Parking, Baking, and Painting

Hello Friends.  Tuesday afternoon and evening was grand. Clare and I went to Al-Azhar park near Khan el Khalili to draw and paint and watch the sunset. This was really fun as we were pretty much the only non-Egyptians in the park, which is the greenest area I have been in since coming to Cairo. It was fun to see all the families and couples. Clare and I saw a woman in full veil with a purse bedazzled with Barbie’s face and cuffed jeans with sperrys on sticking out from beneath her robe, which we both enjoyed. Then we went to go paint (me) and color with pencils (Clare) the sunset. We drew much attention from kids and people our own age who came over and gave me some good practice with my colloquial Arabic. You guys probably think that all I ever do in Egypt is take pictures of the sunset so sorry if you are sick of sunset pictures but here you go.

Couples watching the sunset

Sunset over Cairo

Awesome mosque that I should know the name of/go to

After the sunset, we went into Khan el-Khalili because I wanted to go shopping for things to bring to my cousin Emily and her husband Carl, who I am going to visit in less than a week (!).  We had a great time bargaining and meeting people. We got to go shopping for spices, which was wonderful, I had been longing for an excuse to go into spice shops since day one.

Wednesday was uneventful, we watched a movie in my colloquial Arabic class about a belly dancer named Zuzu and then in my next class, my Anthropology one, we started watching a movie called The Battle of Algiers. This was really interesting and I hope we get to finish watching it sometime. I guess it is a good movie to understand the problems with defining acts as terrorism or as a nationalistic revolt or something. I’m describing it horribly but it’s an interesting movie and you should all watch it. If you want.

Thursday after school, Clare, Meg, Max and I took the bus to Maadi to make thanksgiving pies for our friends at Max’s apartment. We made two apple pies and two walnut pies (we wanted pecan but oddly enough they don’t have pecans in Egypt). We had a great time talking, laughing, playing cards, etc. Most of us slept over at Max’s and then we got to make breakfast for everyone in the morning and clean up the house after we got the kitchen all dirty.

Max, Meg, Mary, Jessie, Kirsten, and Brent

Apple Pie!

Meg made some Peanut butter cookes :)

Morning bathtub chat

Saturday was pretty basic, mostly just homework and studying and being cold. Saturday night however was Turkish Culture Night and we had tons of Turkish food and there was a Turkish artist which was pretty cool. He did this type of art where he has a tray of water that he swirls around paint on the surface and then lays a piece of paper over it and it soaks up the design. It was pretty cool. 

Turkish man doing his art

pretty