Classes have been suspended again and will resume on Dec 6, as opposed to the 1st. Not much of a difference, but it's nice to know that I will still have time to get all my stuff done after I get back from Jordan on the 30. Alhamdulelah!
Leaving for Jordan in about 12 hours! See you kids on the 30th!
Exciting News!
Thanksgiving break [it's actually a break for Eid al-Adha* here, which conveniently falls over the same period as Thanksgiving] starts tomorrow night. I had pretty much made up my mind to be boring and stay on campus to get work done, but I started changing my mind yesterday..after all, I'm living in Egypt. Yes, my schoolwork is important [and I'll get it all done], but the life experience I'm getting here is just as important. So tonight I took the plunge- Will and I splurged** and bought tickets to Amman, Jordan! Our flight leaves at 8am on the 26 and we will spend two days in Amman, and two days exploring the ancient city of Petra. We get back late the night of the 30. I am so, so excited for so many reasons..I have wanted to go to Petra for years! Also, while in Petra, we are planning a trip to the Dead Sea, which is something on my Life List. We were originally throwing around the idea of doing this trip the old-fashioned way: taking a bus from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh, then catching the ferry from Nueba, Egypt to Aqqaba, Jordan, and finally a taxi from Aqqaba to Petra. All of this would take an entire day each way and leave us with limited time in the country, as well as being fairly expensive. It would also be a fairly stressful process and our nerves would already be wearing then by the time we got to Jordan [I don't do well on long bus rides- they are uncomfortable and usually smelly, and a bus to Sharm is around 8 hours, plus the ferry to Jordan is supposed to be a pretty stressful experience]. Granted, the airfare was more expensive, but we will be saving countless hours and arguments. I am so, so, excited and cannot believe that in less than 36 hours I will be in Jordan! I will be back with lots of stories and pictures on the 30th! Take care!
*Eid al-Adha is the Muslim holiday which translates to "Festival of the Sacrifice". It is celebrated to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismael as an act of obedience to God.
**I should note that it was not I who splurged, but rather my parents. I am so blessed with parents who are so gracious and generous and who really believe in my passions and support my obsessive wanderlust. They are truly incredible people and I am beyond lucky to have them as my parents. They will never know how much I appreciate them and everything they do for me. This blog would not exist if not for their willingness to send me all over the world to learn and absorb all that I can. I am so very thankful. I love you Mom and Dad!
*Eid al-Adha is the Muslim holiday which translates to "Festival of the Sacrifice". It is celebrated to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismael as an act of obedience to God.
**I should note that it was not I who splurged, but rather my parents. I am so blessed with parents who are so gracious and generous and who really believe in my passions and support my obsessive wanderlust. They are truly incredible people and I am beyond lucky to have them as my parents. They will never know how much I appreciate them and everything they do for me. This blog would not exist if not for their willingness to send me all over the world to learn and absorb all that I can. I am so very thankful. I love you Mom and Dad!
The Life List
Before I moved to Egypt, I started a list that was meant to be something like a "Bucket List", but was also intended to be a sweet joke for my parents promising I'd be okay living by myself in the Middle East which I planned to craft into a bittersweet, tear-evoking letter entitled "Reasons Why I Can't Get Blown Up Yet". Later on I decided against that, but the list has been growing and evolving ever since then. I have a page of notebook paper which contains the list, and also some quotes which I hold near and dear, that I keep folded up in my wallet. Most of the things will sound like random, cliched, idealistic bohemian tree-hugging wannabe-flowerchild, early 20's rambling, but each of the things on this list really mean a lot to me. Some of these things will take only seconds to accomplish, others years. But I genuinely plan on doing each and every one of them. So, without further ado, here it is:
The Life List
-Go to the Sudan and see the Nubian artifacts [which will all be destroyed within the next 5 years because of the dam being built there]
-Hike Kilimanjaro
-Walk on hot coals. Brag for years.
-Join the Peace Corps. Proceed to do awesome things for the world.
-Lie on a bed of nails. Brag for years.
-Live in a teepee in the jungle. Be dirty.
-Hike Tiger Leaping Gorge, China
-Study with Buddhist monks in Bhutan
-Spend at least a year gallavanting around the globe
-Hitch-hike from Cape Town to Alexandria
-Publish a book
-Study yoga in India. Awaken kundalini power. Possibly go insane..?
-Go to the Holi Festival. Get dirty colorful.
-Float in the Dead Sea
-Grow dreadlocks. Be dirty.
-Be completely alone for at least a week. Preferably in the woods.
-Camp in the High Atlas.
-See Alabama win a National Championship. Roll Tide.
-Spend an extended amount of time on a ship.
-Be a nomad in the Gobi
-Work at a baby elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka
-Ride an ostrich
-Practice capoeira
-Race a camel
-Spend a week in the African savannah.
What are your Life Lists, readers?
The Life List
-Go to the Sudan and see the Nubian artifacts [which will all be destroyed within the next 5 years because of the dam being built there]
-Hike Kilimanjaro
-Walk on hot coals. Brag for years.
-Join the Peace Corps. Proceed to do awesome things for the world.
-Lie on a bed of nails. Brag for years.
-Live in a teepee in the jungle. Be dirty.
-Hike Tiger Leaping Gorge, China
-Study with Buddhist monks in Bhutan
-Spend at least a year gallavanting around the globe
-Hitch-hike from Cape Town to Alexandria
-Publish a book
-Study yoga in India. Awaken kundalini power. Possibly go insane..?
-Go to the Holi Festival. Get dirty colorful.
-Float in the Dead Sea
-Grow dreadlocks. Be dirty.
-Be completely alone for at least a week. Preferably in the woods.
-Camp in the High Atlas.
-See Alabama win a National Championship. Roll Tide.
-Spend an extended amount of time on a ship.
-Be a nomad in the Gobi
-Work at a baby elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka
-Ride an ostrich
-Practice capoeira
-Race a camel
-Spend a week in the African savannah.
What are your Life Lists, readers?
An Open Letter to the Love of My Life
Dear Skype,
I know things have been touch-and-go with us for a while; sometimes I'm satisfied with you and sometimes I'm not. Being out here in the desert, where it's blazing hot and then freezing cold, tends to make you moody and fickle, and believe me, I understand. But these past few days you've really shown me the scope of your commitment. You've really buckled down and worked hard for things you know are important to me, and because of that, I have to say, I think I've fallen for you.
In the past few days, you've helped me talk to my two most important non-family members in the world on several occasions. Not only that, but you've made me feel as if I were there in the room with them. It almost feels unfair, as if I'm cheating on the distance that separates us, the invisible wedge of time and space that has kept us apart these past few months. Because after a few quick rings, there I was, sitting on Kenny's bed, talking with him like I would have after any given school day last year, laughing with him, bickering with him-- it was familiar and comfortable and everything I don't usually have. And then suddenly there was Murph, and he and Kenny and I all bickered back and forth good-naturedly for a while, which hasn't happened for a long, long time. After an hour and a half of talking to my two best friends a world away, I was left with an overwhelming, all-consuming feeling that threatened to fill me up until it began spilling out of my eyes. Home.
And that's when I realized, Skype, that I'm in love with you. After spending the past week on my death bed [or in a hospital bed] with a lung infection [I'm only exaggerating slightly, mind you], you must have known that this was exactly what I needed. You know me so well. I know with this sudden talk of love and committment, you may turn and run, but I really hope not, especially because I need you desperately, if only to finish making my New Years plans with Kenny [wow, I feel like I'm in this situation every year..]. But really, I need you, I do. I know that now. Don't ever leave me; it means too much to me. I love you. Completely, always and forever.
Until they invent a teleporter. In which case, you're f-----.
Love,
Danielle
PS-
Other news, aside from lots of recent Skype time with my very best friends: Egypt lost the final World Cup qualifier in Sudan 1-0, there are riots in the streets of Cairo, my scantily-clad roommate finally got in trouble for being scantily-clad [thank you Sachi!], there is no water at AUC and there is limited electricity. Gotta love Egypt.
I know things have been touch-and-go with us for a while; sometimes I'm satisfied with you and sometimes I'm not. Being out here in the desert, where it's blazing hot and then freezing cold, tends to make you moody and fickle, and believe me, I understand. But these past few days you've really shown me the scope of your commitment. You've really buckled down and worked hard for things you know are important to me, and because of that, I have to say, I think I've fallen for you.
In the past few days, you've helped me talk to my two most important non-family members in the world on several occasions. Not only that, but you've made me feel as if I were there in the room with them. It almost feels unfair, as if I'm cheating on the distance that separates us, the invisible wedge of time and space that has kept us apart these past few months. Because after a few quick rings, there I was, sitting on Kenny's bed, talking with him like I would have after any given school day last year, laughing with him, bickering with him-- it was familiar and comfortable and everything I don't usually have. And then suddenly there was Murph, and he and Kenny and I all bickered back and forth good-naturedly for a while, which hasn't happened for a long, long time. After an hour and a half of talking to my two best friends a world away, I was left with an overwhelming, all-consuming feeling that threatened to fill me up until it began spilling out of my eyes. Home.
And that's when I realized, Skype, that I'm in love with you. After spending the past week on my death bed [or in a hospital bed] with a lung infection [I'm only exaggerating slightly, mind you], you must have known that this was exactly what I needed. You know me so well. I know with this sudden talk of love and committment, you may turn and run, but I really hope not, especially because I need you desperately, if only to finish making my New Years plans with Kenny [wow, I feel like I'm in this situation every year..]. But really, I need you, I do. I know that now. Don't ever leave me; it means too much to me. I love you. Completely, always and forever.
Until they invent a teleporter. In which case, you're f-----.
Love,
Danielle
PS-
Other news, aside from lots of recent Skype time with my very best friends: Egypt lost the final World Cup qualifier in Sudan 1-0, there are riots in the streets of Cairo, my scantily-clad roommate finally got in trouble for being scantily-clad [thank you Sachi!], there is no water at AUC and there is limited electricity. Gotta love Egypt.
YA MISR!!!
I know that I've gone native, for a few reasons. The most convincing argument though, is Egyptian football. Yes, I mean soccer, Americans.
Egypt is battling to get the last spot for Africa in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Tonight the battle came to a head in Cairo, in a match against rival Algeria. Egypt had to win by at least 2 points to stay alive and have a tiebreaker match, or win by 3 points to be assured a spot in the World Cup.
Our tiny common room filled to the brim about an hour before the game even started. Face paint, Egyptian flags, and the national anthem were abundant. The tension had been building for days; the Algerian players were even stoned as they rode their bus into Cairo. I don't support that, but I sure do love passionate sports fans.
In the first two minutes of the match, Egypt scored an incredible goal. The common room was deafening. However, the next 88 minutes were all filled with disappointment. Algeria wasn't scoring, but we weren't either. After the regular play time expired, 6 extra minutes were added to the clock to account for play time which was consumed by injuries. That was all Egypt needed. With seconds to spare, we scored and secured a tiebreaker match which will take place on Wednesday in the Sudan.
Afterwards, footage of the streets of Cairo were shown: things were on fire, people were waving flags everywhere, everyone was screaming and singing and random explosions were going off. Now this is fanhood. I loved every second.
This is significant for a few reasons.
1. It was f*****g awesome. Close games are my absolute favorite things.
2. I hate soccer. And I was still jumping out of my seat screaming at the television.
3. I wish I was there. My parents would have had aneurisms if they knew I was around explosions in downtown Cairo, but MAN, do Egyptians know how to celebrate!
4. This is perhaps the most important: I felt a familiar swell of pride when time expired and the score was Egypt 2-0 Algeria, not unlike the feeling I get watching Alabama football. Granted, it was not quite as strong of overwhelming, but I felt it; that quiet stir in my heart signaling the beginning of a love affair. It felt similar to the feeling I had watching Morocco's olympians march in the opening ceremonies of the 08 games.
It's funny, because as I write this, I am lying in bed wearing a shirt that says "I am not a tourist, I live here" in Arabic and for the first time, it feels true. I do live here. Egypt is home now, and will be for the next few years. And I am so happy.
Egypt is battling to get the last spot for Africa in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Tonight the battle came to a head in Cairo, in a match against rival Algeria. Egypt had to win by at least 2 points to stay alive and have a tiebreaker match, or win by 3 points to be assured a spot in the World Cup.
Our tiny common room filled to the brim about an hour before the game even started. Face paint, Egyptian flags, and the national anthem were abundant. The tension had been building for days; the Algerian players were even stoned as they rode their bus into Cairo. I don't support that, but I sure do love passionate sports fans.
In the first two minutes of the match, Egypt scored an incredible goal. The common room was deafening. However, the next 88 minutes were all filled with disappointment. Algeria wasn't scoring, but we weren't either. After the regular play time expired, 6 extra minutes were added to the clock to account for play time which was consumed by injuries. That was all Egypt needed. With seconds to spare, we scored and secured a tiebreaker match which will take place on Wednesday in the Sudan.
Afterwards, footage of the streets of Cairo were shown: things were on fire, people were waving flags everywhere, everyone was screaming and singing and random explosions were going off. Now this is fanhood. I loved every second.
This is significant for a few reasons.
1. It was f*****g awesome. Close games are my absolute favorite things.
2. I hate soccer. And I was still jumping out of my seat screaming at the television.
3. I wish I was there. My parents would have had aneurisms if they knew I was around explosions in downtown Cairo, but MAN, do Egyptians know how to celebrate!
4. This is perhaps the most important: I felt a familiar swell of pride when time expired and the score was Egypt 2-0 Algeria, not unlike the feeling I get watching Alabama football. Granted, it was not quite as strong of overwhelming, but I felt it; that quiet stir in my heart signaling the beginning of a love affair. It felt similar to the feeling I had watching Morocco's olympians march in the opening ceremonies of the 08 games.
It's funny, because as I write this, I am lying in bed wearing a shirt that says "I am not a tourist, I live here" in Arabic and for the first time, it feels true. I do live here. Egypt is home now, and will be for the next few years. And I am so happy.
Grey
It's been cold here lately. And grey. And the annual mid-semester breakdown where everyone contemplates saying "f--- college", running away and joining the circus is bearing down upon us here at AUC.
Tonight I let the shower run for 15 minutes before I got in. I wanted it to be good and hot. Scalding would be ideal.
Being the champion of water conservation among my friends, my normal shower lasts 5 minutes, no preheating.
Tonight, to hell with the water shortage in the Middle East, I lingered around in the shower three times longer than usual. As I stood in the midst of all that heat, the sand-colored tiles around me, the foggy shower glass, the sensation of itchiness which has been my constant companion since August 28, all melted away. It was only me and the water, cascading down everywhere, and I was somewhere warm and safe and happy.
Yesterday in class, freezing, I snuggled down into the shoulder of the t-shirt I was wearing. I was taken aback by how comforted I was, feeling the soft cotton rub against my cheek. Suddenly I was somewhere else where I was not stressed about midterms, or tired of my friends, or itchy. Home.
Yes, I'm finally feeling some twinges of homesickness.
I miss my mom and dad.
I miss the Cult.
I miss you all.
Sending my love from Egypt tonight across the Atlantic. 51 days until I get to feel warm, and safe, and loved, and welcome, and familiar.
Tonight I let the shower run for 15 minutes before I got in. I wanted it to be good and hot. Scalding would be ideal.
Being the champion of water conservation among my friends, my normal shower lasts 5 minutes, no preheating.
Tonight, to hell with the water shortage in the Middle East, I lingered around in the shower three times longer than usual. As I stood in the midst of all that heat, the sand-colored tiles around me, the foggy shower glass, the sensation of itchiness which has been my constant companion since August 28, all melted away. It was only me and the water, cascading down everywhere, and I was somewhere warm and safe and happy.
Yesterday in class, freezing, I snuggled down into the shoulder of the t-shirt I was wearing. I was taken aback by how comforted I was, feeling the soft cotton rub against my cheek. Suddenly I was somewhere else where I was not stressed about midterms, or tired of my friends, or itchy. Home.
Yes, I'm finally feeling some twinges of homesickness.
I miss my mom and dad.
I miss the Cult.
I miss you all.
Sending my love from Egypt tonight across the Atlantic. 51 days until I get to feel warm, and safe, and loved, and welcome, and familiar.
Happy Halloween min Al-Misr!
Happy Halloween everyone!
Truth be told, I'm really missing America today-- Halloween is my favorite holiday, not to mention the holiest of all days: Nick Saban's birthday [ROLL TIDE!]. There was a Halloween party here on campus last night that only succeeded in making me fully realize exactly what all I gave up to come to Egypt. Even if it is all just sweaty, debauched frat parties and copious amounts of booze, the American college experience is one hell of a fun time.
I have two midterms to study for tomorrow, but I decided to go to Maadi to pick up some boxes my mom sent to Dave and Amy's for me ages ago. Will and I took a bus to Maadi, then caught a cab to Dave and Amy's place. We picked up my boxes, popped in to a local expat market where we loaded up on snacks and Dr. Pepper, and caught a cab back to New Cairo, all of which went ridiculously smoothly and easy. The entire endeavor took less than two and a half hours--an amazing feat in a country where NOTHING happens quickly.
My boxes were full of goodies: 8 packs of Djarum Black clove cigarettes, Halloween candy, movies, clothes, newspaper clippings about Bama football and Megan Fox [my two favorite topics!], a Halloween card, and a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. It made me feel so much better on a day when I was really missing home- a care package from the world I left behind.
I promise I really will write on my Alex trip at some point, but I am pretty tired tonight and still have a lot of studying to do. Goodnight from Egypt, Happy Halloween!
Truth be told, I'm really missing America today-- Halloween is my favorite holiday, not to mention the holiest of all days: Nick Saban's birthday [ROLL TIDE!]. There was a Halloween party here on campus last night that only succeeded in making me fully realize exactly what all I gave up to come to Egypt. Even if it is all just sweaty, debauched frat parties and copious amounts of booze, the American college experience is one hell of a fun time.
I have two midterms to study for tomorrow, but I decided to go to Maadi to pick up some boxes my mom sent to Dave and Amy's for me ages ago. Will and I took a bus to Maadi, then caught a cab to Dave and Amy's place. We picked up my boxes, popped in to a local expat market where we loaded up on snacks and Dr. Pepper, and caught a cab back to New Cairo, all of which went ridiculously smoothly and easy. The entire endeavor took less than two and a half hours--an amazing feat in a country where NOTHING happens quickly.
My boxes were full of goodies: 8 packs of Djarum Black clove cigarettes, Halloween candy, movies, clothes, newspaper clippings about Bama football and Megan Fox [my two favorite topics!], a Halloween card, and a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. It made me feel so much better on a day when I was really missing home- a care package from the world I left behind.
I promise I really will write on my Alex trip at some point, but I am pretty tired tonight and still have a lot of studying to do. Goodnight from Egypt, Happy Halloween!
What's in my Bag? Egypt Edition
There are few ways that enable you to understand what life is like somewhere better than examining the things you need for day-to-day life in that place.
So, without further ado, I present to you:
What's in My Bag?- Egypt Edition*
Bag: Red patterned elephant messenger bag, bought in Dahab for 50 L.E. [approx. 10 USD]
Contents:
-cell phone
-camera
-wallet
-in my wallet [yellow embossed camel skin leather from Morocco]:
Hard Rock Café Hurghada refreshing towelette
Doctor's note for missing class on Sunday
97 LE
Same Same But Different restaurant card from Dahab
Ahmed Adly, International Chess Grandmaster business card
AUC Senior Coordinator business card
UA Student ID
Alabama driver's license and military ID
International Student Identity Card [expired]
Jamie Lyons' business card [hahaha]
Ticket stub from Alabama vs. Clemson [08 season opener]
Mastercard
Ticket stub from Alexandria catacombs
Twenty 10-pound Mobinil phone credit cards
Picture of my nephew
Visa card
AUC Student ID
-passport
-notebook [I am constantly writing down little notes I want to remember to write about…my lack of updates wouldn't be telling of this but I swear it's true!]
-sunglasses..cuz it's freakin Egypt, man- It's sunny!
-iPod
-flashdrive
-2 AUC pens, one of which doesn't work
-Chapstick…cuz it's dry here
-bobby pins
-deodorant..because I sweat. A lot. It's the Middle East!
-bronzer
-56.70 LE and 3.46 USD in loose change
-random sea glass and coral from Dahab and Hurghada, respectively
-5 Ambien which spilled on a bus ride
-La Roka Café flier
Excerpt from flier: "we have the honor to invite you as we will organize the greater party in El Haram just as we blissful to presentation elevated favor and enjoying by captivated nature and enjoyment by dj tones with dj stars. This party at next Thursday and every Thursday and Friday at 9pm." Hilarious? Yes.
*for those of you who don't know, when bloggers are feeling lazy and don't feel like being introspective but need to post something, they list things. Hopefully this list was at least a tiny bit entertaining, and maybe even accomplished the goal, which was to give you insight into my life here in Al-Misr. No? Eh, you can't win 'em all.
So, without further ado, I present to you:
What's in My Bag?- Egypt Edition*
Bag: Red patterned elephant messenger bag, bought in Dahab for 50 L.E. [approx. 10 USD]
Contents:
-cell phone
-camera
-wallet
-in my wallet [yellow embossed camel skin leather from Morocco]:
Hard Rock Café Hurghada refreshing towelette
Doctor's note for missing class on Sunday
97 LE
Same Same But Different restaurant card from Dahab
Ahmed Adly, International Chess Grandmaster business card
AUC Senior Coordinator business card
UA Student ID
Alabama driver's license and military ID
International Student Identity Card [expired]
Jamie Lyons' business card [hahaha]
Ticket stub from Alabama vs. Clemson [08 season opener]
Mastercard
Ticket stub from Alexandria catacombs
Twenty 10-pound Mobinil phone credit cards
Picture of my nephew
Visa card
AUC Student ID
-passport
-notebook [I am constantly writing down little notes I want to remember to write about…my lack of updates wouldn't be telling of this but I swear it's true!]
-sunglasses..cuz it's freakin Egypt, man- It's sunny!
-iPod
-flashdrive
-2 AUC pens, one of which doesn't work
-Chapstick…cuz it's dry here
-bobby pins
-deodorant..because I sweat. A lot. It's the Middle East!
-bronzer
-56.70 LE and 3.46 USD in loose change
-random sea glass and coral from Dahab and Hurghada, respectively
-5 Ambien which spilled on a bus ride
-La Roka Café flier
Excerpt from flier: "we have the honor to invite you as we will organize the greater party in El Haram just as we blissful to presentation elevated favor and enjoying by captivated nature and enjoyment by dj tones with dj stars. This party at next Thursday and every Thursday and Friday at 9pm." Hilarious? Yes.
*for those of you who don't know, when bloggers are feeling lazy and don't feel like being introspective but need to post something, they list things. Hopefully this list was at least a tiny bit entertaining, and maybe even accomplished the goal, which was to give you insight into my life here in Al-Misr. No? Eh, you can't win 'em all.
This place is a prison.
Nighttime.
A girl sits alone in a dark, deserted courtyard, lips painted a dark rouge for no one in particular, wearing the same uniform of too-tight black pants and black shirt, last night's eyeliner smeared haphazardly around languid eyes, lazily puffing away on a cigarette, complacent, listless, agitated. The picture of indifference; she isn't going anywhere.
Some days these walls feel like a prison. The sky is gray and tyrannical, feels as if at any moment it might give up the hope of hanging on to the heavens and come crashing down on us all. The wooden lattices on the windows become bars, the sterile concrete buildings, with their sharp edges and straight facades my faceless oppressors.
A restless mood settles over me.
Some days the world is not quite big enough. Some days AUC is too damn small.
[Alexandria post coming soon.]
A girl sits alone in a dark, deserted courtyard, lips painted a dark rouge for no one in particular, wearing the same uniform of too-tight black pants and black shirt, last night's eyeliner smeared haphazardly around languid eyes, lazily puffing away on a cigarette, complacent, listless, agitated. The picture of indifference; she isn't going anywhere.
Some days these walls feel like a prison. The sky is gray and tyrannical, feels as if at any moment it might give up the hope of hanging on to the heavens and come crashing down on us all. The wooden lattices on the windows become bars, the sterile concrete buildings, with their sharp edges and straight facades my faceless oppressors.
A restless mood settles over me.
Some days the world is not quite big enough. Some days AUC is too damn small.
[Alexandria post coming soon.]
Down in Africa..
It's hard to believe that I've already been in Egypt longer than I was in Morocco. How different my experiences have been! I know I definitely feel like my learning has been delayed, both culturally and academically. I have yet to get up close and personal with the pyramids or the Sphinx, though I've ridden Arabian stallions alongside them at sunrise, and I haven't travelled to see the obelisks, the Valley of the Kings, or even made it to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square yet. A large part of that is because I don't technically live in Cairo. I live in the middle of a desert outside of Cairo, in a wasteland called New Cairo, which, in five years, will be just as bustling as Zamalek, Tahrir, Maadi, and the Heliopolis, but for now is filled with the skeletons of houses yet to be completed and a whole lot of sand. Then there is the shimmering oasis that is the AUC compound, safely tucked away in the middle of nowhere, in a suburb of New Cairo called Katameya, a virtual Shangri La barricaded behind walls and fences, kept completely unto itself.
I've been meaning to describe AUC in depth for some time now, but it is really pretty difficult to put into words the feat of engineering and hubris that is New Campus. I have likened it more than once to a resort, not a university. First of all, it rises out of the desert sand, looming like a small city in the vast emptiness. Once inside the compound –after clearing multiple checkpoints, mind you- the concrete assaults your senses, which realize that here is a huge concrete and marble structure, built on sand, in a place where no structure at all has any business being built.
One main walkway courses through the campus, flanked on either side by looming, architecturally avant garde office buildings and classrooms. Bisecting this walkway are various fountains, man-made rivers, and burbling geysers. The fountains are innumerable on campus, wasting water left and right, but I have to admit that on days when the fountains aren't on or aren't working, the heat is oppressive and the campus just feels so unbearably, unnaturally dry. The walkway is jagged cobblestone lined with slick –too slick- marble, proof that the government was literally desperate to spend money on things as senseless as marble sidewalks.
The buildings are labyrinthine in design; there's a trick to understanding how they're laid out, and once you get it, it's not completely impossible to get to class on time…but these things take time and diligent study. There are balconies and terraces everywhere. The thing that is amazing is the way the design of the buildings brings the outside in. Many times I have been walking down a hallway, looked up, and realized there was no roof…I was technically outside, in a school building. There are random fountains and courtyards scattered throughout every building, and this has a very calming effect, which is necessary in dealing with the bureaucracy which runs AUC. The indoors and outdoors are integrated seamlessly, giving this monstrous marvel of architectural engineering an almost..organic feel. I didn’t even know that was possible.
The "quad" is a huge concrete courtyard filled with fountains and lined with food kiosks and classrooms. There are shady umbrellas and leisurely looking wickers chairs scattered everywhere, and several smaller, sunken courtyards with fountain moats surrounding them, with small concrete bridges connecting them to the larger quad area. There are also several staircases which lead to nowhere, placed in the quad just to serve as a sitting structure—we do leisure very well in Egypt.
Now there are definitely difficulties that come with building a compound in the middle of the desert, as my friend Becky was so apt to point out. The water is fickle- sometimes there is none. When there is water, it's rarely hot. Sometime's the toilets don't flush. You can't flush toilet paper, or they overflow. There are no power lines out here, so the whole operation is powered by generators, which go out frequently. Yesterday at 3:30pm the electricity went out and didn't come back on until around 9pm, plunging the school into four hours of darkness after the sun set at 5, leaving everyone in a frenzy of terror and excitement, and causing an overload in buses due to the mass exodus from the campus into Cairo.
Naturally in our little oasis we are cut off from "real life" in Egypt. This is frustrating for me on many levels, because I was looking forward to trying to assimilate into Egyptian culture. Living on campus exacerbates this problem. But I'm adjusting to my new reality. I'm adjusting to spoiled, immature, elitist Egyptian kids fresh out of high school interrupting teachers and speaking during lecture. I'm learning to control my anger at seeing water wasted unscrupulously. I'm even learning to forgive closed-minded statements about the place of women in society which literally set women's rights back hundreds of years. It is the strange day-to-day existence on the compound which gives me my only semblance of reality and stability, but also daily amazes me with its grandiosity and unnecessary amenities. Such is life in the Middle East, eh?
I'm going to Alexandria this weekend [insha'allah] so a good post is coming soon, promise!
Also, I'm on the AUC fencing team. I told you life is ridiculous here.
Take care, I miss you all!
I've been meaning to describe AUC in depth for some time now, but it is really pretty difficult to put into words the feat of engineering and hubris that is New Campus. I have likened it more than once to a resort, not a university. First of all, it rises out of the desert sand, looming like a small city in the vast emptiness. Once inside the compound –after clearing multiple checkpoints, mind you- the concrete assaults your senses, which realize that here is a huge concrete and marble structure, built on sand, in a place where no structure at all has any business being built.
One main walkway courses through the campus, flanked on either side by looming, architecturally avant garde office buildings and classrooms. Bisecting this walkway are various fountains, man-made rivers, and burbling geysers. The fountains are innumerable on campus, wasting water left and right, but I have to admit that on days when the fountains aren't on or aren't working, the heat is oppressive and the campus just feels so unbearably, unnaturally dry. The walkway is jagged cobblestone lined with slick –too slick- marble, proof that the government was literally desperate to spend money on things as senseless as marble sidewalks.
The buildings are labyrinthine in design; there's a trick to understanding how they're laid out, and once you get it, it's not completely impossible to get to class on time…but these things take time and diligent study. There are balconies and terraces everywhere. The thing that is amazing is the way the design of the buildings brings the outside in. Many times I have been walking down a hallway, looked up, and realized there was no roof…I was technically outside, in a school building. There are random fountains and courtyards scattered throughout every building, and this has a very calming effect, which is necessary in dealing with the bureaucracy which runs AUC. The indoors and outdoors are integrated seamlessly, giving this monstrous marvel of architectural engineering an almost..organic feel. I didn’t even know that was possible.
The "quad" is a huge concrete courtyard filled with fountains and lined with food kiosks and classrooms. There are shady umbrellas and leisurely looking wickers chairs scattered everywhere, and several smaller, sunken courtyards with fountain moats surrounding them, with small concrete bridges connecting them to the larger quad area. There are also several staircases which lead to nowhere, placed in the quad just to serve as a sitting structure—we do leisure very well in Egypt.
Now there are definitely difficulties that come with building a compound in the middle of the desert, as my friend Becky was so apt to point out. The water is fickle- sometimes there is none. When there is water, it's rarely hot. Sometime's the toilets don't flush. You can't flush toilet paper, or they overflow. There are no power lines out here, so the whole operation is powered by generators, which go out frequently. Yesterday at 3:30pm the electricity went out and didn't come back on until around 9pm, plunging the school into four hours of darkness after the sun set at 5, leaving everyone in a frenzy of terror and excitement, and causing an overload in buses due to the mass exodus from the campus into Cairo.
Naturally in our little oasis we are cut off from "real life" in Egypt. This is frustrating for me on many levels, because I was looking forward to trying to assimilate into Egyptian culture. Living on campus exacerbates this problem. But I'm adjusting to my new reality. I'm adjusting to spoiled, immature, elitist Egyptian kids fresh out of high school interrupting teachers and speaking during lecture. I'm learning to control my anger at seeing water wasted unscrupulously. I'm even learning to forgive closed-minded statements about the place of women in society which literally set women's rights back hundreds of years. It is the strange day-to-day existence on the compound which gives me my only semblance of reality and stability, but also daily amazes me with its grandiosity and unnecessary amenities. Such is life in the Middle East, eh?
I'm going to Alexandria this weekend [insha'allah] so a good post is coming soon, promise!
Also, I'm on the AUC fencing team. I told you life is ridiculous here.
Take care, I miss you all!
My heart is beeping
The desert is a terribly dirty place for feet.
My feet will never be clean again.
I am so lucky.
My feet will never be clean again.
I am so lucky.
Swine Flu Break '09: Hurghada, Dahab, and some actual Swine Flu
Wow, I have so much catching up to do!!!
After 8 days of classes here at AUC, the Egyptian government cancelled school for two and half weeks due to the imminent Swine Flu threat here in Egypt. This, of course, sent waves of excitement through campus and within a few hours of the announcement the entire campus had cleared out. So the Group all went their separate ways on adventures around the Middle East, and Goose, Katie, Dana, Dooler, Sherief and I hopped on a bus for a seven hour ride to Hurghada on the Red Sea. Hurghada is a tiny little town full of incredibly annoying Russian tourists. However, we had a hotel with a beautiful view of the Red Sea, and we quickly made friends with the owner of the bar there, Lotfy. The first day there we took it easy and napped, hung out in the ocean, and ate delicious calamari tagine and seafood soup. That night, we tossed back more than a few drinks with Lotfy, who decided he liked my boyfriend [yes, boyfriend, Goose and I are officially dating and have been for nearly a month…really, who is surprised? No one? Figured.] so much that we wanted him to work there. So Goose spent the rest of the night mixing Long Island Ice Teas and hooking us up with free special shisha. The next morning, we all got up and jumped into the back of a mini van which drove us deep into the desert, bouncing over the dunes violently. We climbed a mountain, where I got third degree burns on my feet from the scorching sand, and then arrived at a little camp where we had a fun-filled day of just about everything. In a five hour period I rode a camel, donkey, horse, dune buggy, ATV, giant tortoise, and held chameleons, venomous snakes, goats, turtles and crocodiles, kissed a camel, played with ostriches, got really dirty, and all around had a great time. After that we went to a Fire Party where we ate delicious food, watched belly-dancers, and marveled as Goose was pulled up onto the stage by "The Devil" and made to swallow [or attempt to swallow] a sword. Good news: his gag reflex is alive and well.
Finally, we watched the sun set from the top of a mountain, saw Jupiter through a telescope, took our van out to a deserted patch of sand, and laid there looking at the stars. Lying in the sand with my new friends/family, I couldn’t help but think of Morocco and my ISA friends, and I couldn’t help but think of how different my life here is than I imagined it would be. I love it, but it's not what I was expecting.
Then we set off through the desert again, cranking Backstreet Boys tunes the entire way. We arrived back at the hotel where Lotfy greeted us with Egyptian beer, and happily passed out.
The next day we committed the entire day to eating delicious food and lounging on the beach. That night, we had a fake and very drunken birthday party for Sherief aka Alfastar in Hard Rock Café Hurghada, where we gorged ourselves on American food and expensive cocktails [have I mentioned I love being able to legally buy alcohol? I've only been carded once. Ohebu al-Misr!] Then we somehow found our way back to the hotel, where we drank even more and smoked Lotfy's delicious, free shisha.
The next morning we all unhappily piled into a bus at 8am, me still wearing my makeup from the night before and chugging water to cure my hangover. An hour later we were boarding a yacht and laying out on the deck, overlooking water so clear and blue you could see fifty feet down to the coral below. We spent the day lounging on the boat, swimming in the water, discovering strange aquatic life [including a slug/crab creature with one scary arm ending in a hook which lived in an innocent looking shell..it was terrifying], watching Sherief try and fight Goose, and jumping thirty feet from the top of the yacht into the clear turquoise water below. That night we took a bus back from Hurghada, and jumped on a taxi back to campus, which promptly got a flat tire right in front of a military post. The guards, needless to say, were not thrilled, suspecting us to be American terrorists. However, upon meeting Katie, the flirt of the group, they were charmed and brought us water to quench our thirst as we waited for nearly an hour for our tire to be repaired. We spent the next few days recuperating in Cairo, where I unfortunately came down with the Piggy Flu.
After being nursed back to health by my amazing friends and incredible boyfriend, Katie, Anna, Goose and I took a nine hour bus ride to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula [which was made longer due to the fact that the bus blew a tire around 3 am]. We arrived, checked into Dolphin Camp, where we stayed in bamboo beach bungalows with a view of the water, and Saudi Arabia across it, and had a delicious breakfast at Dolphin Café. We spent the rest of the day basking in the sun on our private beach, and enjoyed incredible food, shisha, beer, free rum, and great company all night. The next day we set out to go swimming and ended up lounging on an abandoned beach called Lagouna, and ate more delicious food. We ended up at a bar called Yalla run by Australian expats around our age, where we got thoroughly drunk. Our last day was filled with lots of shopping and haggling, some bus confusion, and finally an hour bus ride to Sharm el Sheikh, and a six hour ride from there to Nasr City, where we hailed a cab which took us to the wrong AUC campus, ended up eating a 5am dinner at McDonalds, and waited two hours for an AUC bus to arrive to take us back to campus. It was an adventure, to say the least. I realize my account from Dahab is sort of lacking, but we didn't do much. We just relaxed and enjoyed the atmosphere, the food, and each other. Dahab is a lot less touristy than other towns on the Sinai, and is a huge hippie town filled with expats and long-haired, shirtless backpackers. Needless to say, Goose and I fit in well and loved it there. There were rumors circulating the entire time that AUC was not going to reopen this semester, and the four of us seriously considered renting a $100/month, one bedroom apartment and getting part-time jobs at a bar there. One of my new life goals is to retire there after I'm done gallivanting, open a bar, smoke lots of shisha, drink lots of beer, and bask in the awesomeness.
Now the entire Group has been reunited in Cairo, and classes resume tomorrow [supposedly]. In light of this fact, I am off to get some homework done for my 8:30 tomorrow. I will be updating this blog more regularly now that I'm firmly back in Cairo for a while. Check out my pictures on Facebook!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
After 8 days of classes here at AUC, the Egyptian government cancelled school for two and half weeks due to the imminent Swine Flu threat here in Egypt. This, of course, sent waves of excitement through campus and within a few hours of the announcement the entire campus had cleared out. So the Group all went their separate ways on adventures around the Middle East, and Goose, Katie, Dana, Dooler, Sherief and I hopped on a bus for a seven hour ride to Hurghada on the Red Sea. Hurghada is a tiny little town full of incredibly annoying Russian tourists. However, we had a hotel with a beautiful view of the Red Sea, and we quickly made friends with the owner of the bar there, Lotfy. The first day there we took it easy and napped, hung out in the ocean, and ate delicious calamari tagine and seafood soup. That night, we tossed back more than a few drinks with Lotfy, who decided he liked my boyfriend [yes, boyfriend, Goose and I are officially dating and have been for nearly a month…really, who is surprised? No one? Figured.] so much that we wanted him to work there. So Goose spent the rest of the night mixing Long Island Ice Teas and hooking us up with free special shisha. The next morning, we all got up and jumped into the back of a mini van which drove us deep into the desert, bouncing over the dunes violently. We climbed a mountain, where I got third degree burns on my feet from the scorching sand, and then arrived at a little camp where we had a fun-filled day of just about everything. In a five hour period I rode a camel, donkey, horse, dune buggy, ATV, giant tortoise, and held chameleons, venomous snakes, goats, turtles and crocodiles, kissed a camel, played with ostriches, got really dirty, and all around had a great time. After that we went to a Fire Party where we ate delicious food, watched belly-dancers, and marveled as Goose was pulled up onto the stage by "The Devil" and made to swallow [or attempt to swallow] a sword. Good news: his gag reflex is alive and well.
Finally, we watched the sun set from the top of a mountain, saw Jupiter through a telescope, took our van out to a deserted patch of sand, and laid there looking at the stars. Lying in the sand with my new friends/family, I couldn’t help but think of Morocco and my ISA friends, and I couldn’t help but think of how different my life here is than I imagined it would be. I love it, but it's not what I was expecting.
Then we set off through the desert again, cranking Backstreet Boys tunes the entire way. We arrived back at the hotel where Lotfy greeted us with Egyptian beer, and happily passed out.
The next day we committed the entire day to eating delicious food and lounging on the beach. That night, we had a fake and very drunken birthday party for Sherief aka Alfastar in Hard Rock Café Hurghada, where we gorged ourselves on American food and expensive cocktails [have I mentioned I love being able to legally buy alcohol? I've only been carded once. Ohebu al-Misr!] Then we somehow found our way back to the hotel, where we drank even more and smoked Lotfy's delicious, free shisha.
The next morning we all unhappily piled into a bus at 8am, me still wearing my makeup from the night before and chugging water to cure my hangover. An hour later we were boarding a yacht and laying out on the deck, overlooking water so clear and blue you could see fifty feet down to the coral below. We spent the day lounging on the boat, swimming in the water, discovering strange aquatic life [including a slug/crab creature with one scary arm ending in a hook which lived in an innocent looking shell..it was terrifying], watching Sherief try and fight Goose, and jumping thirty feet from the top of the yacht into the clear turquoise water below. That night we took a bus back from Hurghada, and jumped on a taxi back to campus, which promptly got a flat tire right in front of a military post. The guards, needless to say, were not thrilled, suspecting us to be American terrorists. However, upon meeting Katie, the flirt of the group, they were charmed and brought us water to quench our thirst as we waited for nearly an hour for our tire to be repaired. We spent the next few days recuperating in Cairo, where I unfortunately came down with the Piggy Flu.
After being nursed back to health by my amazing friends and incredible boyfriend, Katie, Anna, Goose and I took a nine hour bus ride to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula [which was made longer due to the fact that the bus blew a tire around 3 am]. We arrived, checked into Dolphin Camp, where we stayed in bamboo beach bungalows with a view of the water, and Saudi Arabia across it, and had a delicious breakfast at Dolphin Café. We spent the rest of the day basking in the sun on our private beach, and enjoyed incredible food, shisha, beer, free rum, and great company all night. The next day we set out to go swimming and ended up lounging on an abandoned beach called Lagouna, and ate more delicious food. We ended up at a bar called Yalla run by Australian expats around our age, where we got thoroughly drunk. Our last day was filled with lots of shopping and haggling, some bus confusion, and finally an hour bus ride to Sharm el Sheikh, and a six hour ride from there to Nasr City, where we hailed a cab which took us to the wrong AUC campus, ended up eating a 5am dinner at McDonalds, and waited two hours for an AUC bus to arrive to take us back to campus. It was an adventure, to say the least. I realize my account from Dahab is sort of lacking, but we didn't do much. We just relaxed and enjoyed the atmosphere, the food, and each other. Dahab is a lot less touristy than other towns on the Sinai, and is a huge hippie town filled with expats and long-haired, shirtless backpackers. Needless to say, Goose and I fit in well and loved it there. There were rumors circulating the entire time that AUC was not going to reopen this semester, and the four of us seriously considered renting a $100/month, one bedroom apartment and getting part-time jobs at a bar there. One of my new life goals is to retire there after I'm done gallivanting, open a bar, smoke lots of shisha, drink lots of beer, and bask in the awesomeness.
Now the entire Group has been reunited in Cairo, and classes resume tomorrow [supposedly]. In light of this fact, I am off to get some homework done for my 8:30 tomorrow. I will be updating this blog more regularly now that I'm firmly back in Cairo for a while. Check out my pictures on Facebook!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
I've got some 'splaining to do
A brief explanation as to why I havent been/ won't be posting for a while:
After a mere seven days of class, the school was buzzing yesterday about exactly how long we would have off for Eid; the previously accepted time was 6 days, starting Friday. Around noon, there was a visible change in the atmosphere here at AUC as everyone ran around screaming and hugging. Turns out, the Egyptian government cancelled all schools and universities until October 3 [at the earliest] due to Eid and the onset of swine flu here. So, I'm off to Hurghada, a small beach town on the Red Sea, until Monday, and then probably heading to Israel and Jordan with my boyfriend [yea...so much for not letting things get out of hand with Goose, right? Who's surprised?] where we will meet up with the two Chris's.
Don't miss me too badly, and be looking forward to regular posting and lots of adventurous stories when I get back!
After a mere seven days of class, the school was buzzing yesterday about exactly how long we would have off for Eid; the previously accepted time was 6 days, starting Friday. Around noon, there was a visible change in the atmosphere here at AUC as everyone ran around screaming and hugging. Turns out, the Egyptian government cancelled all schools and universities until October 3 [at the earliest] due to Eid and the onset of swine flu here. So, I'm off to Hurghada, a small beach town on the Red Sea, until Monday, and then probably heading to Israel and Jordan with my boyfriend [yea...so much for not letting things get out of hand with Goose, right? Who's surprised?] where we will meet up with the two Chris's.
Don't miss me too badly, and be looking forward to regular posting and lots of adventurous stories when I get back!
Port Said: The Politically Correct Version
I cannot write anything here that happened in Port Said.
All I will say is that the city kinda sucks, but I had a fantastic time with my friends, all of whom I love more than ever.
Sorry, kids.
All I will say is that the city kinda sucks, but I had a fantastic time with my friends, all of whom I love more than ever.
Sorry, kids.
Lessons learned thus far in Al-Misr
- The security guards at AUC do not like Capture the Flag. They do not want us to like capture the flag. Especially not after midnight. Especially not during class. Especially not on their sandscaping.
- Doritos are about as expensive as a weekend on the Mediterranean.
- Shisha is a universal cure-all.
- So are good friends.
- You cannot walk more than 50 feet at AUC without running into one of these good friends.
- It is possible to take a walk of shame at 6am without having shacked anywhere.
- Alabama football is nearly as important as air.
- Sleep is not nearly as important as I had originally thought. Neigh, it is possible to function daily on three hours of sleep.
- Egyptian Arabic is wack.
- Keeping your cheeks clenched constantly is the only way to prevent tap-water-induced accidents.
- Dramaderies are terrifying, as are Arabian stallions. But nothing will make you as happy as galloping through the desert on one as the sun rises over the pyramids.
- Piastres are the biggest waste of paper ever. In the history of the world.
- Skype is life.
- Ten completely different people can become family in less than two weeks.
- Foosball is a national pasttime here.
- 8:30am classes are not as bad as I feared.
- A "short trip" to the city will always last at least seven hours.
- Ramadan rocks.
- The HUSS building makes no sense. At all. It's a sick joke.
- You can waste all the water you want here. You want 50 fountains on campus? No problem. You wanna take an hour long shower? Go ahead. Water the sand? You got it boss. Let the faucet run all night? Stop worrying. Really, it's not like the Middle East is in a water crisis or anything.
...more to come, I'm sure.
Did that really just happen?
Sept 3 2009
I ask myself that question a lot here. The past two days have been completely ridiculous. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a not so good way. The one thing I can say about life here is that it's exciting. Most people say exciting and it always has a positive connotation, but bad things can be exciting too. And really, as long as it's exciting, whether in a positive or negative way, at least things aren't boring.
On Tuesday I slept in all day because exhaustion finally caught up with me. I was still lounging around in my room when Chris called me and announced we were all getting on a bus in a half hour to go to Tahrir Square. I took the world's fastest shower and got ready in record time. At 4pm, Chris, Chris, Goose, Katie, Becky, Anna, Nate, Zach, Frankie and I got on the bus and settled in for a 45-minute drive. About five minutes into the ride, the bus driver put on his hazard lights, got out of his seat, walked back to a seat in the middle of the bus, and appeared to settle in for a nap. We were all completely dumbfounded. No one else on the bus seemed to think this was out of the ordinary. We were in the backseat discussing the perks of a job where you could randomly decide to nap anytime and still get paid when it dawned on us that he had been praying. We still have so much to learn. After a few minutes, he got up and we were on our way again. What a strange, wonderful place where you can take a few minutes out of your job and practice your beliefs without offending anyone. Wasn’t that the idea behind America in the first place?
We got off of the bus in Tahrir Square by the old AUC campus and wandered around for a while. We wandered into a papyrus shop that had lots of essential oils for all kinds of ailments. They had the best names: "Nervous Colon", "Sexual Weakness", etc. This created the perfect setup for one of my favorite exchanges of all time.
Goose: Chris, you probably need to buy some Sexual Weakness oil, don't you think?
Chris: No, that's ok, I produce my own.
I also had a first shortly thereafter. I was dressed very conservatively since it's Ramadan- loose fitting jeans and a loose long sleeve tunic top. As Katie and I were walking side my side, an old woman in a full abaya/hijab lunged at me and made a hissing noise. For a few moments I was completely dumbstruck, then horrified, wondering if she had actually spit on me. Luckily, she hadn't. But regardless, I was shocked. The only thing more that I could have done to be respectful would have been to wear a headscarf- and there were definitely girls in our group showing a lot more skin than I was. That's the first time ANYTHING like that has happened to me, in Morocco or Egypt, but I'm sure it won't be the last.
Next we met up with Ahmed and Sharif, the chess grandmaster and his friend from the other night. They took us to Felfel for a snack before a night of fun. I got shewarma, and it was delicious. Then we walked down to the Nile where we boarded a feluka boat covered in flashing neon lights blasting dance music. The ten of us rocked out to 50 Cent as we cruised down the Nile, unable to believe our lives.
Next Ahmed took us to a little shisha bar he goes to a lot, a humble little place in an alleyway. I was starting to get tired and thought maybe I wouldn’t make it through the night, so I tried to go easy on the shisha and guzzle some water, especially since Ahmed kept saying we had a long walk ahead of us. When we finished there, we set off for Hussein, a historic part of Cairo. At first we just meandered through streets and darted across traffic, but the next thing I knew we were walking across a high-rise bridge- four lanes, no sidewalk. We hugged the guard rail and walked nearly a mile and a half with cars whizzing by us less than six inches away. I have never concentrated on walking a straight line so hard in my life.
When we finally got off the bridge Ahmed and Sharif took us on a walking tour of historical mosques in Hussein, some of the oldest in Egypt, and all famous for various reasons. In the moonlight, lit by the neon glow of Cairo, it was so eerily beautiful that I was breathless.
As we wandered through the souk [market] looking at hookahs and jewelry, we finally started getting some catcalls, which have been few and far between here, and so very different from Morocco. I think the compliment of my life came from a vendor I passed: "You look like Spice Girl! Spicey spicey!"
We randomly stopped in a little café about the size of a storage unit where there was traditional Egyptian singing going on. We sat down, smoked some excellent shisha, and listened, enraptured, as the woman sang. The dj/announcer thanked us over and over again for coming, and even had us write down our names in Arabic so he could read them out loud and thank us again, along with Mr. President Obama.
Finally, around 12am, we stopped in at a restaurant where we had a private upstairs room and feasted on all kinds of things I don’t remember the names of, except for baba ganoush, which I'm pleased to say tastes as good as it sounds. We caught the 2am bus home, swearing no night could ever be better. Little did we know that two nights later we would have a night to rival any we had had so far.
The next day I slept in all day, and didn’t get anything I needed to accomplished. That night, we went out with Ahmed and Sherief again. First we broke the fast at a restaurant he knew and ate delicious food. Then, Ahmed showed us his driving skills, which consisted of nearly killing us and any nearby pedestrians over and over by squeezing mere inches between cars, weaving through traffic, and doing doughnuts feet away from small children. After we had regained control of our bladders, he took Katie, Goose, Frankie, Dooler and I to a café where we smoked excellent shisha [are you noticing a theme here?] and Katie sang karaoke. After that, we went to City Stars, did some shopping, and came home.
The next night was our Bedouin Night: Extreme Grandmaster Version. At 9pm we met Ahmed, Sherief, and their friend who has a bus in Zamalek. We drove an hour into the desert, and the first moment that I saw a giant triangular shadow on the horizon, a pyramid, will forever be engrained in my memory. I think that was the first moment it really sank in that I'm living in Egypt for the next 3 years. We were distracted from the pyramids by neon lights in the distance. We pulled up to a crowded outdoor club- no roof, no floor, just sand and stars and thatch huts and low tables and carpets on the ground. It was breathtaking. We settled in on our cushions in the very front of the club, closest to the makeshift stage, when someone gasped. We all looked around….and there was a man holding a lion. A lion cub, to be exact. He came over and let us all hold it and take pictures with it. Cuddling with a lion cub in the shadow of the pyramids has got to be the coolest thing I had ever done up until that point. From that point, we ate delicious food, danced to American music, limbo-ed, watched Oriental dancing, and Katie did karaoke. We danced our asses off, generally acting like idiots.
Goose and I have been joking around for the past few days about getting married, and I gave him a ring to surprise me with at some point. The plan was to do something really embarrassing when I least expected it. As we were getting ready to leave the club around 4:30am, Goose decided he wanted to dance. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to dance so badly, because I was tired. He finally pulled me up on stage, and we were the only ones up there. Embarrassed, I looked at him and said, "well, go ahead, you're the one who wanted to dance so badly." At this point, he got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and "proposed". Unfortunately, none of our friends saw, but about fifty Egyptians got up and clapped and congratulated us, thinking it was a real engagement. I was thoroughly embarrassed, but now we refer to ourselves as fiancées and most of the people we've met since then think we actually are.
After that, as the sun was coming up, I got on a dramadery [a two-hump camel] that was wayyyy higher than the camels I'm used to from Morocco and very scary. We rode out into the desert and had tea in the shadow of the pyramids, and then built a human pyramid in front of them. After that, I traded in my camel for an Arabian stallion and galloped full-speed back to the club, which was simultaneously the scariest and most exhilarating ten minutes of my life—riding through the desert beside the pyramids nearly bareback on a stallion. It was incredible. We took the long busride back to campus, and we all slept all day.
We stayed up all that night playing a game in the common room, and the next day I finally got to register for my classes.
Last night Goose and I stayed up watching text updates from the Alabama game – ROLL TIDE! We won, and it made me miss home and football so much, but I do love it here and I know that this is where I'm supposed to be.
Goose and I are slowly turning into a real couple…I suppose joking about it enough will do that. It's strange. I adore him. He is by far the funniest person I've ever met and he makes me laugh constantly. He's also the most caring, genuine, earnest person I know here, and I know he cares about me a lot already, I just don’t know that I want anything "official" or serious right now, so I have to figure out a way to keep my distance somehow.
I finally got to bed at 4am, and woke up at 7:20 to get ready for my 8:30 Arabic class. Intermediate Arabic at 8:30am after only a few hours of sleep kicked my ass, so I'm gonna have to start getting more sleep.
Now I'm off to Science and Tech of Ancient Egypt, my science class. Sorry this entry was so long…it took DAYS to write. I'll start keeping up better, promise. Miss you all!
I ask myself that question a lot here. The past two days have been completely ridiculous. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a not so good way. The one thing I can say about life here is that it's exciting. Most people say exciting and it always has a positive connotation, but bad things can be exciting too. And really, as long as it's exciting, whether in a positive or negative way, at least things aren't boring.
On Tuesday I slept in all day because exhaustion finally caught up with me. I was still lounging around in my room when Chris called me and announced we were all getting on a bus in a half hour to go to Tahrir Square. I took the world's fastest shower and got ready in record time. At 4pm, Chris, Chris, Goose, Katie, Becky, Anna, Nate, Zach, Frankie and I got on the bus and settled in for a 45-minute drive. About five minutes into the ride, the bus driver put on his hazard lights, got out of his seat, walked back to a seat in the middle of the bus, and appeared to settle in for a nap. We were all completely dumbfounded. No one else on the bus seemed to think this was out of the ordinary. We were in the backseat discussing the perks of a job where you could randomly decide to nap anytime and still get paid when it dawned on us that he had been praying. We still have so much to learn. After a few minutes, he got up and we were on our way again. What a strange, wonderful place where you can take a few minutes out of your job and practice your beliefs without offending anyone. Wasn’t that the idea behind America in the first place?
We got off of the bus in Tahrir Square by the old AUC campus and wandered around for a while. We wandered into a papyrus shop that had lots of essential oils for all kinds of ailments. They had the best names: "Nervous Colon", "Sexual Weakness", etc. This created the perfect setup for one of my favorite exchanges of all time.
Goose: Chris, you probably need to buy some Sexual Weakness oil, don't you think?
Chris: No, that's ok, I produce my own.
I also had a first shortly thereafter. I was dressed very conservatively since it's Ramadan- loose fitting jeans and a loose long sleeve tunic top. As Katie and I were walking side my side, an old woman in a full abaya/hijab lunged at me and made a hissing noise. For a few moments I was completely dumbstruck, then horrified, wondering if she had actually spit on me. Luckily, she hadn't. But regardless, I was shocked. The only thing more that I could have done to be respectful would have been to wear a headscarf- and there were definitely girls in our group showing a lot more skin than I was. That's the first time ANYTHING like that has happened to me, in Morocco or Egypt, but I'm sure it won't be the last.
Next we met up with Ahmed and Sharif, the chess grandmaster and his friend from the other night. They took us to Felfel for a snack before a night of fun. I got shewarma, and it was delicious. Then we walked down to the Nile where we boarded a feluka boat covered in flashing neon lights blasting dance music. The ten of us rocked out to 50 Cent as we cruised down the Nile, unable to believe our lives.
Next Ahmed took us to a little shisha bar he goes to a lot, a humble little place in an alleyway. I was starting to get tired and thought maybe I wouldn’t make it through the night, so I tried to go easy on the shisha and guzzle some water, especially since Ahmed kept saying we had a long walk ahead of us. When we finished there, we set off for Hussein, a historic part of Cairo. At first we just meandered through streets and darted across traffic, but the next thing I knew we were walking across a high-rise bridge- four lanes, no sidewalk. We hugged the guard rail and walked nearly a mile and a half with cars whizzing by us less than six inches away. I have never concentrated on walking a straight line so hard in my life.
When we finally got off the bridge Ahmed and Sharif took us on a walking tour of historical mosques in Hussein, some of the oldest in Egypt, and all famous for various reasons. In the moonlight, lit by the neon glow of Cairo, it was so eerily beautiful that I was breathless.
As we wandered through the souk [market] looking at hookahs and jewelry, we finally started getting some catcalls, which have been few and far between here, and so very different from Morocco. I think the compliment of my life came from a vendor I passed: "You look like Spice Girl! Spicey spicey!"
We randomly stopped in a little café about the size of a storage unit where there was traditional Egyptian singing going on. We sat down, smoked some excellent shisha, and listened, enraptured, as the woman sang. The dj/announcer thanked us over and over again for coming, and even had us write down our names in Arabic so he could read them out loud and thank us again, along with Mr. President Obama.
Finally, around 12am, we stopped in at a restaurant where we had a private upstairs room and feasted on all kinds of things I don’t remember the names of, except for baba ganoush, which I'm pleased to say tastes as good as it sounds. We caught the 2am bus home, swearing no night could ever be better. Little did we know that two nights later we would have a night to rival any we had had so far.
The next day I slept in all day, and didn’t get anything I needed to accomplished. That night, we went out with Ahmed and Sherief again. First we broke the fast at a restaurant he knew and ate delicious food. Then, Ahmed showed us his driving skills, which consisted of nearly killing us and any nearby pedestrians over and over by squeezing mere inches between cars, weaving through traffic, and doing doughnuts feet away from small children. After we had regained control of our bladders, he took Katie, Goose, Frankie, Dooler and I to a café where we smoked excellent shisha [are you noticing a theme here?] and Katie sang karaoke. After that, we went to City Stars, did some shopping, and came home.
The next night was our Bedouin Night: Extreme Grandmaster Version. At 9pm we met Ahmed, Sherief, and their friend who has a bus in Zamalek. We drove an hour into the desert, and the first moment that I saw a giant triangular shadow on the horizon, a pyramid, will forever be engrained in my memory. I think that was the first moment it really sank in that I'm living in Egypt for the next 3 years. We were distracted from the pyramids by neon lights in the distance. We pulled up to a crowded outdoor club- no roof, no floor, just sand and stars and thatch huts and low tables and carpets on the ground. It was breathtaking. We settled in on our cushions in the very front of the club, closest to the makeshift stage, when someone gasped. We all looked around….and there was a man holding a lion. A lion cub, to be exact. He came over and let us all hold it and take pictures with it. Cuddling with a lion cub in the shadow of the pyramids has got to be the coolest thing I had ever done up until that point. From that point, we ate delicious food, danced to American music, limbo-ed, watched Oriental dancing, and Katie did karaoke. We danced our asses off, generally acting like idiots.
Goose and I have been joking around for the past few days about getting married, and I gave him a ring to surprise me with at some point. The plan was to do something really embarrassing when I least expected it. As we were getting ready to leave the club around 4:30am, Goose decided he wanted to dance. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to dance so badly, because I was tired. He finally pulled me up on stage, and we were the only ones up there. Embarrassed, I looked at him and said, "well, go ahead, you're the one who wanted to dance so badly." At this point, he got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and "proposed". Unfortunately, none of our friends saw, but about fifty Egyptians got up and clapped and congratulated us, thinking it was a real engagement. I was thoroughly embarrassed, but now we refer to ourselves as fiancées and most of the people we've met since then think we actually are.
After that, as the sun was coming up, I got on a dramadery [a two-hump camel] that was wayyyy higher than the camels I'm used to from Morocco and very scary. We rode out into the desert and had tea in the shadow of the pyramids, and then built a human pyramid in front of them. After that, I traded in my camel for an Arabian stallion and galloped full-speed back to the club, which was simultaneously the scariest and most exhilarating ten minutes of my life—riding through the desert beside the pyramids nearly bareback on a stallion. It was incredible. We took the long busride back to campus, and we all slept all day.
We stayed up all that night playing a game in the common room, and the next day I finally got to register for my classes.
Last night Goose and I stayed up watching text updates from the Alabama game – ROLL TIDE! We won, and it made me miss home and football so much, but I do love it here and I know that this is where I'm supposed to be.
Goose and I are slowly turning into a real couple…I suppose joking about it enough will do that. It's strange. I adore him. He is by far the funniest person I've ever met and he makes me laugh constantly. He's also the most caring, genuine, earnest person I know here, and I know he cares about me a lot already, I just don’t know that I want anything "official" or serious right now, so I have to figure out a way to keep my distance somehow.
I finally got to bed at 4am, and woke up at 7:20 to get ready for my 8:30 Arabic class. Intermediate Arabic at 8:30am after only a few hours of sleep kicked my ass, so I'm gonna have to start getting more sleep.
Now I'm off to Science and Tech of Ancient Egypt, my science class. Sorry this entry was so long…it took DAYS to write. I'll start keeping up better, promise. Miss you all!
It Seems Like Everywhere I Go, the More I See the Less I Know
I find that, somehow moreso in Egypt than in Morocco, I am constantly making an ass of myself here. Perhaps it's because the campus is way too big for the meager 5,000 students who go here and I'm constantly wandering around like an Alzheimer's patient. Perhaps it's because I'm more ballsy about my actions now that it's my second time in MENA. And I suppose it's partly because a lot of times in Morocco I felt like I played it too safe instead of taking risks. This time around, I decided I really want to live, and experience everything, not just observe. I think that, despite the constant ass-making I do, always seeming clueless and lost, I'll be happy that I chose to do things this way in the long run.
Yesterday I didn't have much to do: I signed up for some trips [Alexandria, Bedouin Night, and Giza..there's a 3-day cruise over our long weekend in September too, but its 1750 LE, around $350. Needless to say, I won't be going.], tried to sign my loan check [they wouldn’t let me because I haven’t registered for my classes], registered my e-mail address, and went to the one orientation meeting they have for transfer students. Know what I found out? There are only two transfer students this year, including me. And the other has lived in Cairo for a few years. Silly me. Somehow I thought it was more common to take the route I have. Apparently not.
After that enlightening experience, I hung out with "The Gang" in the common room for a few hours- the common room is the only place in the residential area that is co-ed. There's a group of about eight of us: me, Katie, Becky, Anna, Chris, Will, Zach, Rashid, and Adam. We all hang out together all the time, but the sad thing is all of them except Becky are leaving in December. I have a feeling that that's how things will be at AUC; I'll have to make new friends every semester. We hung around, played BS, and then went to dinner at Tabasco. After that we tried to get a football game together, but we were too disorganized. At 10pm, we caught the bus to Zamalek to go to a bar. It was about an hour's ride there, along busy highways and overpasses. The skyline on the way was so diverse: huge mosque minarets penetrating the black night sky, grandiose hotels, and decrepit buildings literally falling apart around the residents. I also had an enthralling conversation with my new bff Will [I never call him Will- he will henceforth be referred to as Goose or Sunshine. He looks EXACTLY like Goose Dunham. I know, I'm gay.] that ended in my nearly peeing on myself when he asked how I liked his "smell". We got off the bus and Zach, the fearless leader [who was so dedicated to finding a bar that he had drawn up a map], led the speed-walk to a fancy bar on the banks of the Nile. No alcohol here, we were told. [Note: right now is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, where they fast all day and get to eat all night. It's a little difficult to find alcohol here right now.]
Disappointed but not defeated, we started a two mile trek to the Mariott, which has a pub in it. We walked through dank alleyways full of stray cats, passed all the embassies, and practiced our extreme jay-walking [friends from Morocco take note before you come visit me: crossing the street in Cairo is wayyyyy more intense than it was in Morocco. Try crossing 6 lanes of speeding vehicles Meknes-style. It's a rush.]. We FINALLY made it to Harry's Pub, where we quickly placed an exceptionally large order and were delivered exceptionally large Sakara Gold beers [Bama folks: about the size of a Big Ass Beer in Nola]. We had the whole pub to ourselves [again, it's Ramadan] and had a great time talking, watching soccer on the TV, and laughing about how much trouble we went through to get alcohol. Typical Americans. Four Exceptionally Large Beers and two hours later, we stumbled through the streets of Zamalek trying to retrace our steps to find the bus stop. After getting lost several times, we made it to the bus and I had an intense discussion with Chris. Around 3am, I poured myself into bed [the night before I had only gotten two hours of sleep].
I woke up at 8:30, too lazy to take a shower, and ran errands on campus- trying to register and whatnot. Important discoveries today: AUC is only accepting 24 [possibly 30] of my 60 credits from Alabama. This means I will probably be here for THREE years. And also, I can't register for classes until Saturay. School starts Sunday [since Friday is the Muslim holy day, the weekend here is Friday and Saturday. The school week starts Sunday. We'll see how many times this causes me to miss class on Sunday. Predication: a lot.]. Also, the trip to Giza is at the same time on Saturday, so I will miss seeing the pyramids. All rather disappointing discoveries.
Anyway, I'm off to nap- 7 hours sleep in two days is just not okay.
Also, I'm sorry I haven't really described Cairo much. The truth is, on the AUC compound, I don’t really see much of anything except desert, and I've only been off the compound twice. I will definitely try, but let me give a disclaimer: nothing I write will ever do Cairo justice. You'll never get the feel of the broken sidewalk, the chalky-dustiness of the ground, the gray tint to the sky, to heat of the Egyptian sun pounding down on you, the hum of all manner of different languages. For that, I apologize. Come visit me and see for yourself.
Yesterday I didn't have much to do: I signed up for some trips [Alexandria, Bedouin Night, and Giza..there's a 3-day cruise over our long weekend in September too, but its 1750 LE, around $350. Needless to say, I won't be going.], tried to sign my loan check [they wouldn’t let me because I haven’t registered for my classes], registered my e-mail address, and went to the one orientation meeting they have for transfer students. Know what I found out? There are only two transfer students this year, including me. And the other has lived in Cairo for a few years. Silly me. Somehow I thought it was more common to take the route I have. Apparently not.
After that enlightening experience, I hung out with "The Gang" in the common room for a few hours- the common room is the only place in the residential area that is co-ed. There's a group of about eight of us: me, Katie, Becky, Anna, Chris, Will, Zach, Rashid, and Adam. We all hang out together all the time, but the sad thing is all of them except Becky are leaving in December. I have a feeling that that's how things will be at AUC; I'll have to make new friends every semester. We hung around, played BS, and then went to dinner at Tabasco. After that we tried to get a football game together, but we were too disorganized. At 10pm, we caught the bus to Zamalek to go to a bar. It was about an hour's ride there, along busy highways and overpasses. The skyline on the way was so diverse: huge mosque minarets penetrating the black night sky, grandiose hotels, and decrepit buildings literally falling apart around the residents. I also had an enthralling conversation with my new bff Will [I never call him Will- he will henceforth be referred to as Goose or Sunshine. He looks EXACTLY like Goose Dunham. I know, I'm gay.] that ended in my nearly peeing on myself when he asked how I liked his "smell". We got off the bus and Zach, the fearless leader [who was so dedicated to finding a bar that he had drawn up a map], led the speed-walk to a fancy bar on the banks of the Nile. No alcohol here, we were told. [Note: right now is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, where they fast all day and get to eat all night. It's a little difficult to find alcohol here right now.]
Disappointed but not defeated, we started a two mile trek to the Mariott, which has a pub in it. We walked through dank alleyways full of stray cats, passed all the embassies, and practiced our extreme jay-walking [friends from Morocco take note before you come visit me: crossing the street in Cairo is wayyyyy more intense than it was in Morocco. Try crossing 6 lanes of speeding vehicles Meknes-style. It's a rush.]. We FINALLY made it to Harry's Pub, where we quickly placed an exceptionally large order and were delivered exceptionally large Sakara Gold beers [Bama folks: about the size of a Big Ass Beer in Nola]. We had the whole pub to ourselves [again, it's Ramadan] and had a great time talking, watching soccer on the TV, and laughing about how much trouble we went through to get alcohol. Typical Americans. Four Exceptionally Large Beers and two hours later, we stumbled through the streets of Zamalek trying to retrace our steps to find the bus stop. After getting lost several times, we made it to the bus and I had an intense discussion with Chris. Around 3am, I poured myself into bed [the night before I had only gotten two hours of sleep].
I woke up at 8:30, too lazy to take a shower, and ran errands on campus- trying to register and whatnot. Important discoveries today: AUC is only accepting 24 [possibly 30] of my 60 credits from Alabama. This means I will probably be here for THREE years. And also, I can't register for classes until Saturay. School starts Sunday [since Friday is the Muslim holy day, the weekend here is Friday and Saturday. The school week starts Sunday. We'll see how many times this causes me to miss class on Sunday. Predication: a lot.]. Also, the trip to Giza is at the same time on Saturday, so I will miss seeing the pyramids. All rather disappointing discoveries.
Anyway, I'm off to nap- 7 hours sleep in two days is just not okay.
Also, I'm sorry I haven't really described Cairo much. The truth is, on the AUC compound, I don’t really see much of anything except desert, and I've only been off the compound twice. I will definitely try, but let me give a disclaimer: nothing I write will ever do Cairo justice. You'll never get the feel of the broken sidewalk, the chalky-dustiness of the ground, the gray tint to the sky, to heat of the Egyptian sun pounding down on you, the hum of all manner of different languages. For that, I apologize. Come visit me and see for yourself.
You wanna know about Egypt? Oh, I'll TELL you about Egypt.
Hello from New Cairo, Egypt! Sit back and relax, kids, because this is gonna be a long blog. Or, if you are one of my friends from college, scroll through until you find a cuss word.
I have a lot to say, so I'll start from the beginning, which I suppose is leaving Tuscaloosa. I hung around Tuscaloosa all summer in my house at the Village at Brook Meadows and did all kinds of stuff: went to Los Cal, hung out with Phi Sig, nearly got robbed, nearly got arrested, nearly got robbed again, went skinny-dipping, got drunk…you know, the usual. I stayed until Bid Day, and I had a great time with everyone. A few big things marked my departure from Tuscyloosey. First, the night before I was supposed to leave town, I was at the new Phi Sigma Kappa house, my usual summer hangout. I wasn't feeling well so I decided to go home early. Realizing this was probably my last time to see most of those guys, I started saying my goodbyes, when one of my friends stood up on a cooler: "I propose a toast. To Egypt!" All of the other boys put their glasses in the air and said things about how they would miss me and it wouldn’t be the same without me, and before I knew it, I was sobbing. It was a touching moment for me.
I also got to experience my first Bid Day as an ex-Phi Mu. It was strange, sweating in the Alabama humidity in my sundress, being on the other side of the fence around the Phi Mu house. But to be honest, I welcomed the change. Looking at the girls standing in the yard, I knew I wasn't one of them. And for the first time since my Bid Day in 2007, I wasn’t trying to be, wasn’t pretending to be. I stood on the "wrong" side of the fence knowing that their place was inside of it, and mine was beyond it. And that was okay.
Probably the biggest event for me was an unexpected reunion. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a very tight-knit group of friends affectionately referred to as "The Cult". We've been friends since my first month of college and those three boys mean more to me than nearly anyone else in the world. Most people who know me well also know that I had a falling out with a Cult member, my best friend Murphy, over A-Day weekend in April. I won't go into why; it's not important and most of you probably know anyway. But the four months since we have been estranged have been some of the hardest of my life: it's like a part of me was missing, but I still sensed it there, still needed it…like a phantom limb after an amputation. As I was saying my goodbyes to the other Cult members that Sunday, a feeling washed over me; something akin to anger mixed with a deep, unrelenting loss. I wasn't willing to accept the fact that I would never see or speak to my best friend again. So I texted him. And then something amazing happened. He texted back. We met for dinner, there were tears, and hugs, and I couldn’t have been happier as I left Tuscaloosa for the last time.
The next Friday my parents threw me a going-away party, and from what I can remember, it was lots of fun. All I will say about this party is that I drank an entire bottle of Sweet Carolina in one night. The fact that I'm still alive amazes me.
Finally, after months of planning, thousands of dollars, countless tears, and tons of fights, I was at the Atlanta airport with my parents. Saying goodbye to them was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. I had an inexplicable lump in my throat and where I had been trying to be strong, the tears prevailed. Seeing my parents cry is never an easy thing. After lots of hugs and "I love you"'s I went through security and left the Deep South behind, with a one way ticket to Egypt and two suitcases for two years.
I made it to DC on time and proceeded to wait for a ridiculously long time; my flight to London was delayed. I watched the land zoom by as I left America and the real adventure began.
I got half an hour of sleep on the seven hour flight to London, but I did get to watch "I Love You, Man". The flight was bumpy but I was still relatively pleasant when I got to Heathrow. The girl next to me and I struck up a conversation- she's from Jordan and has spent a lot of time in Egypt. She helped me find my way through Heathrow and we stopped to get a coffee before my flight left. This is when the trouble started. I put in my international SIM card and…nothing. I couldn’t make calls at all. I should have braced myself then.
I got on a tiny plane at a far extremity of the airport and took off for Cairo. I was nearly comatose during those four hours. I was deliriously tired but could not fall asleep. It was torture. As we began our descent into Egypt, I looked at the ground and saw…a lot of green strangely enough. A weird feeling of disappointment was beginning to course through me, when the plane turned and I was blinded by the sun. When I was able to see clearly again, I looked down and saw…sand. Lots of sand. And the Nile weaving its way through the sand, canals breaking off every which way. If only I had been a little more lucid, it would have been one of the most blissful sights ever. Feeling near death, I got off the plane in Cairo and stumbled through Customs, and got my luggage when I realized, there was no one waiting on me. Oh, shit. What do I do? Just as I was starting to really panic, I saw a huge group of Americans, and one held up a sign that said AUC. I was ecstatic. Finally, we boarded a bus meant for ten people- there were 15 of us plus two pieces of luggage each. To say we were crowded was an understatement. After half an hour of navigating through the airport's ridiculous roadway, we got out into Cairo, and it was everything I hoped for: dirty, rough around the edges, but ambitious. There were cars and motorcycles with four people on the back and donkey carts and pedestrians casually strolling in front of speeding cars. It was just like Morocco and I felt at home. The feeling would not last long.
AUC is surrounded by a lot of crap. For miles there are half-built mansions which look like they have been abandoned festering in the sun, waiting for completion. There was trash everywhere, but I didn’t mind that. After numerous u-turns [not because we were lost, because the roads weren't planned well] we finally pulled into Gate 4 of AUC. We hauled our stuff off of the bus and two by two, passed through security, where they x-rayed and hand –searched our bags and made us walk through metal detectors. Then a university employee loaded our bags onto a golf cart and dropped us off across campus at the women's dormitories. I got my room assignment and an RA walked me to my room. She showed me where it was…and then left. I mean, I know she was busy helping people move in, but I had no clue what to do. I immediately tried to get on the internet, but it wasn't working. I thought, I'll at least set up my computer. Oh, wait. The electricity from the wall isn’t working. Remember, I still don’t have a working phone. I have no way to get in touch with anyone. That's when panic set in. I was starving; there was no one else in my building yet; I was completely alone. I got in my bed, accepting the fact that I would be alone and hungry that night. I was almost asleep when my phone went off. I had a text message from my dad! I was so happy I nearly cried. We could send and receive texts, but not make calls to one another. Depressed and not knowing what else to do, I went to sleep.
Luckily my jet-lag woke me up at 3:30 in the morning and I had a text from my dad telling me to meet our family friend Amy, who works here in Cairo, at the AUC bookstore in the morning. Alhamdulelah! I went back to sleep, tossing and turning in the heat, and finally woke up at 7:45 to take a shower. I went to the bathroom, and there was no water. Ughh. Really??? Finally, around 8, the water started working and I showered and sat down with a map to find the bookstore. It wasn't too hard to locate on the map, until I realized where it was in relation to my dorm. Imagine a long, winding path, with side-paths branching out in all directions. That's the AUC campus. My dorm is on the far end of the path- really, it’s the farthest building on one side of the campus…the wall securing the little compound it right outside my window. The bookstore was on the exact other end of campus, nearly a mile's walk, and the map was an architect's sketch of the university….not exactly clear on how to get there. I sat down, defeated already, and wondered what to do. Finally, I grew some balls, grabbed my stuff, and set off. I ended up asking tons of people for directions, none of whom spoke English, but finally, after passing through the gates separating the campus from the desolation beyond it, I saw Amy and her son Sam waiting for me. The feeling of relief was instant. We climbed into her SUV and headed for Maadi, the suburb she lives in.
I really would have been lost without her. She took me home, where her husband Dave had breakfast waiting on me. After that, we set off to get a new SIM card, an adapter for my computer, and various other things I needed to survive. We stopped at a McDonalds for lunch, where Sam decided to wet himself. Laughing, we went back home where I got to call my parents –finally!- and lounge for a few hours. Then, Amy and I went to her kids' school and hung out at the playground while Sam and his friends ran around. When we got back, delicious Thai food was waiting on us, which I devoured, and gratefully accepted a much-needed beer from Dave. Finally, around nine, Amy brought me back to campus and we cajoled a guard into taking us from the Pepsi Gate - I'm not kidding, our school is sponsored by Pepsi- to my dorm in a golf cart because we had a lot of groceries from the embassy commissary.
Then, on Sunday, I slept in until about 1, trying to sleep off the rest of my jet lag. My roommate showed up. She is British but has lived in Cairo for the past two years, and, here's the kicker—she's sixteen. Yeah. For a sixteen year old, we get along pretty well. I finally got up and went to get my Orientation packet and met up with some girls I knew from the bus from the airport. We ended up going to the dorm meeting together, and also decided to take the 8pm bus from campus to City Stars, a mall about a half hour away, together. Right away, everyone on my bus got along great. When we were in the meeting, I saw a really cute boy, and lo and behold, he was on the bus. I decided at the meeting that he was my conquest for the semester, and after the night was over, I had his phone number, knew his life story, and we were on a last-name basis, which as any frat guy knows, is closer than a first name basis. We did some shopping at City Stars, and everyone in the group got their phones working. Then, someone had the brilliant idea to go to a hookah bar a "few blocks away". We wandered out of the mall, but no one knew quite where it was. We stopped to ask a group, and instead of telling us, they took us there. It ended up being a half hour walk to the place, but it was worth it. The ambiance was incredible and we had a great time smoking and getting to know each other all night. The guys who took us even stayed and translated for us, and offered to take us sight-seeing tonight, gratis, which is amazing. One of the Egyptians, Akhmed, is the international chess grandmaster. I kid you not- it's on his business card!
We missed the 12am bus back to campus, so we stayed a smoked for a few more hours, then rode the 2am bus home. With tons of new numbers in my phone and a dozen or so new friends, by the end of the night I was feeling pretty good about Egypt. Good, because I needed it. Today I'm going to attempt to figure out registration and get my ID card- insha'allah. Wish me luck!
I have a lot to say, so I'll start from the beginning, which I suppose is leaving Tuscaloosa. I hung around Tuscaloosa all summer in my house at the Village at Brook Meadows and did all kinds of stuff: went to Los Cal, hung out with Phi Sig, nearly got robbed, nearly got arrested, nearly got robbed again, went skinny-dipping, got drunk…you know, the usual. I stayed until Bid Day, and I had a great time with everyone. A few big things marked my departure from Tuscyloosey. First, the night before I was supposed to leave town, I was at the new Phi Sigma Kappa house, my usual summer hangout. I wasn't feeling well so I decided to go home early. Realizing this was probably my last time to see most of those guys, I started saying my goodbyes, when one of my friends stood up on a cooler: "I propose a toast. To Egypt!" All of the other boys put their glasses in the air and said things about how they would miss me and it wouldn’t be the same without me, and before I knew it, I was sobbing. It was a touching moment for me.
I also got to experience my first Bid Day as an ex-Phi Mu. It was strange, sweating in the Alabama humidity in my sundress, being on the other side of the fence around the Phi Mu house. But to be honest, I welcomed the change. Looking at the girls standing in the yard, I knew I wasn't one of them. And for the first time since my Bid Day in 2007, I wasn’t trying to be, wasn’t pretending to be. I stood on the "wrong" side of the fence knowing that their place was inside of it, and mine was beyond it. And that was okay.
Probably the biggest event for me was an unexpected reunion. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a very tight-knit group of friends affectionately referred to as "The Cult". We've been friends since my first month of college and those three boys mean more to me than nearly anyone else in the world. Most people who know me well also know that I had a falling out with a Cult member, my best friend Murphy, over A-Day weekend in April. I won't go into why; it's not important and most of you probably know anyway. But the four months since we have been estranged have been some of the hardest of my life: it's like a part of me was missing, but I still sensed it there, still needed it…like a phantom limb after an amputation. As I was saying my goodbyes to the other Cult members that Sunday, a feeling washed over me; something akin to anger mixed with a deep, unrelenting loss. I wasn't willing to accept the fact that I would never see or speak to my best friend again. So I texted him. And then something amazing happened. He texted back. We met for dinner, there were tears, and hugs, and I couldn’t have been happier as I left Tuscaloosa for the last time.
The next Friday my parents threw me a going-away party, and from what I can remember, it was lots of fun. All I will say about this party is that I drank an entire bottle of Sweet Carolina in one night. The fact that I'm still alive amazes me.
Finally, after months of planning, thousands of dollars, countless tears, and tons of fights, I was at the Atlanta airport with my parents. Saying goodbye to them was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. I had an inexplicable lump in my throat and where I had been trying to be strong, the tears prevailed. Seeing my parents cry is never an easy thing. After lots of hugs and "I love you"'s I went through security and left the Deep South behind, with a one way ticket to Egypt and two suitcases for two years.
I made it to DC on time and proceeded to wait for a ridiculously long time; my flight to London was delayed. I watched the land zoom by as I left America and the real adventure began.
I got half an hour of sleep on the seven hour flight to London, but I did get to watch "I Love You, Man". The flight was bumpy but I was still relatively pleasant when I got to Heathrow. The girl next to me and I struck up a conversation- she's from Jordan and has spent a lot of time in Egypt. She helped me find my way through Heathrow and we stopped to get a coffee before my flight left. This is when the trouble started. I put in my international SIM card and…nothing. I couldn’t make calls at all. I should have braced myself then.
I got on a tiny plane at a far extremity of the airport and took off for Cairo. I was nearly comatose during those four hours. I was deliriously tired but could not fall asleep. It was torture. As we began our descent into Egypt, I looked at the ground and saw…a lot of green strangely enough. A weird feeling of disappointment was beginning to course through me, when the plane turned and I was blinded by the sun. When I was able to see clearly again, I looked down and saw…sand. Lots of sand. And the Nile weaving its way through the sand, canals breaking off every which way. If only I had been a little more lucid, it would have been one of the most blissful sights ever. Feeling near death, I got off the plane in Cairo and stumbled through Customs, and got my luggage when I realized, there was no one waiting on me. Oh, shit. What do I do? Just as I was starting to really panic, I saw a huge group of Americans, and one held up a sign that said AUC. I was ecstatic. Finally, we boarded a bus meant for ten people- there were 15 of us plus two pieces of luggage each. To say we were crowded was an understatement. After half an hour of navigating through the airport's ridiculous roadway, we got out into Cairo, and it was everything I hoped for: dirty, rough around the edges, but ambitious. There were cars and motorcycles with four people on the back and donkey carts and pedestrians casually strolling in front of speeding cars. It was just like Morocco and I felt at home. The feeling would not last long.
AUC is surrounded by a lot of crap. For miles there are half-built mansions which look like they have been abandoned festering in the sun, waiting for completion. There was trash everywhere, but I didn’t mind that. After numerous u-turns [not because we were lost, because the roads weren't planned well] we finally pulled into Gate 4 of AUC. We hauled our stuff off of the bus and two by two, passed through security, where they x-rayed and hand –searched our bags and made us walk through metal detectors. Then a university employee loaded our bags onto a golf cart and dropped us off across campus at the women's dormitories. I got my room assignment and an RA walked me to my room. She showed me where it was…and then left. I mean, I know she was busy helping people move in, but I had no clue what to do. I immediately tried to get on the internet, but it wasn't working. I thought, I'll at least set up my computer. Oh, wait. The electricity from the wall isn’t working. Remember, I still don’t have a working phone. I have no way to get in touch with anyone. That's when panic set in. I was starving; there was no one else in my building yet; I was completely alone. I got in my bed, accepting the fact that I would be alone and hungry that night. I was almost asleep when my phone went off. I had a text message from my dad! I was so happy I nearly cried. We could send and receive texts, but not make calls to one another. Depressed and not knowing what else to do, I went to sleep.
Luckily my jet-lag woke me up at 3:30 in the morning and I had a text from my dad telling me to meet our family friend Amy, who works here in Cairo, at the AUC bookstore in the morning. Alhamdulelah! I went back to sleep, tossing and turning in the heat, and finally woke up at 7:45 to take a shower. I went to the bathroom, and there was no water. Ughh. Really??? Finally, around 8, the water started working and I showered and sat down with a map to find the bookstore. It wasn't too hard to locate on the map, until I realized where it was in relation to my dorm. Imagine a long, winding path, with side-paths branching out in all directions. That's the AUC campus. My dorm is on the far end of the path- really, it’s the farthest building on one side of the campus…the wall securing the little compound it right outside my window. The bookstore was on the exact other end of campus, nearly a mile's walk, and the map was an architect's sketch of the university….not exactly clear on how to get there. I sat down, defeated already, and wondered what to do. Finally, I grew some balls, grabbed my stuff, and set off. I ended up asking tons of people for directions, none of whom spoke English, but finally, after passing through the gates separating the campus from the desolation beyond it, I saw Amy and her son Sam waiting for me. The feeling of relief was instant. We climbed into her SUV and headed for Maadi, the suburb she lives in.
I really would have been lost without her. She took me home, where her husband Dave had breakfast waiting on me. After that, we set off to get a new SIM card, an adapter for my computer, and various other things I needed to survive. We stopped at a McDonalds for lunch, where Sam decided to wet himself. Laughing, we went back home where I got to call my parents –finally!- and lounge for a few hours. Then, Amy and I went to her kids' school and hung out at the playground while Sam and his friends ran around. When we got back, delicious Thai food was waiting on us, which I devoured, and gratefully accepted a much-needed beer from Dave. Finally, around nine, Amy brought me back to campus and we cajoled a guard into taking us from the Pepsi Gate - I'm not kidding, our school is sponsored by Pepsi- to my dorm in a golf cart because we had a lot of groceries from the embassy commissary.
Then, on Sunday, I slept in until about 1, trying to sleep off the rest of my jet lag. My roommate showed up. She is British but has lived in Cairo for the past two years, and, here's the kicker—she's sixteen. Yeah. For a sixteen year old, we get along pretty well. I finally got up and went to get my Orientation packet and met up with some girls I knew from the bus from the airport. We ended up going to the dorm meeting together, and also decided to take the 8pm bus from campus to City Stars, a mall about a half hour away, together. Right away, everyone on my bus got along great. When we were in the meeting, I saw a really cute boy, and lo and behold, he was on the bus. I decided at the meeting that he was my conquest for the semester, and after the night was over, I had his phone number, knew his life story, and we were on a last-name basis, which as any frat guy knows, is closer than a first name basis. We did some shopping at City Stars, and everyone in the group got their phones working. Then, someone had the brilliant idea to go to a hookah bar a "few blocks away". We wandered out of the mall, but no one knew quite where it was. We stopped to ask a group, and instead of telling us, they took us there. It ended up being a half hour walk to the place, but it was worth it. The ambiance was incredible and we had a great time smoking and getting to know each other all night. The guys who took us even stayed and translated for us, and offered to take us sight-seeing tonight, gratis, which is amazing. One of the Egyptians, Akhmed, is the international chess grandmaster. I kid you not- it's on his business card!
We missed the 12am bus back to campus, so we stayed a smoked for a few more hours, then rode the 2am bus home. With tons of new numbers in my phone and a dozen or so new friends, by the end of the night I was feeling pretty good about Egypt. Good, because I needed it. Today I'm going to attempt to figure out registration and get my ID card- insha'allah. Wish me luck!
Pre-Departure To-Do List
-Buy a really good Arabic-English dictionary. How have I made it through two years of Arabic study without one?
-Buy lonely planet guide to Egypt, and probably Israel, and Jordan...and everywhere else I think I might be able to convince my parents to let me go.
-Get really fat so I'll have lots of extra weight to shed as I waste away at the mercy of the heat and my digestive system.
-Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Kidding. But seriously. I need to indulge in every vice I have before I have to go behave for two years.
-Eat lots of Los Calientes.
-Buy a new pair of Rainbows.
-Re-read Tales of a Female Nomad for inspiration.
-Drive. Alot.
-Take a walk around campus and say goodbye to everything I know about the college experience in America.
-Study Arabic. No, seriously. Study Arabic until my epiglottis hurts.
-Try to be fearless.
-Buy lonely planet guide to Egypt, and probably Israel, and Jordan...and everywhere else I think I might be able to convince my parents to let me go.
-Get really fat so I'll have lots of extra weight to shed as I waste away at the mercy of the heat and my digestive system.
-Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Kidding. But seriously. I need to indulge in every vice I have before I have to go behave for two years.
-Eat lots of Los Calientes.
-Buy a new pair of Rainbows.
-Re-read Tales of a Female Nomad for inspiration.
-Drive. Alot.
-Take a walk around campus and say goodbye to everything I know about the college experience in America.
-Study Arabic. No, seriously. Study Arabic until my epiglottis hurts.
-Try to be fearless.
41 days!
It's been a while, blog!
In fact, it's been nearly a year! It's just been a regular year here in Tuscaloosa; I've been enjoying America and missing Morocco terribly. Since I've been back, I've seen Michael and Jennifer twice, Brigid once, I'm seeing Autumn this Friday, and I talk to Ben on the phone once a week like clockwork. Alabama is home sweet home, but it's time to move on. Seeing as UA doesn't offer my desired major, I made the difficult decision to transfer elsewhere to finish school. The first week of June, I got the most exciting news of my life: I've been accepted to the American University in Cairo...that's right- Cairo, Egypt! So on August 27, I'll be hoppin on a flight from Atlanta, to DC, to London, to Cairo, all by myself. Funny to think I didnt come to college a few states away without my parents, and now I'm moving to an entirely different continent completely alone with a one way ticket and two suitcases.
Anyway, since I'm heading back to al-alum al-arabiyya, I'm starting my blog up again to chronicle this exciting new adventure I'm about to go on, to document getting settled and building a new life in a different country just like I did in Morocco last summer. Only this time, it's for real. I will be in Egypt for at least two years, however, knowing me, it will be a long time before I come back to America to live fulltime. The things I am going to see and do and the people I'm going to meet are incredible, I just know it. I really feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing at this point in my life. I'm less afraid than I was before I left for Morocco; I feel more prepared. My Arabic is better [two high A's in my advanced arabic language courses this year!], I know more about the culture and religion, plus I am proficient in Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish...there's bound to be SOMEONE I can communicate with in SOME way no matter where I am. This is my dream come true and I hope you are all as excited as I am about it!
41 days and counting!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
In fact, it's been nearly a year! It's just been a regular year here in Tuscaloosa; I've been enjoying America and missing Morocco terribly. Since I've been back, I've seen Michael and Jennifer twice, Brigid once, I'm seeing Autumn this Friday, and I talk to Ben on the phone once a week like clockwork. Alabama is home sweet home, but it's time to move on. Seeing as UA doesn't offer my desired major, I made the difficult decision to transfer elsewhere to finish school. The first week of June, I got the most exciting news of my life: I've been accepted to the American University in Cairo...that's right- Cairo, Egypt! So on August 27, I'll be hoppin on a flight from Atlanta, to DC, to London, to Cairo, all by myself. Funny to think I didnt come to college a few states away without my parents, and now I'm moving to an entirely different continent completely alone with a one way ticket and two suitcases.
Anyway, since I'm heading back to al-alum al-arabiyya, I'm starting my blog up again to chronicle this exciting new adventure I'm about to go on, to document getting settled and building a new life in a different country just like I did in Morocco last summer. Only this time, it's for real. I will be in Egypt for at least two years, however, knowing me, it will be a long time before I come back to America to live fulltime. The things I am going to see and do and the people I'm going to meet are incredible, I just know it. I really feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing at this point in my life. I'm less afraid than I was before I left for Morocco; I feel more prepared. My Arabic is better [two high A's in my advanced arabic language courses this year!], I know more about the culture and religion, plus I am proficient in Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish...there's bound to be SOMEONE I can communicate with in SOME way no matter where I am. This is my dream come true and I hope you are all as excited as I am about it!
41 days and counting!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
