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.