School...

School has finally kicked in as I have my first assignment due tomorrow. It's only a three page paper and I have all the reseearch I need for it, but old habits die hard. I will once again be writing it the night before. I have a feeling that with all the travelling I'm planning on doing I won't often get the chance to do things too much ahead of time anyway.

I had been doing homework between my 10:30 and 2:30 classes on Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday, but last Thursday Jim and I found a group to play basketball with. Except for Jim and I, everyone was Egyptian. It was a lot of fun, especially since no one was that great and I was considered a good shooter. Bryant and Tom will probably find this amusing. The hard part is that there is sand everywhere here, so any hard cutting or jump stopping is out of the question, and it is really easy to over pursue someone when on defense. Evern tougher, we had a minor sandstorm on Thursday. Visibility was cut way down and I finished the session with a mouth gritty from gulping sand whenever I had to to breath hard. Sunday was much nicer and I got to know the group a little better.

Yesterday I had intended to do a lot of work in the evening, but as it so often seems to happen here, I ended up spending two hours in a cafe getting tea and shisha and talking with people; all of which are great things, but I am now cramming in school work again.

I have made a habit of losing things lately. I accidentally left my Custer State Park hoodie on the bus to Bahariyya, and yesteday I left my ND hat in a classroom and didn't realize it until the bus was already halfway back to Cairo. Finding the Lost and Found office today was quite process, and the only hat they had was a black military beret. Hopefully my professor picked it up on her way out and will have it for me tomorrow. If not, I will have to get a new hat. I've had my ND hat since seventh grade. It started off white with navy blue trim, but during the past eight years has become permanently beige and the navy has faded to purple, and the hat itself has become threadbare.

Camping in the Sahara

This past weekend a group of thirteen of us went camping in the White Desert, a hundred kilometers or so southwest of the Bahariyya Oasis. We picked up bus tickets a couple days before hand and boarded the 7am bus to make the five hour trip from Cairo to Bahariyya. The bus ride itself was quite a trip. Before we got out of Cairo we made a few stops within the city after leaving the major bus terminal. The terminal is by far the nicest public fascility I have seen in Cairo. It was clean, efficient, and easy to find help. We drove southwest through the city and had to go through Giza before getting out of the city and into the major highway that would take us through the empty desert to the oasis. In Giza we made a stop to pick up some more passengers. We also picked up a few salesmen. A guy got on to sell bread to people, which made sense since it was the so early in the morning. The stranger thing was when the guy hawking wathces got on the bus. I had to try hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. I've also come to expect this simbiotic relationship between those who have custody of large groups and those wishing to sell to a captive audience. I'm sure the driver got a kickback to let the hawkers onboard for the duration of the stop.

Once we got into the desert, it was smooth sailing. Every now and then we would stop and a seemingly islolated concrete bench and pick up more passengers, which left me wondering how these guys got out there in the first place. We stopped at a run-down rest area half way through the trip, which had such modern ammenities as squat toilets and Nescafe.

Bahariyya is not much of a town. The building are pretty simplistic and pragmatically built, and we pssed many rusted out pickups and 4x4s as we drove through town. We hopped off at the bus stop and met up with Badry, the man behind Badry's Desert Tours. He was the man. The thirteen of us were packed into three Toyota 4x4s while he and the other drivers dealt with the Egyptian tourist police. We were instructed to pretend to not have our passports if we had them, since being American would require the accompaniment of a tourist police officer for the duration of our trip. Thankfully no one asked for our identification, but we all practiced the accents of various English settlements just in case. I even practiced speaking Arabic in an Aussie accent.

The drive to the White Desert itself was almost worth the trip. The road leading there winds through uninhabited desert, slowly transitioning from hard, sandy, brown terrain to the mountains and plains of the Black Desert. After maybe thirty minutes of driving we stopped for lunch at a cafe apparently run by Badry or having business relationship with Badry. The meal was included in the price for the weekend and was not remarkable. It consisted of water, bread, tuna and veggie dip, yogurt and veggie dip, oranges and bananas, and our choice of Nescafe or tea. What was remarkable was the setting. We sat Indian-style on mats on the ground at low tables under a thatched roof pavillion.

After lunch we continued the drive through the desert. After another 20 minutes or so we arrived at a desert overlook peering over desert more similar to what one would think of when picturing the Sahara. Borderd by rocky brown hills was a valley filled with large dunes of sand. A numer of us made sand angels, and, being young tourists, we climbed the nearest, steepest hill and got an even grander view. I'm sure we stayed much longer than Badry had planned, since he mumble something about having to make it somehwere before sunset as we all packed back into our Toyotas.

We traveled down the desert road a short while longer after this before suddenly breaking off from the road and taking a shortcut. Off-roading through the desert was awesome, and I was reminded of driving through snow as we fishtailed through the deep, loose sand. After winding through the desert a while we made it to a large sand dune bordered by two chalky white rock hills. Our driver gunned the Toyota and frantically shifted gears as we tried to climb the dune. Two of the trucks had made it up the hill already, and we stopped a couple feet short before the Toyota bogged down in the sand adn we had to back it up to try and make another run. We and the other two Toyotas parked so that some air could be let out of the tires, presumably to get better purchase in the deep sand. In the end none of us made it up the hill besides the two that were there originally. Everyone in my 4x4 had a good laugh as we came up just short on our fourth pass at the dune.

Since we could not make it up and over, we took a differnt route down and around the hills and finally made it to our second desination: a beautiful overlook at canyon of white rocky hills and mesas and a valley of sand. The sky was blue, there were wisps of clouds, and the daylight was just beginning to turn to dusk, lending a unique light to the white and brown of the valley.

We got back on the road and made it to the White Desert just as the sun was beginning to set. It was all offroad as soon we passed through the checkpoint to enter the reserve. We were racing the sun as we attempted to make it to our campsite before it went down. The views out the side of the 4x4 were spectacular, but they were nothing compared to what we were about to see. We finally made to our campsite just as the sun was only an inch or two above the horizion. When we hopped out of our vehicles we were greeted by indescribable reds, oranges, and then purples painted on the uneven canvases of cirrus clouds as the sun finally sank beneath the horizon. Once the sun set, the sky was filled with pastel purples, giving the unbalanced white rocky outcrops of the otherwise flat and sandy White Desert pinkish tints.

The 4x4s were rounded up in a half rectangle shaped like an unused staple and tapestries were draped along the interior walls of the enclosure to create a dining area. We at again at low tables sitting on pads on the ground beneath electric lights hooked up to the batteries of the car engines. Dinner was amazing. I don't know if it was because lunch was so dull and I was starving, but grilled chicken, rice, and stewed vegetables never tasted so good. After dinner we sat around the campfire for a while before walking a distance away from camp to take in the sites that can only be seen at night in a place so secluded from civilization. Everyone knows that we live in the Milky Way, but knowing this is nothing until you have acutally seen it. Every inch of sky was filled with stars, and running on an approximately north-south line across the night sky as an even thicker band of stars otherwise known as the Mikly Way galaxy. Constellations like Orion, so easy to spot in the suburbs because these stars are the only that can be seen, were difficult to find out first becuase the gaps between his head, belt, and sword were filled stars barely fainter than the ones that made up the constellation itself.

After stargazing for a while we returned to camp to drink tea, Nescafe, and listen to Badry and his crew play music on hand drums and a trumpet like instrument that sounds similar to a bagpipe. This may or may not have resulted in some dancing on the part of Mark and I. As the night wore on, we picked a spot on the desert floor away from the camp to put down our sleeping bags and camel fur blankets. We wished to be woken by the sunrise and tried to pick our spot based accordingly. Mark knew from Astronomy class that Orion follows the same path as the sun, so we extrapulated his trail until it led us to an unobstructed view, between two white rock hills. The night was cold and we kept this in mind as we debated sleeping arrangements for a while. We finally fell asleep beneath the brilliant night sky, listening the tinny sound of Jack Johnson, Enya, and John Mayer coming from the portable speakers of someone's iPod.

The morning was cloudy so we did not see the sun break the horizon, but the haziness did allow us to look directly at it was it edged its way higher into the sky. We stayed in bed until the sun warmed up enough to make getting up bearable. We then made our way to breakfast at the campsite, which consited of toasted bread, jam, cheese, and fruit. We had time to wander around and climb rocks for a while and generally contemplate the secenery while Badry and the other guides packed up camp and tried to get the vehicles started. They had left the lights plugged in most of the night, so gettin all of the 4x4s started was quite a puzzle. I'm pretty sure at least three of them had to be jumped.

We blew out of the White Desert and stopped at a couple of notable natural formations, the most notable of which was large, steep mountain looking out over Black Desert. We climbed to the top and were greeted with a gorgeous view of valley of yellow and black sand bordered by black mountains. The wind on top was incredible, some of the strongest winds I've every experienced. This was our last stop in the desert before Bahariyya; or at least it was our last intentional stop. On the way back our driver would randomly pound the dashboard above the fuel gauge. Somewhere between this overlook and Badry's thatched-roof hotel complex our 4x4 began to slow, then it cruised and slowly came to a gentle stop. We were completley out of gas, and to make matter worse, we had no cell phone service. But none of us were worried. The whole car simply burst out in laughter when the car finally rolled to a stop. We hopped out sat on the roof of the 4x4 while we waited for help. Our driver eventually found cell phone servcie and contacted Badry. They had a good laugh and we soon found out why: another car behind us was broken down and was being towed by a second 4x4. They had already broken the tow rope 3 times before they reached us. We were all loaded into the two-truck train and were about to take off before a fourth 4x4 came flying down the road towards us carrying gas in plastic tanks. Our original Toyota was filled up and we finally took off again.

We arrived at Badry's "hotel" around 2pm, and had a decent lunch of beef, rice, and vegetables. Then we were carted back to the Bahariyya bus station and boarded the bust back to Cairo. The return bus ride was not the best, to say the least, but the weekend as a whole had been incredible. It was one of the best experiences I have ever had, period.

Additonal Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011199&id=1304580298&l=3e02a

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011200&id=1304580298&l=b4bf8

Globe Trotting

It's official. I now have Akon tickets. Some wonder why Akon would choose Cairo for a concert, but it seems like he is fairly popular in Africa. I talked to a few Sudanese guys at St. Andrews. They've got a rap group called the Future Boys. Among influences such as Tupac, Jay-Z and Nas, they also listed Akon. Cairo just makes the most sense for a concert in Africa, since it is by far the most populas city here.

The big buzz this week was trying to figure out who wants to travel where and when. Almost every possible destination within flying distance has been thrown on the table: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Morocco, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Turkey, and Italy. Everyone has this mentality that we will only be in the region once, and we have to see everything possible (even though the vast majority of international students are Internation Relations/PoliSci majors, taking Arabic classes, and hoping to work for the government some day. Are you sure this will be the only time you are in the region?). Everyone has their own philosophy on travel, too. There is the "I'm in the Middle East so I am only traveling in the Middle East" philosophy, and there is the "I have to go to a European vacation spot for spring break" philosophy, among others.

At this point, I have locked down a few things. I am going to Kenya for a five-day safari over spring break. All I need to do is get a Yellow Fever vaccination and pick up some Malaria pills and I am good to go. We fly into Nairobi, where a highly recommened guide picks us up and drives us to a game reserve, where we tour via 4x4 and camp. After this I know that I want to climb Mount Sinai and visit the nearby St. Catherine's Monastery, see Jerusalem, see Luxor and Aswan, and see Jordan and Petra, all of which is definitely do-able, except that it requires a lot of long term planning on my part. This is something I'm not usesd to doing.

Due to the lack of friendly U.S. relations in Lebanon and Syria, travel to this places is much trickier. Neither will accept anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport, so travel between the three must be highly planned in order to avoid trouble. I would like to see both Beirut and Damascus, but neither are must-dos on my list of places to see and I am not actively seeking out ways to make these work.

Another place of interest is Instanbul. Travel there is much less constricting and is therefore and much more achievable goal, but I still see this as kind of a bonus trip; it would be a great place to see if presented with a good opportunity to do so, but it is not on the must-see list.

One of the factors affecting these travel decisions is time. It's hard to get much out of a weekend stay in Jersualem or Instanbul, so it's desirable to make a trip to such places a three day weekend. You have to pick and choose which places you want to spend the most time in because its not so practical to skip class every Thursday to go travelling every weekend. When formulating all of these travel plans we often forget that we are actually here to go to school.

Tomorrow morning a group of twelve of us are leaving on the 7am bus to the Bahariyya Oasis, where we will be picked up by a reputable guide for weekend camping in the Black and White Desert. It was windy here in Cairo today, so there was a lot of sand blowing in the air. Jim and I played pickup basketball during our break with some Egyptian guys (and a girl or two), and the combination of intense sun and breathing in gulps of sand probably negated any workout we got. Hopefully there will be no dust storms while we are in the desert this weekend.

Akon

Two interesting points for the day:

Sara and I hopped off of the bus early today on the way back from AUC. A quick aside: I'm not sure if I have explained this yet, but we attend school at the AUC New Campus, located about twenty miles south of the city in an area that is mostly desert at this point. Each morning we walk two blocks to the bus stop on the west side of the island and must take a 45 minute bus ride to school. The ride back from shcool usually takes between one hour and an hour fifteen. Anyway, Sara caught me on the bus and asked if I would walk with her to St. Andrews on 26 July St. in Downtown. Women are not supposed to make eye contact with male strangers, and it is dangerous for girls to walk around Cairo without male accompaniment. Verbal harassment is a given, and on rarer occasions women are physically harassed. So I agreed to walk with Sara to St. Andrews having no idea really what it was or why we were going there. As it turns out, St. Andrews is a mostly Suadanese christian church which, among other courses, offers English language classes. Sara was interested in volunteering to tutor English once a week, and I ended up signing up as well. It is a pretty laid back program, and our shifts consist of hanging out in the library so that English students can have a chance to practice conversing with English speakers. She and I are very excited about starting. I will be going in on Tuesdays and tomorrow is my first day.

Secondly, our plans for the weekend of the 26th went from ruined to saved in a matter of one day. We had planned to fly to Luxor and Aswan to see the wealth of Pharonic ruins located there, but flights for that weekend were heavily booked and our tickets would have been outrageously expensive (by Egyptian standards at least. They are usually around 500LE but for that weekend they cost nearly 1000LE. Now this only translates to $200, but why spend $200 when you could spend $100?). But shortly after learning this disappointing news we heard something even more exciting: Akon will be performing at the Cairo Opera House in Zamalek, our island, on February 26th. I don't own a single Akon song but the opportunity to see somebody as goofy as him perform in Egypt is too good to pass up. I am SO stoked to see this concert.

Saqqara

Nothing too much new happened during this past school week. We went back to Cafeteria Huria on Wednesday night and followed it with shisha at a coffee house nearby. Both of these places are located on Tahrir Street, off of Tahrir sqaure. This is the main square in all of Cairo and the center of Downtown. Near here are the Ramses Hilton, the Semiramis Intercontinental, and the Four Seasons. After a couple weeks of exploring Cairo, I've come to realize how amazing it really is to get 9LE Stellas (divide any price in LE by 5.5 to get the equivalent in US Dollars). On Thursday night a group of us made it over to the Cairo Jazz Club in Mohandesseen, across the bridge west of Zamalek. This is a fairly upscale bar/club, and that night they had a live reggae band which improvised and covered some Bob Marley. Supposedly you need reservations, but they let us hang out at a table until the group that reserved it showed up. The vibe was pretty cool, but unike Huria, Stellas were 25LE. The night concluded with teas, lemon juice, and apple shisha at Versaille Palace.

Saturday we made the trip out to Saqqara, the oldest stone-hewn structure still standing in the world. Cairo has a ton of sites such as this in the surrounding area, such as Memphis and Dashur. The problem is that there is no easy way to get to them. Most tourists see Egypt in organized tour groups that might encompass Cairo its surrounding areas to just about everything notable site in Egypt. They purchase packages ranging anywhere from a couple of days to over two weeks, and these packages provide tranportation by tour bus, hotel reservations, tips on where to eat and tour guides. Seeing Egypt on your own is a little more difficult.

We met at 9:30 in the courtyard and had a leisurely breakfast of pita, nutella, peanutbutter, and mango and pineapple nectar. Then we made the twenty minute walk to the Sadat Metro (subway) Station in Downtown. I had not taken the metro yet and was shocked at how clean and efficient it was (clean and efficient being relative terms). It cost 1LE each way, making it a 2LE round trip. We took the metro from Downtown to El Monib station, as far south as the metro would take us. From there, we had to catch a taxi for the twenty mintue drive out to Saqqara. Once at Saqqara, we negotiated a price to keep the cab with us all day. We had trouble communication the idea of "one flat rate for the whole day," but it eventually got worked out. Since we were idependent of a tour group, we didn't have gigantic air conditioned bus to take us around the sites, and the sites are fairly remote so catching a different cab between locations is difficulat. But now we had a chauffer for the day. On the way out we chatted with him in what little Arabic we knew and he got to practice his basic English. The drive was beautiful. If you imagine the Nile Delta as an upside-down triangle, Cairo is situated right at the southern tip. All the was north the south, the nile is line with lush, fertile ground; but since we live in the city of Cairo proper, our landscape only consists of the poorly maintained concrete facades of high rises. Here we got to tavel along the nile outside of the city and in the beautiful green farmland.

Saqqara is known as the step pyramid, for reasons obvious in the picture. Other than being the oldest stone structure still standing, we learned everything else we wanted to know about Saqqara from our collection of Frommer's, Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, and National Geographic guide books. Unlike the United States, most of the ancient monuments and ruins here are without information desks or salaried tour guides. You either bring your own guide, as with a package tour, or you make do by yourself. Of course, there are plenty of random locals willing to give you a tour for a tip, but these are more often a miss than a hit. Usually they will poin out such obvious things as "this is a hieroglyph of a hippo," and then ask you for money. We did our best to avoid this. We found early on in our stay in Egypt that standing in one spot too long draws an unwelcome mixture of people trying to screw you over. In Downtown, there is always someone willing to show you around and then either demand a tip or try to take you to his shop or give you his business card. At Saqqara and Giza, you can guarantee that not staying mobile means getting offered "authentic" bedeouin hair (I think the guy meant hat, but he definitely said hair) or a camel ride. At the catacombs in Alexandria, we had a very nice unofficialy tour and we tipped the man well. But he also wan't pushy about forcing us to follow him around. Gernerally, we are very wary of anyone trying to offer us anything.

We climbed around Saqqara for a while and found some black and red granite ruins. Then we toured an old temple filled with amazingly intact hieroglyphics, many still with their original paint. Here we ran into a problem though, as Mark got his camera taken away temporarily for illegally taking pictures inside the temple. After this we intended to got to Dashur to see the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid, but we could not make it there before closing. Instead, we paid the cabbie an extra 30LE to take us to Giza for sunset. But before we arrived, we were hounded by people hawking camel rides. They would run in front of the taxi and force it to stop and they would run along side the car yelling into the windows. They kept trying to tell us the Pyramids were closed (which was obvious) and that our only option was to ride their camels (which was false). Our driver did his best to shoo them away and it took the five of us yelling and gesturing angrily in Arabic to make it through. He dropped us off at the Sphynx and we parted ways. He was a very sweet old man.

Along the road running parallel to the Giza complex we found a restaurant and dined on the roof while we watched the sun set behind the Great Pyramid. Once it got dark, there was a cheesy sound and light show in which the Sphynx "narrated" the history of the pyramids while the story was projected onto the faces of the pyramids with lazer lights. We finished with some good, although pricy, food and some great photos.

The cab we took back had a serious case of road rage and we blew through stand-still traffic the whole way from the Pyramids to the Giza metro station. He seriously shot some gaps. There is a reason everyone here keeps their side mirrors folded in all the time. If they have them. It was a good day of travel, although we still need to make the trip back out to see Dashur. Next weekend we are planning on camping in the White Desert. If there is anything specific you would like to know, just post a comment.

For further photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011138&id=1304580298&l=f23e1

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011139&id=1304580298&l=02718

Alexandria

This past weekend Chris, Spencer, Jim, Ali, Jessica, Kassie, and I went to Alexandria. Chris and Ali had bought tickets two days before we left and we showed up at the trainstation packed and ready after class on Thursday. Other than needing help figuring out which platform to go to and which train to get on, the train ride went smoothly. We travelled second-class and the cars really were very nice. The problems didn't start until we were on the train.

We had heard that hotels in Alexandria don't really do reservations and that you just walk in and get a room. Since it isn't peak tourist season, we did not think that this would be a problem. About an hour into the ride, Ali and Jim decided to start calling hotels. Someone had recommended the Crillon, but it was full. So was the next one we tried. At this point we pooled all of our Frommers, Rough Guides, and National Geographic Travelers to find a place to stay for the night. Complicating the matter was that not all hotels have bathrooms in the rooms. After at least five tries, we found a place. Crisis averted.

Then we arrived in Alexandria. Getting out of the tainstation was fine, but then you go through that whole "we're in a bran new city unknown to any of us" thing and you realize you have no idea where to go. Luckily all of these travel books have maps so getting our bearings wasn't too hard. We just had to figure out what direction the Mediterranean was in and walk. Then we could take the Corniche west towards the hotel. But seven white tourists wearing huge backpacks pouring over travel guides outside of a trainstation in the second largest city in an Arab country attracts attention. Figuring out how to get from point A to point B in a foreign city is hard enough; it's even harder when you have six different strangers trying to offer you a taxi ride in broken English.

After figuring out how to get to our hotel, Jim, Spencer and I decided to walk it while everyone else took a cab. Unfortunatley, there are two trainstations in Alexandria. We were under the impression that we had come in at Masr Station, just south of our hotel. Instead, as we discovered after over an hour of walking, that we had come in at Sidi Gaber station, over three miles west of the hotel.

I didn't mind the length of the walk. Half the fun of being in Alexandria that first night was navigating and exploring. We knew that we had to walk straight north to get to the sea, but no road goes straight. We walked through narrow streets filled with shabby little shops and vendors selling fruit off of carts; allies draped with Christmas lights and banners. The walk to the sea took us through the decidedly un-touristy and thouroughly fascinating side of Alexandria. We drew stares wherever we went.

And then there was the thrill of cresting a hill in the street and seeing the dark expanse of the Mediterranean for the first time. After walking through rows of lighted shabby apartment building we saw the blackness of could only be the sea. It was especially exciting because for the first time we saw the body of water around which ancient civilzation was centered, and our navigation skills were instantly confirmed.

Once we reached the Mediterranean, we walked west along Corniche running parallel to it. After stopping at a Pizza Hut for dinner (1. we had not eaten since lunch at school and it was almost 11:00pm; 2. Pizza Huts and KFCs are strangely common throughout Egyptian cities) We stopped next to the one landmark we recognized, the Bibliotheca Alexandria, and reassessed our location. Relatively speaking, we did not have far to go. At this point, the rest of our crew had already reached the hotel and gotten rooms. It was very relaxing to finally reach the hotel and lay down.

Then at 1:00am, we get a knock on our door. A hotel worker begins trying to speak to us in Arabic, which we can't really understand. Imagine being in foreign city, to which you have never been before, and someone begins speaking gibberish to you. It is clear that he has a problem with you, but you don't know what it is, much less how to fix it. Here we were in a shabby discount hotel, with a man trying to get us to respond to him, but we have no idea what to do. We communicated with what little Arabic we knew and some handsignals and he eventually left and we thought everything was taken care of. Then we get another knock. He returned with woman we spoke a little English. Between her English and our Arabic, we figured out that the four of us could not stay in one room despite there being two beds. We had to get a second, which was no big deal, but communicated this was a chore. At the same time, the guy kept asking for our passports, saying he needed to make copies of them. In our eyes, this request immediatley upped the seriousness of the situation. I refused to hand him my passport and instead the four of us accompanied him downstairs to the front desk. There we established that all we had to do was get another room . We did so and straightened everything out.

For me, this incident gave our trip a very negative beginning. But once we started our day the next morning, I began to feel better about the trip. We took a cab to the trainstation and bought return tickets for Saturday and began our tour by visiting the excavated Roman ampitheater near the station. Then we walked to Pompei's Pillar and the Catacombs. Trying to navigate between these places with vague travel maps added to the adventure. Also adding to the atmosphere of adventure, but much more sobering, was the poverty of the area in which these historical sites are located. Here we were, seven American tourists, ready to throw down 15 LE ($3) per attraction, whereas the cabbie was thourougly satisfied with our bargain-free offer to pay 5 LE ($1) for the short ride from our hotel to the trainstation. That's $1 total for the ride, not per person. Seeing the ancient wealth of the city of Alexandria mixed with its contemporary poverty was moving. It was strange to think about the huge shiny tour buses filled with comparatively wealthy tourists navigating the narrow streets lined with beat up cars, horse-drawn produce carts, and tiny drink stands in order to get to the historical sites.

After we finished the tour of the old Grecco-Roman ruins, we took a cab up to Qaitbay, a fortress built on a finger of land jutting out into the Mediterranean. It is rumored that it was built from the ruins of the Pharos Lighthouse. The fortress was surprising intanct and offered great views of the sea and Alexandria. Once finished here, we found a restaurant reccomended universally in our guidebooks. A short walk from Qaitbay in a back alley was the classy Qadoura seafood restaurant. Instead of odering off of a menu, you pick your fish from an icepack filled with freshly caught fish. Our group ordered grouper, sea bass, calamaria, and eel. It was delicious.

We concluded the day with arguably the best of all the places we visted in Alexandria: the Spitfire Bar. In a city where the Star Spangled Banner was conspicuously absent from any hotel flying international flags, Spitfire offered reminders of the states along with an amazingly unique ambiance. Sptifire is a hole in the wall. Probably onlt 14' x 50,' the seating area was full and only seated thrity people max. It was dimly lit, and the walls were covered in grafitti and random American and German memorabilia. The Union Jack was hanging on the ceiling. They offered cheap prices on a selection of Egyptian beers, and, best of all, they played only classic American rock. The owner has no clue about American music. Instead, he has a collection of mix CDs given to him by patrons and lets the night's clientle choose the music. Here we were in Alexandria, Egypt, where only the night before a minor problem got turned into a painful ordeal over the inability to communicate, drinking in a bar with multiple red and yellow Semper Fi bumper stickers on the walls and the Doors playing in the background. The owner chatted with us for a while. He knew Greek, German, English, and Arabic. He himself was either of Arabic or Mediterranean descent. It will be hard for any bar I ever go to to top the uniqueness of this tiny classic rock bar in the middle of conservative Alexandria.

The following morning we attempted to go the Grecco Roman museum, but it was closed. The only noteworthy thing was taking the rickety tram ten stops from our location in Alexandria to the train station. The ride took 30 minutes and only cost 25 Piasters, or $0.05. That's right. Five U.S. cents. We were the only white people in the car. After the trainstation it was back to Cairo and time to do the weekends homework for class on Sunday.

A few more random thoughts:

It smellls like gasoline near any major road. It's like being at a gas station, but everywhere.

The whole concept of a "line" or "queue" doesn't really exist. If you want service, you have to push to the front or someone else will. We experienced when in line to get our student IDs. All of a sudden the line stopped moving and no one knew why. It turned out that the people in the front of the line had expected the lady making the IDs to call into her office the next people in line. Instead, she was wondering why no one in the sixty-person line was coming in to get their IDs made. Meanwhile, while a huge line had formed yet the front was going nowhere, at least ten service-type employees had walked straight in the office and got their IDs made.

Nothing is run in an efficient process. If you want something done, you have to make sure it gets done along every step.

Every task is a multi-step process.

Toilets don't have lever flushes. Instead, you turn a knob like a faucet and water rushes into the toilet. Once you think you've flushed sufficiently, you turn the water off.

I've started drinking the water. I haven't had any problems and I'm pretty sure it's safe. It's full of chlorine and tastes like pool water. This reassures me. Kind of.

To order food at most fast-food type places, you order at the register. Then they hand you a two-part ticket. Then you hand the ticket to the cook or someone giving orders to the cooks. When your food is ready you use the other half of the ticket to claim the food. Like I said, there are no one-step tasks. Everything is a process.

AUC's Egyptian population is very well off. Some classes feel like high school classes not because of the content but because of the number of students not taking school seriously. I also find it humorous when I see Egyptian girls who wear the hijab but are also wearing tight jeans.

I've also seen girls wearing Gucci hijabs. Although glitzy and attention grabbing, I guess it still technically covers the hair and sides of the face, therefore constituting one idea modesty. Unless of course it is paired with tight jeans.

Cairo is a cool city if A) you can adjust to the dirt, and B) know a little Arabic. I think I'm going to enjoy it this semester, but the traffic would be a little much to deal with day in and day out for a couple years.

It's hard not to feel like you're risking your life everytime you cross Corniche al-Nil, the major road running along the Downtown side of the Nile. Luckily, I've only been clipped by a sideview mirror and nothing worse.

We are planning to go to Alexandria this weekend. Definitely should be exciting. Especially for a history major like myself. You can dive amongst Roman ruins, some alleged to be ruins of the Pharos lighthouse. And it's rumored that you don't have to be certfied.

Observations, Notes

In hindsight, I think I was too harsh on Zamalek. It is actually very safe, and compared to the rest of Cairo, very clean. I just think that when I heard it described as "the premier residential district in Cairo," I imagined something like Lincoln Park in Chicago. But by my adjusted standards, this is a very nice place to live.

But then again, there are reminders that it's more than the degree of cleanliness that separates Cairo from an American city. There are guards armed with Kalashnikovs posted in front of the dorm, in front of the Catholic church down the block, and really, in front of any noteworthy place in Cairo. The Ramsis Hilton, the SamirRamis, and the Egyptian Museum all have them.

Speaking of church, the Catholic church we go to is pretty interesting. They do masses at 11 in French and 6:30 in English. Of course, English is a second language to just about everybody in attendance. There are no ushers at communion, and neither do people go to communion pew by pew. Instead everybody throughout the church rushes up to the front as soon as the Eucharistic ministers are set. By far being white puts you in the minority in this parish, and it is very difficult to understand the sermon. Some of the similarities though are humorous. Hymns are still led by average organ playing and an old lady who can barley sing. If you've ever been to church in Fowler, IN, the music you heard was exactly what I heard this past Sunday.

One of the tough things about Sundays though is that they are not on the weekend. Muslims are required to pray five times a day, but only at noon on Fridays are they required to perform this prayer in a Mosque. For this reason, the Egyptian weekend is Friday and Saturday. Sunday is exactly the same as Monday in the states.

Today is also Superbowl Sunday. Here it is currently 8:05 pm (Blogger won't change the time off of EST, even though I tell it to) and soon I will sleep until 2:00 am, when the Superbowl comes on. We have sattelite in the front lobby and I've seen people watching the Colbert Report, the Daily Show, and even a Duke game once, which leads me to believe the Big Game should be on. But of course to the Egyptians, the big game today was Liverpool versus Chelsea.

I had my first classes today. History of Shi'i Islam looks like it should be very interesting, my Arabic prof didn't show, and my professor for Philosophy of Art might be insane. I think he would take that as a compliment.

I have a headache. I think it's because I just spent a week in a city full of cars that predate emissions restrictions, full of people addicted to cigarettes, and full of dust from the surrounding desert. To all of you who complain about St. Charles because they don't have a smoking ban like Columbia (*cough* NATASSIA *cough*), try living in this city.

I believe it's time to catch some Zs befored the Superbowl. Kurt Warner is the man. And remember Bryant, I called this. I think. Oh, and no more "guaranteed locks" on Irish games. Brey needs to call it a season like Weis did last year and start getting Nash and Scott some PT.