Ketchup

I'm getting so bad at updating this thing. Sorry, Sara. I'll blame it on our lack of internet. The guy keeps thinking that when we call (with our friend Alfred, who translates) to say we want internet, we're actually saying we'd prefer him not to come, even though he says, "I'll be there between 8 and 10 tomorrow," and then never shows up. It's very confusing, but such is Africa.

First of all, that picture I got has been destroyed by my so-called "friends". I can't seem to take a good picture of it, but let's just say that I have beautiful feminine eyelashes, a Hitler moustache, and a speech bubble coming out of my mouth that says, "I'm a Jew. I don't like spending money, but I will LICK YOUR ANUS DRY!!"

Brian took this picture. It's his elbow.

Other than that, we haven't been doing much at all here since school started. We've got a lot of travel plans in the works, however, since we're slowly realizing that it's already the second month of our semester here, and we have a lot of stuff to see. We keep throwing names out there of places we want to see - Beirut! Syria! Jordan! Israel! Morocco! Libya! Turkey! The Sudan (Tara swears she has a friend who can get us in for 17 dollars, but that seems crazy for a multitude of reasons)! Alexandria! Luxor! - and the list keeps growing without us seeing any of them. However, a group of us are having a potluck dinner tonight at our place to discuss and fully plan our trip in two weeks to... some of these places. I don't want to name which ones, since it makes my mom nervous, so you'll hear all about it when I get back, and probably not much before we leave. But I swear it's as safe as Cairo, Mom.

I realize that Ramadan is exactly halfway completed and I haven't really written much about what it's like, so I should probably do it. I haven't seen that many examples of people getting irritable during the day from fasting, with the exception of a few actual street-side fistfights. Most businesses shorten their hours or shut down completely during the month - the majority of the restaurants are not open during the day unless their main clientele are foreigners - and it's a bit uncomfortable trying to eat in secret. I usually more or less fast during the day and then just eat when I'm back at my apartment, to avoid having to hide it. It's not that you get in trouble for eating during the day, it's just that it's completely rude to chow down or take a big swig of your water in front of someone who's starving. At night, the city goes kind of crazy. The sidewalks are crammed with tables for the huge communal iftar meals after sunset, fireworks are usually going off somewhere, and a crazy woman bangs a drum and screams below my window every night for almost half an hour starting at 3 AM. I hate her.

Apartment life in Cairo is more or less the same as back home, with a few more inconveniences. In the time it's taken me to write this, I've had to answer the door twice and tell two separate guys I did not want them to do my laundry. We're amassing business cards like our lives depend on it. The other day, I discovered an enormous colony of ants that had moved into our kitchen. There must have been at least five thousand. Beckett and I went absolutely crazy on the little guys - first we sprayed them with bug spray, then we left a trail of pepper along the path they were taking to throw off their scent, then we just stomped on them, followed by a heavy dousing of Oust, then just some good-old-fashioned flames, and finally just soap and water to clean up the billions of pathetic ant corpses. It was actually really fun. In hindsight, perhaps keeping our garbage in a flimsy cardboard box on the floor with no garbage bag was a bad idea.

Last Friday, Allyson and I went to Alexandria with a class field trip. Unfortunately, we had been up until 4 AM the morning before, and we had to get up at 6 to catch the bus. We both woke up in time, but since the entire trip consisted of 10 hours on a bus with only about 1 hour total off the bus, we slept throughout the whole thing. We did get to see Alexandria, which looks really comfortable and laid-back, the point where the Nile hits the Mediterranean, and a big hole in the ground people are claiming will turn out to be Cleopatra's tomb. When we stopped to see where the Nile meets the Mediterranean, our security guard told us we were absolutely not allowed to take a picture of the military operations out the left side of the bus. Which naturally means he was challenging us to take the highest-quality picture out the left side of the bus. The second his back was turned, I snapped a picture of the "secret military operations", which were actually just some big concrete things sitting in the sand. Awesome!

You are not allowed to look at this picture.

Allyson can't believe she just re-discovered Cleopatra's tomb.

Picture of a Picture

Look what I got for free when I went to get passport pictures!

Sleepless in Sinai

As you may have guessed from the title, I didn't sleep at all in Sinai. That means I was awake from 9 AM Thursday until 5 AM Sunday. For a pretty surreal weekend, losing my mind due to sleep deprivation didn't help. It all seemed like a crazy dream: there were wild packs of dogs, the sun was constantly going up and down, suddenly I was underwater... Let me start at the beginning.

The grand total of people going on the trip was 34, which is insane. We rented two minibuses, and all met at campus to get picked up. The trip was organized by this guy named Rob, which was good in the sense that it saved me from having to do any work or worry about any of the details, but was bad in the sense that everyone practically worshipped him all weekend. It got to the point where people were completely thrown off when five of us decided to go snorkeling - gasp! - without Rob! He's actually a really nice guy, and I knew that going into it, but I could tell he was going to be a bit anal about the whole thing, since he had gotten it into his head that he was responsible for all our actions all weekend. And who wouldn't want to screw with that?

Anyway, we split in half and boarded our buses. Rob hooked up his closest friends with the bigger, nicer bus, while 14 of us were on the smaller, crappier one. I actually enjoyed our bus size, because it made all 14 of us pretty great friends by the end of the ride. Mostly because we went through many near-death experiences together. Our driver was absolutely insane. He rarely slowed below warp speed, not even on sharp turns. At one point, we could actually feel the left wheels lift off the ground as we rounded a curve, and we started to drift off the road. It was pretty terrifying, and as much as we screamed at him to slow down, he didn't let his foot off the gas a bit. Even though we were going 100 miles an hour the whole way, he managed to make what should have been a six-hour bus ride into an eight-hour ride. He made sure to stop for ten minutes out of every half hour to have several cigarettes. It was pretty torturous. At one stop, we stopped near an intersection, one of the roads having a sign that said, "Foreigners not allowed past this point." Everyone started taking pictures of it, and the driver came over and yelled at us. Someone asked what was down that road, and he said Israel was about 50 meters away, and not to go down that road because there were landmines all around it. Awesome! Aside from the sheer length of the drive, it was pretty fun, and the desert was absolutely beautiful in the middle of the night. You would not believe how many stars you can see when it is literally pitch black - there weren't any lights for miles and miles.

We beat the other bus to Dahab, of course, so at the hotel we were asked to sit down and wait for our rooms to be ready. Now, we're only paying less than 8 US dollars a night for this place, so I wasn't expecting much. But, boy, what 8 dollars gets you! We were seated in their restaurant, which is directly on the beach, and instead of chairs the ground is just covered in comfortable pillows, true Arabian-style. We were given free tea, and after the excruciating bus ride, laying there next to the beach was perfect. I couldn't have been happier.

Finally, Rob & Co. arrived. Now, there weren't enough rooms at the hotel for all of us, but there were two hotels directly adjacent that would be taking the leftovers. We all immediately wanted this hotel, though, because how could it get any better? So we had worked out with the manager before bus two arrived that we would get the rooms at this hotel instead of Rob's group. Of course, Rob showed up, said, "Hell no!" and essentially kicked all of us out in favor of his bus. I loudly booed him, and he singled me out and said, "Danny, do you and two people want to be in the hotel right next door?" Oh my Rob, I got personally recognized by the man himself! Too flabbergasted to speak, I just nodded yes, feeling like the man of the hour.

Turns out he's craftier than I give him credit for. You see, there are three hotels directly in a row - The Penguin, which is the main one we were at; the Sea View, which is even nicer than the Penguin; and sandwiched in between the two is the Jasmine. The Jasmine has four rooms, all of which combined are smaller than the restaurant downstairs. The Jasmine is primarily a restaurant, of course. So Beckett, Brian and I were a little miffed. Especially because we only had two tiny beds, our toilet had someone else's unflushed crap in it (because the toilet was unable to flush) and our "shower" was just an ancient saltwater spout in the middle of the bathroom, with no curtain or anything to stop the water from going anywhere.

There was no way we were going to sleep in that room. And since it was already past 3 AM when everyone was finally going to bed, the three of us went back to the Penguin's restaurant and laid on the pillows to await the sunrise. The hotel was overrun with a pack of stray dogs, and after seeing the staff throwing rocks at them to get them to leave, I of course felt bad, so I pet one on the head, barely using even my fingertips to avoid getting all sorts of diseases. This tiny bit of attention endeared the dog to me instantly, and it collapsed right in my lap to go to sleep. Brian was horrified, claiming I was going to get AIDS and Rob knows what else, but it was too adorable to ignore, so I had to keep petting it, in spite of its open sores and horrible stench. All of the sudden, the greatest little puppy bounded up, and before I knew it, I had five dogs all around me. By this point, Brian was twenty feet away. I just sat with my pack of dogs and watched the sun rise, which was the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen (for the next twenty-four hours, at least). The particular stretch of Red Sea Dahab is on is only a couple miles wide, so we could see straight across into Saudi Arabia as the sun rose behind the Saudi mountains. It was incredible.

For the rest of the day, we rented snorkeling gear and tried out a beach down the coast a bit. The snorkeling there was pretty terrible, but we heard about this place called Blue Hole that we could pay 25 pounds to go snorkeling at, so we jumped at it. There were five of us who climbed into this Jeep for a wild ride through the desert. We passed a huge amount of camels, most of them being led by kids. It was very strange. We got to Blue Hole in one piece, and jumped into the sea. Now, I've been snorkeling in many beautiful places - the Caribbean, Hawaii, the GreatAt 1 Barrier Reef - but I don't know if I've ever seen anything like this. There was so much activity down there, and it was completely beautiful. Too bad the sea was packed with Italians, who all seemed unable to swim, instead grabbing onto us and pushing us down in an attempt to stay above the water. But it was still fun. We finished before noon, and faced with the prospect of nothing to do until 10 PM that night when we would be leaving for Mt. Sinai, we just went back to the restaurant and lounged around literally all day. It was ridiculous thinking that as we were laying in luxury on the Red Sea, eating crab and looking at Saudi Arabia, our friends back home were sitting in class. How is what we're doing right now fair? I pondered it for a second, but then just ordered some more mango juice and continued the crossword puzzle Megan and I were working on.

At 10:30, the group boarded two buses and set off for Mt. Sinai. It's about a two-hour drive, which means we made it in three hours. And since we boarded the buses around 10:30 but didn't leave until midnight, it was already 3 AM and we were pressed for time, if we wanted to reach the peak before sunrise. So we started to climb!

Have you ever tried to climb a mountain in the middle of the night with one flashlight for 20 people? It's really hard. Most of us opted for the harder, more vertical path rather than the longer, gentler slope congested with ancient Russians and camels. Turns out our way was smarter, because Emily took the easy path and gouged her knee enough to need stitches. Which, of course, she didn't get because we were on a freaking mountain in the desert. The climb was so beautiful - there were billions of stars above, and shooting stars practically every second. There's a monastery at the bottom of the mountain that has the supposedly real Burning Bush, and at 3:45 AM, we were high enough to look straight down at all the little monastery lights right as the monks were waking up. Their bells and chants echoed all the way up to us, and it was beautiful.

The climb went on for nearly three hours, and we actually had to scramble up the last little bit, since it was already pretty light out. The top was absolutely packed with tourists, but we found a nice spot and settled in to watch the magic. It was a stunning sight, and I really don't think I'll see anything close to it in quite a long time. The pictures really don't do it justice.

After sitting at the top for an hour or two, we returned to the bottom the same way we came up, which was a thousand times easier in the daylight. Rather than going into the monastery like most people, we laid in the van and rested, since we were completely exhausted by this point. Rob had arranged it so we wouldn't leave until 8 PM Saturday night, even though Sundays are school days here, so people had 7 AM classes the next day. We talked him into moving it up to 6, which meant we would actually be leaving at 8 anyway. We lounged around again all day because everyone was completely wiped out.

We re-boarded our buses that night, and set off (with a different driver, fortunately) back for Cairo. This time, it took nearly ten hours to get back. The driver stopped almost twice as much as the previous driver, much to our chagrin. The word for "let's go" in Arabic is "yalla", so every time he stopped for a smoke break, we'd all scream out the window, "Fucking yalla!" Even though we were exhausted and cranky and just wanted to get into our beds back home, we were still having a hilarious time. It kind of sucked being with such a large group, but I really did have a great time with these people. We got back around 4 in the morning, and I finally got back and into bed at 5 AM, just as the sun was coming up - my third sunrise in a row.

From Thursday until Sunday, it felt like one really long, really productive day. In that one day, I had witnessed two spectacular sunrises, snorkled, climbed a mountain, and sat on buses for almost 24 total hours. What a busy 60-hour day.

Ramadanny

Life has definitely slowed down in Cairo. For the first three weeks, I really felt like a tourist, and I definitely didn't feel like I would be here for any long stretch of time. But now that classes are in full swing and I have this apartment, I actually feel like I live in Cairo, which, I must say, is pretty cool.

For one, I'm back to my regular school ways - go to class, come back to my apartment, take a nap while watching TV, eat ramen noodles, do homework, etc. I've stopped doing a ton of sightseeing every day, mostly because I don't have the time, and also because I've seen a large majority of Cairo already, and I need to space some of it out - I've still got three months!

The hardest part of returning home after all this will be going back to a real school. All us international kids have said the same thing: we feel like we're back in high school. I, for one, feel like I'm in high school in Laguna Beach. The teachers seem like they used to care but have given up, the students seem like they don't need an education (because, let's face it, they don't), and every single student wears at least $10,000 worth of clothing and jewelry to class. We really are surrounded by some of the wealthiest 17-year-olds in the world. And classes are ridiculously easy. On top of that, I only have class two times a week. It's actually a bit frustrating how little work I'm doing.

Everyone seems to be going through the same thing at the almost-one-month mark: namely, a bit of homesickness. Not debilitating or extremely painful homesickness, but in our conversations I find us talking less about sex and more about things like, "I wonder what so-and-so is doing right now..." or "Why are my friends so bad at responding to messages?" (that's YOU, Danny Bodnar). I think this is all just a side-effect of the afore-mentioned transition from tourist mode to resident status. It's strange.

Also, today is the first day of Ramadan. I haven't been outside yet (I need to stay within range of a comfortable bathroom... You figure out why), but I'm a bit nervous to see what it's like. For those of you who don't know, Muslims cannot eat, drink, or smoke during daylight hours for the month of Ramadan. For that reason, they get much testier during the days, and every night turns into a wild party. They also rearrange all the schedules - classes are compressed so I get out by 4 PM instead of 6 - and most businesses pretty much close all month. Which means I'll be either living out of the grocery store downstairs, or... Hardee's. I'll partake in Ramadan for at least one day during the month, which I imagine will be pretty difficult, since I'm constantly starving and you can't even drink water, but I want to see what it's like.

This weekend marks the first of many non-school weekend trips. Although it may as well be a school trip, because 23 of us are going. We've rented two minibuses, and we are leaving at 5 PM tonight for Dahab on the Red Sea. It's about a six or seven hour drive, so we'll get in around midnight. We spend the night and the next day on the beach or doing whatever we want, and then at 2 AM Saturday morning, we will start climbing Mt. Sinai. It takes about two or three hours to climb it, so we'll get to the top and wait for the sunrise. I can't believe I'm going to be watching the sun rise where Moses got his little tablets.

I'll report back (i.e. who kissed, who fell off the mountain, did I find any more commandments) on Sunday.

In Which We Lose Our Minds

Things have gotten a little crazy here in Cairo. Let's start at the beginning.

Four days ago, it was the last day in which you could check out of the dorms and get most of your money back. After that, you would lose all of it, I think. Naturally, I had no plans to leave the dorms.

However, I was sitting in my room, minding my own business, while Ahmed was sleeping in his bed (he has to sleep for 20 hours to gather enough energy to sit on the computer for four hours a day until he goes back to sleep). The RA for our floor walked in, introduced himself for the third time, and said, "If you want, you can move down to room 417." I was confused, so I said, "Okay, thanks, but I think I'm fine here." Then he said, "Yes, but we need you to cooperate. Ahmed wants his brother to live in his room, so we would like you to move."

What the hell? How rude is that? The kid is here two days, I'm here two weeks, and I'm being asked to move all my stuff to another room? Does he really need to live with his brother, who is only two floors below us, and who he probably lives with at home? And why do I have to move? We have a third roommate who could be asked, as well as Ahmed's brother's roommates. I've become great friends with all the guys on my floor, I've gotten comfortable in the room I've come to think of as my temporary home, and suddenly this spoiled (seriously, the kids that go here are wealthier than you could ever dream) little brat puts me in this position? In my mind, I had two options, neither of them favorable: I could suck it up and move, giving in to that little jerk and significantly lowering the amount of fun I have in Egypt, or I could say no, but then live with a kid who would hate me, and whom I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving all my stuff behind with all day while I was in class. I was pretty furious, and you can believe that I stopped being so nice and tiptoeing around the room while he slept - I slammed the door shut and open every time I left (which I made often), and I invited people in to have loud conversations. Passive-agressive non-confrontation is the greatest.

But then Emily, Catherine Catherine, and Laura got an apartment. We were all kind of confused, since Catherine and Laura had been looking for an apartment, but Emily just moved out on the spur of the moment. So Beckett, Tara and I went over to see it, and it was pretty amazing. First we walked up these really awful stairs, that were falling apart and filled with hobos and garbage, so I was expecting the worse. And the elevators - how to describe them? They had to have been the first elevators ever. I laugh every time I ride in them. But we got up to their floor, walked in, and all yelled, "Oh my God!" at the same time.

We didn't know the place was fully furnished, nor that it was so huge. They have a fancy dining room table, two lounge chairs and two couches, a TV with free satellite TV, a coffee table, three fully-furnished bedrooms with two bathrooms, a washing machine/dryer, and even paintings on the walls, rugs on the hardwoods, and shelves with various decorative objects on them. It's incredible.

So Beckett and I started talking, and we began to consider getting an apartment in the same complex. We actually went downstairs, expressed our interest, and toured two apartments, one of which was directly below the girls. This was at 11:10 PM. We had 50 minutes to get out of the dorms, if we were going to do this. Beckett asked what I was thinking, and since the apartments were both nicer than the girls', I said, "For me, the decision is which one do we take." So with that, we said we wanted to take the one right below the girls, landlord Ahmed (get used to that name - the majority of the men I meet here will be named that) said we could come back tomorrow to sign the papers, and Beckett and I took off running to get to the dorms. Luckily, we were only two blocks away.

We ran up to our Resident Director's room and asked what we had to do to check out so we could get our money back. He simply said, "Get out in half an hour. Get packing!" so we ran downstairs and packed in literally five minutes. Roommate Ahmed seemed absolutely thrilled, even helping me to pack. We signed out and returned our keys at 11:45 PM, 15 minutes before we'd be stuck there for the semester, and then we dragged all our stuff the two blocks back to the building. In less than an hour, I had put in an offer on an apartment, checked out of the dorms, and been turned free on the streets of Cairo with all my belongings. It was kind of nuts.

We ended up spending the night in the girls' apartment, with Beckett and I sharing a bed with Emily, which kept us up (talking, pervs) until 4:30 AM. What I forgot to mention until now is that class started the next day at 8:00 AM.

When we all got up and had showered using the same towel (can you see why you get extraordinarily close with people in only a couple days while traveling?) we boarded the shuttle from the dorms to campus. Normally those who live in apartments have to pay for the shuttles, but we still had our housing IDs, so we get to ride free! Jackpot!

Classes were pretty strange. I skipped Arabic, since I was planning on dropping it, so I went to Global Politics of the 20th Century, which is taught by a classy old British woman, who may or may not be a Dame. The Egyptian students really (for the most part) slack off, since they're so freaking wealthy, so none of them had pens or paper, which pissed the Dame off, but not as much as the kids who walked in half an hour late, eliciting a perfectly snooty, "Well!" from her.

I then went to drop Arabic and add another history class. I thought I could just go to the registrar office, but of course Tomader needs to personally control every aspect of our lives, so we had to wait in line for over two hours just to add and drop classes. What was awful is that there was no way of seeing which classes were still open until you were face-to-face with Tomader. So some people waited for two hours for a "No". Luckily, the History of India was open, so I now only have class two days a week.

I got into History of India only five minutes before it started, so I raced across campus to get there in time, which I did, even though I got stuck in a long security check line. After class, Beckett and I had to get in a cab and race back to the apartment to pay Ahmed. He only accepts cash (it sounds shady, but with the exception of this he's actually really professional), so we withdrew thousands of pounds to give to him. I felt so awesome walking around with a huge roll of cash in my pocket. We signed the papers, gave him the money, and raced back to campus for the rest of our classes.

My last two classes were also pretty good. One I might drop - Social Problems of the Mideast. It sounds fascinating, but the professor is this ancient Egyptian woman who forgets what she's talking about and just rambles all class long. Plus there's an obnoxious girl who - even though the professor speaks fluent English and has lived in the United States for extensive amounts of time - feels the need to translate everything we say in English to the professor in Arabic. Everyone else in the class hates her. Oh, and there's a 20-page paper due. Yeah, I'm doing all I can to drop it. And my final one - Egypt in the Graeco-Roman Era - seems really interesting, and there are all sorts of awesome people in it. Plus we get to take five separate free trips to Alexandria.

After class, we went back to the apartment to actually move in. Our place is a bit nicer than the girls'. It's decorated like an 80-year-old woman died recently (and it kind of smells like it, too), with almost leopard-print couches, a matching ottoman/coffee table, a huge dining room table, a china cabinet complete with china, a fully-furnished kitchen with dishes and silverware, a balcony, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a washer/dryer, beautiful views of the Nile, free satellite TV, faux crystal chandeliers, trippy paintings, two of the biggest beds I've ever seen (well, to be fair, my bed is actually two twin beds pushed together to form one enormous bed), etc. I could go on forever. In short, we loved it and didn't regret our decision in the slightest.

We had our new neighbors (the girls) over for a housewarming party, and Tara, Kyle, and Erik came over, Erik bearing gifts of cookies and 24 rolls of toilet paper. What a swell guy. The party was mostly us channel-surfing until we found Legally Blonde in English, and all of us just enjoying the fact that guys and girls could finally hang out together in a comfortable way.

Eventually we went to bed, with Tara sleeping over, since this is so much better than the dorms. I ended up absolutely freezing due to my air conditioner, but I suppose that's better than sweating uncontrollably all night.

Today, we just lazed around for most of the morning while Tara was at the gym and class (she's quickly becoming our unofficial third roommate - she even provided the groceries). When she got back, we went to the City Stars mall, which was freaking huge, to buy some stuff for our apartment. We got towels, dish soap, laundry detergent, dishwasher powder, air fresheners, tupperware, paper towels, shampoo for beckett, and some other stuff that I can't remember for only 120 pounds - less than 25 dollars. It was awesome. We also bought a rip-off game of Scrabble for about 7 bucks. We had a little scare in the cab when Beckett got a text message from his friend Brian, who is also here in Cairo - "Syria shoots down Israeli jet". The three of us kind of began to panic at the thought of the repurcussions from the Syrians shooting down a plane full of Israeli citizens for no reason, and we started debating the likeliness of a nuclear war and how soon we'd be evacuated from Egypt. We then found out later that Brian was a little dramatic, and the real story is that Syria fired at but didn't hit a military jet from Israel. Major difference. Although, I personally think the US press should be a little less biased and instead of "Syria fires missiles at Israeli jet," perhaps they should consider the headline, "Israel flies jet at Syrian missles".

Here's a short apartment tour:
This is how we pay the rent every month.

The gang watching Legally Blonde our first night in the apartment. Those tacky couches, chairs, and table all smell like a horrible barnyard. We're 98% sure they're stuffed with hay.

Beckett got the king-sized bed, I got the two twin beds, which I combined to create a superbed.

The view. For those of you who failed geography, that's the Nile.

This is painted inside my shower. There's all sorts of girly crap on my side of the apartment.

This is where we have all our formal dinner parties. And by that, I mean, "This is where we eat ramen noodles and play Scrabble."

I guarantee we never even touch this fancy china. But it's nice being able to say we have a china cabinet!

The greatest balcony ever. We plan on doing something more with it than some stupid chairs.

I swear this is real crystal. Diamonds, actually. Yeah, diamonds.

I love this. I plan on stealing it when we move out. It's this bizarre painting that came with the place. Note the signs for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and pi. Also the DNA in the bottom left corner, and the words "math" and "science" at the top center.

Out of Africa (Well, Cairo)

Sorry about the lull in updates. Things are pretty hectic here, and the only time I'm in my room is for the five or so hours a night I sleep. But let's get this show on the road, because I have plans soon.

So. We got up to go to the Red Sea. We were told we had to be at campus at 8 AM, so that meant we would have to take the 7:30 AM shuttle. Since we're in Egypt, there were no shuttles waiting for us. So all 200 of us kids from Zamalek had to catch cabs in groups of four. It took forever to get that many cabs. The cab ride was absolutely nuts, too, because for some reason our driver was blasting the craziest Arabic music I've ever heard. So this awful woman is screeching like a banshee as we're careening through traffic. It was wild.

When we got to campus, there was mass chaos again. No one knew what to do, there weren't any buses, kids were missing, and long story short, we left about thirty minutes late. And then we stopped at a gas station for a while to wait for our security guards to arrive. So things were already not going as planned. When we arrived at the hotel, no one knew what to do, but we were quickly herded directly into an auditorium. How was your trip? Good? Okay, now sit for a three-hour orientation session. What made it even worse was the fact that it was a question and answer segment, and I think AUC students are all either insane or really funny jokers. People asked about crocodiles leaving the Nile and entering the city, what to do if they wandered and got lost in the middle of the desert, and where Tomader thinks are good places to eat. Then we sat through presentations introducing us to the Student Union and the "Friends", who are there to help us/take Tomader's verbal abuse. Finally, they let us go, but said that we couldn't go to the beach and would have to all sit in the lobby for an hour. Sweet!

Two hours later, we were given the keys to our rooms. We were grouped in threes alphabetically by our last names. The quality of the room you were given was up in the air - some people got waterfront rooms with balconies, while Beckett had to share one king-sized bed with two other guys. We got two twin beds and a cot, and our room was right by the water. So I was happy. Although they only gave us one key for the three of us, and only one beach towel. One of the jerks I was stuck with decided he was going to hang on to the key and I would have to find him if I wanted to get into the room at all, even though everyone else was leaving their keys at the front desk so all three could have equal access to it. But whatever, the less I had to see of the guy, the happier I was.

The Red Sea was great. It was warm enough to make us have to got out frequently because we were getting a bit too hot, but it was so much fun. Plus we could walk forever and never not be able to touch the ground. It was so shallow - big deal, Moses, I could part this if I wanted to. So we lounged around on the beach all day, and that night we went to a "bellydancing show" which was anything but. It was hosted by this gay little Italian man who was incredibly annoying. For some reason this Italian woman in a bellydancing costume sat on a pillow on stage and smoked shisha with him the whole time, but she did no dancing at all. Some other woman (with enormous breasts) did all the dancing, but it wasn't bellydancing as we know it. It was just a lot of swinging her arms and shaking her ass. And she barely did that, because for every song she just called random guys up on stage and made them dance with her. As the night progressed, I started to notice that she had called all the guys from the first three rows up, with the exception of me. So I began to empty my pockets and think up some cool dance moves.

Then things turned sour. This guy came out, kind of like a Whirling Dervish, only more circus-like. He was wearing a multicolored skirt and some sort of crazy getup, and he just spun in a circle for about ten minutes straight. It was actually kind of cool, until he took off the skirt, stopped spinning, and then just spun the skirt over his head like pizza dough. He did that part for another 5 or so minutes, which got really, really boring. Suddenly, the Italian announced that he would need two people to compete in a spinning competition. So of course Tara starts pointing at me, and next thing I know, I'm being dragged up by the Italian. The other guy they pulled up goes first, and he makes it for 25 seconds, which is absolutely pathetic. So then the Italian and the clearly gay (even though he claims to be married) Whirling Dervish start to put the skirt on me, but before I know it, they've torn off my shirt. So I do the spinning shirtless for some reason, and I make it for 30 seconds before I stop (I could have gone for days, but what would be the point?) Well, I was feeling quite ill, but then the Italian guy grabbed me, threw me over his shoulder, unintentionally (I think) pressed my genitals against his face, and started spinning me around more. I was so close to throwing up. And now I keep getting recognized by AUC students. I hate Egypt.

Later that night, Tara, Beckett, Kyle, Catherine Catherine (don't ask) and I decided to sleep on the beach and watch the sunrise, mostly to avoid all of our awful rooming situtations. We went down to the beach at 2 AM, but a guard wouldn't let us go on it because Tomader told him not to (seriously, he let Egyptians on the beach), even after we found cigarettes for him. But he said we could go in the pool. So Tara and I instantly jumped into the pool, which woke up all the students who had been sleeping in chairs around the pool, waiting for the beach to open so they could watch the sunrise. Plus it attracted some other guards, who kicked us out of the pool and said the beach was open. When we went to the beach, a guard tried to send us back to the pool, but we told him what had happened. He called his superior officer over, who asked, "What's happening?" The poor little guy answered (in Arabic), "The world is broken." But all was good, and a big group of us got to sleep on the beach.

Turns out it was kind of a bad idea. It gets pretty cold in the desert at night, especially when you're right on the water. And we had no blankets or towels or anything, and Tara and I were wet. But Tara managed to talk one of the guards into fetching a blanket for her (she gets free stuff all the time), so she was okay. She climbed onto my chair and I got under the blanket, but she didn't like my still-wet shorts, so she moved to Beckett's chair. Then things got crazy and she was totally naked from the waist down, because she had taken off her suit to dry, and she gave me her skirt to use as a blanket. But Beckett kept his clothes on and remained a perfect gentleman to this half-naked, attractive Iranian girl lying under the blanket with him. Even though we were kind of miserable, we had a great time together, especially in our attempts to force poor, shy Kyle to make out with Catherine Catherine, who is ridiculously hot and really likes him.

Finally the sun came up. It was really beautiful, and it was the first real sunrise I've ever sat and watched all the way through. Then we went back to our rooms to get some sleep. But my room had, like, five guys in it for some reason. I didn't question it and just went to sleep. Two hours later, I was woken up by all the guys walking around in only their boxers, and someone loudly saying, "Just let me poop!" I just rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. That wasn't possible, so I just went to the beach to catch some sleep, which I never ended up doing, since I spent the rest of the day swimming and playing ping pong. Isn't my life so difficult?!

7:00 that night, we all boarded our same buses for the trip back to Cairo. But since AUC was in charge of things, nothing could go right. Our bus was completely messed up. The air conditioning didn't work, and the exhaust and heat from the engine was directed into the back of the bus rather than the outside air. It was well over 100 degrees in that bus, and we were all choking on carbon monoxide. We literally spent the whole trip giggling and passing in and out of consciousness at random. Although on Beckett's bus, the girl next to him vomited into her hands, so I prefer mine.

The next day, we got up bright and early to go on another AUC trip to the pyramids and the Sphinx. It was really awesome seeing them, since I hadn't seen any pyramids yet and I've been wanting to see them since I was, like, five. Although we had to stick with our huge, obnoxious group of kids, and we were on AUC's schedule, which allotted us only 15 minutes at some places and bypassed some really cool-looking things. We'll definitely have to go back, and I totally have to ride a horse or a camel.

We got to go inside some tombs and a pyramid (the Titi Pyramid, nonetheless, which had us all giggling like the 20-year-olds we are), and it was incredible. Everything was at least 4000 years old, but in many places the paint was still on the walls. And the hieroglyphics were beautiful and it was all incredible for a history nerd like me. Cameras were not allowed, but I'm a huge rebel, so I snuck some quick pictures. Suckers!

Today I had to register with Tomader, which was actually kind of scary. She made the girl before me cry, but I held it together. She forced me into some classes I don't want to take, but starting Wednesday we can bypass her and just drop and add classes at the registrar office, so I'm going to do that. Although I don't suspect for one moment that my actions will escape The Tomader's notice, and I fully expect her to break down my door any second.

I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of life in Cairo, and now I'm prepared to add classes - which start Wednesday - to the mix. Although I hear classes aren't that difficult, and once I change my schedule around, I should only have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. Two day week, baby!

Now I must go. Beckett and I are meeting Emily from Madison and her roommates for something - not quite sure what yet. Tomorrow I have absolutely nothing to do, and I plan on sleeping forever. I can't wait.


You are not allowed to take nor see this picture.

Same goes for this one. Although this one is pretty cool.

I had slaves construct these ones just for me.

Touching the Step Pyramid, which, I believe, is the oldest thing in the world.

Only in Cairo Can You Go Bowling AND Eat at TGI Friday's In One Night

It is officially week two of my semester in Cairo, even though it feels like I've been here ages. It's actually pretty cool seeing how accustomed I've become to living here in only seven days. I'm starting to get really good at crossing insane streets, for one thing. Standing on the dotted line in the middle of the road as two cars fly past you on either side isn't that big a deal anymore. I can't wait to try it out back in Madison. The heat also doesn't affect me as much as it used to. When I first got here, I couldn't stand being outside for more than two minutes. But now I don't sweat as much (or I just don't mind sweating all day anymore), and when it dips down below 100, I find it's actually a comfortable temperature for me. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back to Wisconsin in December.

We're only a week in, and already the school has split up into cliques, which is really stupid. The most notorious one is this girl Jessica, who won't even speak to anyone not in her clique. We don't like her at all. But other than a few obnoxious people, I still really like everyone here. And my main group of friends are all awesome. Since I'm awful with pictures, I only have one of Emily so far. So here she is, eating the hardest biscotti known to man:


It's been great not having any real classes other than Survival Arabic. That ended last night, though. We spent the first three hours of class learning new stuff and reviewing old stuff, and our teacher Maysa brought in these unbelievably delicious honey candies. I promise you've never had anything as amazing as those, whatever they were. They were so good that even some had ants on them, we were still wolfing them down. Then for the final two hours, all the classes went out in the streets to practice our new Arabic phrases on real people. So all of the sudden at 7 PM, all these unfortunate people just trying to run a fruit stand or something were hounded by hundreds of American students, pointing at stuff and asking, "How much is this?" "What is this?" in poor Arabic. It was very entertaining. We went through a really shifty-looking market that was actually in a warehouse, and at one point I was slapped by this enormous Santa's-bag-sized thing of some sort of meat this guy was carrying over his shoulder, and I had mystery meat juice all down my arm. It was a very disgusting place (I won't even describe the smells), but it was pretty cool. They had bags of spices and all sorts of vegetables and fish the size of cars. It was nuts. And all the people were so nice - various guys in their stalls would quiz us, pointing at vegetables and saying, "What's this? What's this?"

Our class then went to get Koshiri, an Arabic dish that shouldn't be good based on its looks, but for some reason is. I'm not sure what's in it, exactly - noodles, rice, chick peas, some black stuff, some red stuff, I don't know. But we sat in a tiny little restaurant and enjoyed it. The owner's son kept running over and asking if it was good, and when he cleared our plates, we slipped him a secret tip (baksheesh in Arabic), which he expertly slipped directly into his little pocket with a straight face, so his dad wouldn't take it and give it back to us.

We finished the night by going with Maysa to a cafe and drilling her with questions about her life and family. We got to meet her son, and the two of them invited us to their farm that is an hour's drive away from Cairo, to have a barbeque. I really hope we actually get to do this, because it sounds amazing, and I'd love to hang out with Maysa some more. She's an unbelievably giving person, one of the best teachers I've ever had in my life, and absolutely hilarious. She gave us all her cell phone number in case we need any help at all while we're here.

Two nights ago, we went to a nightclub called Latex. Seriously, we did. Nightclubs are most definitely not my thing, but neither are they Emily's, so we agreed we'd be awkward together. But it actually turned out to be pretty fun. It was basically an AUC mixer, because the majority of the place was AUC kids. The second we got there, Tara started going crazy (or crazier than usual, I guess), dancing like a lunatic, and she didn't stop for the next five hours. I'll have to get Emily's pictures of Tara, because she got some hilarious ones. Apparently when they went to the bathroom together, Tara was dancing up against the stall door as Emily was trying to go to the bathroom. Emily just said, "Magnoun," ("crazy") to the only Arabic woman in there, who laughed and high-fived her. But good times were had by all, and Emily, Kyle, and I left before most other people. We were worried Tara would be raped or something, since she was pretty drunk and all the Egyptians were looking to take advantage of the drunk little Iranian, but we left her in Beckett's hands, who eventually did get her home safely, long after the three of us had already gone to bed.

Last night, we decided the time had come to do Nile Bowling. Seven of us (me, Emily, Beckett, Kyle, Tara, Erik, and Ellen) got in two cabs and
attempted to get to the building. The problem was we barely knew anything about this place, other than the fact that it is on the Nile. Someone at the dorms who had already been there said the address was 125 Nile Street, which sounds absolutely made up. He also said it was across the street from the "Swiss Restaurant", which was a little too vague. But one of the cab drivers insisted he knew where it was, so off we went. We got caught up in conversation with our cab driver, who just kept naming American presidents to see if we liked them or not. ("George W. Bush is good big boss man!" "No no no no no. Bad bad big boss man," we all replied. "Bill Clinton?" he asked. "Yes! Yes!" we all shouted.) But we soon noticed we had crossed back and forth over the Nile about four times, and even though Erik and Kyle kept giving me two thumbs up from the back of their cab, it was pretty clear no one knew where the place was. Eventually we just got off on a bridge, paid the drivers the standard five pounds, and tried to find Nile Bowling from the bridge.

Beckett was 100% positive he knew where it was, so we followed him. We walked all the way across a rather wide section of the Nile, and then along it for about two miles, until we decided we were not in the right place. Who would have thought the Nile would be this long?! We went into some strange little playground/dance hall/fishing pier to ask directions, and got several directions that didn't help at all. But yours truly put the pieces together and realized it was all the way two miles back near the bridge we got off on. All we had to do was take a right when we came off the bridge and walk for ten minutes. Instead we took a left and walked for miles.

But we did find it, and it was spectacular. There were about eight lanes total in the little place, but you could look out at the Nile while bowling, which is probably better than any bowling experience any of you have ever had. Also, I won, even though I'm actually really bad at home. I love Egypt! We're definitely going back many times, and we've already started recruiting people for our next outing.

Afterward, it was 2 AM, but none of us had any desire to sleep. Then someone (Tara, I think) suggested buffalo wings, and buffalo wings became our mission. We chose - again, not joking - TGI Fridays for a really late-night meal. But this TGI Fridays was awesome. It's in a boat on the Nile, and it's where all the young, rich Egyptians go to hang out. We were the only white people in the joint, even though it was completely packed. And why were there small children at a TGI Fridays at 2 in the morning? It didn't make any sense.

All we did was ordered a crapload of food to share - three orders of wings, a cheeseburger and fries, a "fajita tower", and Emily got a fishbowl-sized virgin strawberry margarita that was basically pure sugar. We had an absolute blast, and I think Nile Bowling and late-night TGI Fridays are going to become a frequent tradition.

Today was more orientation, which we haven't had to sit through in quite a while. I slept in two hours late, so I missed some good Tomader stuff - apparently she basically told a Muslim girl who won't shake hands due to her religious beliefs that her religious beliefs were absolutely wrong, and then Tomader claimed she's a descendant of Mohammed. She's crazy. I got there just in time to learn about the various sports and clubs (I'm totally joining the Marionette Club), and to hear this awful guy drone on and on about "Who are the Egyptians?" He spent an hour talking about the many identities these people have - Egyptians, Arabs, Africans, Muslims, blah blah blah. It was kind of interesting, but I couldn't get past his voice (if you closed your eyes, Michael Moore was giving the presentation), and I thought it was all kind of useless, since every single person on this planet has at least two identities - national and continental. But my biggest concern is that he's an Egyptology professor, so there's a good chance he'll be teaching me. Fantastic.

Can't wait for the Red Sea tomorrow. Bright and early at 7:30 AM.

All Tutted Out

Remember what I said about not being able to remember the day before? This one is going to be difficult. I don't remember anything before my Survival Arabic class. And I don't remember if I've written anything about Survival Arabic yet, but it's awesome. We're all really learning a lot in such a short amount of time, and our teacher is really good. She clearly cares a lot about teaching (she's been teaching for, like, twenty years, but I truly thought she was only 30 years old until she told us her birthday today - she's 44). I feel like I can actually get around now. Today she taught us the most important thing - how to tell the cab driver to drive to the church across the street from our dorm, since no cab drivers know the dorm, but everyone knows the church.

After Arabic, I went up to my room, intending to sleep. Since sleep isn't done here, however, the second I left my room to go to the bathroom, I ended up going out to eat with two guys from my floor, Ian and Matt, and one from the floor below us, Eric, who is from Boston but is actually a freshman undergrad here - he's only in the first week of his four years at AUC! We went to this place that had really good pizza and ended up getting three large pizzas for the four of us. Eric can eat like me, so the two of us probably put away a pizza each.

Right before we had finished, Ian's friend from when he was here at AUC two years ago (he's 24 and he's practically a walking Cairo guidebook) called him to tell him he had just driven into town from Siwa. We knew people were going to this awesome place downtown that looks exactly like the kind of seedy bar Indiana Jones would hang out in, so he offered to pick us up, to save us from having to fork over the 25 cents each it would cost for a cab ride. When we got downtown, there was actually a rather large group of people, but people started leaving pretty soon after we got there, since it was already kind of late. I ended up going back to the dorm in a little bit with Emily E and Harty, a girl from my Arabic class. Emily regaled us with stories of some of the most embarrassing things I've ever heard, and we were so distracted that we drove right by the dorm. We then spent about ten minutes trying to direct our cab driver back to the dorm, even though we were totally lost. At one point he yelled out, "Oh my God!" He was pretty pissed with us.

I later found out that my cell phone fell out in my pocket in the cab. I've heard stories of people losing things in cabs and the drivers bringing them back the next day or later that night, but once I knew it was gone, I was sure there was no chance this guy would bring it back. He hated us. So now I have to buy a new phone, and I've lost everyone's numbers. Crap.

The next morning, I got up and met Emily, Harty, and Emily's boyfriend who is in town until Saturday, to go to the Cairo Museum. First we went out to lunch, and Ellen joined us. Ellen is also in my Arabic class (our class is filled with all the coolest people), but she's missed the past two days because she was bit by a possibly-rabid cat. So the doctor at orientation wasn't lying! She's fine, but she has to keep going back to the hospital to get the series of rabies shots. And now we're all on edge around these cats, which are literally everywhere. Cats just stroll around even inside the dorms - these Egyptians take their love of cats way too far. So anyway, we had lunch, where I tried for the first time the local mango juice. And now I'm addicted. It's mango season here, and I've heard stories about how great it is, but I had yet to experience it. There's no way I'm going to drink anything else until mango season ends.

Ellen went back to the dorm to risk more feline attacks, while the four of us headed off to the museum. We ended up paying some dude standing outside to take us on a tour of it, since we had only an hour and a half before class. But it quickly became apparent that the guy only studied some things, and he knew nothing except what he had memorized. He'd fly past all sorts of cool, 6000-year-old stuff, and whenever we stopped to ask him about stuff, he'd obviously get very upset, and then would just lie. Between the four of us, we knew more Egyptian history than him, so it was really easy to see when he was simply making things up. Eventually, we told him we had to leave earlier than we thought, paid him way more than we should have had to, and then did the museum on our own. The place is definitely a multi-trip spot. It's impossible how much stuff they have. They literally have just thrown things in corners because there is too many artifacts. Emily and I made sure to touch as much of it as we could, because there's nothing better than touching old crap, right? One of the coolest exhibits was, of course, King Tut's room. We got to see his famous golden mask, which was beautiful. And they had all the golden jewels and stuff that were on him when he was buried. It was staggering how rich these people were. We didn't see any mummies, because it costs extra and we figured we'd save that for day two at the museum. But if there's a way to touch some old dead crap, I'm definitely going to do it.

Then we all ran to Arabic class (with the exception of Emily's boyfriend, of course). Afterward, a small group of us went out to a bar for dinner, where we had some awesome food. We chose the place based solely on the fact that it had spring rolls, and Tara and I had been talking about Chinese food since we first met.

I really need to get better with these pictures. We tried our best to sneak our cameras into the museum, but it seems practically impossible. They've very thorough in their searches - the guard literally had his hand on my genitals several times. We did see one guy who had a camera phone taking a picture in the museum, and when a guard started yelling at him and demanding the phone, the guy just gave him a bribe and the matter was settled. Classic Cairo.

Feluccin' Awesome!

I fear the blog updates will become more and more scarce as the semester goes on. There's just too much happening all day, every day, and not enough time for me to even sleep. But I don't mind at all.

The problem with this is that even though I've been here for... four days, I think? It feels like at least a week and a half, so I'm having a hard time trying to remember what happened yesterday, because it's already become hazy. Which is another reason why I should keep updating this as much as possible, so I don't forget everything the second I get home. You just do so much all day long from sunrise to almost sunrise again in this city, that the days just go on forever. Which could be good or bad, depending on how much you like Cairo.

So day two of orientation was yesterday, but it was just a "general advising" meeting, where we got information on what we should do to prepare for registering for classes. It was hosted by, of course, the fearsome Tomader, and her really nice and obviously abused Dina. Dina was actually in charge of the thing, and she gave a real powerpoint presentation this time. She made it about two minutes before Tomader grabbed a microphone and cut her off, to basically say the exact same thing. This continued for some time (Tomader started whistling into the microphone while Dina was talking, to signal that it was time for Tomader to speak), and then some Doctor of Something came up to tell people what to do if they want to be in a higher Arabic level, and of course Tomader not only cut him off, but actually made him set down his microphone so we couldn't hear them when they started to get into fights. Then it came time for the questions from the students, and all hell broke loose. People started yelling at Tomader about the fact that we were told our tuition fees covered up to 15 credits (which we were told), but it was changed after we paid to only 12 credits. Well, then. You do NOT yell at the Tomader. It turned into sort of a screaming match, and that just opened the floodgates once people saw a sign of weakness in Tomader. This other girl who failed the Arabic placement exam twice thought she still deserved to take it a third time to place in a higher Arabic course, and Tomader shut her up pretty quickly with some sharp words. At some points, all sorts of people were just shouting stuff, or booing Tomader until she changed her mind about inane things people were fighting with her about, like what time the test results would be posted at. Even though we were supposed to cover more classes than Arabic, the orientation had to be dissolved, because I think Tomader feared a coup. All in all, it was very, very entertaining.

I took off with Emily and her roommates, because they kick ass and all the guys from my floor slept through the orientation. We successfully navigated the subway system to some area I think Emily wanted to go to. But when we got there, it was sort of slummy and filled with only American stores and restaurants (a Hardees with a Pizza Hut above it on the second floor, next to a Baskin Robbins). Plus it was noon on Friday, which is the time when everyone and everything stops to pray for a couple hours. At one point, we got in two cabs to try to find a specific restaurant, and while waiting for the cabs, some kid came up to me and started begging for money. He couldn't have been older than eight, and he was totally covered in dirt. He was part of a group of nearly twenty kids, who I suspected were orphans. I couldn't give him any money, because then I'd have to give all the kids money, and things would just go sour once I took out my wallet. But he wrapped his hands around my wrist and picked his feet off the ground, so I was actually carrying him. I pried his fingers off my arm and got into the cab (front seat, so the girls don't get raped, right Tomader?), and then pried his fingers off of the door so I wouldn't get them stuck in the cab. Then he punched me in the face through the window. It was more of a light push with his fist, but he was obviously pissed about the lack of money. I felt pretty bad, and I understand why he was mad, but I certainly wasn't going to give him money after he hit me. Still, seeing poverty like that was really depressing.

Anyway, we couldn't find a restaurant and ended up going to some cafe so the girls could use internet, since their apartment doesn't have any. Some of us then had to take the shuttles to campus for the Survival Arabic Course, which will supposedly teach us enough Arabic to get around Egypt. Everyone's split up into classes of six or so people, and I was already friends with the majority of my classmates (with the exception of the guy who mumbles everything and is constantly smiling like he's the Grinch or something), so I knew it wouldn't be too bad at all. Plus our teacher is really good and pretty funny. So even though it's three hours a night for the next week, I have learned a ton in only two days, and the class isn't too bad at all.

After Arabic, we all went back to the dorm for the dorm orientation. It's optional, but most people signed up for the free food, drinks, and felucca (basically an Egyptian sailboat) ride on the Nile. First we sat through another orientation run by our RA's who are all really nice, but I'm pretty sure they lie to scare us out of stuff. For example, there's no way a girl in previous years went to Alexandria for a weekend and ended up marrying some Egyptian guy who clearly only wanted a green card. But then it was time for the food (Pizza Hut, which is spectacularly awful in Egypt) and drinks (Pepsi). But whatever, it was free. A small group of us just grabbed a whole pizza and took it out into the courtyard to talk about things like female castration and abortions.

But there was no time for that crap, because we had a felucca to ride! Emily (heretoforth known as Emily E., to differentiate her from Emily S. from Madison) and I had a great time getting fake excited for our first-ever felucca ride. We tried to get everyone on our bus to our level of excitement, but the rest of the losers seemed kind of indifferent.

When we got to the Nile, we had to walk down some steps to get to the dock where about ten feluccas were waiting. Of course, there were hundreds of us, and we only made it about halfway down the steps before we were being yelled at by the RAs to turn back around. So we did, and stood in a massive group pretty much in the street. Then we went back down the stairs, only to be turned back again. This sort of stuff goes on all the time in Egypt, and it never gets less funny. Finally, we all boarded our various feluccas, and we were out on the water. At first, the breeze was really nice, and it was very cool actually sitting on a boat on the Nile, but eventually we were getting sore from the seats and a bit bored because we weren't moving, and the breeze had stopped so it was back to ninety degrees. But our captain didn't seem to want to turn around, because he just unfurled the sails and let us sit out there for close to half an hour. The felucca definitely wore out its welcome. Although we did spot "Nile Bowling", which is a bowling alley right along the Nile. So we have to go there.

Once everyone had gotten off their feluccas, a group of about 10 of us hopped in two cabs to go to some bar on top of the Odeon hotel. It was in some strange back area of Cairo, but this guy Ian, who has lived here before, knows everything about this city, so we had no problems finding it. The night was really fun, even though the group pretty much split in half, mostly because five of us really hated this guy who tagged along with and refused to speak a word of English in favor of Arabic, even though he's American. Which is like the most pompous thing you can do. Just because you're fluent in Arabic doesn't mean you have to be a dick to everyone. So the five of us had a good time planning our hopeful trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Two of the guys, Beckett and Kyle, are in the room directly next to me, so it was a relief to no longer be alone on my floor. Two of the girls don't live at Zamalek, which sucks for them, and the fifth one, Tara, proved to be a lot of fun. She's traveled pretty much everywhere, and she's fluent in Farsi, and knows a lot of Arabic and French. None of that helped when she got her tab and found out her three gin and tonics set her back over 200 pounds.

After our late night, we were up bright and early for the tour of Old Cairo, which I should have slept through. There were, again, nearly a hundred of us, and only one tour guide. So we couldn't hear anything, it was over 100 degrees, and most of the time was spent waiting outside of small churches and stuff for people to empty out so you could get in. We did see some cool stuff, but I want to go back there without the group so I can actually enjoy it. I have no idea what any of the stuff we saw was, but I think we went down into some room where Mary lived for a month and saw a well she drank out of, and then another well that has something to do with Moses (I think maybe it was his favorite well in Cairo or something), and also the first mosque in Egypt. The mosque was actually really cool. The rest I could have done without.

This is really long. So the same group from the end of our table last night went out for lunch after the tour. Dina (Tomader's abused underling) tipped us off to a great Egyptian place in Zamalek. The place was dark and very Arabic, and the food was fantastic. We bought a huge amount of appetizers and main dishes, and just gorged herself. I spent 45 pounds on pigeons. That's right, I ate two pigeons. And they were actually pretty good!

So more Arabic lessons and stuff. I'm bored of writing. At least I finally took pictures.


This is the best picture I have of the shore of the Nile from the felucca. At least you know what part of the felucca looked like now.


Mary totally loved this well.


Mutilated and divoured pigeons!

Boreientation

Today I woke up and got on the crazy little shuttle to take us to the AUC campus (I had to sit in the front seat with no seatbelt, which was terrifying) for orientation. I met the only person I knew before arriving here, Emily, which was great. No one in Zamalek seems to understand my sense of humor, so I get a lot of weird stares and blank looks when I make a joke. Emily gets it, so I actually have someone to laugh at everything with, which is really all I ask. Too bad we're not in the same dorm. Hers seems like a bad mix between a hotel and an apartment. There's eight of them in four bedrooms, and they have a kitchen and a full-sized refridgerator and stuff, but they have to buy pretty much everything else. They don't have internet, towels, desks, or shelves. But judging from all of the people I've met from Marwa, and the people that live in Zamalek, I'd trade most of the luxuries I have here for some tolerable company. Okay, that's harsh. The people here are tolerable - just not really my type. Everyone at Marwa seems like they have personalities, and all of Emily's roommates are really cool.

Orientation was a blast. Everyone (all 400 of us) just sat around in this courtyard, completely confused. There were tables all around us with food and drinks, and some people were able to get some, while others were stopped by the employees. We had no idea what we were doing. Then about four people made a small line at this table, where two women were waiting with lists that we had to sign, and information packets to give us. Luckily, Emily and I figured out what was going on early, so we were about fifth and sixth in line, and didn't have to wait in the line for practically two hours like everyone else. We were also able to get the food (bread and butter) and drinks (juice boxes), so I guess the whole ordeal was a success. Once everyone had gotten their stuff, some people started yelling stuff at us through bullhorns, and then everyone just started to move in opposite directions. Eventually we got sorted out into smaller groups of about twenty people, and we went on a tour of the campus. It was all pretty confusing, and I know I'm going to be so lost once classes start, because we never saw any actual classrooms, so I don't know where those are. Again, I was relieved Emily was there, because she was perfectly willing to make fun of the whole ordeal with me. We loved the kid who seems like he only came to AUC to work out - constantly asking where the fitness center and gym are, what kinds of weights they have there, and salivating while peering through the door once we actually got to the fitness center. But our favorite part was the esteemed "Rare Books Library", which everyone was very serious about. I tell you, you've never seen such rare books as those. No one else seemed as amused with the Rare Books Library as us.

After the tour, orientation took a turn for the worse. We sat through hours and hours of lectures from all sorts of people telling us boring stuff about insurance and the medical clinic and registration and visa applications. The best part was the main woman, who will also be doing our advising and registration, Tomader. She's a fiesty, crazy older woman, and was possibly drunk at the time. At one point, she started fighting the guy telling us about finances.

Some things I enjoyed during the mostly painful three hours:
-The "powerpoint presentation", which was really an old-school projector with transparencies that had bizarre drawings and stupid slogans that added nothing to the information, like "We do the DETAILS so you can do the LEARNING."
-The doctor who assured us that we most definitely will be vomiting if we eat pretty much anything.
-The same doctor, who assured us that all the millions of stray cats around the city will scratch and bite us and give us rabies.
-Some guy with the most boring Southern drawl ever, who calls himself the Warden of Cairo, and thought we'd be impressed that the last time there was an emergency and he needed to contact all the students, he got in touch with 60% of them within a day. He claimed that was a good number, but that means almost half of the American students were technically lost. His excuse was that they were probably "at parties or what-have-you."
-This little slut from the American Embassy who was supposed to tell us how to register with the embassy but only seemed to care about the extravagant parties the Marines throw at the embassy for all us Americans. Tomader cut her off and told us not to go to those, because they have just tossed drunk girls out on the streets in the past. I think the "drunk girl" in the story was actually Tomader.

Emily and I skipped out on part of the lecture to go exploring, because the hall had the most uncomfortable chairs of all time. I scored a two-liter bottle of water for only 25 cents, but we returned after getting hassled too much to buy a bunch of crap, and because we needed to get back to the air conditioning.

After the excruciating speeches were over, nine of us managed to catch two cabs (guys sit in the front seats because women might get raped by the cab drivers, explains Tomader, which I think is neither true nor possible) back to our little island in the middle of the Nile, where we finally found cell phones to buy. It took a while because the first store we went into was "out of phone numbers". I know it meant he's allotted a certain amount of numbers per day or whatever, but it was funny to think that there are so many people that they actually have used up all the possible 10-digit combinations, and there are literally no numbers available. "So what, we have to wait until someone dies?" I asked. Only Emily laughed.

We split up and four of us went to get some sort of meal, and I'm ashamed to say my first official meal in Cairo was a New York Sandwich and potato chips. But, really, we've been hard-pressed to find any Egyptian restaurants. Plus we were really hungry and it was the first place we saw. I then came back to my room, thinking of napping before dinner, but all of the sudden there was a knock at my door, and two guys, Josh and Eric from the fifth floor, were asking if I had a balcony. Apparently some rooms have enormous balconies, and they were searching for them. We ended up talking for a while, and were joined by three guys a few rooms down from me. The six of us decided to go get some dinner, and we went to find this Italian restaurant one of the guys, Zeke, had seen earlier. But since this is the most confusing place on the planet and two different streets have the exact same names, we got lost. We toyed with going somewhere else, but we decided not to give up, and eventually did find the place. You may be confused by my lack of Egyptian food, again, but Italy is so close to Egypt, so it's not as bad as American food. Plus it was about four dollars for a huge bowl of fettucini and a soda. Have I mentioned how much I love Egyptian money?

I know I promised a picture, but there's no time to stop and take a picture. Okay, that's a lie. I'm just a reluctant photographer.

Too tired for a good title.

This has to be quick because I'm exhausted and I have an early morning.

So, I'm in Cairo finally. The flights were fine. I hate to use the word "ghetto" as an adjective, because I feel like there are usually more apt words, but the only way to describe AlItalia is "ghetto". The planes are just generally crappy, they have only about four drink choices, the meal choices were "beef or fish?" both of which were either un-seasoned beef rolled up into balls, or un-seasoned generic fish rolled up into balls. It was disgusting. And the Milan airport, which I was expecting to be swanky and fashionable had leaky ceilings due to the rain, so you had to step over and around buckets half-filled with rain water, and through actual mud puddles in the middle of the airport. It was very classy.

As I was sitting, waiting for the flight to board, some guy came up to me and said, "Are you going to Cairo?"

"Yes," I replied.

"AUC?"

"Yes..."

"I'm Bryan."

"I'm Danny," I replied, shaking his hand.

"Do you have a blog?"

That one threw me for a loop. I admitted I did, and he said he had found it while searching for information about AUC. The problem is I had planned on keeping this a secret from everyone over here until I knew I didn't hate them, just to make sure they wouldn't be able to read the nasty things I might end up writing about them. And now the first person I meet has already blown my cover before I even get to Egypt.

So there were 14 of us on the flight from Milan to Cairo, two of whom were from Madison. I'd say, "Small world," but they came through Chicago just like me, and Chicago to Milan to Cairo was the cheapest option. Wah wah waaaah.

The flight in was really, really cool. First I watched the Mediterranean go by, followed by the green, lush northern coast of Africa, followed suddenly by barren desert literally from horizon to horizon, and then an enormous city just sprung up out of nowhere. All the buildings are fairly low, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a paint color used on a building other than brown or tan. So it looks like the sand just kind of hardened into building shapes. And this city is enormous. Tokyo was mind-blowingly huge, but that was only, what? 5 million? Psh. Cairo's packing twenty million.

When we departed the ghettoplane and arrived in Cairo, all of us were noticeably confused. None of us were really sure if anyone would be there waiting for us, but when we got out, sure enough some guy with an "AUC" sign was waiting for us. He led us through immigration and waited while we all grabbed our bags, which took forever, mostely because AlItalia had lost two girls' bags. The driver led us through customs, which I was nervous about for many reasons. I've heard so many things about how hard it is to get laptops into the country, because they think you're going to use them for seditious behavior or something, and you usually have to pay a hefty tax so they don't steal it from you. Also, I had a Salman Rushdie book in my backpack. Good choice for an Islamic country, right? Well, all those horror stories about customs may be true, but not when you've got AUC on your side. The customs agent looked at all the kids and all our bags, said, "You have nothing to declare? Okay!" and then laughed and high-fived our driver while letting us all through. I snuck so many drugs into Egypt! We then followed our dude through the chaotic crowds outside the airport, who were trying to coerce us into their cabs. The second we hit the outdoors, we were blasted with the 95 degree, extremely humid air. Within literally two minutes, everyone was pouring sweat.

This disgusting, confused, and exhausted train of American students followed our driver across crazy streets, through a tunnel, and across a parking lot. We came up to a huge coach bus, which I assumed would be ours. But, in a move made for the movies, the driver kept walking and took us to our real bus, which was waiting just behind the coach bus. Actually, "bus" is being generous. Let's go with "van". So we had to fit 14 kids, each with two suitcases and a backpack into this barely air conditioned bus. I don't mind heat - give me this over Wisconsin winters any day - and it was good because it allowed me to separate everyone into people I like and people I don't, depending on whether they laughed about the absurdity of the whole situation, or just whined about it being too hot. Most people whined.

My dorm was the last out of the four that the bus stopped at, so the trip took over three hours due to the insane traffic. I can't complain, though, because it went through some really beautiful parts of the city that made me instantly fall in love with it. There are so many huge mosques and ancient Egyptian ruins on the side of the road, and there are markets all over the place with bright fabrics and woven baskets filled with spices and people stopping on the sidewalk to get down and pray. It's pretty impossible to describe Cairo. Part Indiana Jones, part Arabian Nights, and part Tatooine is the best I can do.

So we got to the dorm and waited in the lounge while watching really bizarre Egyptian TV, and one by one we were led to our rooms. I was told I was getting a quadruple, but surprise! I was upgraded to a triple. This is awesome. Even better, I have zero roommates! And this room is as big as a house. Well, the no roommates proved to be sort of a bum deal, since my floor is also deserted, and I was forced to go out for the night with a group of only girls, since this place seems to be totally devoid of dudes. My harem and I walked for about an hour around our little island in the middle of the Nile, before we all were about to fall asleep and had to return.

Tomorrow orientation starts, bright and early, and goes for six hours. I hope we do a lot of ice-breaking games!!!!

Sorry for the lack of pictures. My camera's somewhere in my luggage. I promise at least one tomorrow.