Pyramids

Yesterday we (the international students at AUC) took a trip to the Pyramids of Giza. Honestly, they left me very disappointed. They're size was incredible, especially considering the time in which we were built. Unfortunately no one is stationed at the Pyramids to give information of answer questions. We had a guided tour but the guide told us very little that isn't already common knowledge. I supposed the informative expereience depends on how knowledgable of a tour guide you have. The only people stationed at the pyramids permanently are vendors peddling cheap souvenirs.

They whole thing felt cheapend. On the one hand you have the incredible wonder that goes along with something so huge, something whose construction scientists can't even explain, and then you have swarms of locals trying to scam or guilt you into buying their tacky goods. One guy came up to me and said "American?" and as soon as I paid him attention he said "Barak Obama!" He tried to give me an alleged bedouin headress which I attempted to refuse, but he shoved it in my hands as I began climbing Kufu so I put it in my bag. The bottom line is that I wasn't interested, and so he tried to give it to me "for free." I knew he was going to want it back since I had no plans to pay him for anything and I tried to give it back as soon as I got down. He tried to act all offended for a while that I was refusing his free gift of good will, but as soon as he understood I was completley willing to walk away without paying, he demanded it back. It's like this a lot of places. I remember this same kind of thing in the touristy parts of Tijuana, but people there understood when they were being ignored.

The lax attitude the locals took towards the Pyramids did have its high points. Behind the three big pyramids are two smaller step pyramids and the guards will let you climb right to the top. I had a hard time believing the un-uniformed guy who told us this. He also claimed he was part of the secret security and not a tour guide and was baffled that we did not jump right away at the chance to climb the small pyramids. It's hard not to take a cynical attitude towards people, especially when they are very friendly in a place frequented by tourists.

Today we made our first trip out to the brand new AUC campus in New Cairo. New Cairo is a HUGE artificially constructed suburb of Cairo (think Newtown, St. Charles), except its only half finished. It looks like they decided to begin building these thousands of houses and developments all at once and ran out of money halfway through, leaving hundreds of square miles of half-finished buildings.

The campus itself is beautiful. It's very clean with lots of breezy outdoor walkways, with many classrooms right off of outdoor plazas. Today was the first day of survival colloquial Arabic, which I have all week before classes start for real on February 1. I'm looking forward to developing my Arabic skills not just to get better at the langauge, but also to get better prices on food. Everyone wants to eat authentic by going to hole-in-the-wall street vendors, but these guys spot a sucker when they see one and will significantly up the price when they see a foreigner. Of course, by significantly up the price I mean they might charge you 10LE for a kebab sandwich, which still works out to only two bucks. But if you can speak Arabic with them and get it for 5LE thats just all the better.

We've spent a lot of time wandering around the island the past two days and I'm rapidly adjusting. Everything is still pretty new so there's still a lot to write about, so hopefully for your sake these posts will eventually become shorter. Until then I'm going to keep rambling on here.