1st day of school!

These past few days have not been too exciting, mostly relaxing, trying (but failing) to go to visit the pyramids (we showed up an hour after they closed, they have different hours for Ramadan), reading books,  smoking a little shisha (a national pastime), and hanging out.

The Pyramids from Afar

Smoking shisha with some of the gang at the Mariott

And of course.... today is.... was... the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!! One of my best friends' dad once told her that caps lock is the equivalent of shouting over the internet but i feel like it is completely warranted in this situation, especially since i have been waiting for this day for a long time :) We got up, showered, had a breakfast pow wow of pb and j (rose flavored jam, date jam, and fig jam- not exactly smuckers but it sure is cheap and interesting!) then got on the bus. 

It was fun seeing everyone on campus that actually goes to school there greeting all their friends that they hadn't seen all summer. I had class with Keenan and Anne (2 kids from ND) first. This was colloquial arabic and our teacher, Sophie, is the most adorable little old woman ever. She had on a white polka-dot skirt, a black polka-dot shirt, pearls, and fancy metallic party shoes. When I saw those shoes I knew I should have brought my purple sweater... and I knew that Professor Sophie was going to have an awesome day. 

After this class I went to my next one in the same building. There was a sweet little courtyard right next to my class that i can hang out and read in if Prof. Sophie's class gets out early. This next class was People and Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. This is where I made my first Egyptian friend! At least I hope she still wants to be friends on Wednesday. And I already forgot her name. But she liked how friendly i was! I had this class with David, another kid from ND and though our professor didn't show up, we got the syllabus and ample time to go pick up text books for our first 2 classes.  I also picked up a book that my roommate Clare recommended that is written by an American girl studying abroad for a year at AUC! Here is a link to amazon if you want to read more of it, I started it on the bus ride home and it's already good. The View from Garden City

Everyone buzzing about campus

Courtyard outside of my second classroom

After the bookstore we all grabbed lunch and all the food places were open (finally) and we got to have our first Koushary of the year! Koushary is delicious, I am planning on doing a whole blog post here soon about food (of course) so I'll tell you more about that later).

Lunch time!
(Tyler, Ryne, Clare, Carly, and David)

Koushary with mystery sauces

I had a break next between lunch and my next class so I finished a book i was reading yesterday that was edited or translated by someone in the AUC English department. This book was interesting and sad and I didn't really understand it at the end but it was nice. It was called The Tent.

Then I had classical arabic class to which I got lost. The buildings here all have 2 names and unfortunately the names on our campus maps and on the buildings are not the same as the ones on our schedules. Also, all the buildings have nice maps of the floor plans but don't have a "you are here" dot so they are kind of useless unless you happen to have a compass with you or something. But classical arabic should be fun/challenging/difficult not to mix up with colloquial. Also, the professor looks the way i would imagine Cleopatra would look, without the triangular hair.

So that was my day and in an hour my dorm is having a welcome back to school event of some sort, hopefully with free dinner and then all of the girls we know we are inviting to our friend Anne's room cause she has a beautiful big balcony and we are going to have a juice party. Where we drink juice and talk and listen to music. And look over Cairo :)