home

just an update - i'm back in america! it's definitely nice to be home. i've been watching a lot of tv and just hanging out. off to camp on friday!

update

hey

so nothing too exciting to report. school is getting a little more serious so that's no fun. but i'm down to my last month in egypt. pretty crazy.

there are 2 probably cases of swine flu at gw, so i'm glad i'm not there right now. kind of scary. they've slaughtered 300,000 pigs here in egypt. which was surprising in that i didn't know there were 300,000 pigs here. the one place that i know that serves pork products is a pizza place and i'm not a big bacon pizza fan so i have not indulged in that. i think i'll just wait until i get home. i'm really looking forward to a good breakfast sandwich with bacon and lots of cheese and what not. the place here where i get breakfast sandwiches sometimes puts one measly slice of cheese on it which is not enough. the food is one of the main things i miss about america (outside of family and friends obviously).

anyway i'll be home in 28 days. get excited.

also, as it is past midnight in egypt my birthday is officially in 2 weeks. wowzers. i'm almost 21

Spring Break

So Spring Break was really fun. Through out the course of the 11 days I swam in three different seas- the Red, the Dead, and the Mediterranean. It was really cool floating in the Dead Sea. All three of the seas are significantly prettier and warmer than the Atlantic, at least the part of the Atlantic that I generally go in.

Anyway, the flight to Amman was only around an hour and the hotel sent a BMW to pick us up! We napped then explored the city. We went to the Citadel which had a lot of old Roman ruins and a cool museum. Then we went to the Roman Theater and wandered around the city. At lunch we talked to some other Americans who walked in (it's gotten pretty easy to tell which of the white tourists are Americans and which are Europeans, even before hearing them speak). One of the kids in the group had been at AUC last semester. Small world. We stopped at a pastry shop and had kunafa and baklava. So delicious. The next day we went to Madaba where there was a really old mosaic, then Mt. Nebo where Moses did something (I forget quite what. Saw the Promised Land?) and finally to the Dead Sea. On the way to the Dead Sea we could see Jericho in the distance. It was weird being able to see Israel/Palestine. It was really close across the water. As in a good swimmer could probably have made it across the way. Pretty crazy. Floating was really cool as I mentioned.

On Sunday we headed to Syria. We took a cab because we needed to wait at the border to get visas. We had heard it could take 8 or 9 hours and then we might not even get them, but it took us less than 3 hours which was pretty painless. We read, played some backgammon, ate lunch and then our visas were done. We met an American guy who had been traveling for the past 15 months and in that time had been to 41 countries. Crazy. In Damascus we stayed in an apt this random Syrian guy rents out to travelers. Through out the 4 days we were there we ate lots of shawerma (way better than the shawerma in Cairo), kunafa (a delicious dessert of cheese and honey. i'm not really sure how to describe it), and took lots of naps. We went to the huge souq (marketplace) that we read about in Arabic class almost every day and I got some souvenirs for people :) One of the days we went to the huge mosque where we had to wear cloaks because we had the audacity to wear pants that day (don't worry I have a picture of us in the cloaks) and another day we went to a bathhouse for massages. That was an interesting experience. Overall Damascus was really beautiful. Oh and we ran into 3 different groups of AUC kids while we were in Damascus. Some of the kids were even on our flight. Oh and we spoke a lot more Arabic while in Amman and Damascus than in Cairo. The Arabic there is a lot closer to what we've learned in school and in some places people knew less English. People were generally surprised to hear us speak Arabic. Oh and most people guessed that we were Russian, not American. I guess because we're both tall.

We got back to Cairo Thursday night and took the bus to Alexandria Friday afternoon. We had really delicious seafood for dinner. Grilled fish and shrimp and some fried fish in addition to pita and lots of dips for the bread; it was more food than the three of us could eat (we had dinner with one of Alix's friends. I took some pictures of our spread). And it only cost us around $10 a person. We went to the beach the next day. Long story short, but we were not only the only white people on the beach (and we went to a nice private one) we were the only females in bathing suits. So we got stared at a lot. Some guys took pictures of us. The brave ones came up and asked if they could have their picture taken with us. The water was really pretty there too and it was really nice to lie on the beach. The second day we hung out with a guy who works at the hotel who Alix befriended. Another relaxing day before going back to Cairo.

Yesterday was our last day of break, and we went to Ain el-Sokhna with some of our Egyptian friends. Ain el-Sokhna is a beach about an hour and half away from Cairo, on the Red Sea. It was a lot more crowded than Dahab but the water was just as nice. Swimming in clear water is much nicer than the mostly opaque Atlantic. After hanging out on the beach, we went to someone's beach house for dinner and then went to a cafe on the beach to hang out in the evening. I made friends with a guy who plays for Egypt's best pro soccer team (Ahly) and is also on the Egyptian National Team so that's pretty cool.

Luckily I only had one class today because I was not looking forward to going back to school. I'll be home in around 5 weeks. Pretty crazy!

back from break

hey!

i'm back from Syria and Jordan. it was awesome and i'll give a full update later, but i wanted to let everyone know that we made it home safely. i think we're going to spend the weekend in alexandria which should be fun. i'll post photos and everything once i'm back for good.

Spring Break

Tomorrow at 8 AM I will be flying to Jordan and then a few days after that we'll be heading to Damascus (don't worry, Syria really is not as scary as the American media makes it out to be). I'll be back in Cairo the night of the 16th and then hopefully going to Alexandria or Luxor. But I probably won't be online much, if at all, in that time. Try not to miss me too much. I'll post pics as soon as I get back!

It's been a while...

My b. The past month has been a combo of not doing anything too exciting and midterms and then being lazy about writing about the things I did that were exciting.

A few weeks ago I went to the U.S. embassy for tour and information session that one of my friends here arranged (he interned for State last summer so he had a hookup). We had to turn in our phones and passports to get in and then had to go through security in groups of 3. The embassy is an enormous complex. We went to the State Dept part and sat down with the Deputy Chief of Missions (he's a big deal) and six other staffers who told us what it's like to work in the embassy in Cairo/embassies in general. Hearing what they had to say definitely makes me want to join the Foreign Service. Then we got a tour of some of the offices. They have a ton of cool pictures of U.S. Presidents and the pyramids and various Middle Eastern leaders. We got to go in the Ambassador's office, which was probably as big as the 2nd floor of my house. It was huge. You could see the Citadel and the Pyramids from her view. All the people we talked to were super nice too.

And after seeing fliers when we were there during the day, that night we went back to the embassy for their St. Patrick's day party. This was in the Marines' section of the embassy though. Little bit different. It was really fun. I really felt like I was in America. They even had American beer, which was a nice change from crappy Egyptian stuff (though since the embassy is on U.S. soil I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be 21 to drink...). They had air hockey and pool tables and played all American music. I had a great time.

The day after that Alix and I went out in the desert with some of our Egyptian friends. We were supposed to sandboard and stuff but it was too windy for that so we just hung out for a bit, driving over the dunes and what not, and then came home. We had a dog with us in the car on the way there and it was really cute until it threw up twice. Not so cute anymore. It was relegated to the back of the pick up truck after that. I have some pictures of the dog and his owner riding in the back if you look at my pics site.

I've gone to a bunch of mosques for my architecture class, and pictures from them are online too. A lot of them have captions that pertain to the architectural features that I didn't want to forget, but if you're really curious I can explain what squinches and pendentives and such are. There are some cool pictures because some of the mosques are really beautiful.

I'll be in Jordan this time next week! We're going to spend a few days in Jordan then inshallah go to Syria. I say inshallah (god willing) because it's hard for Americans to get visas into Syria and we have to do it at the border since the Syrian Embassy in Egypt doesn't give visas to non-Egyptians and I can't really go to the embassy in DC. Hopefully we'll get in because Syria is supposed to be way cooler than Jordan. And our flight coming home is out of Damascus, so that's kind of important too. We'll have a few days of Spring Break left after we get back so I think Alix and I might go to Alexandria or the North Coast and relax on the Mediterranean.

For a while I thought I'd never want to leave Egypt, but I think I'll be ready to come home by the end of May. It'll be nice to have fast internet and paper towels and no ridiculous traffic. And the combination of terrible pollution and smoking sheesha (hookah) has wreaked havoc on my lungs. So it will be nice to be breathing clean air when I get home. But despite those things I'm still having a really good time.

Oh, and I have post cards written and addressed, I just need to mail them so if you gave me your address or I like you enough to sleuth it out you should be getting a post card (relatively) soon!

Seeing the beach and snow on the same day...

Now that I spent most the day sleeping I'm ready to write about Dahab.

We left around midnight on Thursday and arrived in Dahab 8 hours later. Our rooms weren't ready right away so we ate breakfast at the hotel. They had an outdoor eating area right on the water. It was a really clear day so we could see Saudi Arabia across the water. I didn't realize how close Saudi was (and I'm glad it was clear the first day because the other days it was too cloudy to see). We rode horses on the beach for like an hour then spent the rest of the day hanging out by the beach. We snorkeled a little. I saw coral for the first time! Then we took a long nap before dinner because we were leaving around midnight to drive to Mount Sinai. I had the catch of the day, red snapper, for dinner. It was delicious. I've been a little hesitant to eat seafood in Cairo so it was nice to have good fish.

It took around 2 hours to get to Mount Sinai, and it was freezing when we got there. We started climbing a little before 3 am, and it took around 3 hours to get to the top. We took a lot of breaks, but it was still super hard, especially since we hadn't really slept the night before. And I kept vacillating between being hot from climbing to cold when we took breaks. Hiking up the mountain in the pitch black was interesting as well. We made it to the top just in time for the sun to rise which was really cool. I took a bunch of pictures, so check those out (though for some reason they're out of order). There was even snow on top of the mountain (probably the only snow I will see while in Egypt) so I saw the beach and snow in the same day. The walk down was much better than the way up. That took a little less than 2 hours and we could talk and relax a lot more. Then we went inside St. Catherine's monastery, saw the Burning Bush, and went home. I slept for about 5 hours after that, which felt great. Then I went to a bar with some kids from AUC who were also in Dahab for the weekend and eventually got dinner. I had barracuda! The food overall was kind of expensive throughout the weekend, but it was really good.

On Sunday, we had a nice breakfast again on the water (all of the restaurants are on a strip right on the beach). I had a banana milkshake that was one of the best things I've ever eaten. Then we piled into a jeep and drove to Blue Hole to snorkel in the Red Sea. The snorkeling was even better than when we had done it the day before. There were so many cool, brightly colored fish that weren't phased at all by people swimming around. The coral was really pretty, and the water was so blue. Coming back in the jeep we chatted with some Danish guys and the driver took a picture of Olinda and I while driving the car (kind of scary...) After showering we got ice cream and hookah then ate dinner and packed up. We took the bus home with some other AUC kids to save money. I tried to sleep but was generally unsuccessful. We got home around 6:30, and I slept for a long time...

I have some nice tans lines, since I was able to wear a bikini on the beach (the first time my shoulders saw the light of day since going to Egypt). Overall the weekend was really relaxing. Dahab is beautiful and it was nice to get away from Cairo for a few days.

Now I have to get back into school mode after having a 4 day weekend. Luckily I only have one class tomorrow. And I might be skipping my classes on Thursday because a friend here arranged for a bunch of us to get a tour of the American Embassy and talk to people who work there and I figure that's worth missing 2 classes. So I might have a 2 day week. Pretty nice.

On a un-Dahab related note, as of this morning I'm officially returning to Sandy Hill for the summer. I didn't feel like having to find and apply for an internship while 7 hours ahead of the East Coast, and it's my last summer for graduating (and this way I won't be pasty white at Douglas's wedding!). But I'm not working for as many weeks as I usually do, so all of you who miss me terribly while I'm in Africa, don't fear- I will be home plenty!

Ok, homework time!