Ahmed's return, Saqqara and Dashur, and Shami Night

Friday night we got to go to our friend Ahmed’s house to have a home cooked Egyptian meal. Ahmed lives in 6 of October City, about half an hour from Zamalek. We went right away to the “Nadi” or Club that his little stepbrother Sam was participating in a kung fu competition at. Unfortunately, we got there too late and Sam had already competed. We walked around the club, which was huge. It seemed to me a bit like a country club with tennis courts, a swimming pool, lawns, restaurants, etc. It was very nice. After that, we went to Ahmed’s apartment that he has with his sister and we had a delicious meal. He made sure to include Clare’s favorite dip, Tomayya (glorified Ranch, I guess it’s mayonnaise and garlic mostly? I’m not a fan) and my favorite kind of Arabic sweet, Kunaffa (this is not the same as my favorite kind in Palestine, but it was still yummy) which was very thoughtful of him. We also tried Hibiscus juice, which is like grape juice but has a bit of a zing to it. After dessert Ahmed wanted to go to an Ahawa (coffeehouse) and smoke some shisha. We had a great time just talking about random things such as traveling, music, and scholarships. When it was time for us to go home, Ahmed got us a cab and negotiated with the cab driver to make sure we didn’t get ripped off. He was so sweet and fun, we had such a great time!

Ahmed, Ryne, Me, Carly, and Clare

Saturday was a fieldtrip. My friend Hannah and I left the dorm to meet up with everyone at the old campus at 7:30 and by 9 we were on our way to Dashur, the location of both the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid (also the Black Pyramid is nearby, but it looks like a rundown fortress now because it was built on uneven or swampy ground or something. Apparently there is a lake there and there is some famous papyrus that I should probably know the name of on which there is written a story recounting events with one of the pharaohs (I should probably know his name) who had a magician who on occasion would entertain him. One time, it is said, this magician turned his staff into a snake (before Moses!), and another time he parted the waters of the lake in Dashur (also before Moses!) which is very very interesting).

Bent Pyramid

Black Pyramid

Anyway, both the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid were very cool and we were able to go into the burial chamber of the Red Pyramid, which is apparently the first pyramid to have the burial chamber in the superstructure of the pyramid (instead of the substructure) (fun fact).  However, partially through the descent into the red pyramid (the shaft down was only the size of a big pyramid cube- probably half my size so about 2.7 feet tall (is that right?? You might want to look this up yourselves), the lights went out. There was absolutely no light at all and the tiny amount of light shining in through the entrance was mostly blocked by the bodies of a bunch of my classmates. I was so happy I am not Closter phobic. Fortunately, the light came back on just about the time I got to the bottom. It was very surreal to be inside a pyramid!

Red Pyramid

At one point our professor, Dr. Ikram, wanted to take us to go see the Eastern Temple of these Pyramids, which was frowned upon by the antiquities police. However, she took us anyway and at one point the whole class was running away from the police though the desert. It was quite a sight. It was also ironic that the antiquities police were trying to keep Dr. Ikram, one of the best Egyptologists in the world, away from these sites for fear of damage.

Running Away from the Antiquities Police

After we left Dashur, my class headed to Saqqara, another site very close by that holds the Step Pyramid complex. This pyramid and complex was designed for King Djoser, a very early king. His architect was Imhotep (yes, the bad guy from the Mummy movies) who was extremely famous and later there was even a cult devoted to him. There is a statue of him in a museum somewhere (I should probably know which one) and he looks kind of goofy but he was apparently the Frank Lloyd Wright of his time. This complex was very exciting to see after we had a whole class devoted to it last week.

Hannah and I at the Step Pyramid

One interesting thing there is the Hepsed Race arena. Kings used to run the Hepsed race which is a certain length and is supposed to symbolize the king running from one side of the country to the other, symbolizing his virility and overall competency and ability to run the country.  Afterwards, the king would shower, get perfumed and all that then there would be another coronation ceremony for him and he would get “re-crowned” King.

Graffiti from the Early Kingdom?

Here's to you, Edward Said

In Saqqara we also visited a tomb that was built for two guys who were hair dressers (probably to the king), and best friends. I thought it was cute that they got a tomb together! It was very well decorated and fairly intact.

Hieroglyphics

We got in trouble with more authorities (Dr. Ikram is on the right)

We also got the opportunity to go into the pyramid of King Tete. His pyramid was smaller than the Red Pyramid of Dashur and the burial chamber was in the sub-structure but the decorations inside his were much cooler. The walls were covered with hieroglyphics that were holy text- very clear and beautiful. I loved his tomb. Unfortuately at a lot of these setes were were not able to use cameras, though I really wish I was able to capture some of these carved words on film. Anyway, that was about the end of the field trip and we got back to downtown Cairo about 5 that evening.

Plastic Bags: Tumbleweeds of the Egyptian Desert

Sunday went well, I even raised my hand in my Anthropology class. However, after school is where the fun lies. Sunday night was Shami Night (The Sham is the Arabic equivalent of what we call “The Levant” in the States, it is composed of the countries Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and my favorite, Palestine) wherein students of AUC from these various countries told us a little bit about their respective countries and then played music on the Oud (the lute, very popular traditional instrument here), showed a short movie they put together with facts about their country, or did a dance (the Dabke and the Belly dance). 

Lebanese Students doing the Dabke

This was really fun to see as it is very similar to an event we put on at Notre Dame called Arabic Culture Night where we do a little skit in Arabic, maybe have someone sing in Arabic, and do the Dabke. After the program we got to have food! This was the best food I have had my whole time here- I just love food from that part of the world. There were stuffed grape leaves, tabouli, baba ganoug, makloubeh, and kunafe (among other lovely things that I don’t know the names of). Clare, David, and I had expected to just get some food at 7 then head back to our dorm on the 8:15 bus however, we didn’t make that or even the 9:15 bus, we had to take the 10:15. Needless to say, we were pretty tired that night too.

Dancing Horses, among other things

Hello!
Unfortunately, we did not end up going to a wedding on Friday because there were going to be rifles shot in the air at the end and that's illegal in Cairo nowadays and Jessie's professor didn't want us to get in trouble, which was nice of her. However, that morning I decided to stroll on over to Metro Mart to get money and go grocery shopping. However, my ATM card ended up getting eaten by the machine. Whoops! At least I had 150 pounds out already though, which is approx. $30. I went back to my room, did homework, then later that night I had Alex Top with Ryne and Jessie then Jessie and I hung out and watched Conspiracy Theory and chatted.
Saturday, all of our friends came back from Luxor and Aswan. It was great to see them again! Later that day I went to church with my friend Tim, we went to Maadi Community Church and met up with some friends who live on campus. We went to get dinner with some other friends that live in Maadi but while waiting, Tim decided he wanted to try a "street drink" which is purchased by men with big metal pitchers on their backs which they then pour from into little glass cups that have been washed with who knows what kind of water. Since I didn't want Tim to die alone, I tried a sip. In my opinion, this drink tasted an awful lot like water from the Nile with some street dirt mixed in. It was probably about as sanitary. After dinner, I went back to Zamalek with two guys who live with tim then did some homework.
Sunday was uneventful as was Monday except that Monday brought a brand new debit card to me in the mail. Al-humdallah!
Tuesday, I went with Ryne and Ben to Tahrir square in downtown Cairo. I was on a quest for shoes because the ones I brought with me cut into my feet. We wandered for a while and popped into many stores until i found some i liked. I got some converses for only $15. Then we got some arabic music and Harry Potter in Arabic and had lunch at a famous restaurant downtown, called Fill-Filla. We took a cab home and did homework for a while. Later that afternoon I went over to my friend Tim's apartment and we made dinner. We got tomatoes, onions, garlic, eggplant, yellow pepper, mushrooms and simmered them all in a pot with some spices for an hour while we prepared pasta and chicken. It was delicious!

Cooking with Tim!

Wednesday after class, Clare and I got off the bus at the early stop on 26th of July and got some of our favorite juice. We wandered back to the dorm, looking in little shops and just taking everything in.

Thursday after school, Jessie, Ryne, Brent, Ben and I went to a bedouin engagement party. This was through Jessie's professor also. We took the metro as far as it would go in the direction of Helwan and from there got in a 12 person bus with 13 other students from AUC and drove out to a village. 

We followed a string of colorful light bulbs to a horse corral area where there were a bunch of men smoking shisha and drinking beer, tea, and coffee. 

Ryne, Ben, Me, Jessie, and Brent

We all sat down and watched as different men on various horses would take turns making the horses dance around in the corral. Throughout all this, a band of musicians played shrill, traditional music and the singer of the group would occasionally call out "Allah! Allah hu Akbar!" (God! God is the Greatest!) over a bad microphone. It was pretty crazy. This went on for about 3 hours.

At one point, several girls and I had to use the restroom so we followed this one girl we had been chatting with into a house nearby. This is where all of the women were! One woman had also recently had a baby, which we got to see. The Bride to Be was also there, and were were able to ask her a couple questions. 

Finally, around midnight, dinner was served. We had delicious rice cooked with saffron and almonds, spicy pickles, chips, and a big hunk of goat meat. For me, who only became "un-vegetarian" less than a year ago, this was a little much to handle. I nibbled at it a bit but I had my friend Ben help me polish it off. Then we took the bus all the way back to our dorms and went to bed.

Early October

Hello!

This past weekend was a lot of fun. On Thursday David and I stayed late after school to watch Chasing Mummies with the Egyptology Club which was a good time. I really like Sabine, Dr. Ikram’s assistant, who is the head of the club. She’s German, dresses in all black (typically) and has some cool Egyptian tattoos and a great sense of humor. Her husband Matt also works at the university in the Technology Assistance department so we had no problems getting the show set up. It was a potluck and I had the first home cooked food since leaving the states.

Friday we went to a pool party in 6^th of October City, a suburb of Cairo. Our host’s name is Ragah, he’s a guy we have hung out with a couple times with our friend Tim and he goes to our school as well. He lives in a beautiful terra cotta colored mansion and has a perfect little swimming pool in the back, just big enough for lots of fun J. After the pool party we went to the Indian Restaurant I described in an earlier post. We went with or friends Tamer, Omar, Ahmed, and met some new friends named Gary and Dina. Omar had never been to an Indian Restaurant before and he thought the food was delicious. Clearly, the boy has good taste!

Saturday morning we got up and went to campus to do homework and go swimming in the beautiful campus swimming pool. We were supposed to be doing laps but I just swam and bobbed around enjoying the cool water. Saturday was very very hot. Apparently we are having a heat wave, which I personally could do without.

Sunday and Monday pretty uneventfully except for the fact that most of my friends here left on Monday night to go on a trip to Luxor and Aswan.

Tuesday Clare and I went and got some bagels at Munch & Bagel and went to the clothes store because some of my clothes got ruined in the laundry and Clare wanted a light jacket to go over some sleeveless shirts she brought. I got 2 shirts for 8 dollars a piece. I was pretty happy. We went to our favorite Café Noir to do homework for a bit then I had to return to the room to get ready for a field trip to the Cairo Museum!

Obviously this field trip was for my Egyptian Art and Architecture course. Unfortunately, there were huge crowds at the museum and it was hard to hear our professor and sometimes see, as she is a little on the short side. Afterwards I wandered around the museum a bit then walked back to my dorm. This was kind of an adventure, cause I had only done that walk one other time, which was the first day I was in the country. Three things happened that gave me a little boost of confidance: I successfully crossed two 6-lane highways in Cairo during heavy traffic (successful here means I didn’t die), got a little lost but asked for directions in Arabic (I understood it too, since I came out at the right place!), and I met up with Clare at a main thoroughfare on the island, 26^th of July Street.

Clare and I got some fresh juice- this was probably highly unsanitary because the man who served us poured already squeezed juice from old water bottles into glass cups that may or may not have been washed with clean water. Oh well! The juice was delicious- I had guava juice and Clare had melon. Next we got some falafels next door but they were the worst falafels ever. We kept walking and bought some salty nuts from a street vender who in hind sight we probably shouldn’t have bought anything from since immediately prior to our purchase she was sweeping the dirty street with a dirty broom. However, the nuts were excellent, if a tad on the salty side. There was a fruit seller on the next block so we went there and I got a big pear and a beautiful pomegranate for only $2.40.  Later that night we (Clare, Jessie, Brent, Ryne and I) went to Goal, a shisha bar really close to our dorm and met up with Clare’s German friend Max who lives in Maadi. We had a lot of fun just laughing and visiting.

Wednesday, Clare left early for an RA retreat and at 12 I met up with Ben and Ryne in order to go to the Giza zoo. When we got there, they wanted to charge us 20 L.E. instead of the 2 L.E. that Egyptians pay and since it is ranked one of the ten worst zoos in the world (I guess they have dogs as one of the exibits?), we decided to leave. We wandered around for a while, saw the Cairo University Campus from a far, then decided to take a cab to Khan el Khalili.

Cairo University Campus

In Khan, we got really lost as I tried to take the guys back to the place where we got Sahlab with Tamer and the gang after the pyramids. 

One of the many entrances to Khan el Khalili

However, I did manage to purchase what I was hoping was a quarter kilo of dates but turned out to be a lot. I don’t know much about weight but I think there are way more than a quarter kilo despite my best attempts to use different variations of the Arabic word for four and what I assumed was fourth to explain what I wanted.

Dates!

Eventually, after an hour or so we ended up at the Sahlab place, a little tucked away place in the inside of a building- it reminds me of the Old City of Jerusalem, one of my very favorite places.

Ryne and Ben

Thursday I had class again, only two however. Afterwards, I met up with Ryne and Ben and we had dinner at Pizza Hut. Along the way we bumped into our friend Jessie who invited us to a Bedouin wedding today, which is very exciting, we are all going. All we know is that we were told to bring cameras, so hopefully I’ll have some better pictures for my next post!

Pyramids, etc.

Hello!

Sorry it’s been a while.

The rest of last week was fairly non descript. Thursday after school we went to a restaurant called Lucille’s, which is supposedly home to the best burger in the world. I would probably say it’s the best burger in Egypt.

Lucilles with Dan, Ryne, Tim, Keenan, Hannah, and David

Afterwards we went to an “ahawa” or “coffee shop” where you can get Turkish coffee, Middle Eastern tea (1 part Lipton tea, 3-4 parts sugar), freshly squeezed juice (mango, lemon, guava, etc.), and of course Shisha. Also, we were able to play backgammon, which was a lot of fun, if my memory serves me right then backgammon was invented in the Middle East.

Friday, Clare, Hannah, Kirsten and I went to the Pyramids with our Egyptian friends Tamer, Omar, and Ahmed. We rented horses and took them around the pyramids and towards the Sphinx (fun fact: Sphinx means “Strangler” in Greek). Some people galloped with their horses, I didn’t because my horse had really seen better days and didn’t need any more whippings. It was kind of a pathetic sad animal.

After the Pyramids, we went back to Zamalek to get Pizza Hut. Going to Pizza Hut in Cairo is a much grander affair than going to Pizza Hut in the states, I felt kind of embarrassed to be smelling of depressed horse.

The Group

Pyramids

Clare and I at the Sphinx

The guys decided to take us to a popular ahawa in Khan el-Khalili, where they smoke shisha and introduced us to a magical drink called “Sahlab.” This wonderful concoction is made up of something like milk and rice ground together with mass quantities of sugar so it’s a thick consistency but still very fluid. It is heated up and shredded coconut, golden raisins, and peanuts are sprinkled on top.  It is extremely delicious. Our whole time at this ahawa was crazy, these street sellers would come in and walk through the place trying to get us to buy there wares (small sheepskin carpets, necklaces, small packets of Kleenex, beaded hats, chunks of animal fur with quranic verses sewn into them, and my favorite, strands of Jasmine blossoms). These sellers were of both genders and of various ages, and for some reason the younger girls kept beating on Omar, who was sitting near the door. They would smack him in the arm or try to push him of his chair, etc without being provoked at all. It was strange, funny, and not exactly a great sales tactic.

Saturday was mostly a homework day, as per day before school again. Tuesday, a couple of us girls went to Café Noir to get some coffee, tea, or Apple Cider (!) and do homework. Believe it or not we actually didn’t get that much homework done but we had a great talk about all we are learning here and applied it to some of our observations, interactions, etc. that we have had so far. Later that night, Clare, who is the new RA on our floor, had organized a floor meeting. So that afternoon we got a couple of cakes (Double chocolate fudge and Cinnamon) from a shop called Pumpkin that has the most delicious slices of cake, and a wide variety of flavors. Very creative. Though I had only bought cake there once, I had been in 3 other times to get menus and what not and the head worker there recognized me, which is kind of embarrassing. We all exchanged names so now Khaled and I are on first name basis.

The floor meeting was a lot of fun but mostly it was study abroad students who showed up, as well as Hannah’s sweet roommate Bassant. Everyone enjoyed the cake J

The rest of the week was uneventful and now I am killing time in the Library before the 7pm get together of the Egyptology Club where we are going to watch an episode of Chasing Mummies and then make fun of it after. I’m excited.

Dyeing, Dancing, and some other word that starts with the letter D

Hello!
Sorry it's been a week since my last post.
I'll do my best to remember the week's events accurately...
First things first: The hair dying was more of a success than I had expected.

Dying Kirsten's hair!

My hair was pretty orange the first day but now it's more subtle. I miss my normal hair color though.

Later that night, Kirsten and I had a real hankering for Indian food (go figure) and we found one 3 blocks from our dorm... and sooooo good! Much better than any indian food in South Bend (no offence, India Garden!) It was much needed. Very delicious.

mmmmmmmmmmmm...

(side note for my family: we got chenna masala, palak paneer, and samosas. We are going here when you come)

After wonderful Tuesday Mid-Week end, we had class again for two more days before the weekend. 

A little comment on Thursday and my awesome yet still intimidating professor of Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, Dr. Selima Ikram: At the end of class Dr. Ikram decided to take us on a little field trip to explore the Rare Books section of the library (side side note: I went to the rare books section with Mary the previous week to scope it out and all I knew was that it was the top floor of the library. Come from my school where we have 13 floors in our library, I obviously went straight to the elevator. However, only custodians can use elevators at school and the library is only 4 stories high, which was pointed out to me by some Egyptian kids who obviously though I was the laziest person in the history of people. cool.). Dr. Ikram prefaced this little trip with a comment about her being old and us being young and how we have to keep up with her and it shouldn't be a problem for us because of that. How deceptive.

As soon as Dr. Ikram was out of the door she took off like she was on rocket powered roller skates. That lady sure can speed walk. She should really consider entering and winning some speed walking races. We almost had to run to keep up with her. This is foreboding given the fact that we have about 8 fieldtrips this semester. 

Alright, the weekend. 

Thursday night Clare, Ryne, Carly, Jessie, Nav, and I walked to this street food vender that our friend Joe had been raving about and had gone to every night since his discovery of it. The restaurant is called Baraka and serves shawarma, which is slices of meat skewered on a huge metal stake and is rotated slowly around with one side exposed to the air and the other sides slowly cooked by a red hot fire wall (there's probably some technical terms that would be good to use here) here is a picture of the Shawarma but it doesn't look appetizing. It's yummy though. We had ours on hotdog buns with pickles and tomato mixed in. Then we wandered around until we found a gelato shop. Yum.

The next day most of the group I hang out with went to Alexandria, but Clare, Kirsten, and I stayed in Zamalek in order to pace our spending and traveling. Friday morning Clare and I took the metro to Coptic Cairo. This was our first time on the Metro (much cleaner than expected, it was really nice) and we rode in the Women's car of the subway. This was a cool experience because the women were much louder in this car without men than I have ever heard them to be on the streets. Especially the women with the Hijab. Some school girls were giggling about us and we got many a stare but we had a great time.

Coptic Cairo was pretty cool, it's mostly just a bunch of old churches, artifacts, and ruins. It was interesting to see the Egyptian Christians out and about in a larger concentration than normal too.

Monastery of St. George

We looked around, lit some candles, took some pictures, and ambled off to another sight.

The Museum of Coptic Cairo is only 2 years old I believe, so it was beautiful and really well maintained. This museum was much better taken care of an run than the entire Egyptian Museum. But they didn't allow pictures either.

We went home, got some more Shawarma and Baraka and did some homework. Later that night Clare, Kirsten and I met up with Clare's friend Tamer (Tamer studied abroad at Clare's home university last year and they became friends) and some of his friends and we went to a club on the Nile. We had such a fun time just hanging out and dancing, it was nice to just let our hair down and laugh loudly (the music in the club was deafening so we could laugh as loud as we wanted an no one could really hear. I'm pretty sure we all incurred some hearing damage).

In the Club

The next day was Saturday and we basically just did homework all day. Sunday and Monday we had class and last night (Monday night) we celebrated Matt's 21st birthday (which is today). We went to a rooftop bar we went to a while back that was very hard for taxi drivers to find, I don't know why we keep going there. 

Matt (the birthday boy) and Tyler

We had a lot of fun though and later went to our friend Tim's apartment to talk, laugh, and celebrate.

Now today is tuesday and all we have really done is homework and working out. I got a big Mango yesterday that I am going to now peel!

A Dash to Dahab

Hello!
Here is the rundown from Eid Break.
Wednesday night we took the 12:15 bus to Dahab, approximately a 9-10 hour drive. We were already frazzled getting on the bus as one of the taxis full of people from our 16 person group was extremely late due to the taxi driver getting lost and only arrived at the bus station at 12:02. Fortunately, this bus was running on Cairo Time so we didn't leave until about 12:30. We all promptly tried to fall asleep on the bus, however we kept being woken up 3 or 4 times about once an hour in the wee hours of the morning for passport checks, ticket checks, and rest stops. When we finally got to Dahab we quickly got return tickets for Sunday morning. We were worried we wouldn't be able to get tickets back because pretty much every study abroad student from AUC went to Dahab for Eid Break and some were on charter buses and were planning on just getting return tickets there the day of. Also, since Eid is a national holiday many people from Arab nations around the Middle East were also in Dahab. Dahab is kind of like the Mexico of the Middle East. In some places it has the golden sand and it's really cheap. Anyway after we got tickets, we went about procuring a ride from the bus station to our hotel. We got kind of ripped off and it turns out our taxi ride was really just six people sitting in the bed of a truck with Egyptian driving. Cool.

Taxi Ride

We arrived at our hotel, the Seven Heaven Hotel, aptly named. We got rooms on the roof of the hotel with beautiful views of the Red Sea out of one window and the mountains out of the other.

Our Room

 

View from our Window

We were greeted at Seven Heaven Hotel by a waiter by the name of Nate who it turns out is the waiter, cook, and general man of all work at Seven Heaven Hotel. He served us up some free drinks of tea (Shay), turkish coffee (ahawa) or lemon juice (aseer). A jolly guy named Mohammed gathered up our passports and ran off to photocopy them for kind of a long time. Once we got them back, we changed into our suits and rented snorkel gear for $2. We all tooled around a nearby reef for a bit and marveled at the sights both under and above the water but mostly I marveled at the water itself. The water in the Red Sea is the bluest water I have ever seen and crystal clear.

The Red Sea

Dahab is right across from Saudi Arabia and you can see it pretty well from the shore. So that's pretty cool.  When we got out of the water we lounged around on some lounging chairs right by the water, there were lots of little cafe type places along the water where you could just lay on lounging chairs and sip on some strawberry juice or what have you and relax the day away. And we did. 

Kayleigh and David relaxing at our favorite spot

Later that night we went to a little place called Budda and smoked some shisha and laughed. It was a fun time. The next day we mostly did the same thing, some of us went to snorkel at a different place and some of us went shopping for some "Ali Baba pants" I have no idea why we call them that. Absolutely not one. They are pretty cool though, once I wear mine I'll throw a picture up here. I also bought some arabic CDs of my favorite egyptian pop star Amr Diab with a friend, some henna hair dye, and I got a scarf that reminds me of the one my mom got when she spent a semester in the Middle East when she was in college :) It's my new favorite. I wore it to... Mount Sinai... which is where we ventured off to that night. (what a good transition :) )

We left for Mount Sinai with bulging backpacks packed with (well I brought a blanket) warm clothes, lots of water, snacks, band-aids, and all of our valuables. Also, cameras and flashlights. We were prepared for a long, sleepless night. Our bus driver for some reason drove around town a while and eventually we ended up traveling over to the base of the mountain by midnight. We got there shortly after 2 I think and met up with a guide who said our group name was "Magic". None of us really caught his name so that's also what we called him. Magic really was all about climbing the mountain at top speed. Before we realized this and while we still had air in our lungs (finally, unpolluted, fresh air!) we chatted with him a bit and found out that Magic has been leading people up and down Mount Sinai for seven nights a week for seven years. Pretty impressive. 

We got to the top of the mountain around 4:30 (it took us about an hour and a half) and waited for the sun to rise. There were more stars in the sky than I have seen in a really really long time, or ever. It made me think of what God said to Abraham about his descendants numbering the stars. Good thing God didn't say that to him in present day Cairo. The most stars I have ever counted there is six.

Finally, around 6 the sun started to come up!

Waiting for the sun (those are people)

The sunrise was gorgeous. 

After a while we hiked down to the monastery of Saint Katherine's, which we are pretty sure is Russian Orthodox. This is allegedly where they have a part of the original burning bush that Moses saw. It's debatable, and it looked kind of poorly maintained. 

Burning Bush in the lower right

Finally we went back to Seven Heaven Hotel. The bus ride back was weird, we were all sleep deprived and drifting in and out of consciousness the whole trip and at certain points the wind blowing in our windows was burning hot- weird as it sounds i was ready to go back to the coolness of Cairo. Normally that statement would be oxymoronic. We got back and some of us took a nap after lunch but my Dahab roommate Kirsten and I went on a quest for postcards. Which we found. We went and got juice at our favorite juice cafe and wrote post cards for a while before we took a dip in the sea. We dressed up a little and walked around Dahab meeting up with various people from our group who had woken up. Finally we had dinner at this place where we got a crazy good deal, we just kind of stumbled upon this guy trying to lure us into his restaurant and I wasn't even trying to play hard to get I was just explaining that we were going to peruse all the restaurants and see where we wanted to go most but he gave us free appetizers (an egyptian mezza), half price main dishes, free fruit for dessert, and free bedouin tea after it all. We made out like bandits. 

The next morning we hopped on the 9AM bus back to Cairo and home sweet home our dorm on Zamalek. 

The next day was school and then after we went to the Marriott with our friend Mary to celebrate her birthday which was the previous day. We didn't know where to find chocolate cake other than the western oasis that is the Marriott of Zamalek. We didn't really fit in here- it's super expensive and famous and classy and I was wearing a thriftstore homemade skirt and a vneck but the cake was delicious. Then we hopped on a felluca boat to celebrate our new friend Tim's birthday from two days before and ate falafels and shawarma. We made some Egyptian friends! They are very nice guys who also go to AUC and I hope we can hang out with them more this year. 

Today is Tuesday which is the best day of the week in my opinion, no class. Sooooo my friends and I got kushary for lunch and now two of us are dying our hair with henna :)

Mosques, Minarets, and Mayhem

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).

A Mosque

This was a lot of fun and we saw beautiful sights.

Decorations in the steets

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!