on the absurd. It is, after-all, only fast food. Still, thanks to this discrepancy the McDonald’s is what I’d call classy. It’s clean, well lit, the music is great, and the décor is what I’d expect to find in a trendy café. They even have free wi-fi. If you didn’t have to buy something to sit there, I’d probably be doing my homework there most days.

I know I’m going into great detail about this McDonalds, but I feel like it’s important with regards to what happened later that night. When Hadir and I got back to the dorms, Grace and Zeinab, roommates on our floor, were in the salon whispering heatedly. We stopped to say hi and Zeinab immediately ran over and started whispering in Hadir’s ear, after a few moments of which Hadir exclaimed out of nowhere, “But I can’t! I’m engaged!”

As you can imagine, I was quite confused. But we all sat down and Grace, after a little prodding, told me a somewhat disturbing story. Apparently, three years ago, she met this Egyptian man online through a language learning site. She was trying to improve her Arabic, he was trying to improve his English. They’ve been talking for the last three years, and you could tell from the look on her face that it wasn’t entirely platonic.

Now, I have mixed feelings about online friendships. As most of you know, I met one of my closest friends online, so I owe something to the invention. At the same time though, I recognize that my experience was rare, and that there are a lot of creepers out there; especially considering that Egyptian men who talk to American women without necessity tend to be creepers anyway. But I haven’t gotten to the disturbing part.

This man friend of hers lives in Cairo, and while she’d tried to meet up with him while we were visiting, there hadn’t been anytime. Now, at ten o’clock at night, he was on his way up to Alexandria to meet Grace at some café he knew of on the other side of Alexandria. I’m not even going to go in to how flabbergasted I was when I realized that was the situation.

She was set on meeting him though, and we couldn’t talk her out of it. Why he was insisting on the middle of the night I still don’t know, but we convinced her to switch the meeting place from his café to the McDonald’s on the corner. In Egypt, places like McDonald’s are frequented all night long, so it was the best choice for a well lit public place with lots of people. Then came the problem of her going alone. Zeinab was having stomach issues, so she couldn’t go. Hadir’s overprotective fiancé would dump her if he even suspected she’d entertained such an idea. An that left me.

I know, I know, it’s about as stupid an idea as ideas come, but I wasn’t going to let a girl just walk into a sketchy meeting like this alone, so I went with her. Besides, I had an exam to study for the next day, so I might as well study at McDonald’s, right? She was glad for the company, but she made it very clear that she didn’t want me sitting with them, so I bought a five pound coffee and camped out in a corner table. For the next three hours.

Yes, they had a three hour date. At the end of which she kissed him, in public, which while entirely acceptable in America is about as offensive as you can get in Egypt. I’m still peeved as her disregard for the culture. But anyway, she was on cloud nine for the rest of the night, and I was just glad she didn’t get kidnapped. Having had a few short minutes conversation with the guy I get the distinct feeling that he may just be making a play for his green card (he works in tourism), but she says she’s going to be careful about that. And frankly, it’s none of my business.

Anyway, back the dorms I was exhausted. It was late, and I had that exam the next day. So I studied a last little bit and went to sleep. For far too long. Thursday morning I woke up at 10:30 AM, my first official day of oversleeping. Thank goodness my exam was in my 11:00 class and not the 9:00 one. Ustaaz Immad was very understanding about my missing class. He gave me my homework, summarized the day’s activities, and informed me that the class would be meeting at the cinema Saturday night to see “3asl Aswaad,” the same movie the girls from the dorm took me too before classes started. I was a bit peeved about the movie because not only had a seen it, but it meant rescheduling an outing with Habiba, but I went along with it anyway.

The exam was harder than I expected it to be. I was as adequately prepared as it was possible to be, but the organization of the test itself and the phrasing of the questions was incredibly difficult. I didn’t leave the exam room confidently. Still, I did leave, and that meant I could go home and take a nap. Which I did.

Later that evening I woke to a knock on the door. Sometime in the last week (though I can no longer pin point when) I’ve become pretty good friends with two girls from the University of Chicago, Tamar and Meghan. Tamar was at my door inviting me out to Silsila, a popular Alexandrian café on the Mediterranean. I’d never been before, but I’d heard the other students raving about it, so I dressed quickly and went out.

I’m pretty sure Silsila is now one of my favorite places in the world. When they say it’s on the Mediterranean, they mean on the Mediterranean, as in the entrance is a set of steps descending to the ocean and stopping only a few feet away. It’s a little more expensive than some other places, but not outlandishly so. I had Arabic coffee and banana juice again and we say around chatting.

After the Silsila, we all went back to the dorms and decided to watch Prince of Persia. Meghan and Tamar got tired halfway through, so I ended up finishing it on my own, but it was a good movie. I’d still like to see it in better quality, my boot legged copy was a little hard to make out at parts, but I love anything with Jake Gyllenhaal in it.

At some point on either Wednesday or Thursday, I did manage to squeeze in a load of laundry, and a very unlucky load of laundry at that. As it turns out my new, blue, zip-up NY&Co. shirt bleeds. Badly. I now have several pairs of blue underwear, two blue bras, a blue pair of socks, a pair of blue-tinted, beige pants, and a blue blouse with blue flowered embroidery. It’s not as bad as it could have been. All of the dyed clothes are still wearable, I just have to wear them with different things now.

All of that brings us to the weekend, which is by far the easiest part to summarize. Hadir’s mother has gotten sick. I don’t understand exactly because I don’t understand a lot of medical terms in Arabic, but I think she has an inoperable problem with her eyes. Either way, Hadir bought a plane ticket to go visit her where she’s living in Oman last week, but because of a problem with her passport number the visa was denied. Not wanting to wait around the dorms to work it all out, Hadir went back to the country to spend time with her family, so I had the room to myself for the weekend.

I slept, of course. A lot. And as much as I love her, there was no Hadir here to wake me up. It was bliss. I slept so much on Friday that on Saturday I even attempted to wake up for breakfast. I didn’t succeed, but I did make it up for lunch, which is still impressive for me. My waking hours over the weekend were spent socializing and doing homework, often at the same time.

Saturday night I went to see “3asl Aswaad,” as per the plan. I did understand more the second time through, and I stayed awake through all of it this time, but I would have rather spent my fifteen pounds on juice or a book or something. While I had aimed to have all of my homework done before the movie, that of course didn’t happen, and I stayed up most of the night afterwards completing it.

And now we’ve reached Sunday morning, and I’m even more exhausted, and I have to be up in 3.5 hours. So I’m going to go to sleep and I will start my next post from the beginning of this school week. It’s been interesting so far, I hope you enjoy reading about it half as much as I enjoyed experiencing it.

Ma3 Salaama.

Days 15, 16 & 17: The Wedding

So, going to the wedding only took one day, but in my life it was a three day ordeal, so that's how I'm telling it.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, last week Hadir invited me to her cousin Ahmed's wedding, and I was happy to accept. Seeing an authentic Egyptian wedding, especially in the country, might be a once in a life time experience. It did mean I had to take the only personal day I'll get all summer to travel, and I'm a little bummed that that means I may not get to go to Siwa, but I still think it was worth it.

Anyway, this post starts on Day 15 and not 16 (the actual wedding) because I was of the opinion that I needed a gift. Hadir had told me that since I was a guest, and not part of the family, that it was unnecessary, but I felt she was pulling the hospitable Egyptian, since she didn't deny that a gift would be appropriate. But then what was I supposed to get?

Since my first stop had been Hadir, who was so set on me not getting a gift that she hadn't been much help at all, I went to Robyn, the program director. Her first suggestion was money, which Hadir had said would actually be inappropriate. I imagine it has something to do with the fact that I'm American and Ahmed's family isn't the richest to begin with. After that, Robyn was out of ideas, so she told me to ask my Egyptian professors.

As luck would have it, I had a meeting with Ustaaz Nour later that day to get my grades for the week. (They're fine by the way.) He said an appropriate gift would be a painting, preferably of a landscape or something similar. I didn't think that sounded too hard, so after classes I went to the biggest Alexandrian Souk, Mahatat al-Raml, to try and find an appropriate painting. But it was late, and all I seemed to be able to find were purses. Finally, I found a store selling reproductions, and while that wasn't exactly what I wanted, I figured it would have to do. So I bought one, spent a little longer trying to find a framer, failed miserably, and went home with a piece of cardboard.

The trip wasn't a total waste though. While looking for a painting I did manage to find a new cheap purse. I quickly learned that the one I brought from America is far too small. Mostly because I can't carry toilet paper or sunscreen in it. The new one isn't too big, bit it holds the necessities, zips, and goes over my shoulder. Every time I look at it though I have to laugh because while it's meant to be a designer knock off, who ever made it had no idea what they were doing. The leather has the Louis Vuitton symbol all over it, but the tag on the front says Christian Dior. Like I said though, it was cheap, and I've never much been one to care about designers anyway.

The other success of the night was finding a two dollar boot legged version of Prince of Persia. Dot's mad at me for ripping of Disney, but I'm never going to find time to go to the movies here, so it was either buy it or not see it at all. Besides, I adore having the Arabic subtitles on it. The same stand selling the movies had every Harry Potter book in Arabic. I contemplated buying them, but I expect they'll be there a while, so I may pick them up later.

When I got back to the dorms with my "painting," Hadir didn't know what to say. She was supportive, and helped me write an appropriate message on the back, but I still think it was a fail. That night, she went to stay at her fiancé's sister's house, and I had the room to myself. I wish I'd taken the opportunity to get more sleep, but instead I tried to complete my homework for Tuesday, seeing as I knew I wouldn't have an opportunity while traveling and participating in wedding festivities. I got about halfway through before I was too tired to continue and just passed out.

We were both up and ready to go early in the morning. The original plan was that her brother was going to drive up to Alexandria to pick us up, but when she called him in the morning he decided he'd rather sleep. As such, we took a taxi to the bus station and got on a microbus headed for Bahira, the province her family's from. I've ridden microbuses in Alexandria, but I'd never been in one for long distances. Luckily that first one wasn't too full, but it was still hot for the hour and a half ride.

Because her house was en route to the bus station in Bahira, Hadir stopped the driver and we got out early. At her house, however, her brother was still asleep and didn't answer the door. Because Hadir didn't have a key we ended up trekking over to her aunt's house to get one and trekking all the way back, bags in tow. On the way though, I did get a chance to see where the festivities would be that night, as well as a chance to meet her grandfather.

When we finally got into the house, I was surprised at how fancy it was. The decor reminded me of a Victorian parlor, and everything was made of expensive stone covered in intricate rugs. One of the rugs in the living room reminded me of the rug we used to have in the den in New York. It made me smile.

Mahmoud, Hadir's brother, was still sleeping, so we hung out for a while and Hadir picked out something to wear because she hadn't been able to find what she wanted in the dorms. Eventually, she narrowed it down to a red pants suit and this bedazzled gold dress. I thought the dress was a little over the top, but it's what she ultimately went with. When I saw what the other girls were wearing though, she fit right in. The party was like a Hollywood runway, and while I don't think I was particularly under dressed, I certainly wasn't winning any awards.

Once Hadir had decided on her outfit, she woke up her brother to drive us to the grooms house where all the women of the family were gathering. There was a drum and trumpet player there to sing and announce the pending nuptials, and we all danced and clapped along. Everyone was very sweet and welcoming, and they had cooked us this fantastic lunch. It's customary in the country for everyone to eat off the same plate, but Hadir claimed she didn't want to sit with the giant crowd that was eating there that day because of the wedding, so we got one giant plate to ourselves in a back bedroom. I'm still not sure if she really didn't want to sit with the crowd or if she was trying to make me more comfortable, but either way I appreciate it.

After lunch, we mostly sat around socializing. It was only then that some of the women realized I wasn't Egyptian. Another mark in the proof I look Arab column I guess. Surprisingly, the older women seemed a lot more comfortable with me than the younger ones. Hadir had warned me that many people in the country have never seen an American before, but I was still surprised that some of the looks I was getting were dirty rather than just wary. Maybe they thought I was a bad person for not wearing a Hijab. I was at least careful to cover my arms and neck the entire time I was there. And generalizations aside, I did make friends with an amazing little girl who's some how related to Hadir and whose name, sadly I still do not know.

Over the course of the day, I was able to get a little more homework done, but not as much as I would have liked. There's no air conditioning in the country, so they leave all the windows open and it lets all the bugs in. At first I was disgusted to be sitting in a room literally filled with hundreds of flies, but eventually I got used to it. When they weren't landing on me anyway.

At some point I fell asleep for an hour or two, which was good, because I was pooped, and when I woke up all the girls were in the back room getting dressed for the wedding. From about six to nine in the evening we dressed and primped. My dressing and primping really only took about fifteen minutes, so I mostly watched the other girls.

The wedding didn't start until ten o'clock that evening, but I found out at nine that because I was Hadir's friend, I was an honorary part of the wedding party, and there for I was to go with the caravan to pick up the bride from the hairdresser. Probably fifty cars wove through the tiny village streets. It was impressive, but nothing compared to what happened when the bride finally got in to the lead car.

Apparently, it's customary in these caravans to drive like a maniac (more so than Egyptians normally do) in order to get a picture of the bride in her car. There were people with boom boxes on scooters to accompany us and lend music to the fray of speeding, swerving, and cutting off. And anytime we came to an intersection all of the cars without women in them would see who could pull off the best donuts. It was ridiculous, but once I stopped fearing for my life I did settle in and enjoy myself.

Back at the party grounds, we had to wait for about half an hour for the bride to be ready to enter. The village was already inside partying, but remember, I was part of the wedding party. We all piled out of our cars at the same time and meandered in a gigantic disorganized procession into the humongous tent that had been set up on top the spot I think the village usually kept their livestock. There were rugs covering the ground, so I couldn't tell for sure, but I was at a loss to guess what else you'd use all that empty dirt for on any other day.

The procession was just as grand as everything else. Loud music, dancing, illegal fireworks. And when we finally got to the end, it all just continued. Hadir and I found seats, but the bride and groom got up on a stage at the front of the tent where their friends and family would join them intermittently to dance. I compare it now to a concert more than a party, because of the hundreds of people there, only a small fraction of them danced, and only a small fraction of that fraction danced a lot. Mostly, we all sat and watched the bride and groom. For four hours.

The dancing was interspersed with a few performers. Two men dressed as a horse did a little performance, and then one of them cam back dressed as wrestling midgets so that when he danced it looked like they were fighting each other. The last guy did this cool dance with some heavy spinny skirt garment and then led the groom around with him to dance on tables.

It was all very upbeat. More so than any American wedding I've ever seen. In the beginning, it was one of the more amazing things I'd ever seen in my life, but by the second hour I was highly dehydrated, and by the third or fourth I had a pounding headache from the unending loud music. My ears rang for hours afterwards.

Toward the end of the festivities, Hadir also looked like she was getting tired, so we got up and and left the tent to walk and visit her grandmother. Hadir's grandmother is the town bread baker, and the sweetest little Arab lady I've met to date. She invited us in and we chatted for a bit, and then Hadir and I went back to the grooms house to see the newlyweds enter the home for the first time. Afterwards, we slept there, like the rest of the females in the wedding party.

Let me correct that. Hadir slept there. It was already four thirty in the morning by this point, and I still had homework. So I did homework for two hours while Hadir slept, then I woke her up and we went about getting ready to leave.

I had class at eleven that morning, needed a shower, had remnants of homework to complete, and was paranoid I wasn't going to make it home on time. Still, Hadir took her sweet time, stopped by her house to sit for a few moments. Complained about feeling rushed. And then asked if we could go to her grandmother's house to pick up some money.

I couldn't say no, of course.

It was seven-thirty when we left Hadir's grandmother's while I'd wanted to get on the road at seven. For running on no sleep, I'm very proud that I kept my head, knowing that Egyptian culture doesn't put much stake in time. We caught a microbus from Hadir's village to a neighboring village, which has a bigger bus station, and then another bus from the station to Alexandria. Both of us slept the entire trip. Unfortunately, an hour and a half on a microbus does not a good night's sleep make.

The taxi from the Alexandria bus station pulled up at the girls dorms at approximately nine fifteen. I ran upstairs while Hadir went to get water and set myself in whirlwind mode. Shower first, because I was gross, then rapid homeworking and no pause for breakfast. I managed to finish everything at about ten-fifteen, at which point I ran to the dar to print my homework and made it to class on time. Al-hamdu llah.

I don't remember much from classes that day. They all asked me how the wedding was. I gave my opinion. When I got home from the University, Hadir was asleep, of course. I joined her, and though I'd planned to wake up and do more homework later in the evening, I ended up sleeping straight through. I needed it though, so I can't be too mad at myself, and the homework I should have done was easy enough to bs. (Don't worry, I went back and did it properly later.)

Whoo. I feel like I just spent hours writing that post. And now it's far too late for me to still be awake with class in the morning. I'm sorry I haven't caught you all up on everything, but I have written about six days in two, so I'm catching up. Hopefully there will be more to come soon.

Love you everyone back in the States!

Days 12, 13 &14: Cairo

Okay, so... having fallen behind on school work, and therefore blog posts (because school comes first), it occurs to me I have a ton to write about. I am, therefore, going to break it all up over several posts to be written throughout the weekend. Going in chronological order, that means I'm starting with Cairo.

On Thursday, we were instructed to bring our luggage with us to our classes so that the bus to Cairo could leave from the University as soon as classes ended at one. Not wanting to lug a suitcase through the bust streets of Alexandria I managed to fit everything in my backpack, but it still wasn't pleasant. Classes were uneventful, but when they ended, because everything runs on Arab standard time, things still weren't ready. Some people had run to the corner store, others were just sitting in the dar instead of getting on buses. We finally pulled out around two and set off on the long road to Cairo.

They served us lunch on the bus, to conserve time, but part of me wishes they'd conserved food too. Because they didn't know who liked what they packed each person a lunch big enough for three. It was ridiculous, and a big waste. Still, it gave us something to do on the three-four hour bus ride other than stare out the window at the sand.

We were originally supposed to head straight to the hotel to check in before going to dinner, but because we were running late we went straight to the restaurant instead. The restaurant was called Nile City and built in the river to look like a boat, even though it didn't move. I got a table by the window so I could look at the water while we ate, and I was glad for the view because the food was mediocre at best. Soggy french fries, oat rice, and several unidentifiable meats. By the end, my table was very tempted to split a giant ice cream, but we eventually decided against it and headed out to the deck to look out at the river and the city beyond for an hour or so.

After the restaurant came the river boats. We all piled on to one of four motor boats and went off for a pleasant ride on the nile. It was night, with too much smog and ambient light to see the stars, and the only real view other than the water was a bunch of hotels. But still, it was relaxing, with the river breeze wafting through as we chatted.

After the boats, we finally got to the hotel. It wasn't like any hotel I'd ever seen though. Every room was entirely different. Some had parlors others had breakfast nooks, some had metal keys others had key cards, and I don't think I heard about any two showers being alike. Charley and I were lucky, we got put in one of the rooms without problems. The shower flooded the bathroom every time we used it, but that was nothing compared with bed bugs and broken air conditioners.

That first night, I went straight to sleep, being exhausted from the week and having and early morning the next day. I did hear the next day (when a girl threw up on the bus from her hangover) that a fair number of people went out to experience the Cairene nightlife, seeing as Alexandria has none to speak of. When I woke up the next morning I showered and went down to breakfast, which was a nice buffet of traditional Egyptian breakfast items: breads, cheeses, boiled eggs, olives, etc. They had tried their hand at American coffee, but I had a cup and it tasted like hot water. The juice was interesting though. I still haven't identified it, but it was red and thick, like nectar.

Immediately after breakfast, we split into two groups: one going to see the pyramids and one going to see Islamic Cairo. I was in the former, as was almost everyone who hadn't been to Egypt before. The pyramids are one of those things you have to see at least one, but that I could understand not wanting to see multiple time.

The first stop on the pyramid tour was Saqqara, the ancient burial grounds for earlier kings and later respected dignitaries. It was here that Imhotep designed and built the first pyramid to be the tomb of King Djoser. There's an entire complex at Saqqara with a theatre that shows you historical films and a museum with artifacts out of the tombs.

Our tour guide for the day met us there and gave us a basic run down of pyramidic structure before we started looking around the complex. Most of Saqarra is still under excavation, so the complex serves a touristic limitation. Behind the museum, however, is that first pyramid built by Imhotep. From what I hear, three of the girls from UT found a guy who let them inside for five pounds a piece. It sounds sketchy, but I still would have loved to have gotten the same offer. Instead, I wandered up to the precipice overlooking the burial grounds. It mostly looks like a lot of sand with bits of stone here and there. There aren't many pyramids, because there aren't as many kings there. Still though, it's a captivating sight.

The most fun part about Saqqara were the tourist hunters. Men wander Saqqara with donkeys and horses and camels trying to lure people in to taking a five minute ride with them for ridiculous amounts of money. The funniest part is, their form of luring is picking you up and putting you on an animal without asking your permission first.

This is how I found myself on top of a donkey being led around by a man in a kufia named Aymaad. The worse part was, they'd put a kufia on my head too. I cringe to think what bugs I might have gotten, but my head hasn't started itching yet, so maybe I'm safe. Once I was on the donkey anyway, I didn't see the point of getting off. And Aymaad did take a lot of pictures on me with the pyramid, and with the desert and what not, even if they all kind of suck.

When I got off the donkey five minutes later and went to pay, he tried to charge me a hundred pounds. That's a little less than twenty dollars, for those who don't know the conversion rate, and ridiculous for Egypt where everything is cheap. I bargained it down to fifty, which is still ridiculous because it was only worth ten, and just paid him. I was hot, and tired, and as you will discover later in my stories, do not like bargaining. I imagine I'm like my mother. I'd rather just pay them and leave.

We went to lunch at a Saqqara tourist restaurant. The food there was better, but you had to pay to use the restroom, and it was outside in a tent, so I was always worried about flies. Being gross from the dessert, I agreed to pay the ridiculous fee of fifteen pounds for a coke. Buying drinks kills in Egypt, and in Cairo especially. That's probably why the program agrees to pay for our meals and not out liquids.

After lunch came the papyrus institute. We got a short lesson on how papyrus is made and then we got to wander an art gallery of gorgeous papyrus paintings for sale. Some people bought pieces, but the Egypt veterans told us it would be cheaper in the souk we were visiting later, so most of us held off and just admired. For the record, I haven't bought papyrus yet, but I really want some. I'm hoping I can still find some in Alex. If I do, it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper.

After the institute came (dramatic pause) the pyramids! And this time I mean the real ones. The great pyramid and the two smaller ones flanking it. Their the set next to the Sphinx that you always see in pictures and tourism magazines. There's not much to say about them really... You'll see the pictures when I get home, but mostly it was just really sandy. One of the merchants selling things asked if I was Canadian. I don't know if that counts as interesting...?

While the Sphinx is near the pyramids, it's actually a lot smaller, and you have to pay to get in to see it from closer than a huge distance. The American councils had bought us tickets though, so we got to walk through an old temple like ruin to approach it. I bought an alabaster Anubis sarcophagus from one of the merchants there because I thought it was pretty, but I talked him down to a third of his original asking price before doing so.

We went back to the hotel for showers (we were filthy from the desert) and dinner and afterwards loaded on the bus to go to Khan el-Khalily, the famous tourist souk in Cairo. It was fun, in that way that there were lots of colors and tons of things to do and look at, but... I didn't really enjoy it. Because it's a tourist souk, everyone's yelling at you to come into their store, and they assume you don't know what you're doing so they're even harder to bargain with.

At one point I ended up in a rather sketchy back room... Yes, I know, I'm sorry mother. But I had friends nearby and I was in easy shouting distance. The shopkeeper, like every other shopkeeper, told me he'd give me a discount because I spoke Arabic and then did no such thing. I learned quickly what things are worth, and trying to charge me two hundred pounds for something worth twenty did not sit well with me. I was firm with him though, and eventually left with quite a few tiny souvenir-y things for a fair price.

The other thing I bought at Khan el-Khalily was a soccer jersey, and while it's my absolute favorite item that I've bought in Egypt, I paid way too much for it. At the University, the Flagship students are divided into classes named after famous Alexandrians. My class is Muhammad Neggi Gedo, the most famous soccer player in Egypt at the moment. So I had to have his jersey. I wore it to class on Wednesday and let me say, it was quite the experience. More on that later.

When we got back to the hotel from the souk, none of us really wanted to go to bed. It wasn't terribly late, and we didn't have as early of a morning the next day. A group of about ten of us wandered around searching for a cafe that an Egyptian had told us was a few blocks away. We never did find it, but we ended up back at the cafe next door to the hotel. Thanks to its proximity it was a little more touristy than we were looking for, but the banana juice was to die for.

We didn't stay too late at the cafe before heading back to bed. The next morning was a repeat of the morning before, and then we all packed off and headed down to Citadel of Salah al-Din. It's a complex of three mosques, one of which is a larger jaam3, built into a fortress to keep out intruders. It was the first time I had ever been in a mosque, and the architecture was beautiful. From the patio outside you could see all of Cairo, or rather all of Cairo that you could make out through the smog. Thing there took a while, so we were running a little late when we left, but nothing that we couldn't make up. Until disaster struck anyway.

On the way to lunch I fell asleep, and woke up only to feel the bus lurching beneath me. Looking around we were in a very enclosed space, so I started asking around to see what was going on. As it turns out, the directions we had to get to our lunch restaurant took us through a street that was far too narrow for a tour bus. And now we were stuck. There were police running around, moving cars without owners' permission, trying to find room to get us through. Eventually we were able to back up far enough to go the wrong way down a still too narrow one way street. Oh yeah, and we hit a car on the way. And just kept going. It was a little ridiculous, but from the time I woke up it took more than forty five minutes to get us, so we'd wasted a lot of time.

It was worth it though, because when we got to the reasturant, The Happy Dolphin, the food was the best I've yet had in Egypt. It wasn't anything dramatically different than what we'd been having, but the dips with the bread had much more flavor, the meats were identifiable, and they had a variety of sugary desserts, from jello to kunafa.

By the time we finished lunch, it was technically time to leave Cairo, but there were still things to do on the schedule. They took a vote, ignored the results, and then we all headed off to the Coptic Quarter, tired, hot, and miserable. I am kind of glad we got to go, but being so rushed I'm not sure what we got was worth the misery we were all going through. We saw a famous Jewish temple that used to be a Church, and an even more famous Church that's still a Church. We spent so little time there I'm not even sure what their names are, but I do have pictures for later.

The Coptic Quarter itslef is quite pretty. It's a city in and of itself, walled in and made up of alleys with tall buildings on either side. The advantage to that is that everywhere was shady, but it would have been nice to have more time to explore.

After the Coptic area, we loaded back on the bus for the final time and headed back to Alex, wanting nothing more than to curl up in our beds and go to sleep. Alas, most of us had too much homework for that. I spent all night completing three different essays for two different classes and then trekked off to the University the next day. It was unfortunate that I was so busy and tired, because Sunday (excluding classes) was my only day to rest before the wedding on Monday. But the wedding was still fun. More to come on that later.

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The Same Story in Formal Arabic:

كما تعرف، ذهبنا أنا وزملائي إلى القاهرة في العطلة الماضية وطبعا شاهدنا كثير من الأثار القديمة مثلا الأهرمات وأبا الهول وقلعة صلاح الدين وبالإضافة إلى ذلك شاهدنا مواقع بيئية أيضا مثلا النيل والصحراء ولكن الطريق كان طويلا والحر كان شديدا ومع أن كل شيء كان جميلا وفاخرا وممتعا فأظن أن كلنا شعرنا بالمرض قليلا قبل نهاية السفر.

تركنا الإسكندرية يوم الخميس "بعد الصفوف يالضبط"، يعني ساعة بعد الموعد مع مشاكل النظام، فركبنا على أوتوبيسين إلى مطعم اسمه مدينة النيل في مركب على نهر النيل طبعا بالرغم من أن كان الجدول أن نصل إلى الفندق أولا. كانت المشاهد من خلال الشبابيك مثل الصورة مع أن كان الطعام مقبولا على الأكثر ولذلك قضينا وقتا طويلا خارج المركب نشاهد السماء والماء قبل القيادة إلى مراكب أخرى لنركبها تحت النجوم.

لما وصلنا إلى الفندق معظمنا ذهب إلى النوم بالوقت لأن الفطور كان مبكرا جدا في اليوم الثالي، يعني كان من اللازم أن أقوم في الساعة السادسة لآخذ دش بدون وصول متأخر إلى الوجبة. بعد الفطور ذهب نصف مجموعتنا إلى القاهرة الإسلامية بينما ذهبت مع النصف الآخر لنشاهد الأهرمات وأبو الهول في سقارة والجيزة ولسوء الحظ ما عندي الكلمات المناسبة لأصف العجب الذي هو الأهرمات ولكني استمتعت بالتجربة كثيرا. بعد العشاء في الفندق حدد المجموعتان لنذهب إلى سوق خان الخليلي لنشتري البضائع السياحية، ومع أن الزيارة كانت مفيدة لفهم الثقافة السياحية لم تكن أفضليتي.

فعلا شعرت بالسعادة أني أسكن في الإسكندرية طوال الصيف وليست في القاهرة لأن على الرغم من القاهرة جميلة وتاريخية ومهمة من الناحية العالمية فلم يكن ممكن أن أتكلم مع أي مصري كمصري حقيقي لأن كلهم عاملوني كسياحي فقط مع أني تكلمت العربي وفي حقيقة الأمر استخدموا العربي ليحاولوا أن يقتنعوا لي أن السعر الغالي كان السعر الصحيح ولذلك لم أشعر بالاحترام الذي أشعر به كل يوم في الإسكندرية.

بعد خان الخليلي نزل بعضنا لنستكشف القاهرة ولكن التكسيات هناك غالية جدا فشربنا القهوة والعصير فقط من مقهى قريب من الفندق وكان لذيذا على أننا رجعنا إلى الفندق قبل وقت طويل لننام. في الصباح استعدنا للرحيل من الفندق وذهبنا إلى قلعة صلاح الدين الذي كان أول جامع زورته في مصر فالتجربة كانت ممتازة بالرغم من التعب.

كانت مشاكل كثيرة على الطريق إلى الغداء وهو المهم أن الأوتوبيس كان أكبر من الشارع إلى المطعم ولذلك ضرب سيارة، وكانت شرطة كثبرة في المنطقة فلم تكن مشكلة حقيقية ولكن كلنا كنا مندهشين قليلا. بسبب المشكلة هذه كنا متأخرين جدا في الغداء وبعده كثير أردنا أن نعود إلى الإسكندرية فورا ولكن الزيارة إلى القاهرة القبطية ما زالت على البرنامج فذهبنا بسرعة ولم نعد إلى الإسكندرية حتى المساء.

في الحقيقة استمتعت بالقاهرة كثيرا ولكني لا أريد أن أسكن فيها أبدا لأن هناك مدن كثيرة في العالم هي جمياة في الزيارة ولكنها سيئة في السكان وفي رأيي القاهرة واحد من هذه تماما.

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The Same Story in Egyptian Arabic:

زي ما بتعرف، روحنا أنا وزملائي إلى القاهرة في العطلة إللي فاتت وطبعا شوفنا كتير من الأثار القديمة زي الأهرمات وأبو الهول وقلعة صلاح الدين، وكمان شوفنا مواقع بيئة مثل النيل والصحراء، لكن الطريق كان طويل والحر كان قوي وكل حاجة كانت جميلة وفاخرة وممتعة فبأعتقد أنو كلنا حسنا بالمرض شوية قبل نهاية السفر.

تركنا اسكندرية يوم الخميس "بعد الصفوف بالضبط"، يعني ساعة بعد الموعد مع مشاكل النظام، فركبنا على أوتوبيسين إلى مطعم اسمه مدينة النيل في مركب على نهر النيل طبعا، رغم كان الجدول نصل إلى الفندق أولا. كان أيه شوفناه من الشبابيك زي صورة، بس كان الأكل مقبول على الأكتر وعشان كدا قضينا وقت طويل برا المركب نتفرج السماء والماية قبل السواء إلى مراكب تانية لنركبها تحت النجوم.

لما وصلنا إلى الفندق معظمنا نمنا بالوقت عشان الفطور كان بدري جدا في اليوم إللي جيء، يعني كان لازم أصحى في ساعة ستة لآخد دش بلا وصول متأخر إلى الوجبة. بعد الفطور راح نص مجموعتنا إلى القاهرة الإسلامية لبينما روحت مع النص التاني لنتفرج الأهرمات وأبو الهول في سقارة وجيزة ولسو الحظ ما عنديش الكلمات المناسبة لأصف العجب إللي هو الأهرمات لكن استمتعت بالتجربة كتير. بعد العشاء في الفندق كان موجود المجموعتين لنروح إلى سوق خان الخليلي لنشتري الحاجات السياحية، والزيارة كانت مفيدة لفهم الثقافة السياحية بس ما كانتش تفضيلي.

فعلا حسيت بالسعادة عشان أسكن في اسكندرية طوال الصيف ومش في القاهرة عشان رغم القاهرة جميلة وتاريخية ومهمة عالميا ما كانش ممكن أتكلم مع أي مصري كمصري حقيقي عشان كلهم عاملوني كسياحي بس، مع أني تكلمت العربي وبصراحة استخدموا العربي ليحاولوا يقتنعوا لي أنو السعر الغالي كان السعر الصحيح وعشان كدا ما شعرتش بالاحترام أني أشعر به كل يوم في اسكندرية.

بعد خان الخليلي بعضنا نزلنا لنستكشف القاهرة لكن التكسيات هناك غالية جدا فشربنا القهوة والعصير بس من مقهى أريب من الفندق وكان لذيذ، بس رجعنا إلى الفندق قبل وقت طويل لننام. في الصبح استعدنا للرحيل من الفندق وروحنا إلى قلعة صلاح الدين إللي كان أول جامع زورته في مصر فالتجربة كانت ممتازة رغم تعبي.

كانت مشاكل كتيرة على الطريق إلى الغدا وهو المهم أنو الأوتوبيس كان أكبر من الشارع إلى المطعم وعشان كدا ضرب سيارة عليه، وكانت شرطة كتبرة في المنطقة فما كانتش مشكلة حقيقية لكن كلنا كنا مندهشين شوية. عشان المشكلة دي كنا متأخرين جدا في الغدا وبعده كتير مننا كنا عايزين نرجع إلى اسكندرية فورا لكن زيارة إلى القاهرة القبطية كانت على البرنامج لسة فروحنا بسرعة وما رجعناش إلى اسكندرية لغاية المساء.

في الحقيقة حبيت القاهرة كثبرا لكني مش عايزة أسكن فيها أبدا عشان هناك مدن كتيرة في العالم هي جميلة في الزيارة ولكنها وحشة في السكان وفي رأيي القاهرة واحد من دي تماما.

Just a Little Longer, I Promise

The worried E-mails have started to pour in, so I thought I'd just post and let you all know that I'm alright. Going to Cairo last weekend, and then the wedding as well on Monday, really put me behind, so I've been having trouble finding time to sleep, let alone write a blog entry.

Now I have an exam tomorrow, so you won't be getting more tonight either. Things have been fine though, and come this weekend you will all have lots to read. Promise.

Days 10-11: Bits and Pieces

So, I'm starting to fail at this whole keeping up thing. I actually did something on Tuesday, and then decided I was tired and didn't want to write about it, especially when I was busy trying to get all me weekend homework done. The weekend homework excuse was why I almost didn't blog today, but I leave for Cairo tomorrow, at which point I'm going to forget everything of only a little consequence in Alexandria.

So, I get to sleep in on Tuesdays because I don't have class until eleven. It's glorious. My first class of the day then was Egyptian Dialect, in which we took a trip to a souk because we'd just finished learning names for fruits and vegetables. It was quite an experience.

Most of it wasn't very sanitary, and hence I didn't buy anything, but I did eat some of Charley's weird cheese croissant thing and Elizabeth's baggette that she bought of a tray from a little boy wandering around the market.

It was amazing to see so many fruits and vegetables in one place, but the most interesting/disturbing part in my opinion was the meats. I mentioned in an earlier post seeing stores selling rabbits and chickens. There were similar stores here, except because we were wandering around and not just passing buy, I was privy to actual sales, and therefore actual slaughters. It made me flinch, but thankfully it wasn't that bad.

More bothersome in my opinion were the fish, which were not necessarily dead either. Being so close to the ocean, Alexandria is well known for it's fresh fish. And when they say fresh they don't mean caught that morning. They mean caught five minutes ago. Several of us got a fright passing a fish stands with wares still jumping and flailing about. I saw one fish gasp for a good five minutes before finally giving up. And it wasn't just regular fish, either. They had catfish and eels too. The eels were the worst, especially since one jumped out of its bin only to land and writhe right in front of me.

Apart from the wares, the structure of the souk itself is worth mentioning. Merchants own stalls along a narrow alley through which people have to push and jostle their way through. Eventually, at the end of the alley, you reach some peripheral shops on a more main street, but the point of the souk is being able to shop without worrying about cars. With that many people in such a small space however, heat, stench, and thievery are all big problems.

After the souk we went to a pharmacy, just to make sure we knew how to ask for things properly, and then on to have a tea in a little cafe. We were a little late to lunch, but all in all it was more than worth it.

The entire trip was a great experience, but I would need a lot more energy and English ability than I have at the moment to describe it properly. Suffice it to say that I've been to a real live Egyptian market, complete with street children and pick pockets. None of us got anything stolen, but that doesn't mean we didn't have to watch our backs.

Hadir's been having a lot of exams lately. One every other day it seems. So I bought her chocolate on the way home from class yesterday, just to help with the studying.

Today we had our weekly Flagship meeting. It seems we've all had a lot of homework, but some of the other students in my specific class think the homework's been to easy. I can see where they're coming from, most of it's simple busy work, but I think the structure allows for a lot more private learning. If you look for something to study in the material you can find it, but there's no one handing you a structure and saying "here, learn this."

Also, I've begun reading my novel for the summer. It's called "Sharq al-Nakhil," or "East of the Palms" in English. I'm only twenty pages in, but I'm really enjoying it. We'll discuss it tomorrow in class before getting on the bus for Cairo.

I'm not taking my computer with me to Cairo, so don't expect to hear from me for the next few days. Hopefully when I get back Saturday night, however, I will have the time to write you a nice long description of everything I did there. Also to come next week, I've been invited to Hadir's cousin's wedding on Wednesday. We'll be taking a car an hour out of the city so I can experience an authentic Egyptian wedding. I'm quite excited, even if I will have to take my personal day from classes.

That's all for now. Good night everyone!

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The Story of the Souk in Egyptian Arabic:

النهاردة روحنا إلى السوق مع أستاذ عماد لنستخدم مفرداتنا عن الخضروات والفواكه. كان تجربة جديدة بالنسبا لي عشان روحت إلى أسواق من قبل بس مش أسواق الأكلة. كل الخاجات اللي شوفتها وسمعتها وشميتها كانت ممتعة ومهمة للثقافة المصرية وكنت مبسوتة لأكون هناك. بأعتقد إنو معظمنا كنا مندهشين شوية من حاجات زي السمك المعيشة، يعني كنا عارفين إنو السمك في إسكندريا تازغة قوي لكن كنا نفتكر إنو صياد السمك يقتلوها أولا، بس لسة تعلمت كلمات أنواع السمك زي بولتي وبوري، ودا المهم طبعا. بردو، كان كتير من تجار الفواكه والخضروات يبيعو كل حاجة من التفاح والموز والمانجة إلى الخيار والتوم والعنب. جزئي المفضل كان العيش، وزورت تاجر واحد كان عنده أنواع العيش كتير، في أسكال مختلفة أو مع الجبنة وكدا. ما أستريت أي حاجة بس أكلت شوية من الباجات اللي استريته آليزباث وكنت موافقة معها لما أعدت الولد اللي يبيعه الفكى. كان مبسوت قوي وابتسامه تأاق كالشمس. في النهاية حبيت زيارتنا إلى السوق وعايزة أرغع مرة تانية أقرايبة.

Days 8-9: Happy Birthday Daddy

First things first. Happy Birthday Daddy! I love you, and I hope you have a great party on Sunday!

Now, I know I skipped yesterday. I even got the worried, "I'm not going to ask because I know I'm being paranoid, but I'm still going to E-mail you just to make sure you're alive" note from mom. Thank you Momma, it made me smile. But I was fine. I just slept later than I intended to Saturday and was up all night doing homework. So I slept all day when I got back from class.

There wasn't much to say. Class was good. I bought my novel that I'll be reading this summer. I finally charged my phone. The end.

Today, there was a little more to write about.

Yesterday in class Ustaaz Immad invited us to his home to meet his family, so tonight we went as a class to have dinner there. There's only seven of us, so it wasn't really an issue, but still there were problems. For instance, Ustaaz Immad lives on the other side of Alexandria in a cute little neighborhood called Jelaklise. It's not really hard to get to the other side of Alex, you can take the tram or a bus or a taxi, but we chose taxi based purely on time. I was bringing a cake with fresh fruit on it, and I didn't want it to spoil in the hour or so the tram would have taken.

Once we got to the neighborhood though, we were lost. Immad had drawn us a map, but none of us really understood what it was saying. We called him to get clearer directions, but being our dialect professor he told us to ask people in the street. Practice he said. Well, half an hour later, in the middle of an unfamiliar neighborhood, he comes to pick us up. Turns out he'd been watching us the whole time, seeing how we functioned with dialect in unfamiliar territory. It was a bit cruel, but effective.

Anyway, we finally make it to his place. It's a little apartment on the fifth floor of a tall building on a residential street. From the outside it's nothing special, but the doors to the apartments were gorgeous. And though his apartment was tiny (two bedrooms, one bath, a salon, a living room, and a tiny kitchen), the decorations made it classy and comfortable. The apartment also featured a narrow balcony across from which was his wife's sister's apartment. They've erected a levy system between the two homes so that they can pass groceries and such back and forth. It's rather ingenious, and we had far too much fun playing with it.

Ustaaz Immad's family is amazing. There's his wife, of course. Her name is Dineya, or at least that's how you pronounce it. I have no idea how to write it. He has two children, a boy and a girl. We think the older one, the girl, is named Miriam, and the boy is named George. They're in first and third grade respectively and are absolutely adorable. Miriam likes music, she sings and dances and what not, and George plays soccer like pretty much every Egyptian boy. They took turns showing us toys and pictures and it was all great fun.

Dinner was delicious as well. Dineya is an amazing cook, and the spread was gigantic. Plates and plates of all kinds of vegetables. Stuffed cucumbers, grape leaves, stuffed peppers, eggplants, kofta, faraakh, tomatem. We all ate until we had to learn the phrase for "our stomachs will explode." Then we sat and chatted for a while longer before turning to dessert. In addition to the cake I brought Dineya had watermelon and honeydew. And after dessert we had tea and coffee. It was all lovely, and very homey and welcoming. We felt like we were part of an authentic Egyptian family and it was beyond heart warming.

Also, for the first time in Egypt, I didn't feel out of place for not wearing a scarf. In the streets, in the dorm, in the Universities, ninety-nine out of a hundred women are covered, but Ustaaz Immad is a Coptic Christian, so his wife is not muhagiba. She showed her hair, like us. Wore short sleeves, like us. And when the call to prayer came over the city loud speakers we all sat and marveled at it rather than most of us rushing off to pray. As a little a thing as it was, it was kind of nice.

They're wonderful people, and I was sad to go, but alas, we had to get back to the dorms eventually. We took a taxi back again, just because it was late and therefore easier. And now I'm here about to finish the last of my homework. It's late, and I'm sleepy, and I need to go to bed because I have a lot of reading to do tomorrow. Good night all!

Day 7: Welad el-3am

So... today I did a whole lot of nothing. Slept late, got up, did some homework, went to dinner, did some more homework. Then around ten o'clock Habiba, my language partner, came by to see if I wanted to watch a movie. So we did.

The name of the movie was Welad el-3am, which roughly translates to the uncle's boys in Egyptian. It's about an Egyptian woman whose husband turns out to be a secret spy for the Israeli secret service. He kidnaps her and their children and relocates them to Israel where they're forced to stay. Meanwhile, a guy working undercover for the Egyptian government in a pharmacy helps them to escape, but wants to gather information first. So the woman starts funneling information about all of her husbands activities. When they're finally going to get to leave, one of the guys working with the guy helping them gets caught, and there's a big action sequence and so on and so forth. And she gets shot and the good guy almost dies and then the bad guy gets set on fire and blows up and it's all very dramatic.

It was a good movie, very deep. I've been able to understand the gist of Egyptian movies before, but having Habiba there explaining some things to me definitely helped me to understand the details and nuances. I appreciated the film more because of it.

That's all for today. I'm going to go complete the mountains of homework I still have left. Love to you all!

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The Story in Formal Arabic:

في الشرق الأوسط اليوم هناك قضايا كثيرة ومهمة، خاصة بالنسبة للمشكلة بين العرب واليهود، ولذلك نجد أكثر وأكثر أن هذه القضاية تظهر في الأفلام والبرامج التلفريونية وبالإضافة إلى ذلك في الأخبار والإعلام، وواحد من الأفلام المعاصرة يتعاملها اسمه "ولاد العم" أو "أولاد العم" في العربية الفصحى، ويركز على العلاقة بين البهود والمصريين بشكل مخيف ودراماتيكي إلى حد ما لم أعرف أي أجزاء كانت مثل الحال الحقيقي وأي أجزاء كانت الدعاية. على الأقل صديقتي المصرية التي شاهدت الفيلم معها أمّنت كله.

تدور قصة الفيلم على إمرأة مصرية إسمها سلوى متزوجة من رجل تجد أنه يهودي سري يعمل للحكومة الإسرائيلية عندما يعطي لها مخاضرات ويأخذها وولديهم من مصر إلى إسرائيل. لم أفهم أسبابه في بادئ الأمر ولكني بعد وقت بدا أنه يحب سلوى مع أن حبه بشكل غريب لأنه لا يهتم برأيها أو إرادتها ويريد أن تعيش معه فقط بالرغم من عدم سعادتها.

لما قامت سلوى من النوم غضبت طبعا فأجر زوجها يهودية مصرية لتقتنعها أن الإسرائيل بلد رائعة ولكن سلوى رفضت الاقتناع وفي الفرصة الأولى أخذت ولديها وركضت معهما لتجد السفارة المصرية ولكنها لم تتكلم اللغة العبرية ولا أحد تكلم اللغة العربية حتى رجل بشكل عربي يلبس كوفية وجلباية وهكذا ولكنه ظن أنها فقيرة فقط لما سألته للمساعدة وقبل أن تستطيع أن تشرح الحكاية الكاملة لة وجدها زملاء زوجها.

بعد الهروب الذي فشل أصبح الخروج من البيت ممنوع بالنسبة لسلوى حتى أمّن زوجها أنها سعيدة في إسرائيل ولذلك اكتئبت سلوى وفقدت كل الأمر لأنها لن تحب إسرائيل أبدا وهي مصرية وفوق هذا مسلمة أيضا. ومع أن سلوى كانت حزينة كثيرا فلم تعرف كل شيء يحدث خارج بيتها وفي الحقيقة في نفس الوقت أنها فقدت أمرها الرجل الذي تكلمت معه في الشارع ذهب إلى السفارة المصرية نفسها ليقول لهم عن الحدث لأنه فهم أن شيء غريب كان موجود فيه. ولا حاجة للبيان أن الحكومة المصرية أرادت أن تساعد موطنتها فبعثت مخابر مصري ليُعيدها وولديها، اسمه مصطفى.

لم يمكن أن يقابل مصطفى سلوى لما وصل إلى إسرائيل فبدأ الشغل في صيدالية وقام بمشاهدتها، وفي حين لم يستطع أن يساعدها فورا فساعد امرأة عربية أخرى أُكتشف أنها مخابرة. ثم يوم من الأيام، لحسن الحظ رازت سلوى الصيدالية ولكنها زارت مع اليهودية المصرية ولذلك لم يستطع مصطفى أن يقول أي شيء، ولكنه ما زال عنده معلومات عنها على الأقل ونظم اجتماع معها بدون زوجها "لتقدير صحتها"، على أن فيه قال لها إنه سينقذها وولديها وأيضا ليحصل على ثقتها إن زوجها قتل خالتها التي ربتها بعد وفاة والديها وهي كانت صغيرة. ولكن هذا الخطاب سبب رد مختلف لأن زوجها كان عنده زميل يتظاهر أنه خالتها على التليفون يستخدم الكمبوتر.

مع ذلك ما زالت تريد سلوى الانتقاذ ولم تثق زوجها أكثر من الغريب، واتصلت خالتها وسألتها لتكرر الصورة من القرآن التي كررتها لسلوى كل ليل قبل النوم في طفولتها ولكن الرجل على الكمبوتر قال فقط بشكل الخالة إنها كبيرة بالسن ونست وعرفت سلوى فجأة أن المخابر المصري كان يقول الحق فقالت روخها إنها موافقة على أهدافه وإجتمعت مرة أخرى مع مصطفى الذي سألها لتساعده والحكومة المصرية قبل الإنقاذ لأنها كان عندها أكثر قدر لتجمع معلومات مهمة من زوجها وبعد رفض شديد وافقت أخيرا ولذلك بدآ يتبادلان رسائل سرية عبر روشيتات وسلات المهملات وهكذا إلى أن زوجها أرتب منها واخيرا ليتركا البلد فورا، ولكنه لم يكون سهل.

في الليل قبل الرحيل وبسبب معلومات من سلوى رميل مصطفى دخل مكتب زوجها ووجد أن اليهود عرفوا أنه مخابر فبل أن يلتقطوه فجأة في المكتب وهم يعرفون أن سلوى كانت تساعده ووجدوها والولدين ومصطفى سهلا لأن الزوج وقع جهاز نظام تحديد المواقع في قلادة بنته، فبدأ أنشطة فيها سباقات وحوادث سيارات وقدر مصطفى أن يجعل الحادث الأخير يبدو كأنهم ماتوا، ولكن الزوج أمّن ذلك طوال وقت قصير فقط لأنه وجد سلوى في الطريق ليلتقط زميل مصطفى، ومع أنه حاول أن يقتلها فمصطفى أشعله ومات. في النهاية تستطيع سلوى أن تعود إلى مصر مع ولديها ولكنها ما عندها شيء إلا الولدين وهي لازم تبدأ حياة جديدة. يعني اللطفاء سينجحون أخيرا ولكن الشريرين سيسببون ألما كثيرا قبل ذلك.

في الحقيقة أحببت هذا الفيلم ولكني أريد أن أعرف أكثر عن مصدره لأني في نفس الوقت الذي قالت فيه صاحبتي إن الفيلم حقيقي لم أعرف إذا قصدت أن اليهود يعملون أشياء سيئة، لأني موافقة مع ذلك، أو أنهم يختفون مصريين من مصر لأني أشعر بأن ذلك صعب بالنسبة للإيمان. على اختلاف الأرآء ما زلت فرحانة أن أفلام مثل هذا الفيلم موجودة في العالم لأنها على الأفل تقدم لنا وجهات نظر جديدة، وكلنا بحاجة إلى ذلك في حياتنا.

Day 6: Feeling Better

So... I figure there's nothing wrong with posting twice in a day, especially since I skipped yesterday and today's post was early.

Something I omitted from today's post: Did you know in Egypt you're not allowed to leave stores with glass bottles? You can buy sodas in glass bottles, but then you have to drink them there. I asked around and it has something to do with recycling, like the store owners get money for keeping the bottles. I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried to buy sprite in a glass bottle. Luckily, the market had sprite in plastic as well.

Anyway, the real reason I'm posting again is to let you all know that I'm feeling much better, not just in physical health but in spirit too. When I made it down to dinner, I sat with Susan and Minar from Maryland, and they invited me out to have juice with them.

The juice in Egypt is spectacular. It's all fresh, blended right before your eyes, and it comes in every flavor: from mango and strawberry to sugar cane and fruits I have never heard of before.

Victoria wanted some really good mango juice, so we asked one of the girls at dinner where the best mangos were in the city. She directed us four neighborhoods over to a place called 3sir Mecca (Juice of Mecca in Arabic) in the neighborhood of Sporting. Because it was four neighborhoods over, we had to take the tram. Some of the other girls were a bit worried. If they'd taken the tram, they'd only done so once. And we were all with Ustaaza Radwa at the time, so it wasn't an issue. It was also night, and that's always a little creepy.

I'd been on the tram with Habiba to go to Mahatat Raml a few nights ago, so I knew better how it worked. When the conductor asked us where we were going I think I was the only one who understood and was able to get the correct directions.

We did end up getting off at the right stop. The juice was delicious, but afterwards none of us wanted to go back to the dorms, so we went down to the Corniche and walked along the beach for a while. A couple of the girls bought corn and cotton candy from street vendors. Let's hope they don't get sick.

As it turns out, Victoria bought a few American movies with her, so I'm anxious to watch them. That's exactly what I was looking for last night. Also, a bunch of girls want to see Prince of Persia with me, and Raven wants to go see the inside of Qaitbey, which was built with the ruins of the Pharos Lighthouse on the spot where it used to stand.

The funniest moment of the night was Fatima needing to use the restroom, and none of us knowing where it was appropriate to ask. We were passing a lot of shisha bars, but those are mostly for men. We finally came to a restaurant, which I didn't think was the best idea, but she asked and they let her. Part of me wonders if it was because we were clueless Americans and they were just being nice.

Again, my thoughts that I might be able to pass as an Arab were reinforced. First on the tram when the conductor asked where I was from and became surprised when I said America, and second when none of the other girls believed I hadn't been here last summer. It seems I'm learning how to find my way around quickly. The way I see it, sure, bad things happen. But there's a difference between being careful and being paranoid. If you're afraid to try new things you're never going to have any adventures.

I wouldn't call tonight an adventure exactly, but it was still fun.

Also, I got to talk to Allison (and Richie and Katherine by proxy) tonight. It was great seeing faces and hearing voices from home. Hopefully I'll get to talk to more of you soon!

Days 5 - 6: It all Catches Up

So, I didn't post a blog last night. I'd planned to, but I was utterly exhausted. I didn't even go to the movie they had scheduled at the boys' dorms and I told Robyn I'm not going swimming tomorrow. In hind sight, the not swimming was a good decision because I woke up in the wee hours of this morning sick as anything. When I finally got back to sleep, I slept until my roommate woke me up, thinking I was lazy for not being up and studying yet. Still, I went back to sleep not long after.

There's nothing forcibly removing itself from my body anymore, but I still don't feel well. I finally managed to climb out of bed long enough to make my way down to a street vendor and buy a sprite. It's helped, but it's dinner time and I still don't have an appetite. I'm worried Momma Huda's going to be mad at me for not calling before I skipped breakfast and lunch (like we're supposed to) but I didn't have any phone minutes. I need to find some of those to buy...

Anyway, I'll be going down to dinner after I finish this. Hopefully I'll be able to force something down and keep it there.

As for yesterday, classes were good. I love my Fusha professor, and I think the pace is about where it needs to be. I was planning to talk to Mom after class, but in class the professor asked us all to come to his office hours that afternoon to discuss what we thought of the class. It was useful, but when I got to the computer Mom had to leave for her dentist's appointment, and Skype wasn't really working anyway.

Afterwards I went out book shopping because there are a few textbooks I need for class. Mainly the novel we'll be reading and an English-Arabic dictionary. I got the dictionary for fifty dollars when it would have been two hundred and fifty in the US. It's gorgeous. As for the novel, so many of us have been buying it they had to order more from Cairo. It should be here tomorrow.

That's really been it for both days... Like I said, posts are getting shorter.

Interesting point, apparently I can pass as Egyptian if I try hard enough. Because my hair and eyes are dark, it's really just my skin and behaviour that gives me away. The skin isn't as noticeable when I'm wearing long sleeves, and there are some pretty pale Egyptians anyway. So if I wear clothes like the locals and look like I know what I'm doing, people don't notice me as much. If I spoke better Arabic I might blend right in.

I didn't notice all of this at first, but it's been becoming more and more apparent. When I was on the double decker tour bus last week, the driver came by to collect our fares and stopped to talk to us. He asked Jeff where he was from and didn't flinch when he said America. But when he asked me he refused to accept that I was American. I was confused then, but when we went to the rice pudding stand on Wednesday and struck up a conversation with the guy working there, he went around telling everyone how American they looked until he got to me. Apparently, I don't look blatantly American, which I hope works in my favor. I'm getting fewer stares at any rate.

That's it for now. I think I'm going to go try to force that dinner now, and then work on homework until Daddy tries to call me on Skype. I love you all!

Day 4: Classes

Thank goodness things have finally slowed down. If I'd stayed in super tourist mode I think I might have busted. But today, we started classes, and as such I only went trekking all over the city once.

My morning was a little earlier than it has been, but that wasn't much of a problem. My first class was Fusha, or formal Arabic. My professor's name is Nour Abdel Din while the assistant professor is Sharou', who I mentioned the other day. There's not really much to talk about class wise. I think it will be fun? It's all in Arabic, no surprise there. The book they're using is a little frustrating. It's an in the works packet, self-assembled, and it's identical to Al-Kitaab, except they don't translate the new words for you. So it's Al-Kitaab + frustration x ten.

Don't worry, I looked them all up in the dictionary.

My second class was Egyptian, with Ustaaz Immad. Again, not much to say there. Oddly enough, all the kids in my Egyptian level are from Texas, so it wasn't really a "get to know your classmates" kind of first class.

After classes, I had lunch, and headed back to the University. My Arabic house form that I didn't receive until I was in DC with no access to a scanner or fax machine, was due yesterday. The scanner in the dar, however, is broken. There's a technician on the way, but who knows when it will get fixed. I've alerted Helena to the hold up, but I'm still frustrated at the entire situation.

Ustaaza Radwa got out of class while I was waiting around the dar trying to get the scanner to work. Again. She was taking her Egyptian class for rice pudding and ice cream, and all the UT students hanging around were invited. We rode the tram to a somewhat shabi area and walked a good ways to the store. Not only did we go through China Town, but we passed a shop selling live chickens and rabbits for slaughter.

The rice pudding was good. It had nuts and raisins on top. The guy working at the store was a bit too friendly, he even told Bruce (one of the few guys in the group), how lucky he was as we were leaving. Egyptian guys don't get much time with women on a regular basis. Still, the store as a whole was very hospitable.

When we got back to the dar there was a language partner meeting for those people who haven't met their partners yet. Habiba and I have already gone out together, of course, so she wasn't there, but as a Flagship student I still had to attend. It was ridiculous, having that many people in one room (something like eighty). But there was delicious fresh juice and they made us play a funny little game to get to know each other.

We all had to find five people born in the same month as us, five people with the same favorite color, and then the Egyptians had to find five Americans who don't like football, while the Americans had to find one Egyptian who doesn't like Soccer. There were only three of the later in the entire room.

After the meeting, I headed back to the dorms to begin my homework. Unsurprisingly, it's incredibly helpful living with Egyptian girls. I was doing my homework with Habiba earlier, and all I had to do was look up and ask a question to have it answered. Then, just a few minutes ago, Hadir translated some of my new vocabulary words for me so I didn't have to look them up.

I'm thinking my posts may start getting shorter, now that I'm in class. There's no guarantee I'll be doing interesting things every day anymore. Anyway, back to homework.

Also, to do list for tomorrow so that I have it written down somewhere:
- Talk to Shareen about getting a room key.
- Buy books.
- Print the Fusha syllabus in the dar.
- Send Arabic House form.

Day 3: Alexandria at Large

Today was by far the most fun I've had so far, even if I was so tired that I'm falling asleep as I right this.

When we all bet at the dar this morning, Robyn split us into groups for a scavenger hunt. Reid, Elizabeth, Tamar and I got a list of places we had to take pictures in front of and we were off, no directions, no map, no nothing. To some, this might sound cruel and unusual, but it made me interact more with the city than I had yet had the opportunity to. We knew enough to piece some things together on our own, but for everything else we had to ask people on the streets. And we were only allowed to take one taxi the entire day. As you can imagine it was chaos.

Most of the people were very nice. As I'd been to the cinema the night before, we decided to start there. On the way, we passed a juice bar, which was one of the items on the list. When we stopped to taste the juice, we got to talking to the man behind the counter, and he got so engaged in our hunt that he actually came out from behind the counter, out of the bar, and started pointing us in all the different directions we needed to go.

From there, we had to ask a man carrying fresh bread down the street. He in turn asked a man in a suit, who asked a police officer. The police officer wasn't very friendly, but everyone else certainly was. We did learn one things quickly though. Reid was our biggest asset. No one wanted to talk to the women, especially women who weren't veiled.

We finished all but three of the items on the list by lunch time, which was the deadline. The cab driver on the way back was the nicest I've had yet, chatting with us about Arabic and teaching us new words like horn, and honk. After lunch we met back at the dar to discuss the scavenger hunt. Only one group got them all, but everyone had fun stories to share. The people of Alexandria are inexhaustibly helpful.

The next item on the agenda was a seminar with Ustaaza Radwa and a girl named Seraphina who live in Alexandria for the Middlebury program. They mostly addressed harassment, with a few other topics thrown in. We've heard about harassment over and over again, but somehow this seminar was more entertaining. I expect it was because there were more examples and stories. Seraphina, for instance, kept making a big deal of it being the guys' job to watch out for us, because it was always her guy friends who chased away the creepers who were following us.

Speaking of creepers, on my way to the dar after lunch with Kaylea and Fiza, a guy approached us. At first he was telling Kaylea to quit smoking, but that was just a trick to get our attention of course. And Kaylea, being the sweetheart she is, took the bait. The entire way from the dorms to the University he followed us, chatting up Kaylea and trying to get our phone numbers. We knew not to give them to him, but that didn't stop him from writing his down and demanding we call him. His name was Hashaam, if anyone cares. He was harmless really, just annoying.

Anyway, after the seminar we were split into classes and took our language pledge. From here on out I am not allowed to speak any English unless it's to family or friends who don't speak Arabic. So far I've enjoyed it, but it's only been a few hours.

Between the pledge and dinner I didn't do much, but after dinner I had an outing planned with Habiba, my language partner. I had never been to Mahatat Raml, the big market place, so we took the tram (another first for me) and wandered around there chatting about life and such and looking at the five billion things they sell there: everything from food, to souvenirs, to hair barrets and fine jewelry. She's very patient with me and my shoddy Arabic, and I think we have similar outlooks on life. Either way, we get along well, which is good because now we'll be spending four hours a week together.

After we'd explored most of the market, she bought me a drink called 'asl. It was delicious, but I couldn't figure out what it was, and when I asked she didn't know the word in English. After a little investigating with the shop owner, it turns out the drink was made of bamboo. Bamboo has a taste, go figure. After the drinks, we decided to walk home rather than taking the tram. It's not too far, and the ocean is gorgeous at night. So we bought these nut/bean type things, covered in pepper and lemon juice, and ate them as we walked the corniche. I know, they sound disgusting, but they were a lot better than you'd think. And eating them was an experience in and of itself because there's a shell you have to learn to squeeze them out of. I'm happy to say that by the end I was a pro.

A little about Habiba. She 's the oldest of seven children in a family that lives on the East coast of Egypt. She's studying to teach Arabic as a foreign language and wants more than anything to study in America, but her father won't let her leave the country. She loves Bollywood romances and sitting on the beach at night. She's also very understanding when I flinch away from the friendly hand holding that all Egyptians do as second nature.

We got back from our outing at around ten-thirty. Hadir is upset about her exam tomorrow. She doesn't think she's prepared and has been crying off and on all night. I wish I had more words of comfort for her, but my Arabic is far from that level yet. Thankfully, the other Egyptian girls in the dorm are handling it all very well.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes, so I'll let you know how that goes. For now though, I'm just going to pass out and hope I stay awake through tomorrow.

Day 2: Shiny!

Today was the first day I didn't have any meetings. This morning, I went on a tour with Sharou', my TA for the semester. She is incredibly sweet and absolutely gorgeous. She took us to the Royal Jewelry Museum via microbus. I'd never been on a microbus before, but it wasn't half as bad as I expected. I sat next to a sweet old lady and we had a nice little chat about why I was in Alexandria and so on and so forth.

After we got out of the microbus, it was a few more blocks to our destination. Since the museum is in a more residential area, there were a lot more cars parked along the street. It made me laugh that in the span of thirty seconds I passed two exact replicas of my mother's car. Just goes to show that it's a small world after all.

At the museum, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the outside was beautiful too. The museum is housed in an old palace that King Fu'ad built for one of his lesser relatives. It's ridiculously extravagant, of course. The decorations, however, were redone by a European couple in the last hundred years. So the stained glass windows show European celebrations, and the ceilings are covered in frescoes. The architecture is still something to marvel at though.

After the museum (which was somewhat far from the university), Sharou' found us a double decker tour bus to ride back on. It took us the entire length of the corniche, so we got a great look at the beach. Side note: Hadir (my roommate's name) means sound of the ocean. I thought it was cool.

Once back that the University we had lunch, Koshery and this delicious chicken soup like concoction, and went to Wal-mart.

Okay, so we didn't actually go to Wal-mart. We went to Carrefour, which is identical Wal-mart except some of it's in Arabic. I got all of the necessities I needed to buy. There's a terrible selection of toilet paper here, by the way, since no one uses it.

My biggest purchase of the day was my new Egyptian cell phone. It's pay as you go, as most Egyptian phones are. Since I don't have any minutes on it yet I can't call out, but now Robyn, the program director, or anyone else can get a hold of me if they need to. Most people's phones turned on in English when they activated them. Mine, for some reason, turned on in Arabic. It was a lot of fun figuring out what went where, but I think I've decided to leave things in English for now. Business I'm doing on my cell phone is too important to screw up.

My roommate has another exam tomorrow, so when I got back from Carrefour she was napping so that she can study all night. When she woke up, she told me that some of the other girls were going out to the movies tonight and that I'd been invited. Not being willing to turn down any opportunities in Egypt, I, of course, agreed.

After dinner, we all gathered together in the dining room and Ala', the amazing girl who proposed the trip, organized us into groups for taxis. The taxis without Egyptian girls in them had some problems getting there, but we all made it eventually.

Buying tickets was an ordeal. In Egypt, there's assigned seating in movie theaters, which means we had to buy our tickets together in order to be able to sit together. Zeinab, another of the girls, organized the money, and one we all had our tickets we went to get ice cream before the movie started. I had mangos and cream. It was delicious.

I was happy to find that I understood most of the movie, despite it being in Arabic. The title translates to "Black Honey," and it's all about an Egyptian man who became an American citizen before returning to Egypt to work on a photography project. While in Egypt, he has a lot of issues with the same cultural things we're having problems with, so I thought the movie was fitting. Eventually, having lost his passport, an family he used to friends with takes him in and shows him that he doesn't have to loose his Egyptian roots just to be a citizen. Then they find his passport and he gets to go home. There's more to it, of course, but that's the gist, and I was falling asleep through half of it, so I'm proud I could keep up.

Egyptian movie theaters are a trip. Apart from the assigned seating, there's no real agreed upon rules like there are in American movie theaters. Everyone had their children there for starters, babies, toddlers, and all the way up. There was an intermission halfway through, like it was a play. Then, there was no phone etiquette. Not only do you not have to turn off your cell phone, but a guy sitting a few seats away from me actually answered his phone and carried on a conversation in the middle of the movie. None of it was really bothersome, surprisingly. They play the movie very loudly, so it drowns out everything else.

Now that we're back, and I've gotten ready for bed, I'm even more exhausted than I was to begin with, so I'm going to end this post here. More to come tomorrow, in sha' Allah!

Day 1: Kites and Cars

Today was our first full day in Alexandria. I don't think my alarm went off, but I still woke up far earlier than I expected to. There were meetings, of course. The dorm councilors told us all of the rules and regulations after breakfast, and then we made our way to the dar for the first time. It's a cute little room where all of the Flagship students can hang out on campus. Thankfully, campus isn't far anyway from the girls dorms. Only a five to ten minute walk.

At the meetings in the dar, it was exciting to see familiar faces again. Ustaaza Radwa and Ustaaza Marwa, two past visiting professors from UT, were there and we were all ecstatic to see them. Ustaaza Radwa even brought a cake for on the Texas boys' whose birthday was yesterday.

After lunch, I had a scheduled interview to evaluate my skills in the Egyptian Colloquial dialect, but I had a free hour beforehand. As such, I tagged along with some of the year long students who had been to Alexandria before to find an ATM. As it turns out the only working ATM we could find (outside the Library of Alexandria) only worked for me. One guy forgot his pin number, one girl's debit card had expired, and the last guy's transaction failed. I felt lucky to have been able to withdraw smaller bills, but because the airport only gave out hundred pound notes. When I got back to the dar, the interview went fairly well, though I forgot the word for pyramids and didn't understand the word for expectations. Because we were all waiting around in the same place for the interviews though, we were able to make plans.

For dinner, most of the UT students went out to an amazing Egyptian restaurant with Ustaazatain Radwa and Marwa. In the summer especially, we have to be careful where we eat out because things spoil so quickly, but we felt safe with not one, but two natives guiding us. On the way to dinner Marwa drove some students to exchange money at the bank while the rest of us walked with Radwa. It was wonderful to explore the city. Everything is so beautiful in its own way. We also managed to break the biggest rule of the entire program, but I figure it's okay, because a professor told us to.

I've heard at least two dozen times in the past few months, "Never cross the corniche. NEVER!" The corniche is a giant highway that runs along the Mediterranean, separating the city from the beach. It's always full of traffic, and no one follows any laws. Somehow, they've turned three painted lanes into four and there's no speed limit. So if there's ever space for you to cross, there's probably someone speeding up to close it quickly. As far as I know, none of us had any intention of trying to cross the death trap. We've heard the stories, someone dies there every day. So you can imagine our surprise when Radwa led us to the corner and began to cross.

At first we freaked out. But as it turns out, the tunnels that run under the corniche and allow one to safely reach the other side end a certain length down the highway and we were at a part that was tunnel-less. So we followed Radwa's lead and crossed. I have to say, it was exhilarating. We were all smiling when we reached the other side. And because there are no intersecting streets on the beach side we reached the restaurant much more quickly.

Now that I've crossed the uncrossable corniche three times, I feel a bit unstoppable. Don't worry, I'll still be extra, extra careful anytime I cross a street, but it's nice to have some confidence.

Dinner was quite an affair. In Alexandria, one pound tends to equate to one dollar, by which I mean something you would pay a dollar for in America (like a bottle of water) you pay a pound for here. Thanks to the exchange rate though, everything is one fifth the American price. So we went to the equivalent of a five star restaurant. The atmosphere was fancy, the lighting low, every plate was about fifty pounds, and the food was amazing.

Because we're in Egypt, we wanted to try as many Egyptian things as possible. Several people got stuffed pigeon, others tried dishes I can't even begin to describe like Koshary and Corsican Chicken, and I think we all considered Mulukhia, but no one had the guts to order it. I ended up getting Fattah - Egyptian risotto with yogurt, onions, meat and some other stuff. And yes, by meat they mean meat. As in unidentified. It definitely wasn't chicken, and it definitely wasn't beef, and because it's Egypt it definitely wasn't pork. My best bet is that it was rabbit, though whatever it was it wasnt' bad.

After dinner, we asked Radwa to take us to her favorite place in Alexandria, and when she started walking we had no idea where we were headed. As it turns out, we walked the entire length of the corniche, which is long, and ended up at this castle like structure which I'd been eying since we arrived. It sits on a little outcropping, so you can see it from almost anywhere on the corniche, and it's surrounded by tables and chairs for people to sit in and enjoy the sea.

It hadn't realized before this what a social spot the corniche was. It looked like half the city had turned out to just hang out on the sidewalk for the evening. There were tons of people on dates, or hanging out with friends. Merchants sold corn, and cotton candy, and little knickknacks along the side of the road. When we got to the parts that were swimable there were massive crowds of men and boys in the water, splashing and playing, with the women sitting on the side watching and chatting. And of course every group of young guys we passed made comments. They were all fairly easy to ignore. In America, I don't even think I would have called it harassment. We even enjoyed the funnier ones.

Radwa bought us all ice cream at the castle, and we wandered around eating it. Aynur bought a kite from one of the merchants along the street and several of us started trying to fly it. Everyone failed, but we failed badly enough that one of the little boys selling kites came over to try and help us, and when he failed to his friends began to join in.

Before ten minutes had passed we had half a dozen little Egyptian boys running around us, jumping off ramparts and trying to fly this kite, which I will add usually ended up flying into us and going down with a crash. It was one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen, until an older man ruined it.

According to Radwa, people have started taking the public chairs alongside the castle and "claiming" them, so to speak, demanding that people pay to sit there despite having no right. One such man who had claimed the chairs near us realized that people were no longer sitting in his area, fearing they might get hit by the kite, and came over to yell at the kids. Thank goodness Radwa was there, because none of us had the language skill to deal with him. She yelled at him for a bit, reminding him it was public property, and he left us all alone, but we still left soon after.

By this time it was early evening, and most of us were quite tired from walking, so we took taxis back to the dorms. It only costs five pounds (one dollar) to go just about anywhere in the city, so it was certainly worth it. The Egyptian girls' curfew was two hours prior to when I returned, so the dorms were swarmed with people. I'm beginning to get used to it though. I've even started singing along with my roommate's ringtone.

I'm going to try to continue these posts on a daily basis, but I'm warning you now that I might miss one or two. I almost fell asleep already tonight, and that's hard with all that's going on in the dorms. I hope you're all doing well back in America. Just because I'm making these mass posts doesn't mean you can't E-mail me if you have something to say!

<3

The Beginning

As most of you reading this should know, I'm not going to have much time to communicate with you while I'm studying in Egypt. That means you're only going to catch the odd story here or there, especially if I have to tell them to each of you individually. As such, I'm starting a blog. I'll write about what I'm doing here, you can read about it if you like. Then I don't waste time retelling and we can catch up on more important things.

So, the logical place to start this journey is, of course, take off. I got to DC last Wednesday night, met some people, hung out with some people, and then meetings started in earnest on Thursday. Of course we went through most of the same things in the handbook, but we learned some interesting new things too. For instance, Egyptians are not liars, they just don't like disappointing you. So even if they can't do something, or don't have something, they'll tell you they can and they do just to make you happy. Useful information to have in a dire situation.

The most commonly mentioned things in these sessions were health - drink lots of water (but not the tap water), don't get overheated, and expect to have intestinal problems, traffic - don't cross the major highway, you'll die, and self-awareness - more accurately, the fact that everyone else will be hyper aware of you. Nothing too surprising, really.

Between dinner and meetings on Thursday, we had some free time, so several of us went trekking around the capital sightseeing. We saw the White House, the Washington Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam War Memorial. There are no pictures of the latter because round about the Lincoln Memorial it began to rain with us almost fifteen blocks from our hotel. We were soaked by the time we got back, but it was worth it, even if I am still nursing the infected blistered from walking so far in wet shoes.

Friday evening, we boarded the flight to Frankfurt, Germany. Nine hours in a cramped plane showing "It's Complicated" on repeat. Okay, so maybe there were more movies, but since I was too lazy to figure out when they began I ended up coming in halfway through, not enjoying them, and reading instead. I slept little, but finished "The Lion the Witch in the Wardrobe."

I was hoping our flight from Frankfurt to Cairo would at least have a bit more Arabic. It did, but not much. I did, however, get to see "Valentine's Day," which a few of you know I've been wanting to see, despite the terrible reviews. It lived up to it's reputation, but I'm glad I saw it.

When I wasn't watching sappy romantic comedies, I was talking to the guy sitting next to me. He's a Canadian casino bouncer, who's friends all kept talking about going to Egypt, and then never did. So he got sick of it and bought himself a ticket. He's going to be here for ten days in a tour group. I taught him how to say shukran, 3afwan, and min fudlak. As we were landing, he claims he saw the pyramids from his window seat, but the plane wasn't at the right angle for me to do that same.

In Egypt things started to actually get interesting, of course. We still had a three hour bus ride from Cairo to Alexandria. That gave us the chance to drive past the pyramids. They were still pretty far in the distance, but my camera has an awesome zoom, so I have some awesome pictures of that when I figure out how to upload from Egypt.

The closer we got to Alexandria, the more that awareness point from orientation began to kick in. Cars were pulling up alongside our bus, waving and honking, just to get the attention of foreigners. One guy even managed to get up on his knees in the seat in oder to give us a better view of his rear end. I can't think of a better way to kick off being sexually harassed. When we got to the dorms, the attention only got heavier.

In the dorms of course, the attention was all of the good kind. I have never seen a welcome so warm as the one our Egyptian roommates gave us. Sure, a couple hundred girls squeezed into a lobby trying to introduce themselves to everyone at once is a little hectic, and I was certainly overwhelmed, but I was also touched by how anxious they were to get to know us.

My roommates name is Hadir. She's a student in the college of medicine. Unfortunately for her, she has a final tomorrow, so I volunteered to stay in tonight and unpack. Everything's in it's rightful place, but I still have a list of things I need to buy. For instance, silly me didn't realize my computer doesn't plug in to the adapter I bought. My language partner, who I'll be meeting with four hours a week to practice my Arabic, is named Habiba. She's studying Arabic to teach it as a foreign language, so my helplessness should be right up her alley. We have a meeting on Tuesday after her last exam. She's already told me she hopes we become fast friends, and I certainly hope for the same.

The dorms here are very nice - clean tile floors, private AC, and yes mom, they provided a pillow. I took a shower to recover from traveling, and that's an experience I'm going to have to get used to. The showers aren't bad - big private stalls. However they don't have shelving inside or outside the stalls, so I have to throw my clothes over the door and hope they don't get wet. Also, every time I want to use the restroom I have to take toilet paper with me. The toilets here function like bidets, and wiping is not part of that equation.

A rude awakening hit me in the shower. Apparently, I swallow water while bathing. I didn't realize until I had a mouth full of World Health Organization disapproved water, I'm just hoping now that I didn't swallow enough of it to make the first victim who needs Cypro.

Getting ready for bed, Hadir brought me half a pizza from down the street. She'd never had it before either, but it was certainly interesting. There was some unidentified meat like substance on it. She assured me it wasn't meat, but she didn't the English word for it, and I didn't know the Arabic. It wasn't bad, but I'm still curious.

Just now, as I'm sitting in bed writing this, Hadir came back from visiting friends down the hall. Apparently one of the other girls in the program is already in tears. It's certainly stressful, and more than a little intimidating, but I think we're all just tired. I haven't understood half of what Hadir has said to me, but she's been wonderfully patient with our misunderstandings. The overload of Arabic, combined with the full frontal hospitality of our hosts is terribly overwhelming, especially when you add jet lag into the mix.

I for one am enjoying myself and looking forward to experiencing all Alexandria has to offer. But we all have our limits. Mine is that I'm going to have to do it on a good nights sleep. So I'm headed to bed, window open on to the dorm courtyard with everyone's clothes hanging from the windows. There's a washing machine in the dorms, but no dryer. And due to the sea breeze the weather is beautiful and the mosquitoes minimal.

TusbiH 3la kheir!