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!