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!