Bombing in Cairo

So there was a bombing today in the market I went to a few weeks ago which is pretty scary, but I and everyone I know are okay.

I just wanted to provide an update in case anyone was concerned.

Felucca Ride, the Zoo, and another field trip.

Shawn's birthday was Sunday so we went out on a felucca with a bunch of people. It was really fun. There were ipod speakers so we could listen to music. All of the buildings along the Nile looked pretty cool at night. I didn't bring my camera, but when people put pictures up on facebook I'll steal some of them.

Yesterday Shawn and I went to the Zoo. That was definitely an experience. It only costs a pound to get in (roughly 18 cents) so there were tons of people just hanging out. I think most families were there more to have a picnic than so see the animals. Which makes sense, since the animals weren't that impressive. The cages were pretty small and there were a lot of deer like animals and birds and not a lot of the "cool" animals. But from talking to people who had gone to the zoo before us, we knew that if we paid the handler we could hold the baby lions. So for less than $3 Shawn and I got to hold a lion cub. I was dumb and let the zoo's photo guy take the pictures with my camera and he didn't do a very good job, but regardless, I have now held a lion.

Speaking of pictures, when Shawn and I were looking at the map a little girl came up and tapped me and said something in Arabic, but all I caught of it was "I want" so I didn't do anything, but she tapped me again and said the same thing and her mom made the camera motion. I thought she wanted me to take a picture of her, since kids do that sometimes so I took her picture but then I figured out she wanted a picture with me. So I crouched down and she put her arm around me and then a couple of other kids came over too. Shawn took a couple of pictures and all the parents pulled out their phones and took pictures. I'm thinking this happened because I was the only white person in the entire zoo (Shawn's Indian). No hyperbole, I didn't see another white person, making me more of an exotic creature than the zebras or elephants. haha.

It's interesting standing out so much, since at GW and especially Great Valley I did not stand out at all. A lot of preteen girls at the zoo came up to me asked where I was from and what my name was. On the street people just look at me a lot. I was talking to one of my Egyptian friends about it and he said that would happen since I had blonde hair and white skin. To which I was said "I don't have blonde hair" and he told me it was blonde relative to what most people have here. I've been here for 4 weeks now and overall the harassment on the street is not that bad. Maybe because people warned me a lot or because I spend most of my time in a pretty nice part of Cairo, but it's mostly pretty harmless stuff.

I had my second field trip this morning. We visited 2 mosques and 2 gates from a big wall that used to surround the royal city that existed about a thousand years ago. I took a ton of pictures and I'm putting them up online right now. The first mosque was really pretty. It had marble flooring and cool hanging lights. The stone engraving on all the buildings is amazing.

Also, the weather is beautiful here. Even when it's a little chillier (like 60 degrees) it's still sunny and clear skies every day. There have maybe been 2 overcast days in the 4 weeks I've been here, and one of those was a day last week where we had a mini-sandstorm (later in the semester we'll have a whole week of sandstorms...). It's a nice change from rainy and cold DC.

Ok now I need to do some homework!

A mosque and a museum

So I've been going out more now that we've made some Egyptian/non-GW friends, which is why I haven't been writing as much. Plus classes aren't that exciting to write about (though one of my professors who is super strict about attendance told us he was ok with us using wikipedia as a reference in our term paper).

This morning I had a field trip for my art and architecture class. We went to the Nilometer, this really old structure that was used to measure the height of the Nile. Then we went to the Ibn Tulun Mosque, the oldest still existing mosque in Cairo. It was really cool. We got to go to the top of the minaret. I took a ton of pictures. I'm putting them up on my website right now. I figured out how to record voice tags to pictures I take, which is pretty cool. I can record what my professor says about different structures and whatnot.

Then I met up with Alix and we went to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum. It costs 30 LE for students to get in which isn't bad. But it's only 1 LE for Egyptian students. The actual museum was pretty cool. We saw a lot of mummies and jewelry and cool things. Sadly, you aren't allowed to take pictures there. We didn't stay for too long because we were hungry and tired and we figured we could go again later. The most notable thing was probably the slutty clothes some girls were wearing. Clearly they didn't realize they were in Egypt. Mini skirts and tank tops and cleavage everywhere. It was pretty ridiculous. I get tons of looks and comments when I wear a turtleneck around, let alone tiny little clothes. Some people...

I'm talking to Douglas and Noelle on Skype right now. Douglas wants a shout out because he's an egomaniac. haha. I don't know how I'd keep in touch with everyone without skype. It's so nice to be able to see and talk to people from home for free. Though Douglas just informed me about his bowel movements. Lovely

Lots of adventures

So we were planning on going to the pyramids nice and early until I read in one of the guide books that the pyramids are often shrouded in mist until around 10. So we left a little later. We didn't know exactly where in the city the pyramids were, but luckily we were able to tell the cabbie that we wanted to go to the pyramids and he took us there. After about 20-30 minutes, the biggest pyramid just appeared out of nowhere. We were all pretty excited. Then we got out of the cab, paid the 30 LE for students to get into the area and were immediately approached by a guy saying that he worked for the Egyptian government and he would show us around. Shawn complained to Alix and I about what we "whities" had gotten him into. Once we said we wanted to ride camels, the guy found someone with 3 camels and we debated about the price. We still paid a lot, but we figured it was probably the only time we would be doing this. And it was worth it. We rode the camels around all three of the big pyramids and the Sphinx. We stopped to take pictures at each of them (including pictures on the camel). At one point I got to like gallop on the camel across part of the desert, which was cool, but the bouncing up and down hurt a little. It's definitely different than riding a horse, and I'm pretty sore today. In the end our guide wanted us to give him a lot of money, but at the beginning he had told us we could give him whatever we wanted, so we gave him what we thought he deserved (about half of what he had asked). Yesterday was a perfect day for going there. It was warm, but not too hot. I had heard that the people are really pushy about selling things, but it really wasn't bad. Every once in a while a kid would come up to us, but they left one we said "la la" (meaning no no in Arabic). After taking tons of pictures, we left the area and took a taxi home. Then we had a delicious lunch at Pizza Hut, which as I said last time is a sit down restaurant with waiters and what not. Then I uploaded my pictures and took an awesome nap.

Last night I went to Drew's professor/bff's apartment for dessert with some of the Northeastern kids. The dessert was delicious. I was there for about 3.5 hours, and it was really cool.

Today Alix and I went to the City Stars mall, which is a huge, luxury mall in Cairo. Getting there was kind of a process. The cab driver didn't know where it was and we had to stop so he could ask. He then drove the wrong way down a one way street and got a ticket. He also stopped to get gas while we were in the car. Then we finally go to the right neighborhood and dropped us off at a mall. But not the right one. We went inside anyway since we wanted to get away from that guy. We were the only white people in the entire mall. Alix almost fell getting off the escalator because she was watching kids on the indoor ice skating rink and this guy at the top laughed because he saw too. We smiled and walked away and noticed that he was still standing there as we walked around. As we were leaving the mall he came up to me and told me his phone number and told me to call him tomorrow...

So then we left that mall and got in another cab that took us to the mall we wanted to go to. Walking inside felt like stepping into an American mall, and a nice mall at that. It's 7 stories. And has restaurants like Ruby Tuesday, Chillies, Johnny Rockets, and Macaroni Grill, among all the normal fast food chains. We went to the food court and got Asian food that could have easily come from a Chinese food place at the Exton mall. We went into H&M which was pretty pricey. Overall, the whole mall was pretty ritzy. Coming home took forever because none of the cabbies know the street we live on. Hopefully I'll get better at giving directions. Once we get to a certain spot I can direct him home, but tonight it took doing two loops around the island before we got to somewhere we recognized.

Now I have to do some homework since we have classes on Sunday here!

the pyramids!!

Well we went to the pyramids today! I'll write all about it later, but I'm tried now. But I wanted to let you know that I have my pyramid photos posted on my website.

Oh and the last picture in the pyramids album is of the pizza hut here- it is a sit down restaurant. pretty bizarre.

Also, Drew- 1) Now I have my own pyramid pictures. So there 2) I spent like 3.5 hours at Denis's apartment tonight. It was really cool. We had some delicious desserts. I'll tell you all about it later!

And for Kaitlin- I have no Twilight update because I haven't been able to acquire the 4th one yet. I'm working on it though.

Classes and an adventure

Over the weekend I went with some girls from Georgetown to Khan al-Khalili, this big bazaar/market thing in Islamic Cairo (one of the older parts, the bazaar was the oldest in Cairo I heard). There were a lot of cool things for sale like scarves, clothes, perfume, shoes, and all sorts of souvenir type things. I didn't buy anything but I took lots of pictures (they're up on my website). There were a lot of really cool old buildings. We went in a mosque that had a big opening in the ceiling so you could see the sky. We just wandered around for a while. We got lost but asked in Arabic how to get back and were able to successfully follow the Arabic instructions! Clearly Survival Arabic paid off. Getting lunch was an experience. There were probably 10 identical restaurants next to each other on this one street and each had a guy outside it trying to get you to come in. They would come up and thrust the menu in your face and try to get you to sit down. They would even come up while you were talking to a guy from a different restaurant. The one we picked was fine, nothing too exciting.

The funniest part about the bazaar was what all the men said. All three of us were dressed pretty conservatively but that didn't stop the vendors from saying all sorts of ridiculous things. I heard "Are you a movie star? Are you a movie star?" "Hello my future wife" "You're beautiful. Are you married?" along with a lot of "hi" and just staring. One guy said something about Obama and a bunch of guys started yelling "OBAMA!!" They love him over here apparently. One of the girls I was with is Puerto Rican and could pass for Egyptian so a lot people asked her what she was/if she was Egyptian. Oh, we got baklava and some Egyptian dessert from a street vendor that was soo good.

Classes started on Sunday. They seem pretty good. All of them are a majority American though which is kind of a bummer. I'm only taking 4 classes which is nice, especially coming after a semester of 5 hard classes and working 13 hours a week. The bus schedule is a pain and I'm always stuck with an extra 40 min before or after each class but hopefully I'll just use that to get work done.

Alix and I are planning on going to the Pyramids on Friday because neither of us have been and we both want to go soon. I will take lots of pictures- especially if I ride a camel!!

Drew's professor Denis invited me over to his apartment for dessert on Friday so that will be nice to go to. Oh and the director of study abroad and the director of GW's Arabic program took all the GW kids out for dinner and coffee last night. It was really nice. The food was great. I had moulekhaya which is this slimy green stuff made of a root like spinach and other herbs that you put on rice and eat with meat (I had a choice of chicken, meatballs, or rabbit. I went with meatballs). It was really good. Both of the directors were really cool to talk to, especially the director of Arabic. I'm glad I met him because I might have him in class later on.

I have pretty much given up on trying to watch TV here because the internet is so slow and the sketchy sites don't work super well. I wish I could use all the legit ones but alas they don't work outside the US. I really want to watch the Office!! But I have a lot more free time because I'm not watching TV.

Okay I'm going to get back to doing some work! (Also I'm in the study room and a cat just walked by. Cats wander around the lobby of our dorm. They are everywhere on the street. Last night we saw a little kitten and it was sooo cute. But we can't pet them in case they have rabies. Speaking of that- Mom have I had a rabies shot?)

P.S. I miss talking to all of you so definitely skype, fb chat, im me!