It might have been almost two weeks ago, but I went to Asia. And that in and of itself makes up for delays. So my last adventure began on a Tuesday afternoon. We had Wednesday off because it was some Egyptian holiday or something and we were excused from Thursdays classes so we had a nice few days to go run wild. We were going to Sharm el Sheikh and St. Catherine. It is a a solid seven hours to Sharm and the delightful Indian family from last trip were back. Before we got into the fun part, I just have to say that the mother with the 5 month old baby is a nut. To entertain her child, she meowed at him. Loudly. We would be sitting there and all of a sudden hear "Mewwwwwwwwow, meooooooooow". All the time. By the end of the trip, people in the back were started barking when she meowed. It was really weird. Anyways, we had to go under the Suez Canal, which has a pretty cool history. In brief, it was completed in 1869 but its history dates back to the 2nd Millenium (BC). Aristotle wrote in reference to a canal here way back then, too. Construction for the 'modern' canal began in 1856 and it officially opened ten years later. Due to debts Egypt owed to Britain, the British took control of the completed Canal in 1882, and Egypt only regained control and rights to it in 1956. Okay, done with the history lesson. (I can actually say that sentence in Arabic :)
We got to Sharm around 930 and of course we went right out. Sharm is a big destination for European travelers and it is very influenced by Western ideals and it is pretty obvious in the dress of its tourists. It is very liberal and there's nightclubs everywhere. We went to a rooftop bar until they kicked us out around quarter of three. We tried to get into another club down the street, The Buddha Bar, and we managed to get in without paying cover due to our friends fantastic negotiation skills. We didn't stay long because they were closing too, so we headed back to the hotel and decided to go swimming. Who doesn't want to swim in the Red Sea at 4am? That unfortunately didn't last long because some guards kicked us out. So we went to the pool. That didn't last long either because the guards came back and told us we were going to get "chlorine poisoning". Ooookay. Thus ended the first night. The second day we just hung out at the beach and went swimming. You could lay on a beach chair and look at Saudi Arabia across the sea. We thought about swimming over but we'd probably get sniper-ed out of the water so we stuck to snorkeling. There were reefs and really cool tropical fish everywhere so it was fun. And the water was like bathwater and for all you in New England, it was around 100 degrees (still is actually :) We had a lower key night and went downtown again, but just walked around and hung out.
Out last beach day was a blast. There were 14 of us and we rented a private boat and spent the day on the water. We went to two snorkeling sites and saw some awesome fish and more reefs; our diver guide told us after we got back on the boat that there was a seven foot shark near us. Didn't see that, but we did see two sting ray. There was a camera guy who spent the day taking pictures of us doing random stuff and swimming so were were able to get those pictures at the end of the trip. It was a great time and we were out on the boat until almost 4pm so it was a good long day. Of course, pre-departure we walked into a Drinkies (what they call packies around here) and asked for two cases of beer; I'm pretty sure they had never gotten that request before. Typical Americans. Of course the only way to end a great day is to go out and have a great night. So we did. We went to a popular club called Pasha Sharm. It was four floors with no ceiling on the upper floors (perks of never getting rain or cold) and there were all the typical club things with the added bonus of having a pool and foam pit on the first floor. It was wild. There is one in NYC and/or Las Vegas too. So we paid cover but didn't really want to spend the rest of our money on the absurd drink prices so since we had time to kill, we went to another Drinkies, bought beer there and sat outside on the sidewalk for a couple of hours. I found 10 English pounds, which is about 100 Egyptian pounds so that was a fantastic perk (especially outside of a Drinkies....) It was of course another late but very memorable night. And the last night we slept until Saturday.
We had all morning to kill before we hopped on the bus again so we got a few beach hours in and lunch. I somehow managed to miss that Daylight Savings had happened here the previous week and I had somehow been living an hour behind and still making it to class on time. True genius right here. We had a three hour bus ride up to the Dahab area to the place we were staying at over night. We were in the middle of the mountains and stayed at St. Catherine's Monastery. We would be climbing Mt Sinai in the morning, since the monastery is at the base of the mountain. Mt Sinai is of course the mountain where Moses got the 10 Commandments. I just have to say that even though I know 40 is just a symbolic number, if it really took them 40 years to cross that desert, I totally believe it now. Now, climbing mountains in Egypt is an adventure. (Especially if you stay up all night and ...watch... 5 people consume 8 bottles of wine beforehand...) But Egypt is a hot country. You can't climb mountains during normal mountain hiking times aka daylight hours because it is too hot and its the desert, meaning there are no trees and no shade. So you climb Moses Mountain in the middle of the night. So 130am finds us bright eyed and ready to hike for 3 hours. The initial part isn't that bad. Of course, my flashlight dies after 5 minutes, so there is no light but other people's lights and the stars. Which I do have to say I have never ever seen stars like this in my life. It was absolutely surreal and beautiful. The camels everywhere really added to the 'scenery' of course, as we almost walked into them every other step and they obviously smell great!. The last 45 minutes or so are what really get you, because it is 750 vertical 'steps' to the top. Steps is quite a relative term, because one you cant see shit, two they are all different sizes and three there are no straight lines so they're all windy and twisty and its almost 4am. We finally made it to the top and basically collapsed for a half hour and froze our asses off. You get all hot climbing for 3 hours but then freeze at the top because its 4am in the desert and its cold and your sweaty clothes are drying. So the alternative is to wrap up in smelly camel hair blankets. Truly attractive group. But the sun started rising at 515ish and when it came up, it was gorgeous. You got your first look at the landscape (and realize why they make you climb in the dark: so you can't see down). But it was nothing but mountain ranges for as far as you could see from all angles. We sat up there until 6ish then began the trek down. We went a different way down which consisted of 3000 'steps' down, which you could see this time. You can see the Monastery from almost the beginning of the hike down and you think that it won't take long, but then realize how wrong you are. There were a few choice words running through my mind. But we made it down around 8 or 830, had time for a quick shower in the worlds dumbest shower. How the expect you to shower AND hold the shower head above you is beyond me. We took a quick tour of the monastery, which was built by Emperor Justinian I (527-567). So its old. It has some of the oldest surviving relics and icons and manuscripts dating back to the 6th century and there were no pictures allowed. (The Vatican is the only site that has more ancient manuscripts) It is also the home of the burning bush as in THE burning bush that is mentioned in the Bible. The one Moses saw. As a plant, it is the only one of its kind in Egypt. It wasn't burning when I saw it thought. Just hanging. But it was still cool. There are all sorts of scientific dispute about it, but it hey, that's nothing new. We left for Cairo soon after and after almost 10 glorious hours on a bus, we finally arrived back in time to finish some Arabic homework we all neglected and pass out so we could go to classes on Sunday.
Fast foward the week (Happy Birthday Melanie!) and we rented a falluca (a Nile boat thing) for Thursday night. It was our friend's 21st birthday so we had a little party on the Nile and saw a crocodile (floating trash is not a cool explanation for it, so were going with croc :) We had dinner and drinks on the falluca then got lost, ended up at the wrong hotel, and finally went to a stationary boat on the Nile that had a cool nightclub on it. So its been a pretty legit month thus far. I've gotten some people ask if they celebrate Halloween in Egypt. Answer is no, but Americans do. So we will be doing something for Halloween. Any costume suggestions are welcome (please keep in mind location). So I hope you are all not freezing in America and enjoy the rest of your week!
Bye habibis!
Monday, October 18, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
"Its Not A Gay Bar, There Are Just A Lot Of Gay Guys..."
First, Happy 2nd Birthday to Princess Amelia :)
Second, I'm going to preface the gay bar story with typical behaviors and attires of young Egyptian men. Cause its just weird. First, their clothes. Some of the attire I've seen thus far on guys would fit in very well if they lived in Ptown or certain parts of San Fransisco. Im a personal fan of the jeans. They are usually blinged out and bedazzled skinny jeans, and I mean very skinny jeans. Sometimes they are faded, which usually just makes it all the better. Ed Hardy shirts are also pretty popular, as are pinks and purples; I've even see some pretty sparkly shirts that I wouldn't be caught dead in. All this would be manageable if not for the fact that Egyptians are very touchy feely. The guys here will go around in big groups and they will all be holding hands, or will walk down the street with their arms around each others shoulders. Yet you will see very few men and women doing this in public. Okay, yes, I know its all a cultural thing, and they probably think we're weird too, but when you put the bedazzeled skinny jeans on with purple sparkly shirts and start holding hands, most people assume you are gay. But the thing is, being gay in Egypt is not exactly accepted. Its essentially forbidden in the Quran; actually, I had a sub in my Quran class this week and he compared being gay to watching the windows screen saver all day: its pointless and unproductive. So that's why we had a hard time believing we somehow ended up in a gay bar in Alexandria. Because who knew they even existed?
Last Thursday, ALI had a trip to Alexandria, which is a little over two hours from Cairo. It turns out that you don't have to be a student to go on these trips; as long as one person is somehow affiliated with AUC and/or ALI, you can sign up your whole family if you so choose. Which people so chose. The first family was awesome. It was a young couple with a 10 month old baby boy, who sat behind us. The mother was an American from Minnesota who was in the Army and had been studying Arabic for the past ten years. Her husband was Yemeni and an Arabic professor who helped us with homework on the bus when we weren't playing with his son. They were very nice. The second family was more like a circus. As far as we could figure out, one of the guys was an Indian diplomat and his mother, his wife and family, and his two sisters, and their two husbands and all the kids. Yep. It would have been alright except they let one of the sons, who was about seven, run around during all the tours and push people out of the way and generally be disrespectful and disruptive every time we went somewhere. There was a collective sigh of relief when they finally left.
Anyways, the first night we got there we had a free night so a bunch of us decieded to go out. Some other people from AUC were planning on coming up for the weekend so we were going to try to meet up with them. In the meantime, we decided to try to find a bar, because we had heard Alex had a few good ones. So we hopped in a cab and asked the driver to take us to a bar called Cope D'Or. He of course had no idea where it was, but he told us he knew exactly where it was. After stopping a few times for directions, we get out on this pretty sketchy street and he says follow me. We go into this whole in the wall place and there is maybe 4 people in there, all guys. There is no sign saying where we were and we were convinced that the driver took us to the first place he could find and say that it was Cope D'or, because how would we know? So the cabbie leaves us there and we decided we would at least get a drink and then profitably try to leave. Well, one turned into two and two turned into four and all of a sudden there are a ton of young dudes in this bar. In their blinged out skinny jeans and popped collar Lactose shirts and fro-hawks. We weren't paying that much attention to them because the bartender looked like an Egyptian version of Steve Carrell until a few guys sat next to our guy friend and after about five minutes they are stroking his back. We of course thought it was hysterical and we just sat there and watched all this. I was one of two girls in this bar so me and my friend went to find the bathroom. We came out and there was a guy standing there. We didn't know what he wanted so we told him that this was the girls bathroom (it was the only room at the top of a staircase and he was blocking the way down) He said (with a hand wave) I know, its just like, cleaner then the guys bathroom. Oooookay. Back downstairs our friend now had more than one guy touching him, but one of them leaned over and said "When I was 16, I had eyebrow like him. Now I'm 27 and I wax . You like?" And on and on it went, with the comments getting more and more inappropriate, but said with pretty poor English so it was hysterical. This is so far out of the norm for Egypt; we had no idea what we had gotten into, but we had a great time. We got home around 430am.
As we didn't go to Alex for a gay bar, we did do all the typical historical tours the next day, which was very cool. We went to the catacombs, which only a third are excavated. The rest are still underwater and under the city. You could actually see the water that was flooding them. There were a few sarcophagus' that we were able to see. We saw Pompeii's Pillar, which has nothing to do with Pompeii, but was built for Ptolemy. Its still mind boggling to try to fathom how these things were built using very primitive tools and whatnot. The last stop for the day was the Roman Theater, which apparently still has productions held there. The rest of the day was spent at the Automobile Club, which had a pool overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Afternoon at the beach; it was fantastic. That night was much more uneventful, unless you want to count when we asked a waiter for the bathroom. We actually asked the guy where the pigeon was; thankfully he knew what we meant. The word for bathroom and pigeon is very similar, the difference is how long you pronouce an 'a'. Arabic at its best :)
Saturday was our final day there, and we went to see the Library. The original one of course burned, but the built a new one, which was very cool. An ariel view would show water surrounding it and an obelisk meant to represent the sun rising out of the water. They were able to save some of the texts from the ancient library and we saw those and took a few illegal pictures. All in all it was a really fun trip. Its so easy to get to Alex from Cairo so it is definitely a place to go back to and spend more time at.
The weeks are as always just go by in a blur. Last night there was a sandstorm. That shit's pretty legit. They actually canceled a trip that was planned for this weekend for it. There were chairs and tables and umbrellas overturned and now there's piles of sand where there usually aren't piles of sand. This coming week is a short one; we have Wednesday off, and ALI has a trip to Sinai and Sharm el Shek from Tuesday to Saturday. Maybe ill get to swim in the Red Sea. Who knows.
Happy Friday! Masalama :)
Second, I'm going to preface the gay bar story with typical behaviors and attires of young Egyptian men. Cause its just weird. First, their clothes. Some of the attire I've seen thus far on guys would fit in very well if they lived in Ptown or certain parts of San Fransisco. Im a personal fan of the jeans. They are usually blinged out and bedazzled skinny jeans, and I mean very skinny jeans. Sometimes they are faded, which usually just makes it all the better. Ed Hardy shirts are also pretty popular, as are pinks and purples; I've even see some pretty sparkly shirts that I wouldn't be caught dead in. All this would be manageable if not for the fact that Egyptians are very touchy feely. The guys here will go around in big groups and they will all be holding hands, or will walk down the street with their arms around each others shoulders. Yet you will see very few men and women doing this in public. Okay, yes, I know its all a cultural thing, and they probably think we're weird too, but when you put the bedazzeled skinny jeans on with purple sparkly shirts and start holding hands, most people assume you are gay. But the thing is, being gay in Egypt is not exactly accepted. Its essentially forbidden in the Quran; actually, I had a sub in my Quran class this week and he compared being gay to watching the windows screen saver all day: its pointless and unproductive. So that's why we had a hard time believing we somehow ended up in a gay bar in Alexandria. Because who knew they even existed?
Last Thursday, ALI had a trip to Alexandria, which is a little over two hours from Cairo. It turns out that you don't have to be a student to go on these trips; as long as one person is somehow affiliated with AUC and/or ALI, you can sign up your whole family if you so choose. Which people so chose. The first family was awesome. It was a young couple with a 10 month old baby boy, who sat behind us. The mother was an American from Minnesota who was in the Army and had been studying Arabic for the past ten years. Her husband was Yemeni and an Arabic professor who helped us with homework on the bus when we weren't playing with his son. They were very nice. The second family was more like a circus. As far as we could figure out, one of the guys was an Indian diplomat and his mother, his wife and family, and his two sisters, and their two husbands and all the kids. Yep. It would have been alright except they let one of the sons, who was about seven, run around during all the tours and push people out of the way and generally be disrespectful and disruptive every time we went somewhere. There was a collective sigh of relief when they finally left.
Anyways, the first night we got there we had a free night so a bunch of us decieded to go out. Some other people from AUC were planning on coming up for the weekend so we were going to try to meet up with them. In the meantime, we decided to try to find a bar, because we had heard Alex had a few good ones. So we hopped in a cab and asked the driver to take us to a bar called Cope D'Or. He of course had no idea where it was, but he told us he knew exactly where it was. After stopping a few times for directions, we get out on this pretty sketchy street and he says follow me. We go into this whole in the wall place and there is maybe 4 people in there, all guys. There is no sign saying where we were and we were convinced that the driver took us to the first place he could find and say that it was Cope D'or, because how would we know? So the cabbie leaves us there and we decided we would at least get a drink and then profitably try to leave. Well, one turned into two and two turned into four and all of a sudden there are a ton of young dudes in this bar. In their blinged out skinny jeans and popped collar Lactose shirts and fro-hawks. We weren't paying that much attention to them because the bartender looked like an Egyptian version of Steve Carrell until a few guys sat next to our guy friend and after about five minutes they are stroking his back. We of course thought it was hysterical and we just sat there and watched all this. I was one of two girls in this bar so me and my friend went to find the bathroom. We came out and there was a guy standing there. We didn't know what he wanted so we told him that this was the girls bathroom (it was the only room at the top of a staircase and he was blocking the way down) He said (with a hand wave) I know, its just like, cleaner then the guys bathroom. Oooookay. Back downstairs our friend now had more than one guy touching him, but one of them leaned over and said "When I was 16, I had eyebrow like him. Now I'm 27 and I wax . You like?" And on and on it went, with the comments getting more and more inappropriate, but said with pretty poor English so it was hysterical. This is so far out of the norm for Egypt; we had no idea what we had gotten into, but we had a great time. We got home around 430am.
As we didn't go to Alex for a gay bar, we did do all the typical historical tours the next day, which was very cool. We went to the catacombs, which only a third are excavated. The rest are still underwater and under the city. You could actually see the water that was flooding them. There were a few sarcophagus' that we were able to see. We saw Pompeii's Pillar, which has nothing to do with Pompeii, but was built for Ptolemy. Its still mind boggling to try to fathom how these things were built using very primitive tools and whatnot. The last stop for the day was the Roman Theater, which apparently still has productions held there. The rest of the day was spent at the Automobile Club, which had a pool overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Afternoon at the beach; it was fantastic. That night was much more uneventful, unless you want to count when we asked a waiter for the bathroom. We actually asked the guy where the pigeon was; thankfully he knew what we meant. The word for bathroom and pigeon is very similar, the difference is how long you pronouce an 'a'. Arabic at its best :)
Saturday was our final day there, and we went to see the Library. The original one of course burned, but the built a new one, which was very cool. An ariel view would show water surrounding it and an obelisk meant to represent the sun rising out of the water. They were able to save some of the texts from the ancient library and we saw those and took a few illegal pictures. All in all it was a really fun trip. Its so easy to get to Alex from Cairo so it is definitely a place to go back to and spend more time at.
The weeks are as always just go by in a blur. Last night there was a sandstorm. That shit's pretty legit. They actually canceled a trip that was planned for this weekend for it. There were chairs and tables and umbrellas overturned and now there's piles of sand where there usually aren't piles of sand. This coming week is a short one; we have Wednesday off, and ALI has a trip to Sinai and Sharm el Shek from Tuesday to Saturday. Maybe ill get to swim in the Red Sea. Who knows.
Happy Friday! Masalama :)
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