I bought a copy of “Up” on the streets of Alexandria the other day for $1.90. It was originally pirated in Russia, and thus all the English writing in the movie had been replaced with Russian. Furthermore, it was subtitled in Arabic.
That has nothing to do with the following post, but thought I’d share it while the thought was still warm.
Last weekend we visited the Siwa oasis in western Egypt, about 60 km from the Libyan border. We were only mildly worried about contracting the plague. We were more worried about, you know, dying of dehydration and exposure and discomfort in THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT. Click the links I've thrown in here to see photos and videos from this trip.
We left on Friday at 6:00 in the morning. In the hour before sleep snuck up and stole me from myself, I watched with wide eyes as we passed vile-smelling refineries, vast pools of shallow water which would eventually evaporate and leave salt behind to be collected, and out in “Alexandria West,” we drove past mile after mile after mile of resorts. Unfinished resorts. Beautiful, stately buildings emulating completion, ringed by boundary-defining walls that blocked any view of the ocean, standing empty under the unrelenting sun. We drove past complexes for a solid hour, before the resorts turned to abandoned desert. This empty, barren land was also blocked from the road by a retaining wall, but for a good reason: this was El Alamein, site of a battle during WWII, and reportedly still pockmarked with mines.
We drove along the coast for two or three hours until we reached Marsa Matrouh – a lovely resort city that I’ll come back to later. At Matrouh the road turned southwest, and we drove for another three hours through the starkest land I’ve ever seen. Think Nebraska, but with sand. And instead of buffalo: This.
Sleep stole itself from me once again as condensation dripped into our boxed breakfasts inside our air-conditioned tube. When I woke, the difference in landscape was dramatic: desert had turned to groves of palm trees, and buildings the color of sand hid between these groves. We drove over a channel of water dug from one of the natural springs. It was noon, and no Siwan in their right mind was out voluntarily during that time of the day.
We pulled into our hotel: a simple double-ring of low buildings forming the shape of an eye. Next door was an empty, immaculate Olympic sports complex, locked, dark, waiting for Egypt to host the world games. There’s something a bit heart-wrenching about this basketball court.
These men in front of the hotel dressed in local fashion greeted us with plates of dates and glasses of hibiscus juice. We looked around suspiciously, not wanting to be rude, but confused at the elaborate welcome. Granted, we were visiting during the off season. (See the “no Siwan in their right mind” comment above. No one visits this desert oasis in June. Er, except for a gaggle of Americans.) We were told to discover our rooms and get our swimsuits – we were going on a safari. (Insert confusion. Safari? Swimsuits?)
I always though safaris required animals. But 28 of us hopped in 5 sturdy jeeps and tore off through the desert, leaving five sets of tracks marching up and down the dunes. My driver seemed amused that his jeep of six gawking kids shrieked when he launched off particularly precipitous drop-offs. We were somewhat afraid that we were living our last moments of life.
The desert is beautiful. And a half-hour into this excursion, we came to what Erica appropriately called a “black hole in the desert.” The first thought that came to my mind was, I’ll admit, straight out of the Lion King: A watering hole! We pulled up to this button of life and were told that we had an hour to swim. To swim! In the desert! The other women on the trip and I looked around trepidatiously – we had to put our swimsuits *on*. Our guides pointed to a 4.5-foot fence made of interwoven palm fronds. So, hopping from foot to foot to keep the sand from scalding our soles, we bared our butts to the Sahara. And swam in the sweetest desert water with minnows that nibbled our moles.
We drove next to the bottom of the ocean. Well, at one point in history it was the bottom of the ocean, and seashells, crustaceans and coral is baked into the desert floor to prove it. From there, we stopped at some deserted dunes and sand-boarded in the amazing sun.
The sun disappeared under 28 pairs of watchful eyes as we perched on top of a melting sand dune, and our drivers spread a blanket behind the shadows of jeeps and made tea.
We then had dinner in a Bedouin (or, as our itinerary said, “Bedwin”) camp. Water has never tasted so good.
Saturday, we were busy from sunup to well past sundown. Breakfast early in the morning, then we were on the bus and off to the edge of town where we climbed all over jebel al-mout, or “Mountain of the Dead.” So named for honeycombed tombs that pockmark its face, and the hand of death that slithered down our spines along with rivers of sweat, as the sun climbed higher in the desert sky. Here's a video from the top.
From the jebel we headed back into town to crawl across the melting face of Shali, which is Siwi for “city.” It was literally the old city of Siwa, built entirely within mud-brick walls, and built up as the population expanded. The walls were to protect it from invasions of nomadic peoples in the surrounding desert. Ironically, these protective walls also lead to the demise of the very city it encompassed: every 50 to 70 years in Siwa, it rains. And when it rained in 1926, the walls – made of this mud-brick solution baked harder than brick - melted from its own saline content and turned Shali into Mom’s last Halloween pumpkin.
From Shali we headed back to the fringes of the city, along a winding, amazingly narrow dirt road that passed several natural springs now contained in concrete pools. The area was lush – for the desert. Dust-covered palm trees created dense foliage. We turned a corner and parked in front of 3ayn Kleopatra. You Arabic speakers out there might read that as “Cleopatra’s eye.” I learned this day that “3ayn” also means “spring.” We were face-to-face with Cleopatra’s spring.
At the time I didn’t catch much information on the spring, for my understanding of the tour guide went something like this: “[dialect] [dialect] [dialect] in [dialect] [dialect] Kleopatra’s spring [dialect]…”
Though we hadn’t been told to bring swimsuits or towels, the heat of the morning boosted our convictions that clothes dry quickly. One by one we jumped in with varying amounts of clothes on, as Egyptian men and boys watched us in amusement and waited for their turn.
From 3ayn Kleopatra we drove back into town and had lunch in a lovely, shady restaurant off a dirt road. Side note: In our entire time in Siwa, we saw about four women on the streets. Three of them were covered head to toe, with screens over their eyes. Siwa is known for its separation of genders – and has a somewhat hushed history of sanctioned homosexuality. At any rate, the restaurant sat us on the floor around four long tables and – they must have gotten word the Americans were coming –served us pizza and French fries.
After lunch we were informed of the rest of our day’s itinerary. Whereas the original schedule promised a “free afternoon,” we were somewhat dismayed to learn we’d be doing more sightseeing. (What a conundrum, huh?) Several of my classmates returned to the hotel regardless, to keep the afternoon heat at bay and slog through the mountain of homework we’d been given for the “long” weekend. The other ¾ of us piled back on the bus and headed to Amun Temple, or roughly, Egypt’s equivalent of Delphi. (Classics majors, feel free to leave your angry corrections in the “comments” section below. I welcome them.) Alexander the Great visited Siwa’s oracle in (year) to determine if he was indeed the son of gods. I think he got the answer he was looking for. And check this out. This is what we westerners were taught represents Egypt - and here they are, written on the wall!
After that brief, intense sweat session we drove into the desert. By this point we were excited for another promised spring to swim in. I won’t speak for my roommates, but after our incredible past two experiences swimming in natural springs, this third was slightly disappointing. The water was mildly saline and slime-filled, as is to be expected. But we weren’t expecting there to be a small tea tent set up next to this pool-like structure, and for several men to be staffing it, making tea, and overseeing the swimmers. Some of my female classmates and I walked a dirt road to a bend at which we hoped desperately no one would see our bared butts. We changed, and tried to ignore the mule poop concentrated in this particular bend we chose. My classmates devised a marvelously Egyptian slant to the American traditional pool game Marco Polo. We call it: Ibn Batuta. (Those of you who have used Al-Kitaab book 2, you'll know why we chose that reference.)
Example:
Tom: Ibn!
Class: Batuta!
Tom: Ibn!
Class: Batuta!
Tom: Ibn!
Class: Batuta!
Tom: Dammit, you guys are diving, aren’t you? I hate you…Ibn!
Egyptian men watching us: ???!
(On a side note, the U.S.-Brazil game is on in the lobby right now. U.S. is up by two – what on earth??! And a commercial for KFC just aired. I’ll repeat…..wtf??!)
When we drove from this spring in the desert to a “traditional Siwan house” in the city, I was amazed to watch my wonderful classmates, despite dehydration, sleep deprivation and ensuing exhaustion, wait patiently as another lecture was given to us in Egyptian Arabic. We ended the day with a brief excursion into the small town marketplace, where shop owners marveled at the American tourists dumb enough to visit Siwa in June. I was utterly impressed when one of my classmates bartered beautifully with a shop owner in Egyptian Arabic. I wound up paying a hefty price for my [noun], which I won’t describe because it’s going to be given to a certain reader of this blog. ;)
That night during an outdoor dinner at the hotel, we were treated to a traditional Siwi dance by about a dozen men who worked at the hotel. It was at this point that we saw the vestiges of Siwa’s longstanding (though “no longer”) acceptance of homosexuality. The Siwi men danced around our large circle, pulling – not women, but MEN – into their circle to dance. (Women joined later, but for that brief time, we were delighted to, for once, NOT be put on the spot!) My classmates are such good sports.
This brings us at last to Sunday, our last day of this intense weekend trip. We were up, fed, packed and out of the hotel by 9. On the road, back through the desert, we arrived in Marsa Matrouh (link) by 12:30. We were then given free reign of a hotel and its stretch of beach for about five hours. Our theory: the program expects us to work tremendously hard in class five days a week, and for an equal number of hours every night. And once in a great while, they sanction play time to even it out. I felt guilty. But the salty water, sea shells, crabs, starfish (THOSE were awkward to find with my toes!) and volleyball made for an excellent “free afternoon” at last.
On another side note: We have seen several locals slip face masks on when in the presence of Americans, for fear of swine flu. Honestly, I’d say they’re more likely to get the plague at this point.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Yesterday we had evening classes, from 3:45 p.m. to 8:00. A solid four hours of fusHa (with a short break for dinner-snackish-eat-time that offers vegetarian fare as often as it doesn’t) is enough to make anyone lethargic and somewhat anxious. During a short top-o-the-hour break, I steeped some green tea that our language center generously offers us in mildly warm water. And I tell you what: halfway through the next hour, Arabic started making sense to me. I loved the language, I loved the class, my classmates were witty and charming, and I loved everything about Egypt. I was considering signing up to participate in TWO voluntary plays being offered by the center, and maybe forming a regular extra-curricular study group just to go over the finer points of the grammar that hadn’t sunk in yet…
Then it occurred to me that I don’t drink much caffeine here.
Oh, caffeine highs, how sweet you are while you last. And how wretched the feeling of lying in bed after a long day with green tea bubbling through my veins, keeping my brain in third gear when the only thing I want in this world is to sleep.
*
I do like walking back to our hotel after evening classes. By 8 p.m., Alexandrians have ventured from jobs and air-conditioned apartments to window shop and socialize. The road we take to our hotel is lined almost entirely by shops, and this is the only time I can unabashedly look around. I mentioned a couple posts ago that locals are very eager to catch the eye of a foreigner and use that connection to invite her or him in to shop, or consider a lifelong legal commitment with said owner of the shop; for this reason I often wear sunglasses during the day and use those lenses as privacy shields behind which I can soak in Alexandria. At night, everyone is out, looking around. I openly observe brightly-lit shop windows offering Alexandria's hippest ideas on fashion, at the movie theaters that show Terminator (and X-Men Origins *sigh*) alongside slapstick Egyptian family comedies, and shops that sell mango juice that is the bane of every foreigner’s digestive track. Shopkeepers still catch our eyes, but we are just a few of hundreds of people ambling past a shop at any given time in the early evening.
*
At last: I have exercised!
Although it requires a taxi to get to and from, the F Club allows women in, whereas many gyms walkable from our hotel don’t. My female classmates and I have been deeply grateful that, the times we’ve visited, its small but suitable workout room has been deserted. We have now exercised our American desires to utterly ignore those around us: self-imposed blinders that allow us the personal freedom and mental space we need to perform the monotonous, controlled movements emulating natural movements that are relics from another life.
Although it takes a solid three-hour time commitment, navigating TWO taxi drivers who may or may not know where the fitness center or our hotel is and may or may not want desperately to know our marital statuses, dropping 20LE to use the facilities, and the usual mental preparation necessary to enter voluntarily into the world of pain that is running or StairMastering, it never doesn’t feel fabulous afterward. In our rooms at the hotel, we have a 4’x7’ square of open space (depending on each individual room and its occupants’ organizational habits) in which to stretch, sit up, push up and meditate. At the club the space is perhaps 8’x7’. It feels like a ballroom.
*
After being dumped by my first “language partner” (a partnership required under the terms of our program), I’ve finally met with my replacement. M is a sweet, small, incessantly enthused woman just a couple years younger than I am. During our first meeting and lunch of kosharee(link), she told me “You know, Liz, I really love you a lot.” She took me shopping afterward, teaching me all the important words for a young woman to know in the Egyptian dialect: skirt, leather bracelet, open-toed summer shoes, closed-toe summer shoes, and silver. I asked her what she thought of the Iranian elections, and she told me she’s not interested in politics.
A few days after this meeting my class and I left to go to Siwa. Upon our return from this three-day, intensively-structured trip M and I met to get hot chocolate at one of the large local malls. The first thing she told me once we were outside the language center was “You know, Liz, I’m really very mad at you.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp – why on earth would she be mad at me?! “You didn’t call me ONCE while you were in Siwa.” Okay, NOW I wanted to laugh. My first face-to-face experience with young adult friendship in Egypt continued to unfold. I explained that we were actually VERY busy (a true statement!) and when I did have a spare moment (at night, to sleep) I didn’t have cell phone reception. (What I DIDN’T tell her was that calling her didn’t occur to me once while we were gone.) I talked to a few of my female peers, who shared similar stories about their language peer interactions. Some receive 8-10 calls a day from their “special friend.” Some meet several times a week to go shopping, or go to the beach, or get secretly set up with their language partner’s friend’s friend (that’s a friendly shout-out, You Who Know Who You Are).
I’m a bit afraid that M wasn’t joking when she told me she was very mad at me: I did my best to, well, make an effort at being an over-present New Best Friend and sent M not one but TWO text messages (one in Arabic!) and haven’t heard back from her.
I spend enough of my waking moments fretting over confusing interactions with people of my identical cultural background and the reproductive parts I prefer, and have concluded that if I have already lost a friend who I barely had, the world will not cease to revolve on its axis. And I’ll have more time to study fusHa.
*
The walk TO class has started to take on something of a routine. My peers and I have two main routes we take. One is straight and simple, stretching along a major shopping route. But it takes us slightly out of our way and, at night, can double the duration of the walk due to congestion (izdihaam!) on the sidewalks. The other is a bit more convoluted, but half of it takes place under the sweet shade of trees and takes us right past Alex’s medical school.
In my last post I mentioned the culture of honking in Egypt. I’ve discerned that cars here have somehow equipped their horns to surpass the decibel level of jets. But not every car has a soul-shattering honk – which makes the game all the more exciting! Will the next taxi to pull out of a hidden driveway and honk in surprise at your presence merely inform you speedily of its rapid approach? Or will it pierce the very flesh that comprises your ear drum and render you dizzy for the remainder of your walk, perhaps bloodying your eye sockets and chipping away at your molars?
*
This entry’s rendition of “damn, I’m glad I brought [noun]” will trend toward the practical.
-I bought a few pairs of cheap sunglasses last year that were advertised at a 5k run I participated in. The quality was no better than that you’d find at Target, but the internet-based company appealed to my sense of pride for having voluntarily competed in a sporting event (guh-hyuck!). One pair, absolutely nondescript in every way possible, came with a hard, zip-together case to protect it. I schlep this hoagie-sized vessel everywhere with me. And it’s in this fashion that the most boring pair of sunglasses I’ve ever owned have lasted this long.
-Undershirts + sweat = semi-composure. Were it not for these simple tank tops I grabbed from Target in the days before departing, I would sweat through every shirt I wear. Every day. But they kindly soak up my salty sheen, and don’t trap too much of my ample body heat during the hottest parts of the day.
-I almost didn’t bring my textbook from last year’s Arabic class with me. My suitcase was embarrassingly heavy, despite my delightful plan to keep it light and simple. But the class I’ve been placed in is spending the summer slogging through the second half of this textbook (somewhat of a review for me) before moving on to the next volume in the series. And every day I secretly laugh when I open my thickly-thumbed book to an exercise that I’VE ALREADY DONE and don’t need to spend an additional two hours deciphering. (Folks in my class, I’m really sorry. That’s just the way it worked out!)
-More about shopping at Target. *sigh* In the last hours before I left Minnesota, I made a sickeningly practical purchase. There is nothing compelling about this librarian-bag. I needed something to triple as a backpack, a beach bag and my carry-on suitcase. Although boring to its very core and utterly uninteresting, this bag has been excessively practical, and (CPS, I’m looking at you) it was an unfortunately wise purchase. But I REALLY wanted a sea-green number with less space and fewer uses – it had so much CHARACTER…
See? Boring.
*
While walking to class today and exchanging mutual sighs of mental exhaustion, my roommate – a PhD candidate at Wash U in St. Louis – gave me the best advice I’ve received thus far on this trip: Just imagine that this is “intellectual boot camp,” and the deluge of vocabulary and homework and obligations and structured daily activities is all part of an organizational schema that WE HAVE NO PART IN PLANNING.
Today in 3amiyya (Egyptian dialect) class, we practiced counting, and writing exceedingly large numbers on the board and reading them aloud. I was deeply struck by how empowering it is to be able to recite such large numbers. This, combined with the continual discordant manner of discovering, barely-verbally, the pedagogy of our class, leads me to feel much younger than I am. I may know an answer, but it's not time yet to give the answer. It's time to play a game in which we recite certain things BEFORE giving the answer! It’s like second grade all over again.
*
We live in an area called “Mahatat-Raml,” or Raml Station. (I learned last week that raml means “sand.”) It is so named for the tram and train stop that’s 30 feet from the entrance of our hotel. But the small square is more than just a train stop. To the best of my knowledge, the trains run 24 hours a day, and there are always Alexandrians waiting to board on either side of the multiple tracks. The small-ish strip of raised concrete that constitutes the rest of the square (perhaps the size of a Starbucks parking lot, for those of you familiar with driving culture lingo) also provides space for people to pray, and when prayer rugs aren’t spread out to bear prostrators pointing to Mecca, the green rugs are neatly rolled and stacked behind a concrete slab that signals the end of one of the train lines. There’s a circular stand that cells 360 degrees of popcorn (only 1LE, or about 20 cents, for a cone of perfectly-salted snack!), ice cream and stamps (or so I’ve heard). A low building on the far end of this square opens up at night to sell books and black-market movies. I bought UP yesterday for about $1.90. (Have yet to see if it works, though.)
And at night, my roommate and I fall asleep to the near-silent hum of our air conditioner, and the rumble of the hotel’s foundation as another train delivers its load to Sand Station.
Then it occurred to me that I don’t drink much caffeine here.
Oh, caffeine highs, how sweet you are while you last. And how wretched the feeling of lying in bed after a long day with green tea bubbling through my veins, keeping my brain in third gear when the only thing I want in this world is to sleep.
*
I do like walking back to our hotel after evening classes. By 8 p.m., Alexandrians have ventured from jobs and air-conditioned apartments to window shop and socialize. The road we take to our hotel is lined almost entirely by shops, and this is the only time I can unabashedly look around. I mentioned a couple posts ago that locals are very eager to catch the eye of a foreigner and use that connection to invite her or him in to shop, or consider a lifelong legal commitment with said owner of the shop; for this reason I often wear sunglasses during the day and use those lenses as privacy shields behind which I can soak in Alexandria. At night, everyone is out, looking around. I openly observe brightly-lit shop windows offering Alexandria's hippest ideas on fashion, at the movie theaters that show Terminator (and X-Men Origins *sigh*) alongside slapstick Egyptian family comedies, and shops that sell mango juice that is the bane of every foreigner’s digestive track. Shopkeepers still catch our eyes, but we are just a few of hundreds of people ambling past a shop at any given time in the early evening.
*
At last: I have exercised!
Although it requires a taxi to get to and from, the F Club allows women in, whereas many gyms walkable from our hotel don’t. My female classmates and I have been deeply grateful that, the times we’ve visited, its small but suitable workout room has been deserted. We have now exercised our American desires to utterly ignore those around us: self-imposed blinders that allow us the personal freedom and mental space we need to perform the monotonous, controlled movements emulating natural movements that are relics from another life.
Although it takes a solid three-hour time commitment, navigating TWO taxi drivers who may or may not know where the fitness center or our hotel is and may or may not want desperately to know our marital statuses, dropping 20LE to use the facilities, and the usual mental preparation necessary to enter voluntarily into the world of pain that is running or StairMastering, it never doesn’t feel fabulous afterward. In our rooms at the hotel, we have a 4’x7’ square of open space (depending on each individual room and its occupants’ organizational habits) in which to stretch, sit up, push up and meditate. At the club the space is perhaps 8’x7’. It feels like a ballroom.
*
After being dumped by my first “language partner” (a partnership required under the terms of our program), I’ve finally met with my replacement. M is a sweet, small, incessantly enthused woman just a couple years younger than I am. During our first meeting and lunch of kosharee(link), she told me “You know, Liz, I really love you a lot.” She took me shopping afterward, teaching me all the important words for a young woman to know in the Egyptian dialect: skirt, leather bracelet, open-toed summer shoes, closed-toe summer shoes, and silver. I asked her what she thought of the Iranian elections, and she told me she’s not interested in politics.
A few days after this meeting my class and I left to go to Siwa. Upon our return from this three-day, intensively-structured trip M and I met to get hot chocolate at one of the large local malls. The first thing she told me once we were outside the language center was “You know, Liz, I’m really very mad at you.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp – why on earth would she be mad at me?! “You didn’t call me ONCE while you were in Siwa.” Okay, NOW I wanted to laugh. My first face-to-face experience with young adult friendship in Egypt continued to unfold. I explained that we were actually VERY busy (a true statement!) and when I did have a spare moment (at night, to sleep) I didn’t have cell phone reception. (What I DIDN’T tell her was that calling her didn’t occur to me once while we were gone.) I talked to a few of my female peers, who shared similar stories about their language peer interactions. Some receive 8-10 calls a day from their “special friend.” Some meet several times a week to go shopping, or go to the beach, or get secretly set up with their language partner’s friend’s friend (that’s a friendly shout-out, You Who Know Who You Are).
I’m a bit afraid that M wasn’t joking when she told me she was very mad at me: I did my best to, well, make an effort at being an over-present New Best Friend and sent M not one but TWO text messages (one in Arabic!) and haven’t heard back from her.
I spend enough of my waking moments fretting over confusing interactions with people of my identical cultural background and the reproductive parts I prefer, and have concluded that if I have already lost a friend who I barely had, the world will not cease to revolve on its axis. And I’ll have more time to study fusHa.
*
The walk TO class has started to take on something of a routine. My peers and I have two main routes we take. One is straight and simple, stretching along a major shopping route. But it takes us slightly out of our way and, at night, can double the duration of the walk due to congestion (izdihaam!) on the sidewalks. The other is a bit more convoluted, but half of it takes place under the sweet shade of trees and takes us right past Alex’s medical school.
In my last post I mentioned the culture of honking in Egypt. I’ve discerned that cars here have somehow equipped their horns to surpass the decibel level of jets. But not every car has a soul-shattering honk – which makes the game all the more exciting! Will the next taxi to pull out of a hidden driveway and honk in surprise at your presence merely inform you speedily of its rapid approach? Or will it pierce the very flesh that comprises your ear drum and render you dizzy for the remainder of your walk, perhaps bloodying your eye sockets and chipping away at your molars?
*
This entry’s rendition of “damn, I’m glad I brought [noun]” will trend toward the practical.
-I bought a few pairs of cheap sunglasses last year that were advertised at a 5k run I participated in. The quality was no better than that you’d find at Target, but the internet-based company appealed to my sense of pride for having voluntarily competed in a sporting event (guh-hyuck!). One pair, absolutely nondescript in every way possible, came with a hard, zip-together case to protect it. I schlep this hoagie-sized vessel everywhere with me. And it’s in this fashion that the most boring pair of sunglasses I’ve ever owned have lasted this long.
-Undershirts + sweat = semi-composure. Were it not for these simple tank tops I grabbed from Target in the days before departing, I would sweat through every shirt I wear. Every day. But they kindly soak up my salty sheen, and don’t trap too much of my ample body heat during the hottest parts of the day.
-I almost didn’t bring my textbook from last year’s Arabic class with me. My suitcase was embarrassingly heavy, despite my delightful plan to keep it light and simple. But the class I’ve been placed in is spending the summer slogging through the second half of this textbook (somewhat of a review for me) before moving on to the next volume in the series. And every day I secretly laugh when I open my thickly-thumbed book to an exercise that I’VE ALREADY DONE and don’t need to spend an additional two hours deciphering. (Folks in my class, I’m really sorry. That’s just the way it worked out!)
-More about shopping at Target. *sigh* In the last hours before I left Minnesota, I made a sickeningly practical purchase. There is nothing compelling about this librarian-bag. I needed something to triple as a backpack, a beach bag and my carry-on suitcase. Although boring to its very core and utterly uninteresting, this bag has been excessively practical, and (CPS, I’m looking at you) it was an unfortunately wise purchase. But I REALLY wanted a sea-green number with less space and fewer uses – it had so much CHARACTER…
See? Boring.
*
While walking to class today and exchanging mutual sighs of mental exhaustion, my roommate – a PhD candidate at Wash U in St. Louis – gave me the best advice I’ve received thus far on this trip: Just imagine that this is “intellectual boot camp,” and the deluge of vocabulary and homework and obligations and structured daily activities is all part of an organizational schema that WE HAVE NO PART IN PLANNING.
Today in 3amiyya (Egyptian dialect) class, we practiced counting, and writing exceedingly large numbers on the board and reading them aloud. I was deeply struck by how empowering it is to be able to recite such large numbers. This, combined with the continual discordant manner of discovering, barely-verbally, the pedagogy of our class, leads me to feel much younger than I am. I may know an answer, but it's not time yet to give the answer. It's time to play a game in which we recite certain things BEFORE giving the answer! It’s like second grade all over again.
*
We live in an area called “Mahatat-Raml,” or Raml Station. (I learned last week that raml means “sand.”) It is so named for the tram and train stop that’s 30 feet from the entrance of our hotel. But the small square is more than just a train stop. To the best of my knowledge, the trains run 24 hours a day, and there are always Alexandrians waiting to board on either side of the multiple tracks. The small-ish strip of raised concrete that constitutes the rest of the square (perhaps the size of a Starbucks parking lot, for those of you familiar with driving culture lingo) also provides space for people to pray, and when prayer rugs aren’t spread out to bear prostrators pointing to Mecca, the green rugs are neatly rolled and stacked behind a concrete slab that signals the end of one of the train lines. There’s a circular stand that cells 360 degrees of popcorn (only 1LE, or about 20 cents, for a cone of perfectly-salted snack!), ice cream and stamps (or so I’ve heard). A low building on the far end of this square opens up at night to sell books and black-market movies. I bought UP yesterday for about $1.90. (Have yet to see if it works, though.)
And at night, my roommate and I fall asleep to the near-silent hum of our air conditioner, and the rumble of the hotel’s foundation as another train delivers its load to Sand Station.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” -Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
We were told, shortly before and immediately after we arrived, that we would get sick. Being on a continent in which none of us grew up, the daily germs and microbes are different from those we’re used to, and a slip-up as simple as eating an apple washed in city water could result in the dreaded Egypt Gut Rot. It would pass, we were told, but not until our roommates had become extremely familiar with the sounds and frequencies of our bowel movements.
Even my classmates who have been to the Middle East several times tell me that each time they return, they get the Gut Rot again. Hence, I had prepared myself for the unavoidable nature of this unpleasant guarantee. I brought a family-sized bottle of Pepto Bismol, some Immodium, and enough Ibuprofen to get me through the summer.
I definitely taunted fate a few times. I’ve been careful about the fruit I eat, and make sure any soda I get doesn’t come with ice. But once or twice I was without a bottle of water at night, and, here in Alexandria, decided to bite the bullet and drink straight out of the tap. Maybe the Gut Rot is more common in Cairo, for a few days of that and I was still feeling fine. But one by one my peers felt a rumble in their innards. I loaned out the Pepto Bismol. My Ibuprofen is almost gone. And mid-week last week, my stomach gave a cramp worthy of pregnancy. I sweated a little. My stomach cramped again, and, well, the rest of the afternoon is sort of a blur. I’m pretty sure my life flashed before my eyes, but I was in a semi-conscious state, struggling to stay upright at my desk.
That evening after class, my roommate and I stopped by – hear me out, now – McDonalds. To use their internet! It’s the only establishment in town with free wifi (that we’ve found so far), and we just wanted to check a few things before returning to the snail-paced internet at the E. Hotel.
But Cally, I lied to you. After a half-hour at McD’s suffering through our respective misery, the two of us became famished. We succumbed and got one hamburger and one large order of fries, and wolfed them down in moments. (I had the fries.) And we both agreed: it was the best McDonalds we’d ever had. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but eating at McDonalds actually made me feel LESS sick than I felt beforehand – my stomach cramps went away entirely, and I’ve been gut-rot-free since then! *knocks on wood*
In retrospect, some vegetarians I keep company with say my symptoms are similar to their experiences after having eaten meat accidentally. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out one of the twenty-cent falafel sandwiches from Gad had a few flecks of shawarma in it, or the olives served at breakfast in the hotel had been stored with the meat. I guess I’ll never really know – perhaps I should start drinking out of the tap again and test the theory.
*
Two weeks ago when we were still in Cairo, we attended a mandatory meeting at the U.S. Embassy. There, a State Department representative informed us, among other things, that “in Egypt, crossing the street will be the most dangerous thing you’ll do.” So far, my peers and I agree as a whole: he was absolutely right.
Sometimes, the roads have lines delineating traffic. Occasionally, drivers heed those lines. Stoplights exist, but more as an indicator of “the other direction has a green, so while you blow through this intersection, there will be cars coming straight at you.” Fifty percent of the time, I SWEAR that cars speed up when they see pedestrians in the road. If this directly leads to my demise sometime in the next six weeks, I just want you all to know I love you and care about you tremendously, and please emboss on my urn “I DID look both ways, Mom!”
*
As in Greece, the streets of Cairo and Alexandria are home to countless stray cats, and occasionally, dogs. The cats are beautiful, long-faced, lithe-limbered Egyptian cats, but have lived their lives on the streets. Their sticky, mangey fur is just enough to deter me from scooping one up and making it the E. Hotel’s mascot. But every now and then you’ll see one sneak into an open door and scurry into a convenience store or – like I saw last week – skulk up the stairs of our school.
*
I’m seriously lamenting the lack of exercise I’ve had in the last two weeks. The run I took through the streets of D.C. on June 2nd may well be my last run of the summer. I have not seen a single runner here since arriving. My classmates and I have brainstormed that it may be possible to run along the Cornice in the early, early morning, but even then a few drivers and millers-about are out, and running would add to the spectacle of a white, foreign, single, uncovered woman being on the streets of Alexandria. I might just have to count on the restricted caloric intake we’re all experiencing, ample sweating and a few in-hotel exercises to get me through the summer.
*
The honking is incessant. People honk to say “get out of my way,” “feel free to merge,” “excuse me,” “what’s up,” “hey there, you look like a foreigner; I’m intrigued and wish to capture your attention,” and “oops.” The first break from honking came Friday morning. Few people on the streets, few people on the roads. Sometimes taxis honk when they pass us on the streets – either for any of the above reasons, or because they assume we gringos will be in need of a ride. It bothered me for the first week here, but now it melts into the general background din of Alex’s streets.
*
It’s very common here for women to be…acknowledged. I should clarify: as a white, single, foreign, uncovered woman, I’m finding that I’m very frequently acknowledged by the men in Alex. This acknowledgement runs the gamut from friendly, surprised “hello”s, to stares at my approach and passing, to somewhat unwanted statements of “You are beautiful, you speak English?” to marriage proposals (most of them facetious). I estimate that, of all the women I pass on the streets in Alex, 99% of them are covered. Of the women who cover, I’d estimate that 10% of them wear a head-to-toe cover with openings only for their eyes. Some of my female peers will wear scarves over their hair when they’re out at night, and say it dramatically reduces the attention they receive. Others have said it changes the nature of the attention – rather than catcalls in English, they get them in Arabic.
I resigned myself to the fact that I look like a foreigner, walk like a foreigner, speak like a foreigner and will always BE a foreigner. In Greece this bothered me somewhat. It does, too, here. But I’m attempting every day to come to terms with it and move on, to love the luscious life I see and live here, to squeeze from this experience every succulent drop of opportunity.
However, in regard to being an undeniable outsider, I will now begin an ongoing narrative of the most useful items I packed for this trip. The first item to make this list is a pair of sunglasses. I was told by a few people who have traveled to Egypt before to drop the Minnesota attitude and avoid making eye contact. As an obviously foreign, white, single, uncovered woman, any glance that is caught by another person (particularly a male) indicates my foreignness and invites inquiry. A glance of mine into a shop or store that is caught by the owner results in lavish invitations to come in, browse, check out the latest deal that I’m offered for no reason other than I’m (obviously) American and Barack Obama visited Egypt two weeks ago, and perhaps marry him. Hence, with sunglasses, I can maintain a small semblance of aloofness while allowing my eyes to roll wildly in their sockets, taking in the marvelous peeling buildings that attest to years in the sun and sand and wind, the beautiful women and their breathtaking fashion senses,the shops that sell candy, soda and water for the equivalent of quarters and dimes. Definitely, item number one on the “Damn, I’m glad I brought that” list is sunglasses.
*
Egypt reminds me of Greece – or what Greece probably would have been like before it switched to the euro. The exchange rate when we arrived was 5.5 Egyptian pounds (LE) to the U.S. dollar. A pound can go a long way – if you’re picky about how you spend it. The modest stipend that we were given can easily carry us through this summer if we’re thoughtful. As I mentioned in my last entry, we have little to no opportunity to prepare food (other than peeling open a can and sporking its sweet sweet treasure into our mouths). Our stipend was meant to fill this need – if we’re careful about our spending habits, we could possibly seek outside sources of meals on a daily basis.
Though, as one of my classmates noted, there’s little middle ground. On the rakheeS end of the spectrum, there’s Gad, the Egyptian equivalent of a highway McDonalds. As I’ve mentioned, I can get a falafel pita sandwich with a few shreds of “salad” in it for one pound, or about 20 cents. Two of those, and you’ve got a mildly satisfying dinner. (Though we all agree that Gad is also the intestinal equivalent of McDonalds. Dining on those sandwiches, you’re taking a risk.) On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Café R.* This American-style restaurant offers steaks, quesadillas, pasta dishes and the smoothest, silkiest lattes in Lower Egypt…for near-American prices. The restaurant itself opens up with a vaulted ceiling and wood-paneled walls, enthusiastic air conditioning and cliché theme music done on piano looped once every 15 minutes (no joke). A meal there can easily cost 30LE – thirty times a measly sandwich at Gad (though still only six dollars). But there’s very little middle ground. Not many places offer a sandwich, or plate of hummus and falafel, for five or ten pounds.
As a result, we’re cycling our food sources. One day at Gad, an occasional day at Café R., and a once-in-awhile trip to the highly-acclaimed Alexandria Mall where a Wal-Mart like store sells limited groceries next to shawls, shoes and the Qur’an. We may not be able to prepare food, but canned corn tastes like steak when you’re hungry enough.
*
By the end of our first week of class, I was sick of everything. Sick of class, sick of Arabic, sick of being spoken to in Arabic, sick of being a foreigner, sick of the attention and catcalls and living out of a suitcase in a hotel. I was nostalgic for anything that was familiar, and began to crave the doldrumity of living at home, sleeping in the bedroom of my childhood, driving on familiar roads. Over the weekend I chatted with some folks on Skype, and saw faces halfway around the world smiling in their familiar residences. And I realized that if I fight the unfamiliarity and the language barrier, this fantastic opportunity to be immersed in a language and culture will be forever wasted. I realized where much of my anxiety and despair was coming from - I don’t like not knowing everything. But by the start of this second week of class, I was ready to start over. Arabic words were no longer bouncing like ping-pong balls off a brick wall in my brain. Some were sticking, like Gak, and leaving a filmy, oily impression…before falling off noisily. But at least it’s sticking more than it was last week!
This is my first language immersion experience (yes, there was Greece, but we weren’t called on to use Greek daily). And it’s intense. It’s intense in a way I couldn’t completely prepare for without experiencing it.
I’ve come to another conclusion: The past is only nostalgic because we know how it ends. And the unknown is scary.
I don’t think I’ll be chancing the tap water any time soon.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” –Khalil Gibran, The Prophet.
*For specific names, shoot me an e-mail. I’d prefer this blog not come up in internet searches of specific businesses.
We were told, shortly before and immediately after we arrived, that we would get sick. Being on a continent in which none of us grew up, the daily germs and microbes are different from those we’re used to, and a slip-up as simple as eating an apple washed in city water could result in the dreaded Egypt Gut Rot. It would pass, we were told, but not until our roommates had become extremely familiar with the sounds and frequencies of our bowel movements.
Even my classmates who have been to the Middle East several times tell me that each time they return, they get the Gut Rot again. Hence, I had prepared myself for the unavoidable nature of this unpleasant guarantee. I brought a family-sized bottle of Pepto Bismol, some Immodium, and enough Ibuprofen to get me through the summer.
I definitely taunted fate a few times. I’ve been careful about the fruit I eat, and make sure any soda I get doesn’t come with ice. But once or twice I was without a bottle of water at night, and, here in Alexandria, decided to bite the bullet and drink straight out of the tap. Maybe the Gut Rot is more common in Cairo, for a few days of that and I was still feeling fine. But one by one my peers felt a rumble in their innards. I loaned out the Pepto Bismol. My Ibuprofen is almost gone. And mid-week last week, my stomach gave a cramp worthy of pregnancy. I sweated a little. My stomach cramped again, and, well, the rest of the afternoon is sort of a blur. I’m pretty sure my life flashed before my eyes, but I was in a semi-conscious state, struggling to stay upright at my desk.
That evening after class, my roommate and I stopped by – hear me out, now – McDonalds. To use their internet! It’s the only establishment in town with free wifi (that we’ve found so far), and we just wanted to check a few things before returning to the snail-paced internet at the E. Hotel.
But Cally, I lied to you. After a half-hour at McD’s suffering through our respective misery, the two of us became famished. We succumbed and got one hamburger and one large order of fries, and wolfed them down in moments. (I had the fries.) And we both agreed: it was the best McDonalds we’d ever had. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but eating at McDonalds actually made me feel LESS sick than I felt beforehand – my stomach cramps went away entirely, and I’ve been gut-rot-free since then! *knocks on wood*
In retrospect, some vegetarians I keep company with say my symptoms are similar to their experiences after having eaten meat accidentally. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out one of the twenty-cent falafel sandwiches from Gad had a few flecks of shawarma in it, or the olives served at breakfast in the hotel had been stored with the meat. I guess I’ll never really know – perhaps I should start drinking out of the tap again and test the theory.
*
Two weeks ago when we were still in Cairo, we attended a mandatory meeting at the U.S. Embassy. There, a State Department representative informed us, among other things, that “in Egypt, crossing the street will be the most dangerous thing you’ll do.” So far, my peers and I agree as a whole: he was absolutely right.
Sometimes, the roads have lines delineating traffic. Occasionally, drivers heed those lines. Stoplights exist, but more as an indicator of “the other direction has a green, so while you blow through this intersection, there will be cars coming straight at you.” Fifty percent of the time, I SWEAR that cars speed up when they see pedestrians in the road. If this directly leads to my demise sometime in the next six weeks, I just want you all to know I love you and care about you tremendously, and please emboss on my urn “I DID look both ways, Mom!”
*
As in Greece, the streets of Cairo and Alexandria are home to countless stray cats, and occasionally, dogs. The cats are beautiful, long-faced, lithe-limbered Egyptian cats, but have lived their lives on the streets. Their sticky, mangey fur is just enough to deter me from scooping one up and making it the E. Hotel’s mascot. But every now and then you’ll see one sneak into an open door and scurry into a convenience store or – like I saw last week – skulk up the stairs of our school.
*
I’m seriously lamenting the lack of exercise I’ve had in the last two weeks. The run I took through the streets of D.C. on June 2nd may well be my last run of the summer. I have not seen a single runner here since arriving. My classmates and I have brainstormed that it may be possible to run along the Cornice in the early, early morning, but even then a few drivers and millers-about are out, and running would add to the spectacle of a white, foreign, single, uncovered woman being on the streets of Alexandria. I might just have to count on the restricted caloric intake we’re all experiencing, ample sweating and a few in-hotel exercises to get me through the summer.
*
The honking is incessant. People honk to say “get out of my way,” “feel free to merge,” “excuse me,” “what’s up,” “hey there, you look like a foreigner; I’m intrigued and wish to capture your attention,” and “oops.” The first break from honking came Friday morning. Few people on the streets, few people on the roads. Sometimes taxis honk when they pass us on the streets – either for any of the above reasons, or because they assume we gringos will be in need of a ride. It bothered me for the first week here, but now it melts into the general background din of Alex’s streets.
*
It’s very common here for women to be…acknowledged. I should clarify: as a white, single, foreign, uncovered woman, I’m finding that I’m very frequently acknowledged by the men in Alex. This acknowledgement runs the gamut from friendly, surprised “hello”s, to stares at my approach and passing, to somewhat unwanted statements of “You are beautiful, you speak English?” to marriage proposals (most of them facetious). I estimate that, of all the women I pass on the streets in Alex, 99% of them are covered. Of the women who cover, I’d estimate that 10% of them wear a head-to-toe cover with openings only for their eyes. Some of my female peers will wear scarves over their hair when they’re out at night, and say it dramatically reduces the attention they receive. Others have said it changes the nature of the attention – rather than catcalls in English, they get them in Arabic.
I resigned myself to the fact that I look like a foreigner, walk like a foreigner, speak like a foreigner and will always BE a foreigner. In Greece this bothered me somewhat. It does, too, here. But I’m attempting every day to come to terms with it and move on, to love the luscious life I see and live here, to squeeze from this experience every succulent drop of opportunity.
However, in regard to being an undeniable outsider, I will now begin an ongoing narrative of the most useful items I packed for this trip. The first item to make this list is a pair of sunglasses. I was told by a few people who have traveled to Egypt before to drop the Minnesota attitude and avoid making eye contact. As an obviously foreign, white, single, uncovered woman, any glance that is caught by another person (particularly a male) indicates my foreignness and invites inquiry. A glance of mine into a shop or store that is caught by the owner results in lavish invitations to come in, browse, check out the latest deal that I’m offered for no reason other than I’m (obviously) American and Barack Obama visited Egypt two weeks ago, and perhaps marry him. Hence, with sunglasses, I can maintain a small semblance of aloofness while allowing my eyes to roll wildly in their sockets, taking in the marvelous peeling buildings that attest to years in the sun and sand and wind, the beautiful women and their breathtaking fashion senses,the shops that sell candy, soda and water for the equivalent of quarters and dimes. Definitely, item number one on the “Damn, I’m glad I brought that” list is sunglasses.
*
Egypt reminds me of Greece – or what Greece probably would have been like before it switched to the euro. The exchange rate when we arrived was 5.5 Egyptian pounds (LE) to the U.S. dollar. A pound can go a long way – if you’re picky about how you spend it. The modest stipend that we were given can easily carry us through this summer if we’re thoughtful. As I mentioned in my last entry, we have little to no opportunity to prepare food (other than peeling open a can and sporking its sweet sweet treasure into our mouths). Our stipend was meant to fill this need – if we’re careful about our spending habits, we could possibly seek outside sources of meals on a daily basis.
Though, as one of my classmates noted, there’s little middle ground. On the rakheeS end of the spectrum, there’s Gad, the Egyptian equivalent of a highway McDonalds. As I’ve mentioned, I can get a falafel pita sandwich with a few shreds of “salad” in it for one pound, or about 20 cents. Two of those, and you’ve got a mildly satisfying dinner. (Though we all agree that Gad is also the intestinal equivalent of McDonalds. Dining on those sandwiches, you’re taking a risk.) On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Café R.* This American-style restaurant offers steaks, quesadillas, pasta dishes and the smoothest, silkiest lattes in Lower Egypt…for near-American prices. The restaurant itself opens up with a vaulted ceiling and wood-paneled walls, enthusiastic air conditioning and cliché theme music done on piano looped once every 15 minutes (no joke). A meal there can easily cost 30LE – thirty times a measly sandwich at Gad (though still only six dollars). But there’s very little middle ground. Not many places offer a sandwich, or plate of hummus and falafel, for five or ten pounds.
As a result, we’re cycling our food sources. One day at Gad, an occasional day at Café R., and a once-in-awhile trip to the highly-acclaimed Alexandria Mall where a Wal-Mart like store sells limited groceries next to shawls, shoes and the Qur’an. We may not be able to prepare food, but canned corn tastes like steak when you’re hungry enough.
*
By the end of our first week of class, I was sick of everything. Sick of class, sick of Arabic, sick of being spoken to in Arabic, sick of being a foreigner, sick of the attention and catcalls and living out of a suitcase in a hotel. I was nostalgic for anything that was familiar, and began to crave the doldrumity of living at home, sleeping in the bedroom of my childhood, driving on familiar roads. Over the weekend I chatted with some folks on Skype, and saw faces halfway around the world smiling in their familiar residences. And I realized that if I fight the unfamiliarity and the language barrier, this fantastic opportunity to be immersed in a language and culture will be forever wasted. I realized where much of my anxiety and despair was coming from - I don’t like not knowing everything. But by the start of this second week of class, I was ready to start over. Arabic words were no longer bouncing like ping-pong balls off a brick wall in my brain. Some were sticking, like Gak, and leaving a filmy, oily impression…before falling off noisily. But at least it’s sticking more than it was last week!
This is my first language immersion experience (yes, there was Greece, but we weren’t called on to use Greek daily). And it’s intense. It’s intense in a way I couldn’t completely prepare for without experiencing it.
I’ve come to another conclusion: The past is only nostalgic because we know how it ends. And the unknown is scary.
I don’t think I’ll be chancing the tap water any time soon.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” –Khalil Gibran, The Prophet.
*For specific names, shoot me an e-mail. I’d prefer this blog not come up in internet searches of specific businesses.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
On Friday June 5th, after three days sightseeing and soaking in the marvelous history and acrid air of Cairo (to my Cairene friends: I’m sorry, but you can’t deny that it is acrid!) we bussed north to Alexandria, and were greeted with a very unexpected rain shower!
We’re staying in the E. Hotel*, in “Raml Station” (that’s the name of the station up the block where the local train comes through), right along the Cornice. Now, I don’t speak French, and if that word isn’t French, I should just say that I don’t really know what a cornice is. But, were I to guess from context, I would guess it means “long road or walkway along a waterway, which may or may not curve because this one here does, and which is probably very beautiful and frequented by locals and visitors alike.
When I say that we’re staying in a hotel, it probably conjures some pretty luxurious images. Were we to stay at a Holiday Inn in the States, our experience would undoubtedly be different. For Egypt, from what I can tell, this hotel is fantastically luxurious. There are two people to a room, bathrooms in each room, air conditioning, a breakfast nook where we can stop by any morning for a lovely plate of meat, cheese, olives and eggs, and even a wifi connection. However, we’re discovering that these accommodations are a little cramped for a two-month stay. None of the rooms have desks or chairs in them, relegating our study time to the expanse offered by our beds or the few chairs in the lobby. Color televisions in the room offer Egyptian sitcoms and the Qur’an channel, but we’re without radios to listen to popular music. We’re pretty sure the plumbing in the hotel is strong enough to allow us to flush our toilet paper (see this helpful report), but half of the bathrooms (mine included) simply weren’t intended to include shower curtains – meaning my roommate and I, despite our best efforts, soak the floor, toilet and sink with every shower. We are extremely fortunate to have a small refrigerator in the room, but there’s not a single shelf in our room or the bathroom. Therefore, storing most food and preparing any is nearly impossible.
On being vegetarian: So far, it’s not been too trying. A few times meals have been served to us en masse that serve meat, in which case I get a little hungry. But for the most part, vegetarian meals are available wherever I am. The local equivalent of a fast-food chain, Gad, sells falafel pita sandwiches for one Egyptian pound, or about 20 cents. Fool, or a mashed bean dish, is considered by some to be the national dish of Egypt. I’ve also had the famed dish kosharee, which is something of a “leftover” dish containing, from my one experience, several kinds of pasta and beans with a tomato sauce on top. And, in the restaurants I’ve visited in which we order as a large group, my request for vegetarian or nabatee (vegetarian)dishes have been met with viable alternatives. It could be worse. One of my classmates is keeping kosher. (Love you, S.)
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The day after arriving, we were tested individually at the language center. Herein lies something of a sticky issue for my peers and myself: the tests were administered after four days of intensive traveling, and consisted of oral conversation only. Based on those results, the next day we looked over a list that delineated our discerned ability levels and the classes we would be in. Suffice it to say that we spent the first five days of class rearranging those delineations. Some of our peers are fantastic students of classical Arabic (fusHa), but have had zero knowledge of the Egyptian dialect, or 3amiyya. Others have spent extensive time traveling in the Middle East and are extremely proficient in 3amiyya, but have taken few structured fusHa classes. Others were so affected by jet lag, nervousness or other personal factors that their oral interviews poorly represented their abilities. By the last day of the school week we had more or less determined our appropriate placements. But it was a stressful week.
Arabic is fantastically logical. Sunday is called youm al-ahed or “the first day” for a reason: it’s the first day of the school and work week. Thursday, youm al-khamees, is “the fifth day,” or the last day of the week. Friday is the day most Muslims go to mosque. We’ve spent two Fridays in Egypt so far: the first we rushed through Cairo, seeing the historical sites, bartering in the khan and bussing to Alexandria. Last Friday some classmates and I walked to a nearby café to do work, and the street scene was remarkable: almost no individuals were out, almost no honking could be heard. Every block or so we saw rolls of green carpet unfurled in front of shops, and rows of men bent and straightened harmoniously as the neighborhood mosques called out the prayers. A classmate put it best when she said “It’s like a whole different Egypt on Fridays.” At our café, I asked one of the waitresses how it felt to be working on Friday. Her response: “I’m Christian, and I don’t mind.”
But now back to our first days in Alexandria: After our first day of class, we piled onto a bus for a long day of short visits to some of Alex’s most famous sites. First to the Alexandria Cultural Museum, which happens to be across the street from our language center. Then to an amazing archeological site which appeared, from our parking spot, to be completely deserted. And that impression wasn’t entirely wrong: we entered a stairway into what appeared to be a water tower whose tin hat sat just five feet above ground. The stairway inside that tin can circled three stories underground into an immense honeycombed series of catacombs, with rooms upon rooms upon rooms. The bottom floor of the catacomb isn’t even accessible, because the water table in Alex has risen since its original creation, and the lower floor is now entirely underwater. I was astounded by this water: it covered the floor of several rooms of catacombs, ethereally still, and remarkably clear. We tiptoed across saggy boards that stretched the lengths of these rooms, admiring the relief carvings that adorned the walls, many with original paint clinging to the limestone. I would think that centuries of debris falling into this water would spur artistic algae growth, but it was as clear as a well-kept swimming pool.
From the catacomb we visited Qait Bey Citadel, a castle-like structure that had just closed its doors for the day when we arrived. It sits on the far west side of the Cornice, in the spot of the famed lighthouse that was destroyed by an earthquake a millennium and a half ago. Then we drove to the far, far east side of the Cornice to Montaza Palace (link), built not so long ago in 1892 for a royal family, now the summer house of President Mubarak. We didn’t have access to the palace itself, but enjoyed the view from the outside. After a very short stop by Montaza Beach (site of one of our future “excursions), we retraced our steps to the west arm of the Cornice and had a delicious dinner overlooking the bahr (ocean).
.jpg)
Coming up next: Some impressions, thoughts, quirky cultural nuances, and my two-week reflection on residing in a part of the world I’ve spent the majority of the last several years focusing my my academic and free time on. (How's that for ending a blog entry with a preposition?)
*For specific names, shoot me an e-mail. I’d prefer this blog not come up in internet searches of specific businesses.
We’re staying in the E. Hotel*, in “Raml Station” (that’s the name of the station up the block where the local train comes through), right along the Cornice. Now, I don’t speak French, and if that word isn’t French, I should just say that I don’t really know what a cornice is. But, were I to guess from context, I would guess it means “long road or walkway along a waterway, which may or may not curve because this one here does, and which is probably very beautiful and frequented by locals and visitors alike.
When I say that we’re staying in a hotel, it probably conjures some pretty luxurious images. Were we to stay at a Holiday Inn in the States, our experience would undoubtedly be different. For Egypt, from what I can tell, this hotel is fantastically luxurious. There are two people to a room, bathrooms in each room, air conditioning, a breakfast nook where we can stop by any morning for a lovely plate of meat, cheese, olives and eggs, and even a wifi connection. However, we’re discovering that these accommodations are a little cramped for a two-month stay. None of the rooms have desks or chairs in them, relegating our study time to the expanse offered by our beds or the few chairs in the lobby. Color televisions in the room offer Egyptian sitcoms and the Qur’an channel, but we’re without radios to listen to popular music. We’re pretty sure the plumbing in the hotel is strong enough to allow us to flush our toilet paper (see this helpful report), but half of the bathrooms (mine included) simply weren’t intended to include shower curtains – meaning my roommate and I, despite our best efforts, soak the floor, toilet and sink with every shower. We are extremely fortunate to have a small refrigerator in the room, but there’s not a single shelf in our room or the bathroom. Therefore, storing most food and preparing any is nearly impossible.
On being vegetarian: So far, it’s not been too trying. A few times meals have been served to us en masse that serve meat, in which case I get a little hungry. But for the most part, vegetarian meals are available wherever I am. The local equivalent of a fast-food chain, Gad, sells falafel pita sandwiches for one Egyptian pound, or about 20 cents. Fool, or a mashed bean dish, is considered by some to be the national dish of Egypt. I’ve also had the famed dish kosharee, which is something of a “leftover” dish containing, from my one experience, several kinds of pasta and beans with a tomato sauce on top. And, in the restaurants I’ve visited in which we order as a large group, my request for vegetarian or nabatee (vegetarian)dishes have been met with viable alternatives. It could be worse. One of my classmates is keeping kosher. (Love you, S.)
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The day after arriving, we were tested individually at the language center. Herein lies something of a sticky issue for my peers and myself: the tests were administered after four days of intensive traveling, and consisted of oral conversation only. Based on those results, the next day we looked over a list that delineated our discerned ability levels and the classes we would be in. Suffice it to say that we spent the first five days of class rearranging those delineations. Some of our peers are fantastic students of classical Arabic (fusHa), but have had zero knowledge of the Egyptian dialect, or 3amiyya. Others have spent extensive time traveling in the Middle East and are extremely proficient in 3amiyya, but have taken few structured fusHa classes. Others were so affected by jet lag, nervousness or other personal factors that their oral interviews poorly represented their abilities. By the last day of the school week we had more or less determined our appropriate placements. But it was a stressful week.
Arabic is fantastically logical. Sunday is called youm al-ahed or “the first day” for a reason: it’s the first day of the school and work week. Thursday, youm al-khamees, is “the fifth day,” or the last day of the week. Friday is the day most Muslims go to mosque. We’ve spent two Fridays in Egypt so far: the first we rushed through Cairo, seeing the historical sites, bartering in the khan and bussing to Alexandria. Last Friday some classmates and I walked to a nearby café to do work, and the street scene was remarkable: almost no individuals were out, almost no honking could be heard. Every block or so we saw rolls of green carpet unfurled in front of shops, and rows of men bent and straightened harmoniously as the neighborhood mosques called out the prayers. A classmate put it best when she said “It’s like a whole different Egypt on Fridays.” At our café, I asked one of the waitresses how it felt to be working on Friday. Her response: “I’m Christian, and I don’t mind.”
But now back to our first days in Alexandria: After our first day of class, we piled onto a bus for a long day of short visits to some of Alex’s most famous sites. First to the Alexandria Cultural Museum, which happens to be across the street from our language center. Then to an amazing archeological site which appeared, from our parking spot, to be completely deserted. And that impression wasn’t entirely wrong: we entered a stairway into what appeared to be a water tower whose tin hat sat just five feet above ground. The stairway inside that tin can circled three stories underground into an immense honeycombed series of catacombs, with rooms upon rooms upon rooms. The bottom floor of the catacomb isn’t even accessible, because the water table in Alex has risen since its original creation, and the lower floor is now entirely underwater. I was astounded by this water: it covered the floor of several rooms of catacombs, ethereally still, and remarkably clear. We tiptoed across saggy boards that stretched the lengths of these rooms, admiring the relief carvings that adorned the walls, many with original paint clinging to the limestone. I would think that centuries of debris falling into this water would spur artistic algae growth, but it was as clear as a well-kept swimming pool.
From the catacomb we visited Qait Bey Citadel, a castle-like structure that had just closed its doors for the day when we arrived. It sits on the far west side of the Cornice, in the spot of the famed lighthouse that was destroyed by an earthquake a millennium and a half ago. Then we drove to the far, far east side of the Cornice to Montaza Palace (link), built not so long ago in 1892 for a royal family, now the summer house of President Mubarak. We didn’t have access to the palace itself, but enjoyed the view from the outside. After a very short stop by Montaza Beach (site of one of our future “excursions), we retraced our steps to the west arm of the Cornice and had a delicious dinner overlooking the bahr (ocean).
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Coming up next: Some impressions, thoughts, quirky cultural nuances, and my two-week reflection on residing in a part of the world I’ve spent the majority of the last several years focusing my my academic and free time on. (How's that for ending a blog entry with a preposition?)
*For specific names, shoot me an e-mail. I’d prefer this blog not come up in internet searches of specific businesses.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
So at last, hello from Egypt!
After a three-day orientation in D.C., my 24 classmates and I (and a study abroad advisor from the University of Utah, which is somewhat hosting our trip because of their established program in Alexandria) hopped a plane for Egypt. We spent our first three days in Cairo, partly to overcome jet lag, and partly to visit the sites. Partially, I should add, to adjust to the lack of available wifi internet.
We arrived sans luggage, thanks to a harried layover in Frankfurt. In the hallways on our way to customs (where we got a SWEET visa), we paused to have our photos taken. Was this a continuation of Brazil’s fingerprinting hulabaloo of ten years ago? Actually, those devices on tripods were thermal imaging devices that took our temperature – ostensibly, to screen for H1N1. (Apparently the eight AUC students who just arrived and were diagnosed with H1N1 didn’t…have fevers when they arrived?) I stood and smiled like a moron at the thermometer. After departing in a coach bus with blissful A/C, we stopped briefly at the Sofitel Le Sphinx hotel in suburban Giza (here, “suburban” means far enough away from Cairo to be considered another city. Not that it’s filled with endless identically-stamped houses, like the word “suburb” conveys in the U.S.). At the hotel - just a mile away from the pyramids (al ahram) - we hopped back on our new best friend (the bus with air conditioning) and drove to the Nile. Specifically, a dock on the Nile in the heart of downtown, amidst the high-rises and elite neighborhoods. The buffet on this Nile cruise could have been swill, but we were weak with hunger and a little queasy from the length of the plane rides. One plate of cruise swill, and sleep began to steal our life essences. The belly dancer who came on after the mediocre karaoke singers could have been plated in gold, but we sat on the back side of the boat in the warm river breeze and devoted every ounce of energy to ensuring the continuation of our parasympathetic systems. (Side note: to turn on the electricity in the hotel, we put our electronic door key card into a slot on the wall that activated the electricity. Cool!)
The morning of Thursday the 4th, we were up and out of our hotel by 8 a.m., rushed to the bus by a pressing schedule complicated by Obama’s Egyptian arrival. Dressed in our rumpled clothing from two days previous and passing a lone stick of deodorant among us, we looked nostalgically at our gathered suitcases that had been freshly delivered and sat next to our bus, tempting us to dive in and salvage clean underwear, socks and sunglasses. But our schedule wouldn’t allow for this ravaging, and we piled on, only to pile off one mile later in the unforgiving 8:30 sun.
Cairo reminds me of Louisville a little, in that its air sears the throat and burns the eyes in a remarkably endearing way. In Louisville, this is because traffic pollution and the local meat processing plant spew love and Care Bears into the Ohio River Valley which traps it until a particularly frisky breeze stirs things up. In Cairo, this is because tens of thousands of cars with unregulated emissions convalesce with triple-digit temperatures…and the Sahara Desert. So Thursday, our 45 minute stop at the pyramids were enough to let us gaze at these most historic human-made structures, soak in their unabashed local normalcy and sweat through our undershirts. Back on the bus, we drove for about four minutes and unloaded at the resting spot of our good friend abu al houl – the Sphinx.
The distribution of foliage is remarkable in Cairo. Look at Google Maps, and you’ll see a strip of green running through a sand-colored country. That’s the Nile demarcating civilization’s historic spread. Essentially. In Cairo, standing on the far east side of the city at the Citadel built on a natural high point, you can see across the tree-strewn city, pick out the path of the Nile by the extravagant high-rises lining it, and see the desert and the ahram on the west side. On the ground, canal offshoots have been dug to spider-leg water to other regions of the city, and from those canals, smaller trenches branch out irrigating smaller and smaller farms until the water table can no longer support them. Then, the desert draws a literal line along the west and east sides of the Nile, remarkably clear both on a map and in-person.
At 11 that morning we were shuffled off the premises so that the area could be secured for Obama’s imminent (five hour following) arrival. There were - honest to Paul Simon - policemen on camels stationed on the surrounding dunes to secure the area for his visit. (E-mail me for photos - the connection here is too slow to upload them to Blogger.) After lunching at an outdoor under-tarp food place (where the vegetarians on the trip were given salty vegetable soup in place of plates of meat), we were treated to a televised broadcast of Obama’s live speech in town – dubbed in Arabic. The combination of Classical Arabic mixed with his measured English prevented most of us from understanding more than three words in a row, but knowing that he was speaking live in the very city we had just landed in sent a little shiver of pride through our sheens of sweat.
Later that day we visited Memphis – once-capital of Egypt and home to a palace of Ramses II – and Saqarra, whose historic sites lie just feet away from the desert-line. Saqarra is also home to the Step Pyramid, and some of the most enthusiastic hawkers we’d seen yet on the trip. One of our classmates was “treated” to both a donkey and a horse ride, and the rest of us were amused until we remembered how hot it was and returned to the bus to end our long, hot, historic day.
Friday the 5th was our last day in Cairo, and we fit in just about everything we could in that remaining day. Another early departure took us first to the Egyptian Museum – absolutely packed, for Fridays are everyone’s day off. There was an entire room dedicated to Tutankhamen’s business, or, tombs (four in total, one having been stored inside the other) and the grand body-shaped caskets – three in total, again, one inside the other. Tutankhamen (name in old-school Egyptian: Tut Ankh Amen) himself is chilling in Luxor still, also known as the “Valley of the Kings.” We’ll be making a visit there in about a month. As you all probably know, he wasn’t that much of a big deal in his day – came into king-dom at age 9 and died at 19. The only reason we know who he is and revere his once-existence so much is because he and his grand belongings were some of the most complete and extravagant to ever be excavated.
After the museum, as the hottest part of the day approached, we visited Coptic Cairo and its famous “hanging church,” so named for its lack of foundation underneath. Then to Islamic Cairo, and the Citadel that overlooks the city. Finally to Khan El Khalily, a massive, extensive, dendritic market that snakes through square miles of Cairo.
This was our first real chance to test our bargaining skills.
We were equipped with haggling advice, horror and success stories, and anxiety sharpened by a one-hour time limit. I went in determined not to be ripped off - the hawkers at Memphis and Saqqara got me pretty good. A classmate advised me that “If you feel you got a good price, then you did. Don’t compare your price to the one others got.” These words rang in my head, and I headed out determined to ignore it and get a better price than any other khwagayeen. Shops lined both sides of every street with zero inches separating one from the other, selling loose-fitting men’s and women’s clothes, spices, perfume, toys, sunglasses, spices, hookahs, scarves, clothes, cloth, perfume and haakatha (those of you who know Arabic, you with me still?). I entertained a polite perfume seller who delighted me by following a few rituals I’d heard would unfold:
First, he called out a tantalizing price: one gram of perfume for one Egyptian pound (LE – one pound is about 30 cents). Sounded like a deal! He invited me and my two classmates in to his six-by-six foot shop lined floor to ceiling with beautifully blown glass bottles and jugs of potions with the deepest, darkest, subtle scents. He invited us to sit on three chairs lining one side, and he sat on the other, his knees almost touching ours. He asked where we were from, what we study, and though we tried some pigeon Arabic with him, our conversation reverted to English. He then pulled out a glass bottle about the size of an Ibuprofen container, and told us that was 80 grams. Ya3nee 80LE. Oops. But, but: because we were American, and his friends, he would give it to us for 60. Trying out the well-intended advice given by Egypt veterans, I offered him 20. He then got very offended (this is part of the ritual), and told us at length how long he and his father have been blowing glass in the family, and how long their family had lived in Egypt and worked out of this shop. Then he threw in two more bottles of perfume: three bottles times 80 grams should be 240LE, but because we’re his friends, he’d give it to us for 200. I offered 60. He offered to make us some tea. Eventually I walked out with three bottles of perfume and three decorative jars for 105 pounds – about $20.
After this adventure we had just 10 short minutes to make it back to the bus. My eye caught a backgammon board gleaming on a vendor’s table. We performed the ritual in fast-forward: I was initially offered 480LE, and walked away with the lovely board and its pieces for 110LE.
Were they good deals? Perhaps I could have gone even lower. But I got to practice these bargaining skills with the backup of my two classmates, and picked up a few unnecessary but wonderfully local items.
This was our last stop in Cairo, and three hours on the bus that night brought us to our new home: Alexandria. Suffice it to say for now that Egypt is a lovely, loving, rich place that I've just BARELY begun to see and swim in. My 24 classmates are amazing, intelligent, interesting compelling people, and this should be a fantastic experience. We've all worked extremely hard for many years to get here, and as I sit in the lobby of our hotel (=home for the next two months) I share this space (and sole wireless connection) with 6 of my peers. Four are hovering around a bootlegged copy of Harry Potter acquired from the Alexandria mall on the outskirts of town (dubbed in Arabic), and we're all dividing our attention between frantic spurts of internet availability and our homework. I’ll leave this entry here for now, and write some on Alex, our new home and the school in a coming entry. Again, if you desire photos, e-mail me!
After a three-day orientation in D.C., my 24 classmates and I (and a study abroad advisor from the University of Utah, which is somewhat hosting our trip because of their established program in Alexandria) hopped a plane for Egypt. We spent our first three days in Cairo, partly to overcome jet lag, and partly to visit the sites. Partially, I should add, to adjust to the lack of available wifi internet.
We arrived sans luggage, thanks to a harried layover in Frankfurt. In the hallways on our way to customs (where we got a SWEET visa), we paused to have our photos taken. Was this a continuation of Brazil’s fingerprinting hulabaloo of ten years ago? Actually, those devices on tripods were thermal imaging devices that took our temperature – ostensibly, to screen for H1N1. (Apparently the eight AUC students who just arrived and were diagnosed with H1N1 didn’t…have fevers when they arrived?) I stood and smiled like a moron at the thermometer. After departing in a coach bus with blissful A/C, we stopped briefly at the Sofitel Le Sphinx hotel in suburban Giza (here, “suburban” means far enough away from Cairo to be considered another city. Not that it’s filled with endless identically-stamped houses, like the word “suburb” conveys in the U.S.). At the hotel - just a mile away from the pyramids (al ahram) - we hopped back on our new best friend (the bus with air conditioning) and drove to the Nile. Specifically, a dock on the Nile in the heart of downtown, amidst the high-rises and elite neighborhoods. The buffet on this Nile cruise could have been swill, but we were weak with hunger and a little queasy from the length of the plane rides. One plate of cruise swill, and sleep began to steal our life essences. The belly dancer who came on after the mediocre karaoke singers could have been plated in gold, but we sat on the back side of the boat in the warm river breeze and devoted every ounce of energy to ensuring the continuation of our parasympathetic systems. (Side note: to turn on the electricity in the hotel, we put our electronic door key card into a slot on the wall that activated the electricity. Cool!)
The morning of Thursday the 4th, we were up and out of our hotel by 8 a.m., rushed to the bus by a pressing schedule complicated by Obama’s Egyptian arrival. Dressed in our rumpled clothing from two days previous and passing a lone stick of deodorant among us, we looked nostalgically at our gathered suitcases that had been freshly delivered and sat next to our bus, tempting us to dive in and salvage clean underwear, socks and sunglasses. But our schedule wouldn’t allow for this ravaging, and we piled on, only to pile off one mile later in the unforgiving 8:30 sun.
Cairo reminds me of Louisville a little, in that its air sears the throat and burns the eyes in a remarkably endearing way. In Louisville, this is because traffic pollution and the local meat processing plant spew love and Care Bears into the Ohio River Valley which traps it until a particularly frisky breeze stirs things up. In Cairo, this is because tens of thousands of cars with unregulated emissions convalesce with triple-digit temperatures…and the Sahara Desert. So Thursday, our 45 minute stop at the pyramids were enough to let us gaze at these most historic human-made structures, soak in their unabashed local normalcy and sweat through our undershirts. Back on the bus, we drove for about four minutes and unloaded at the resting spot of our good friend abu al houl – the Sphinx.
The distribution of foliage is remarkable in Cairo. Look at Google Maps, and you’ll see a strip of green running through a sand-colored country. That’s the Nile demarcating civilization’s historic spread. Essentially. In Cairo, standing on the far east side of the city at the Citadel built on a natural high point, you can see across the tree-strewn city, pick out the path of the Nile by the extravagant high-rises lining it, and see the desert and the ahram on the west side. On the ground, canal offshoots have been dug to spider-leg water to other regions of the city, and from those canals, smaller trenches branch out irrigating smaller and smaller farms until the water table can no longer support them. Then, the desert draws a literal line along the west and east sides of the Nile, remarkably clear both on a map and in-person.
At 11 that morning we were shuffled off the premises so that the area could be secured for Obama’s imminent (five hour following) arrival. There were - honest to Paul Simon - policemen on camels stationed on the surrounding dunes to secure the area for his visit. (E-mail me for photos - the connection here is too slow to upload them to Blogger.) After lunching at an outdoor under-tarp food place (where the vegetarians on the trip were given salty vegetable soup in place of plates of meat), we were treated to a televised broadcast of Obama’s live speech in town – dubbed in Arabic. The combination of Classical Arabic mixed with his measured English prevented most of us from understanding more than three words in a row, but knowing that he was speaking live in the very city we had just landed in sent a little shiver of pride through our sheens of sweat.
Later that day we visited Memphis – once-capital of Egypt and home to a palace of Ramses II – and Saqarra, whose historic sites lie just feet away from the desert-line. Saqarra is also home to the Step Pyramid, and some of the most enthusiastic hawkers we’d seen yet on the trip. One of our classmates was “treated” to both a donkey and a horse ride, and the rest of us were amused until we remembered how hot it was and returned to the bus to end our long, hot, historic day.
Friday the 5th was our last day in Cairo, and we fit in just about everything we could in that remaining day. Another early departure took us first to the Egyptian Museum – absolutely packed, for Fridays are everyone’s day off. There was an entire room dedicated to Tutankhamen’s business, or, tombs (four in total, one having been stored inside the other) and the grand body-shaped caskets – three in total, again, one inside the other. Tutankhamen (name in old-school Egyptian: Tut Ankh Amen) himself is chilling in Luxor still, also known as the “Valley of the Kings.” We’ll be making a visit there in about a month. As you all probably know, he wasn’t that much of a big deal in his day – came into king-dom at age 9 and died at 19. The only reason we know who he is and revere his once-existence so much is because he and his grand belongings were some of the most complete and extravagant to ever be excavated.
After the museum, as the hottest part of the day approached, we visited Coptic Cairo and its famous “hanging church,” so named for its lack of foundation underneath. Then to Islamic Cairo, and the Citadel that overlooks the city. Finally to Khan El Khalily, a massive, extensive, dendritic market that snakes through square miles of Cairo.
This was our first real chance to test our bargaining skills.
We were equipped with haggling advice, horror and success stories, and anxiety sharpened by a one-hour time limit. I went in determined not to be ripped off - the hawkers at Memphis and Saqqara got me pretty good. A classmate advised me that “If you feel you got a good price, then you did. Don’t compare your price to the one others got.” These words rang in my head, and I headed out determined to ignore it and get a better price than any other khwagayeen. Shops lined both sides of every street with zero inches separating one from the other, selling loose-fitting men’s and women’s clothes, spices, perfume, toys, sunglasses, spices, hookahs, scarves, clothes, cloth, perfume and haakatha (those of you who know Arabic, you with me still?). I entertained a polite perfume seller who delighted me by following a few rituals I’d heard would unfold:
First, he called out a tantalizing price: one gram of perfume for one Egyptian pound (LE – one pound is about 30 cents). Sounded like a deal! He invited me and my two classmates in to his six-by-six foot shop lined floor to ceiling with beautifully blown glass bottles and jugs of potions with the deepest, darkest, subtle scents. He invited us to sit on three chairs lining one side, and he sat on the other, his knees almost touching ours. He asked where we were from, what we study, and though we tried some pigeon Arabic with him, our conversation reverted to English. He then pulled out a glass bottle about the size of an Ibuprofen container, and told us that was 80 grams. Ya3nee 80LE. Oops. But, but: because we were American, and his friends, he would give it to us for 60. Trying out the well-intended advice given by Egypt veterans, I offered him 20. He then got very offended (this is part of the ritual), and told us at length how long he and his father have been blowing glass in the family, and how long their family had lived in Egypt and worked out of this shop. Then he threw in two more bottles of perfume: three bottles times 80 grams should be 240LE, but because we’re his friends, he’d give it to us for 200. I offered 60. He offered to make us some tea. Eventually I walked out with three bottles of perfume and three decorative jars for 105 pounds – about $20.
After this adventure we had just 10 short minutes to make it back to the bus. My eye caught a backgammon board gleaming on a vendor’s table. We performed the ritual in fast-forward: I was initially offered 480LE, and walked away with the lovely board and its pieces for 110LE.
Were they good deals? Perhaps I could have gone even lower. But I got to practice these bargaining skills with the backup of my two classmates, and picked up a few unnecessary but wonderfully local items.
This was our last stop in Cairo, and three hours on the bus that night brought us to our new home: Alexandria. Suffice it to say for now that Egypt is a lovely, loving, rich place that I've just BARELY begun to see and swim in. My 24 classmates are amazing, intelligent, interesting compelling people, and this should be a fantastic experience. We've all worked extremely hard for many years to get here, and as I sit in the lobby of our hotel (=home for the next two months) I share this space (and sole wireless connection) with 6 of my peers. Four are hovering around a bootlegged copy of Harry Potter acquired from the Alexandria mall on the outskirts of town (dubbed in Arabic), and we're all dividing our attention between frantic spurts of internet availability and our homework. I’ll leave this entry here for now, and write some on Alex, our new home and the school in a coming entry. Again, if you desire photos, e-mail me!
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