Last Thursday we went to the Akon concert. Sara and I finished at St. Andrews around 6:30 and grabbed dinner at a small place that served "pizza." It was really just some cheese and vegetables on top of flakly flat bread. Pizza or not, it still tasted good and lasted us the rest of the night. From here we walked back to the dorm and dropped off our school stuff and then met Mark down at the Opera House for the show. We are used to seeing average Cairenes, but the concert brough in a lot of the wealthy Egyptians. While we were walking a limo passed us with a couple teenage girls dancing and yelling out of the sunroof. It was pretty strange seeing that here. At the concert itself were a lot of teenage Egyptian guys doing their best jobs to look American, or even American gangsta. We saw more than a few nerdy-looking kids wearing Fubu and G-Unit clothes.
The concert itself was a surprise. It wasn't in the indoor theater; instead they blocked off a giant rectangle in a plaza within the Opera House complex and set up couple entrances to it. We bought tickets for the cheapest level of seating, which ended up being a mistake because our standing area was in the back quarter of the rectange on the opposite end from the stage. The next three quarters of the rectangle were the pricier seating areas, and we could barely see because they had set up raised equipment platforms beginning at the back third of the venue which we had to try and see over.
In the end, our view didn't end up so bad. Everyone in our area crammed along the barrier separating us from the next level up, and whenever the security guards that were stationed about every five feet or so turned the backs at the same time, a person or two would hop the barrier and sneak into the next section. Things went along like this for a while before five or six people broke for it all at once. This led another fairly large group to go for it, and then the whole thing snowballed until the entire seating area stormed across the barrier and crammed into the next level.
The concert was great and Akon ran through all of his hits, but the craziest/most exciting part came at the end when he tried to crowd surf from the stage to the back of the venue. The crowd was nuts and he couldn't get anywhere because people were holding him instead of passing him along. He finally made it to one of two platforms between the main stage and the back of the venue, but it started to sway from all of the people pushing up on it was he got on. He made it off safely and struggled to approach the second platform, and it started swaying and rocking, and eventually collapsed before he ever got to it. I don't think anyone was hurt, but there was a bunch of equipment on top of it. So at this point he is on the ground in the middle of the crowd. He tells everyone to back off and take three steps away from him, but no one listens. With the help of his security he finally surfs all the way to the back of the venue. Then he is carried out the gate and back up to the stage, going parallel to the venue. Everyone rushes out to take part in the surf back to the stage, but unbeknownst to us, his security has taken over the carrying duties. Me and Mark ran ahead of his path to join in, but since he security took over we just got shoved out of the way by his bodyguards. We did managed to touch him as he went by though, so that was pretty cool. Only in Egypt.
The next day was Friday and Spencer and I went to Coptic Cairo. Spencer had been there already but I hadn't. It was pretty cool to see a whole Christian district since they're such a minority here. We visited the Hanging Church, which is a Coptic church built over some Roman ruins and is supposedly the place where Moses was found floating down the river among the reeds. Another church we visited had a crypt built on the spot where the Holy Family was supposed to hae stayed during their flight to Egypt. We also saw a Greek Orthdox church and an old synagogue. The Coptic museum contained many icons and artifacts from the first century AD, and we visited a graveyard where there was an Islamic-style dome masouleum that was topped with a cross instead of a crescent.
One of the coolest parts of the day though involved some Egyptian kids, probably around thirteen years old. As we were leaving the Greek church we passed them. They greeted us with the usual "Welcome to Egypt," and then as we were walking away one of them said "m****r f****rs." Well we thought the kid was just pissed because we mostly ignored them, but as we were winding our way through the alleys of the older part of Coptic Cairo we passed them again. They stopped as and one of the kids said, "I'm sorry about my friend, he not know what mean "m****r f****rs." We told him not to worry, but he wouldn't let us go until Spencer forgave him! It was one of the few but very rewarding genuinely nice things people have done for us here.
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