Catching Up

I finished my last exam yesterday. These last few weeks have gone by extremely fast. I finally have time to catch up on all of these posts I meant to be doing but passed up on to instead pretend to study and do homework.

This past week has been pretty tough. Between doing a paper and an exam this week, I had two exams and four papers due last week. This past week I had to finish my last two assignments while dealing with the departure of many of my good friends. Some people were finished with all of their papers and exams on the last day classes and people began leaving Saturday night. Sara and Ed left Friday night, followed by Ben and Jarvis early Saturday morning. Saturday night Jim Napier and Mark left. Julia left Monday morning while I was on campus turning in an exam, and David left that night. Basically, that aren't many of us left. Most of the people who I have grown close to over the course of this semester are now gone. Its strange how close you can get to people over the course of a semester, but I suppose a study abroad experience, especially one here, forces people to let their guards down and just be themselves. Travelling, getting lost in strange citites, trying to make sense of a different culture, these things all allowed us to really get to know each other. Without getting too nostalgic, its just a little weird being in Egypt with a good portion of the people that I spent my time with here gone. Many of us became just as close to each other as to friends at home. It feels like we've known each other for years.

The study abroad experience is much like high school or college, but fast-forwarded. We all got to know each other pretty quickly, developed inside jokes, and now at the end of it all we leave and go on to other things. Mikey and Jessie go to Navy and BC, repspectively, and they are planning on coming up to ND for those football games this upcoming season. Many of our other friends live in the North East as well, so they plan on tagging along or making sure we get together when our schools play each other in Big East basketball.

Today Spencer and I went to Khan al-Kahlili again to pick up some of the last remaining items on our souveneir lists. When I went to Islamic Cairo last weekend, I wanted to pick up another taola set. I had been there the previous Wednesday and saw one that really caught my eye, but was not planning on buying anything so did not have the money. I told the guy to hold the set for me, which he said he'd do, but when I came back last weekend he had sold it. I then commissioned a set, and hopefully it will be finished by Friday. Spencer and I paid him a visit today, just to say hi. I'm not sure if I have told this story yet, but the first time I went the Khan I was very interested in finding a taola set. After looking at a number of souvenir stalls, mark and I stumbled upon a shop stuck just below ground level built into the side of a building. It appeared though this shop made the sets, among many other wooden products, themselves and then sold them through third parties throughout the rest of the bazaar.

Mark and I probably spent a good hour in there that first day, just talking to the guy and perusing his collection of hand-made woodcrafts. Which each left with a nice taola set and from that time on, this guy has been our guy for wood products. We always make sure to stop by and say hi anytime we go to the Khan.

I've been to the Khan three times in the past three weeks. I always get really excited to go because its in the heart of the old Islamic part of the city and I like looking at all the shiny trinkets. I always leave with a headache, wondering why I was so excited to go in the first place. A trip to the bazaar takes a lot out of you. Its impossible to just walk and look, and windowshopping is always a hassle. The stall owners all interprety looking at a product or handling a product as a sign of general interest in purchasing the product. When they give you a price, unsolicited, there is always a disconnect when answering "I don't want it." They always think you don't want it because their price is too high, so they lower it. They don't understand that often the price is not the problem; the problem is that you simply don't want to buy that item.

Besides this, all the item-hawkers are pretty pushy, and haggling takes a lot of energy, especially if you want to get a good price. Anything can be obtained cheaply, but there is a standard theatere one must "perform" to make haggling work. First you have to absurdly low-ball the guy, then work your way back up to a normal range of prices. This low-balling counteracts his ridiculous mark-up, placing summer in the middle of that range the actual price you want. He'll usually come down to within a couple increments of the price you want, whether you're working in 5's or 10's or whatever. At some point he will give his so-called "best price," usually an increment or two or three above what you really want. You then restate what you want it for, he says no, and you walk away. He may call you back right away or he may let you walk a bit before catching you and bringing the price down again. You can usually walk away twice, sometimes three times, and get the price lowered further. Now you have a good price! Then you realize that you just spend the last ten minutes arguing over a 5LE difference, which amounts to $1.75. Then you feel like an idiot. Anyway, I went to the Khan the last two weekends because I was touring Islamic Cairo, where the Khan is locate. This is the oldest Islamic part of the city.

Two weekends ago Sara, Ed, and Sophie came along with me to Islamic Cairo. We only made a half day of it so we covered the northern end. The cab dropped us off near al-Azhar mosque and university and we began our tour here. As is usual in mosques, we had to take off our shoes and Sara and Sophie had to cover their heads with their scarves. Al-Azhar University is the world center of Sunni Islamic learning and is also a very important mosque. From here we continued to the al-Ghouriya mosque, a Mamluk era mosque at the head of the southern market. One time when we were in this area a guy pointed us back north, saying "There Khank al-Khalili, this not the tourist market." Egypt is frustrating at times. Very often we know what we are doing and where we are and have to put up with people trying to point is in the direction we are already going or trying to lead us to some touristy site we are totally uninterested in. Anyway, we continuted south down this street, Al-Muizz li Din Allah, until reaching Bab Zuwayla. This is an old medieval-era gate, complete with towers and parapets and giant wooden doors. We climbed the tower, which required some athleticism at the top, and got a wonderful view of Islamic Cairo. We could see north to Al-Azhar and south to the Citadel.

Sophie and Sara stopped in the market to buy some of the colorfully patterned cloth used for decoration in Egypt. After this we walked back north past Al-Azhar and followed the street through Khan al-Khalili. We stopped at the mausoleum and madrassa of Al Nasir Muhammad and of Sultan Qalawun, then continued north to the mosque of Al-Hakim, the Caliph of the Fatimid Empire who proclaimed divinity for himself and whose heterodox religious teachings helped foudn the Druze faith. We then finished our day at the medieval gate of Bab al-Futuh, counterpart of Bab Zuawayla. This all occurred three weekends ago, so I'm hazy on the details still unfortunately...

Last weekend I tagged along on Jessie and Julia's Islamic Art and Architecture field trip to the citadel. I had not toured any of Islamic Cairo at that point and needed to fit it in before leaving. The fieldtrip was a great opportunity because I got into the complex for free and their professor's lectures at each site essentially amounted to a free tour for me. She also got us access to some places tourists couldn't normally go. It was also a good opportunity because all of my other friends here had already gone earlier in the semester. The field trip kind of ensured that there would be people to come tour with me. Spencer and Jim came too, because they never made it this far when they came to Islamic Cairo. They were accused of being Jews by an old hagg and watched her chew out the guy who had let them into a mosque. They called it at day after that. So Spencer, Jim, and I walked the half-mile to the mosque of Ahmad ibn Tulun, the oldest mosque in Cairo. Its doors opened in 876. Disappointingly, I left my Egypt guidebook behind this day. I knew where I wanted to go and how to get there, so I saw no sense in taking along anything other than a street map. Had a brought the book, I would have known that we missed the best part of going to ibn-Tulun mosque: the adjacent 16th century house-turned-museum. The book calls it an Orientalist's fantasy almost more worth seeing than the mosque itself, complete with intricate artwork, secret viewing galleries, porticos looking over open courtyards with fountains, and winding passageways. We also passed up the worth-while Museum of Islamic Art due to time constraints. I didn't sense much interest in going there anyway (as I said, being in this area for too long, including the Khan which we were headed to next, makes for a very long day). Perhaps I will go back to these places in these last three full days I have here. The mosque was impressive considering the time period in which it was built and the fact that Christians were still a vast majority in Egypt at the time of its construction.

We cabbed from ibn-Tulun to Midan al-Hussein, the starting point for all of our ventures into Khan al-Kahlili. Spencer and Jim had not been to Al-Azhar yet, so we stopped here one more time. Then I showed them how to get to a book-binding store Mark, Mikey, and I had found the preceding Wednesday. They sell leather- and cloth-bound books and custom engrave them with gold leafing. Thus began another tiring day in Khan al-Khalili. It was these day that I found out our friend in the woodshop had sold the taola that I promised him I would return for. He apologized, saying the guy gave him a very generous offer. Oh well.

I have three more days here and lots of packing to do. I hope to see some of these last few things on my list before leaving, never knowing when or if I will ever return. Well I guess that last statement was a little dramatic but I probably won't be back for a while and I don't want to leave with any regrets.

Luxor

It's been a bit of a challenge keeping up with school while travelling, especially since I spend an hour and a half commuting to and from school each day. That said, here are the highlights of the past two weeks. I will begin with my trip to Luxor:

Mark's friend from high school, Buddy, is an Egyptology enthusisast. Actually, this is a bit of an understatement, although he would never admit to posessing such an immesnse body of knowledge on ancient Egypt. Buddy is studying abroad in Itlay this semester, and accompanying him to Cairo two of his classmates from Italy, Betsy and Asad. Betsy actually went to high school with Mark, although they didn't really know each other then. I beleive Buddy met Asad in Italy. He goes to university in the US, but his home is Karachi, Pakistan. Buddy, Betsy, and Asad were all on break from their school in Italy, and Buddy's interest in Egypt made visiting Mark good decision.

Luxor and the surrounding areas are a wealth of archaelogical sites. We easily packed three days full of tourism and exploration without ever making it over to (relatively) nearby Aswan. In order to spend enough time in Luxor, we took the night train out of Cairo at 8:30 on the night of Tuesday the 24th and skipped classes Wednesday and Thursday and returned by plane to Cairo Friday evening.

I was tutoring at St. Andrew's unitl 7pm, as I do every Tuesday. For this reason I carried my backpack packed for the weekend around school with me all day so that I could head to the train station immediately after tutoring. I left St. Andrew's on time, but when I tried to meet up with Mark, Betsy, Buddy, Asad, and Sara, my phone would not work, even though I had plenty of credit. Vodafone for some reason wanted my name, address, birthdate, and passport number (which I did not give them) before continuing my service. This was only a minor setback, although it seemed big at the time because I was in a rush to catch a train. But even worse, it reminded me that I had forgotten my passport in my room. I would need that to fly back to Cairo from Luxor! I hopped a quick cab back to the dorm, grabbed my passport and attempted to get another cab back to Downtown. The cabbies were in a bad mood that night, as the first one would not take me Downtown, and the one that finally agreed would only do it for twice the going rate (although this still amounted to less than $2). I finally arrived at the trainstation via the subway at 8pm, an hour after I had agreed to meet Mark and our friends. The next problem was that I had arrived on the wrong side of the station and was faced with a huge concrete wall, designed to keep people from coming into the station from the wrong direction. Made it half over the wall before deciding that, although the coast was clear, potentially causing a scene with the guards would delay us too much. In stead I walked until I found some guards standing neer an unoffical entrance. They let me in just fine, only asking to see my ticket before they waved me through. I finally met up with my friends, ten minutes before the train arrived.

The train ride itself was nice enough, although my intermitent naps probably added up to less than 45 minutes of actual sleep. We arrived in Luxor at 5:30am. Making our way past the wave of taxis, happily waiting to take us to our destination for a ridiculous fee (but a fee that would be considered chump-change to any foreigner converting from the euro or dollar), we began my favorite part of any trip. Mark busted out the Lonely Planet, flipped to the page with a tiny, sparsely detailed map of Luxor, and we tried to figure out where the hell we were and where we were going. This group (meaning me, Mark, Sara, and a number of the other people we travel with who were not present on this trip) likes to walk. We all have fairly independent personalities with widely varying degress of a "take-charge" tendencies. We all get along well and enjoy a bit of an adventure.

Luxor isn't exactly a dangerous town, but nevertheless, it is still exciting to navigate your way through a strange twon with tiny map. After making one wrong turn (we blamed Lonely Planet for not making a better map) we finally found our destination: The Bob Marley Hostel. We ran into a group of backpackers who were looking for the Sherif Hostel, and the two ended up being one in the same. These fellow travellers were somewhat annoying. They rudely chanted "Stand up, wake up!" when we mysteriously found the hostel locked and the owners sleeping at 5:45 in the morning. I think Bob Marley would have wanted them to demonstrate a little more understading, especially since they were being obnoxious with his song.




The Bob Marley Hostel is a trip. We had to walk fifty yards to the end of an alley to get to the entrance, which was on the ground floor of a fiver or six story building. Outside is a giant sign advertising the hostel, and underneath it is a flag with the iconic red and black face of Che Guevara. Inside the lobby was a small desk and a number of simple chairs and couches. The walls nearest the desk and the stairs leading up to the rooms were covered with Bob Marley posters, accompanied by poster for Tupac and Usher. The walls around the sitting area were brightly painted with such generic Egyptian scense and figures, such as pyramids and a baby Donald Duck. As is usual with any business encounter in Egypt, we were offered tea and gladly accepted after the long train ride and the long day we still had ahead.

We had booked ahead of time using hostelworld.com, and finagled to get a better room combination, giving us one quad for the four guys and a double for the girls. The rooms themselves were pretty tame, painted in a pale blue with simple beds which took up nearly all of the floor space; absent was the slightly over-the-top decor present in the rest of the hostel. We had a great view of the alley below, and the girls had a walk-out balcony. The light in the early morning was beautiful as the sun rose and its rays filled the alley and filtered into our blue room.. Maybe it was because we were closer to the equator, or maybe I simply havn't been awake at such an early hour for such a long time that I forgot what a sunrise looked like from any other setting than inside of Notre Dame's library.



We began the day at Luxor Temple. On the way we stopped at a local bakery and got pasteries for 1 to 2 LE each. I will avoid being too detailed about the visit specifically, but just let me say that watching Buddy run around and excitedly point things out and read hieroglyphs was quite a trip. Without him with us, the temple would have been nothing more than an impressive stone structure built a long time ago. Buddy gave it meaning, a story, a history. Some of the officials inside the temple warned us that we were not allowed to have a guide (guides in Egypt must be Egyptian, bringing your own foreign guide is generally not allowed), and we would smugly explain in Arabic that he was merely a student who was not even majoring in Egyptology. In reality, the people working inside the temple usually took a great interest in Buddy, referring to him as "Doctor," and pointing to explaing things which Buddy would either elaborate on or explain why the official was completely wrong. -- When I refer to an "official" working inside an achaelogical site, what I am referring to is usually an older Egyptian, wearing a worn galabiya and turban, who sits in various nooks and crannies of the site waiting for tourists to walk by. Then he will attempt to lead them around, usually pointing out the obvious or giving slighlty less known but still shallow information. It the tourists are receptive, he will lead them around for a while before asking for baqshish (a tip) at the end of the tour. These sorts of tours are usually limited to whatever room of the temple the man is sitting in and rarely extend to an area any larger, much the less the site as a whole.

After Luxor Temple we walked the town until we found a less-touristy lunch spot to refuel. We had checked into a cotton shop mentioned in Mark's lonely planet earlier that morning and the two of us decided to get custom-tailored Egyptian cotton galabiyas. Near the cotton store we found a place to get water for the day, and on our way out we were wrangled in by an Egyptian trying to impress us with his impressions of English and American accents. He went so far as to quote Shakespear and Jane Austen. In the end he convinced us to meet him at 3pm for an afternoon faluka ride on the Nile. It was twice the price of an offer we had received earlier in the morning, but we figured it was worth paying for his character. After lunch we went to met him and he took us out on his sailboat. The ride was peaceful and afforded us gorgeous views of the Nile and the surrounding green fields. The river was much bluer in Luxor than I had seen it anywhere else and the waters were calm. We stopped off at a place called Banana Island and checked out the banana groves and got some freshly-picked fruit before heading back out to the Nile for sunset. Then we found spot for dinner and headed back to Bob's.

The owners of the hostel had outfitted the roof as a chill escape from Luxor. It had a hammock, and few more simple chairs and tables, and the ground was covered in colorful pads. We came up here after out dinner and met some Brits. They were from Manchester and London and were touring Egypt to use up some of their accumulated holiday time. They couldn't have been more that three years older than any of us, although we never got their ages. We ended up getting tea and shisha with them before calling it a night.

The next day we grabbed breakfast at the same place and took a ferry over the Nile to the West Bank. There we negotated a taxi for the ride to Valley of the Kings. We bought two tickets each, allowing us access to six tombs. According to Buddy, all the best tombs were closed but this did not affect me too much. The ones we saw were still impressive and Buddy's commentary only contributed to the expereince. The most notable event from the morning-afternoon in the Valley were our (mostly Sara's) attempts to get into the closed tomb of Seti I. Sara initially tried to flip it into flirt mode with the official taking tickets. He seemed about ready to let us in for a small bribe before thinking better of it, realizing he would probably lose his job if he was caught letting us in. We toured some more tombs and when we swung back around there was a tourism police official there. Obviously, greater authority meant there was a higher probability that he would be able to let us in. Sara tried to song and dance again but only to the same result. He seemed like he REALLY wanted to take the baqshish and let us in but he eventually thought better of it. Besides, he didn't have the key anyway, the director did. We rested under the pavillion separating the two sides of the valley for a while, and then realzed Sara was gone. I put two and two together and peeked inside the director's open door. Sure enough, Sara was inside pleading her case. When she came out, she said she had tried to explain how Buddy was really into Egyptology and he really wanted to get into Seti's tomb and that he would be the only one and that if it made him feel better, the director could accompany him personally. She mentioned that all of the more popular tombs required separate tickets, and we would be willing to pay any extra fees necessary to get Buddy access. Unfortunatley, he would not budge, explaining to Sara, "I know you don't know you are doing this, but do you realize you are trying to bribe the director of this whole region?" Of course, that was exactly the point of Sara's visit. Even though she was unsucessful in the end, the attempt still makes for a good story and Buddy was very touched by her efforts to get access for him.

The end of our tour in the Valley brings us to the second interesting event of the day. It is possible to hike over the mountain that separates the Valley of the Kings from the fertile Nile Valley, where we wanted to visit the worker's tombs. We made it fifty yards up the hillside before an un-uniformed man tried to tell us that we were not allowed to climb over. Luxor is a very touristy town, which means the inhabitants are even pushier about selling you things. This primed Mark for any form of negotiation, and here was his moment to shine. Instead of continuing our hike and feigning ignorance, Mark turned around and met the guy. They argued in Arabic for a while, which meant that in order to keep the flow of speech going Mark every now and then made some pretty non-sense statements in Arabic. I think this tactic worked in Mark's favor for two reasons: One, the guy probably appreciated the attempt at speaking his language. Two, this probably also meant the Mark was only half-coherrent, making it possible to eventually wear out the guy's patience. The man first tried to tell us that the sites on the other side were closed, but we knew they weren't. He then conceded that we could walk over, but only if accompanied by an Egyptian. At this point, Mark claimed that we did have an Egpyptian with us: Asad. Although Asad had been mistaken for Egyptian a couple times, he knew absolutely no Arabic; only English, Urdu, and Italian. Mark then told the guy that Asad's family was wealthy and he had been raised abroad, spending most of his life in Rome, which is why he did not know much Arabic. I witnessed this whole scene from halfway up the mountain. Eventually the man and Mark separated and Mark joined the rest of the group. I'm not sure how it happened, maybe the guy was just annoyed with the situation and Mark's stubborness, but he eventually let us be.

The hike was beautiful and we had great views of the Valley below us. When we crested the mountain, we were greeted with the even more spectacular view of the Nile Valley below us, with the blue ribbon of river and the sprawling green fields dead-ending at the dusty mountains range we were standing on, buffering the fertile valley from the rest of Egypt's barrness. We descended the path and made it to the worker's tombs before close. The story behind these tombs made them my favorite. Many skilled laborers worked to carve and paint the Pharaoh's tombs, and because they had these skills, some were able to make their own private tombs. Although in scale they were much smaller, their artwork was just as impressive.

That night we ate on the roof of our hostel and passed out pretty early. The next day we ate breakfast at the hostel, checked out of our rooms, and stored our bags until the evening. We made it to Karnak Temple, which was HUGE. In the afternoon we went back to the West Bank to see some more ruins. We decided to walk back to the ferry by taking a detour around another archaelogical site. At this time they had all closed but we though maybe we could get a sense of the place from the outside. We had to stand on a hill strewn with trash just to peer over its walls. At this point we had walked a fair distance parallel to the river, away from the ferry. We picked our way back to the ferry by direction, regardless of the roads that were taking us there. We ended up gettin semi-lost, but this let us witness the sun set behind the mountains as we wandered down a narrow road through sugarcane fields. We were no where near the tourist centers of the West Bank and appreciated the evening walk through the Upper Egyptian countryside, unencumbered by tourists or those trying to sell to them, fully separated from the developed city. To everyone's relief, we finally found our way back to the main road and grabbed the ferry back across the river.

Back at Bob's we picked up our bags and tipped them heavily. Each morning they had given us tea and nescafe, and they had also given us one dinner and one breakfast. Usually when someone in Egypt gives you such "free" things, a tip is expected in return. Not so at Bob Marley's. Happy (one of the owners) seemed genuinely taken aback. I explained that we owed them this for all of the free drinks and food they had given us, not to mention the friendliness and the great atmosphere. He explained in reply, "but those things were free" and I believed that he acutally meant it. We gave him the tip anyway and said goodbye. We grabbed a cab to the airport and headed back to Cairo. Upon arrival we were still in haggle mode and got a cab for the seven of us back to the dorms for a pretty good price.



It was strange how well Sara and I got along with Mark's friends, even though we had only spent three days with them. It did not fell as if we were travelling with them for only the first time. At the end of the trip I felt like they had been my friends for year. I guess Egypt attracts a certain type of personality in a foreigner, especially in Americans. I think it takes a personality with a certain openness to adventure, ability to go with the flow and improvise, and enjoys doing things the hard, that is, fun, way.

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Mount Sinai

We left at 1:30 Friday afternoon for our excursion to Mount Sinai. It had been a crazy week making plans; a number of us were going for sure but a couple people were on the fence about it until very late in the game. The major issue was transportation. The drive is six hours, and that is a long way on a public bus. Besides, the public buses have a history with security issues, so we decided to pony up the extra cash and get a private 15-passenger van. Not knowing the exact number of people made figuring costs a little more difficult, but in the end seven of us decided to go. Paying for the extra seats wasn't too bad since it gave us all plenty of room to stretch out for the ride.

We made it out of Cairo pretty quickly and before we knew it we were driving south along the western coast of the Sinai Peninsula. The sun was setting the whole way, and we had excellent views as the sun slowly sank behind the mountains on the opposite side of the Suez Canal. The haze from blown sand and pollution made it easy to look directly at the sun and we all took some great pictures.

We all slept (or tried to) for most of the ride. I gave up once it got dark and stared out the window and the mountainous terrain bathed in moonlight. We would need our sleep, because the plan was to arrive at the Monastery of St. Katherine at the base of the mountain around 9:00 pm, make the 2 to 2.5 hour climb up the Stairs of Repentance, and camp out until sunrise. Just as we reached the southern tip of the peninsula, we turned inland and headed north for the monastery. Along the way we had past several checkpoints. At each one our drivers would speak Arabic to guards, and all I could make out was saba' imreeky taaliba, from which I gathered that they were being asked to identify their passengers and probably what our business was, to which they would respond "seven American students," among other things. At the last couple checkpoints we had to produce our passports. The official would leaf through them, hand them back, and send us on our way.

The final checkpoint was also the ticket office for St. Katherine's. One of us had a student visa, so we were able to get tickets for the resident Egyptian rate. These tickets were for entering the monastery. Climbing the mountain is technically free, but the guides expect and deserve a tip. Our drivers dropped us off in the parking lot for the monastery and we collaborated in Arabic to establish a pickup time for the next morning. We fully intended to take the shorter, but much more difficult, Stairs of Repentance to the top of the mountain, as opposed to the longer but easier camel path. I don't think the anyone's decision to take the Stairs was ever based on making good time. Firstly, we were all excited by the challenge. I also think we felt that the trip itself would have more personal meaning if we took the most difficult path possible.

Taking the Stairs, however, was a problem. You are technically not allowed to take them at night. After much laborous insistence (and remember: these guys don't speak English and we don't speak Arabic well enough to express the slightest of abstract ideas), the officials at the base let us take the stairs. While they sent for a guide, Mark and I began to play with our cameras. The sunset was followed by one of the brightest moons I have seen. We both slowed our shutter speeds way down and opened our aperatures to see if we could capture these beautifully moon-lit landscapes. We both achieved amazing results. Mark has a brand-new Canon digital camera, one step below an SLR I believe. He was able to get some incredibly shots. They nearly reflected what we were actually seeing. I have a Minolta that is at least 4 years old. Its old enough that along with its 10x optical zoom (impressive), it also advertises its 3.2 mega pixels (not so impressive anymore). Despite this, my pictures turned out much better than I expected.

Our guide finally arrived around sometime between 10 and 11pm. He seemed a little groggy and we learned not too much later that he had just made the hike up the Stairs the night before and that his knee was bothering him. We felt bad for him and offered him our water and Advil, but he declined. He joked a little and handled it all well considering he had not gotten much rest. The hike up was amazing. As mentioned earlier, the moon was bright and clear, and we were able to make the entire climb by moonlight. Coming back down the next morning, we decided that in addition to being beautiful at night, it was also a good thing that we made the hike in the relative darkness of the moonlight because that way we couldn't see the challenge we had ahead of us. The Stairs of Repentance are so named for a reason. For the majority of the hike, espeically at the beginning, they are really only stairs in the loosest possible sense of the word. For the most part, its just a number of flat (relatively), narrow, stone footspaces, one right after the other. During the ascent, they often curved in such ways that getting on all-fours was necessary, and getting from one step to the next required some precarious foot and handwork. No one complained about this though, since we expected there to be at least some climbing involved. If not, then I think we all would have been a little disppointed. All told, the official count on the number of steps is 3,750. They are so uneven in places that it is hard to understand how they arrived at this number, but I'll just let it be.

We made good time up the stairs, pausing every now and then to take in the view behind us. We took a couple breaks, and only had one long delay when I had set down my prayer beads at one of our break points and forgot about them. I went back down to get them, and Mark gave me a 50 piaster (under 10 cents) incentive to sprint back up to where everyone was waiting. Not much longer after this we reached the Gate of Fogiveness, and just passed that was a flatter area. We rested here before starting the final 750 stairs. This area had a tree that was over 1,000 years old, and it was sillouetted by the moonlight. Mark and I snapped a few pictures (as much as you can snap a camera set for a 15 second exposure) and we headed on our way. Just below the top was a shack where we rented pads and blankets and got some tea. Here we hit midnight, meaning it was now Sara's 21st birthday. Someone had brought along an orange and stuck two candles in it while we sang Happy Birthday to Sara. I can't imagine a more unique 21st birthday.

Our guide led us to the prime sleeping spot: an approximately 8x20 foot roof of a mud hut built for pilrimaging monks. He we set up camp and watched as the clouds slowly melted away and the sky opened up to thousands of stars. We braced ourselves for a cold windy night. Not many of us slept much, but it didn't matter. When first light hit four hours later at 5:30 am we were all wide awake to take in the gorgeous sunrise. I'm not sure that words can really describe spending the night on Mount Sinai and then watching the sunrise over the valley below, so I'm not going to try. All I can say is that it was beautiful and was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

However, detracting from any amount of spiritual reflectiveness one might try to experience was the amount of tourists. Our schedule for climbing the mountain seemd to be fairly unique, at least for this night. We were literally the only people on the mountain during our climb, and we had the summimt all to ourselves until first light. But starting around 4:30, we began to the intermittant cheering of groups as the summited the mountain. Most of the tourists on this day had decided to stay most of the night at St. Katherines and then time their ascent to coincide with sunirse, rather than get there early and spend the night on the top of the mountain. These groups stayed out of sight until sunrise began. Then things got a little strange. Our group filled up most of the roof we were sleeping on. Once sunrise began, two people peeked over the ladder that led to our roof. We expected them to head back down once they saw that it was pretty much entirely occupied, but instead they went and sat down on the three feet of space left between the last of our row of pads and the edge of the roof. Now the only space left was the three feet of space running horizontally between the long edge of the roof our row of feet. Shortly there after, another couple of people poked their heads over the ladder and looked around. They decided to sit down right in front of us, in front of us being between us and the sunrise. And the people just kept coming, not just on our roof, but throughout the entire top of the mountain. There had to be at least 70. I was not going to stand for having people show up late and then sit right in front of me. We had been expecting, and for 15 minutes were able to, lie in our sleeping bags and watch the sunrise. This couldn't exactly be done with people sitting in front of you and jockeying for camera angles. Being where I was, I did not want to come off as selfish or cause a scene, so I just climbed on top of a rock. Mark followed, and the rest of us decided that it was finally time to stand up and just go with it. The people who joined us on the roof turned out to be Swedes, and we thought they were pretty nice once we got over the fact that they were there in the first place. We got them to sing the Swedish birthday song to Sara, which was very entertaining.

The hike down was interesting enough. It was great to see by daylight all the places we had passed in the night. But whereas on the way up we were the only people climbing the mountain, we were a group of 7 among hundreds of people all trying to descend at the same time down the same narrow stairs. We saw one women walking down the stairs in heels and were slightly apalled. And this wasn't even the worst case of a poorly-dressed foreigner. Many Europeans (the offending parties seemd to mostly be Eastern European) were dressed inappropriately. One girl was stopped at the entrance to the monestary because she was wearing a miniskirt. Once we finished the hike, we toured the limited areas of the monestary that tourists were allowed to see.

We met up with our drivers and returned to Cairo. The ride back mostly involved sleeping, but we did make a pit stop at the Red Sea. We were trying to get to a hot spring listed in one of our guide books. We found it, but it was inside a tiny cave and was crowded with old men. Instead, we dipped our feet in the water at the nearby beach and ran in the sand for a little while. We also had a memorable break at a rest stop just at the edge of the Sinai, before we crossed back into the main part of Egypt. Here at the rest stop lives a stray kitten which we named Dirty Kitty. We enjoyed feeding and petting her, and teased the girls in our group who us for playing with a most likely diseased animal.

On our return we showered and then went donwtown for kosharie, shisha, coffee, tea, and taola (backgammon), and then headed back to the dorm. All but one of my classes for Sunday were cancelled, and in the one class I had the professor was showing movie. I slept a good night's sleep, showed up for the movie, did some homework in the libarary, and went to bed. Monday is off for the Prophet's birthday. We were planning on going to Dahsur, which we missed on our original trip to Saqqara, but I think that many of us will just sleep in and do homework.

Feel free to let me know about any typos you find by commenting. And feel free to comment about other things, too.

Additional Photos:

1. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011321&id=1304580298&l=8a096

2. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011322&id=1304580298&l=dcb6b

3. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011323&id=1304580298&l=4af95

Khan al-Khalili and My Birthday

I only had one class today, and since we went out late last night for a friends birthday, I decided to take the day off and go to the famous Khan al-Khalili bazaar instead. Really, it would have been a waste to get up at 7 to make the 8 o'clock bus to get to campus in time for one class from 9:30 to 10:20, and then have to wait around to take the first bus back to campus at 12:45. I would have spent more time on the bus than in class.


Mark, Sonja, and I took a cab out there and it dropped us off near the Hosayn Mosque. Khan al-Khalili is in Islamic Cairo, which has many famous Mosques. Our cab was surprisingly nice; it had leather seats, air conditioning, and an actual meter (although we payed more than the metered price anyway. The cabbie was nice enough to help us with our Arabic during the ride). We began near the Hosayn and Al-Azhar mosques. The bazaar fills the surrounding streets and narrow alleys. It is open air, but people have built makeshift rooves over the alleys throughout the years. The area used to be a major thouroughfare in Cairo, which led to the setting up of shops. Its growth over time led to the bazaar that it is today. Now it mostly sells tacky touristy items, like sphynx busts, bellydancing outfits, papyrus, and t-shirts, but in the heart of the bazaar you can still find spices and well crafted hand made goods. The bazaar is usually pretty clausraphobic, but crowds were light this afternoon. Perhaps the minor bombing outside of Hosayn mosque last week had something to do with it. Just for convnience's sake, we now respond to mineen (where are you from) with Ana Irlaandee (I am Irish), which isn't technically a lie for those of us who go to ND.



I was primarily there to price backgammon sets. Many of them are inlaid with mother of pear. We found quite a few places that sold them among other souveneirs, but we eventually found the origin of many of the sets. This little workshop specialized in woodwork inlaid with mother of pearl. We spent close to a half hour there looking at all they had to offer, and I finally left satisfied with my purchase.

We walked through more of the bazaar and found ourselves three floors up some building where a guy produces some of the silverwork sold at street level stalls. Mark went into the stalls first, but wanted something slightly different than what they were offering. The guy made a phone call, and we wove our way through the bazaar, following him to a small production house three floors up one of the buildings. Mark got his card so he could come back later.

We made the twenty-five minute walk back to dowtown and got koushary for dinner and followed it was shisha, tea, and coffee at a cafe. We have a caffe here in Zamalek right next to the dorm, and we thought the prices there were pretty reasonaby when converted to USD. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and shisha are all 10LE each, and right now the USD is worth 5.6 LE and rising. But at this cafe downtown we got two teas, a coffee, and two shisha for a TOTAL of 23LE, or about $4. Total. Today I bought a delicious and filling lunch of two kofta sandwiches for 8LE ($1.50), and koushary costed 6LE ($1). Living here is heartbreakingly cheap. I'm upset with myself when I eat luxuriously for the day and set myself back a whole $10.

Then again, my thriftiness today was offset by last nights cash hemmhorage (I don't fell like cheching the spelling). We had three birthdays this week, so we went to Club Purple, which was located on a big boat on the Nile (it was much like a casino boat in size and layout). Cover was an outrageous 150LE, and alcohol was very expensive. I don't think anyone drank very much. We've adjusted pretty well to viewing things here in their Egyptian prices, relative to the cost of things here in general, and have mostly stopped converting everything to American prices. I think this will make transition back to American life pretty tough, where the cost of getting dinner at Applebee's is euqivalent to an upscale resaurant here.

On my actualy birthday I just met some people at Versaille. I splurged for a Heinekin and got a shisha, but kept it short and simple since I had an exam the next day.

Coptic Cairo and Akon

It's been pretty busy with school, so I havn't had as much time to post. I also had my birthday this week too, and now I finally found some time to get back to some of the things that happened last week.

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.