Were Robert Frost to visit Cairo, he would have a hard time traveling around the city because there is no such thing as a road less traveled in Cairo. Today I learned that there are more people who live in Cairo than in New York City, which to me has always sounded like the biggest city in the world next to maybe Hong Kong or Beijing. Anyway, there are lots of people here.
Ok now Monday. Monday was my second day of school, first day of Monday/Thursday classes. I had class with Sophie again (the metallic shoes were back! I guess they make everyday special :) ) then I had Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt. This class felt like a first date- I was so so excited but my teacher is a force to be reckoned with. She is soooo smart and will be extremely tough. Word on the street is that my professor has been on either the history channel or National Geographic or something several time, she's a pretty smart cookie. Here is a link to some info on her: Dr. Salima Ikram
I'm very excited about her class but I'm worried about how tough it will be. Next class was Creative Writing (which I recently got approved for some ND credit!). My professor is actually 3 professors- it will be a creative writing lab and the teaching is split up between 3 teachers teaching 3 different types of creative writing (poetry, fiction, and film scripts). I'm excited about that class, it looks very enjoyable. Then I had classical arabic then went home.
The next day was a day off- we have every tuesday off here which will be excellent. Many of us signed up to go on the AUC sponsored tour of Islamic Cairo. This was impressive. So many beautiful mosques in this part of the city, the area around Khan El Khalili (the market we went to a while back).
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| A Mosque |
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| Decorations in the steets |
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| Beautiful Glass Bottles |
Later I did homework making flashcards for Arabic class. Then Clare, Ryne, and I met with Ahmed, a friend of Clare's father's co-worker who is my age. He was a lot of fun to meet and it was nice to get to talk with him.
Today we had class which was tiresome. I had salad for lunch- its more expensive than I would like -$2.70 whereas typically i could get a lunch of a falafel sandwich for as cheap as $.50. However I really don't get to eat as many vegetables as I normally would like.
Then Keenan and I raced out of our last class, running through campus to make an earlier bus. Which we did :)
Tonight, we are leaving Cairo to go to Dahab for 4 days. We're going to be there spending time on the beach and at some point we are going to climb Mt. Sinai and see St. Catherine's monastery, where the "flaming bush of fire" is. I'm excited!
We have all these days off because it is the long awaited end of Ramadan which ends with a holiday called Eid El Fetr!
Eid Mubarak!
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