I have a feeling that after Sunday, venturing around Egypt and subsequently getting into ridiculous situations are going to decrease exponentially...nobody is going to care how much time I spend in the library trying to make heads or tails of Arabic. But until then!
Monday was quite the day. Two friends and I went to al Maadi, which is a pretty Americanized/Westernized area. Its quieter and greener, and therefore not as hot as downtown Cairo is. My friend Hibar had been to Cairo before, and he knew a taxi driver from his previous trips so we took a ride. If you can get to know a cab driver in Cairo, you keep him. Mohammand Osama is a pretty cool dude; he takes us wherever we want, teaches us Arabic and puts up with a cabful of crazy Americans at all hours of the day. So we drove around Maddi for a bit, then drove past the Citadel. Its an old fortress thing that overlooks part of the city. It was built to protect the people from Crusaders. We didn't go in, but got a few blurry pictures from the highway. Enclosed is also a Mosque. In the year that I'm here, I'm sure Ill make my way to actually see it, especially since its its on the Top 10 Things To Do In Cairo list. We then went to Khan al Khalili (pronounced han al halili) which is a big outdoor bazaar. It was incredible. It was more like a giant maze with stuff everywhere. There were hookahs, dresses and clothes, typical touristy things like scarabs and mini pyramids and papyrus and spices. We didn't stay too long, so we're obviously going to come back. Osama came with us and haggled with the owners so we didn't pay the tourist prices and taught us Arabic so we could try to talk to them. I had my sunglasses on for most of the time we were there, but as we went into one area, the sun was low and I took them off. Out of nowhere, 3 guys swarmed and started calling me Magic Eyes, and one guy said I broke his heart, and another asked how many hearts I break. I was confused, but Osama said it was because of the color of my eyes. So, uh, hey Magic Eyes!
We went back to school for a bit, then headed out to Zamalak for the night. Zamalak is an basically an island in the Nile where the other dorm of AUC are. We met up with my friend Jess from home, and a bunch of us went to this rooftop bar. It was on top of a semi-sketch Korean hotel, but the rooftop was nice and breezy and overlooked the Nile. I had what I think was Egyptian wine, but if it wasn't it was still good. We hung out, got some shisha and of course closed the place down. We got home at 330 and got gross late night food. Typical.
Tuesday another group of us headed back to the Zamalak area, and this time went to the Cairo Tower. Its the tallest building in Cairo, and we were able to go to the top of it around sunset. You could see the whole Cairo area, and through the heavy heavy smog that is forever present, were able to see the tops of the pyramids. (I got a blurry and bad picture that will of course make its way to facebook) We watched the sunset then ventured out to find Abu el Sid, our restaurant of the night. After almost being hit by a few cars and witnessing a collision, we finally found it. It was this big dark building and it was mostly typical Egyptian food. Our group ordered a ton of food, of course, from lamb meatballs to stuffed grape leaves and falafel. We had some interesting main courses, including duck, rabbit, and pigeon. And yes, I did try pigeon. It was small and stringy. I don't anticipate ordering it as a meal anytime soon. On our way home, we hoped in a cab and only one from our group could speak passing Arabic so you can imagine how that was. Our driver didn't know where our campus was in New Cairo , just the general direction, so he agreed to take us if we sort of helped him out with directions. As I'm slightly directionally challenged, I didn't pay much attention to driving (its defiantly better that way anyways) until all of a sudden we go from driving 85 miles an hour between two big rigs to honking and flashing lights at the cab ahead of us and trying to catch up to him. Now we are cruising down the highway chasing another cabbie for reasons unknown to us. We reach him, role the windows down, both cabs slow down to about 25 miles an hour, still between two big rigs. Our driver proceeds to lean across the console and shout for directions from the guy in the other cab. We somehow made it back to campus alive.
Today we went to the Egyptian Museum, but first proceeded to miss the free bus that would take us there. So roomie and I hoped in the first safe cab we happened to see and tried to tell the driver who spoke no English were to go. Through bad cell phone connections and very butchered Arabic on our part, we made it to Tahrir Square in record time. Cameras were not allowed and they wanted us to leave them in a 'safe' area, which seemed a little shady, so we smuggled our cameras in..in our pants. And maybe took a few pictures (without the flash of course!) This museum is very big and very not air conditioned. They have thousands of things from thousands of pyramids throughout Egypt. It was amazing how many artifacts there was. It seemed slightly disorganized and was more of a free for all in the sense that there was no order to follow and not many labels for things so we drifted and did our (semi illegal) thing. They have eleven or twelve royal mummies that they charge you to go see, so we paid and saw the faces of Rames and Seti and a few other famous mummies unwrapped. They also had mummied cows and horses and alligators. I'm not sure how mummied alligator helps you pass into the afterlife, but hey, if it works. Oh, and I saw the for real mask of King Tut. It weights almost twenty five pounds and it rivals the Crown Jewels in worth. It was a good time.
We took the train back to Maadi for dinner. The train has separate cars for men and women, which was interesting. The male car looked like a typical subway would at home-jam packed. At least the female car wasn't like that; there was room to breath at least. It is also only a pound to ride, which is about 18 cents. Iowa (the phonetic spelling of Yeah) Anyways, we went to this seemingly cute Asian restaurant. We ordered our food, got it and started to eat. You already know that this isn't going to end well, right? So I was mowing down some chicken Marsala/curry dish, which was quite delightful, until my fork pulled out something black. Something that had six legs and antennae. And took up at least the length of my fork. Yep, nice little big bug in there. I legitimately almost puked. The waiter took it away as I was trying to figure out if I should laugh, cry or puke. I settled on a weird combination of the first two. The manager came over, apologized to my friend, whom he knew, then asked if I put the bug in there myself. Obviously this guy doesn't know me at all, because the size of this bug is something that if I saw on the street, I would scream and or freak out. We left very quickly after that.
So I guess I've been in Egypt for a week now. I've seen and done quite a bit, and have somehow managed to not have my schedule for classes. Hopefully I'll get it tomorrow. If not, well, we're going to the pyramids on Friday so it will have to wait. Just kidding. But really. I hope life stays this entertaining for the next foreseeable future, but who knows. Until then, I'll just have to keep breaking hearts....
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