My Language Partner

مساء الخير!
masaa al-kheer!
Good evening!

I'm having some problems with the slideshow of pictures I added- It's only showing the first page of my pictures! Ugh! Technology- Until I get it figured out, you can visit my flickr page to view all my photos at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39945289@N02/show/

(My language partner, Rina, and me)

I finally have a few pictures of my language partner, Rina, from an outing last week to the pool! Rina is 19 and studies English and French literature. She's very enthusiastic and tons of fun! She loves shopping and accessories and the color pink! I've met a some of her friends and also her sister Fiby.

Last Saturday, Rina invited me over to her home for dinner. Her mother cooked a ton of delicious seafood, all fresh from the area. They are currently in a fasting period and cannot eat meat and other animal products. Coptic Christians fast something like 260 days a year where they eat essentially just veagan food. It's customary to take seconds and thirds as a guest, otherwise you may be considered rude. So, I ate a lot!! They also offered me fruit and icecream for dessert.

They made me feel very at home and told me that I was welcome any time. Rina's mom, Mary, told me she would be my Egyptian mom and Rina and Fiby would be my sisters. I've even been invited to Fiby's wedding in a couple of months which I am extremely excited about!!

(Me, Fiby, Rina, Mimi, Mera)

After dinner we walked over to their church, a large Coptic church across the street from their home. Rina's grandfather used to be a well known Priest in the area. The church is more than just for prayer, it's also like a very busy community center. There is a library for adults and children, a computer lab and a soccer field. Afterwords her friends drove me back to my dorm.

Friendship seems to have a much deeper meaning here. In America we say we are friends with casual acquantances that we see now and then, but that is not the case here! You see eachother much more often and there is a greater level of concern and care. For example, Rina texted me on my cell yesterday that she was busy and wasn't going to be able to meet up. My phone battery died that afternoon and I never got the chance to reply, so today she called me just to make sure that everything was ok! Very sweet. We are only language partners for the summer, but I know we will continue to hang out during the year!!

(Me, Mimi, Rina, Rose, Fiby)

Slideshow!

The slideshow of pictures is now up and running! You'll find it to the right hand side of the blog. I hope you enjoy the pictures! I enjoyed taking them!

How my life in Egypt is different

I realize that most of my blog posts thus far have been just reiterating the activities I've been doing and not really detailing any of my thoughts or observations on life here in Egypt, so I decided to write some down.

Life in the dorm-
living in the dorm here in Egypt is WAY different that my time in the dorm at UofM. Here, we have a curfew and we must let the women of the dorm know when we are going out at night after dinner. Our curfew is technically midnight, but as long as we tell them that we are going to be late- someone will be here to open the door. However, the women don't like it at all when we are late because they have to stay up to let us in. We also have to check in at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and again at night. Boys are not allowed in the dorm, unless they are American boys in our program who eat lunch here during the week because their dorm is too far to compute to in the middle of the day. Girl visitors from outside the dorm are not allowed to stay and hang out. I am really bummed about this rule because I was hoping my language partner could hang out with me here, but she is not allowed.
Having all these rules is really hard. I'm so used to living my life very independently at school. I've lived in an apartment for the last three years and in a dorm before that where there were certainly no rules like this. I know that the rules are supposed to be for our own good. The women in the dorm worry about our safetly when we go out late. Plus, it's definitely not the cultural norm for girls to go out late, especially without a male escort. It's been a little bit of a hard adjustment and I feel as though there's been some tension between the women in charge and American students. Today I learned that Mama Huda, the very sweet woman who is our main contact in the dorm, got very nervous and high strung when the Americans moved in. I'm not sure exactly why, but it demonstrates the kind of feelings going around here.
That being said, we definitely have it way better than the Egyptian girls in the dorm. Their curfew is 7pm, unless they are going out with the Americans. They also do not get all the same benefits as we do. For example, we are given a bottle of water everyday at lunch (you can't drink the tap water. Well, you can, but you'll be sorry) while the Egyptian girls must buy their own or drink the tap water.
It makes me uncomfortable that there is this seperation of treatment between the Egyptian girls and the American girls. I don't like feeling priviledged. It's awkward.
The same thing goes with the housekeeping around here. We are supposed to ask the women of the dorm to clean our rooms and change our sheets. Personally, I'm not used to this and I would rather just do it myself. I don't mind the work- I clean my own apartment in the states. I know that it's just how things are done around here, but it's still something I haven't quite gotten used to. My roommate feels the same way. Needless to say, our room hasn't been cleaned at all yet!

internet-
the internet is definitely much much slower. I've had huge problems trying to talk with my parents via video chat. In a way, the fact that the internet doesnt work all the time is a blessing- it gets us all out of the dorm. They told us at orientation that you cant live your life in America, via facebook and gmail, etc and live your life here. This is true. So, it's kind of ok that the internet isn't so great. On the otherhand, it takes forever to upload pictures and like I said, I've had problems trying to talk with my parents. Most of the time, the internet just makes me want to kick puppies. It's frustrating.
Although, I think I've finally discovered the secret. The router on the 6th floor is connected to all the other routers in the building and it keeps getting unplugged. I think that's been the source of most of our problems. At least now we know how to fix it. But it's still slow.
There is a MacDonald's just down the street with free WiFi, so I'm going to try that soon to see if it's any faster.

the food-
The food in Egypt is great. I've always like Middle Eastern food. My favorites so far: عصير Aseer, or fresh fruit juice. There are stands all over the place selling fresh squeezed juices. My favorite flavors are strawberry and lemon (like fresh squeezed lemonaid). I also love Fateer, which is this layered dough that has toppings like pizza, or sweet toppings. The food in the dorm is ok. Lunch is great- there's always lots of rice, and patotoes and chicken or shawarma and soup and usually some kind of fruit. Breakfast is usually a hardboiled egg and some cereal or bread. Dinner is always bread and cheese. Sometimes we get milk with breakfast or juice with dinner, but not always. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day instead of dinner, which has taken some adjustment, but I actually like it better. You dont feel as tired in the evening eating such a large meal. I think it's healthier too.
Today I had a wonderful meal at the home of my language partner, Rina. Rina is awesome. I love hanging out with her and I feel like I'm getting better at communicating with her. She has a sister that's my age and is also very sweet. Her mother cooked a wonderul meal of all different types of seafood. It was delicious. It's customary to cook a lot of food for a guest as a sign of good hospitality and it's also customary for the guest to eat a lot. Not taking seconds can be considered rude. Needless to say, I ate a ton! But it was great.

On being a woman-
Egyptian society is obviously very male dominated. Therefore, men have many more priviledges than women. Life for the guys in the male dorm is very different from ours. They each get their own room, their meals are a little larger, and they come and go as they please without checking in. As foreign women, we occupy some place in between Egyptian women and men on the social ladder, as demonstrated by the different rules imposed on Egyptian girls in the dorms. Being a woman, Egyptian or foreign, you run into a lot of harrassment on the streets, especially on the Qurneesh- the large road that runs along the highway. Most of the time it's just yelling things like "beautiful foreigner" or "welcome!" or occassionally "you're so soft!" Most of the time we just laugh about the crazy things people try to say to us in English. It's pretty harmless. But sometimes it gets a little out of hand. People stop their cars and get out and follow you. Or just follow you in their car. Luckily, I haven't had this experience yet, but sometimes men try to get too close and grab you in inappropriate ways. That's rare, but it happens.
This is very frustrating. As a woman who is used to more or less equal treatment in America, it's extermely difficult to deal with this behavior. Not that things like this don't happen in America, but it's much more widespread here, and men don't seem to see anything wrong with it.
We are told the best thing to do is just ignore it. But I can see myself eventually losing my temper and just going off on some Egyptian man in the street. Hopefully, it will be entirely in Arabic and then he'll really be surprised!!

Friends-
I absolutely love everyone in my program. They are totally amazing. We are all getting along really well and bonding over our crazy experiences in Egypt! My language partner, Rina, is truely a blessing. She's so sweet and a very patient language partner. She's also very helpful and is great at giving me help with anything I need. She also knows all the great places to go shopping which is definitely an asset here. The Egyptian guys working in the Dar are also great. They're like big brothers to us all. We've also made some Egyptian friends outside the college who have been really nice in giving us tips on good places to go around the city and showing us around. I think the best thing about this program so far is the connections with people that I'm making, which will continue throught the year.

Day 3 in Cairo

*I've been having some trouble trying to upload pictures to this post, so I will come back and add them in later this week when I can work at the Dar where there is faster internet!*

On our last day in Cairo we woke up early again and went to the museum. I only have a picture from the outside because you are not allowed to take cameras inside.

The museum was very interesting. I will definitely have to go back because there's so much to see and I didn't make it through the whole thing in the 2 hours we were given. There were so many interesting artifacts. One of the coolest things I saw was the "pet mummy" room with mumified cats, dogs, crocodiles, and birds. There was also a human mummy room, but you had to pay extra to enter and I figured I'd be back with visitors from the states and go with them into the royal mummy room then. From what I hear from my fellow students, it was definitely worth the extra fee!

My second favorite room was the King Tut room. On display there is all the wonderful things found in King Tut's tomb- the most famous mummy of all time. This includes two beautiful gold sarcophagi and the famous gold mask. I also enjoyed the jewelry room- seeing all the fashions the women and men used to wear WAY back in the day.

After the museum, we went to lunch and then visited the Saladin Citadel. It was very beautiful, inside and out. When we first walked in the complex, there were people there set up to take a group photo of us which you could later purchase if you wanted to. There were people after us getting their photo taken who dressed up in Pharoah costumes, or like roman soldiers- from the same photo shop that was taking the picture. It was kind of funny to see people all decked out and taking their picture in front of the Citadel. We went into the mosque- so ladies had to cover their hair, and most of us had scarves handy for just such a reason. The inside of the mosque was beautiful. There were lamps all over the ceiling and the painting and decorations inside were absolutely stunning. We then stepped outside and go an amazing view of Cairo. I managed to take about 5 pictures to form a panoramic view, and I will try and connect those together and post the picture!

After the Citadel we drove and walked around the Coptic part of Cairo. We got to visit a church there as well. It was also very beautiful. It's hard for people to be Christian in Egypt, which is majority Muslim, and seeing these hardships and being in a country where one is definitely in the minority gives me a much greater respect for how minorities must feel in my own country. I bought an Arabic translation of the Bible while I was there. I've always wanted one and it will be useful to practice my reading skills.

After touring the Coptic area, we stopped at a perfume shop and got to smell a bunch of different essential oil perfumes. It was very nice- we all smelled amazing by the time the demonstration was done. Some of my favorite included lotus flower and jasmine. I ended up buying a scent called "secret of the desert" which has kind of an awkward backstory to it (ask me about the "upside down triangle" sometime) but it smells really good. I bought a small bottle and got a small glass perfume holder for free because we paid in a group of 4.

Finally, it was time to depart Cairo. We were already running two hours behind schedule. We stopped at a McDonalds for dinner. They had pre-ordered the meals, but they weren't ready, so we had to wait an hour at the McDonalds. Most of us passed the time by buying icecream or milkshakes. We actually live right down the street from a McDonalds in Alexandria. The food is actually very good, but it's a little on the pricey side considering you can get a great falafal sandwhich for like $1 most places around here. But McDonald's has free WIFI and it's a great place to get change for large bills.

Finally we got our food and got on the road. The bus was running very slow as usual and we decided to entertain ourselves by having a talent show of sorts- there was a lot of singing and slam poetry. My only real talent that I could contribute in that setting was being one of the only ones on the bus that knew all the lyrics to "Hey now, you're an All star," but you know, I do what I can! We stopped at a gas station almost half way through and once again our bus struggled to get up hill to the pumps, but we were eventually successful.

We finally arrived home around 2:00 am, 7 hours later than we were supposed to. Luckily, our teachers gave us an extra day to complete our homework since we were all exhausted and didn't have time to finish it when we got back!

An interesting side note about the trip in Cairo- we had a body guard with us on the bus while we were traveling, which is supposed to make tourists feel safer, but I think it may have a little bit of the opposite effect. He was nice though. Just another way life in Egypt is a little different.

I'm working on uploading my photos to a flickr account and then I will put a slideshow of picture on my blog so you can see more pictures. Hopefully it will be up and running soon!

Day 2 in Cairo

So Day two in Cairo-

After getting very little sleep, we hopped on the bus and drove to the step pyramid at Sakkara. It was a long bus ride since our bus was slow and our driver didn't really know where we were going, so I at least got to take a little nap.

We arrived at the step pyramid and our bus struggled to make it up the hill to the pyramid. In fact, we made it about 75% of the way up and then rolled backward all the way down! But on the second try we were successful. We took a tour of a tomb first. It was really cool to see real hierogliphics in person!! Afterwards we drove over to the step pyramid and our tour guide gave us a history of the pyramid in Arabic. We posed for a group picture and also made a human pyramid in front of the pyramid. You know, the touristy stuff.

Next we went to lunch and then to the Pyramids at Giza. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to see these pyramids, so I was super excited! It's amazing how big they are in person! We drove up to an area behind the pyramids (yes, struggling up the hills again) to take some great pictures and then a group of us rode camels back down to the first pyramid. Our program coordinator and tour guide negotiated the price for us and we hopped on. It was kind of scary to be on the camel. Actually, I was downright terrified to begin with! The camel was so high when it stood up! But after about half way I finally relaxed and took a lot of pictures. In retrospect it might have been faster for us to take this caravan of camels home over the bus. When we arrived at the first pyramids we disembarked from the camels and took some pictures up close. A few of us climbed up a little on the pyramid, which is not allowed, so you have to do it quickly before the tourist police come see you and yell at you. But it was worth it.

After that we visited the sphynx, but only for a short period. That's one thing I didn't like about our tour. The guides kept only giving us 10 minutes to take pictures and look at things. We just blatantly ignored their time frames and stayed much longer in most places because for most of us this was the first time seeing this stuff!

After the sphynx we stopped by a papyrus place and I bought a small picture of Nefrititi printed on handmade papyrus. Then we stopped back at the hotel and a group when to the large market in Cairo know as Khan al-halili.

Valerie (the other student from Michigan) and I took a taxi to our professor from Michigan's apartment and had dinner with him. It was really nice to see him outside a classroom setting. He was full of good advice for living in Egypt, since he was born there and lived there for a long time before moving to the US to teach Arabic and visits twice a year every year, he knows Egypt well. We had a great dinner at a nice restaurant and for dessert we ate some of the chocolate cake that Valerie and I stopped and bought on our way to his home. Delicious! We took a cab back to the hotel and the driver had on some great Cairo techno station on the radio all the way home which was nice.

Cairo- part 1.

اهلا وسهلا بكم!!

We spent this past weekend in Cairo. It was my first visit to the city and I have to say, I'm in love with it already!

(first views of the pyramids Friday morning- can you see them way in the background?? الاهرام "al-ahram"- pyramids)

Our trip started out a little rocky. Our bus did not function very well and was super slow. So, the trip from Alexandria to Cairo that is supposed to take about 2.5 hours ended up taking almost 7 because of the slowness and Cairo traffic.

We had a dinner cruise on the nile scheduled for the first night, Thursday night and we arrived at the peer just in time to see the boat about 12 feet off the dock pulling away. We were in despair because it was 9pm and we were all super hungry. But luckily they decided to pull the boat back to the dock and let us on! Yeah!! The food was really great and there was a show with music, belly dancing, and folk dancing. At one point we all went up and got to do some dancing in a group. Lots of fun. We all decided that we should start a tabla (small drum) club here at the University so we can all learn how to play.

(picture- رقس بلدي- ra's balady- folk dancing)

After the dinner cruise we checked into the hotel and watched the second half of the Egypt v. Italy soccer game. كرة القدم "qurat ah-kadam" is football (soccer). Egypt played great and won over Italy 1-0!! It's so much fun to watch soccer games here- it's like watching football games back at UofM. People get very excited and yell and cheer! We have learned some good phrases to use while watching the games like : شووووووط! Shoot!! ايه ده؟ "eh da??" What's that?? and so on. Learning some good cheers too!

After the game I went out with a group to a small bar on the top of a hotel. On the way people were celebrating the match in the streets! People were leaning out of cars and cheering, waving flags, yelling, clapping, and even setting things of fire. It was nuts!! In a good way!
(picture- from on the deck of the cruise- Xenat, Jake, Hannah, Kira, Robin (our program coordinator here in Egypt), Monica, Sara)

We made it to the bar with only a little confusion from the taxi driver. As one girl in the group said, (her name is Caitlin too!) it was just the right amount of shady-ness. It was a little seedy, but we could sit out on a balcany and had a great view of Cairo at night. We drank some Egyptian beer- Stella and Sakara and smoked some shisha. It was really nice. We left around 2am. Then the fun really began. We knew the name of our hotel, but not exactly where it was located. Our traxi driver told us he knew the hotel, but after about 2 minutes in the taxi, it was clear he didn't. We were calling other students trying to figure out the area. It took a while, but finally we got an answer. Then our taxi driver had to find it. We ended up being in the cab almost an hour and half.

So by the time we got back to the hotel and got to bed, the morning call of prayer was already drifting through the window and that 6:30 am wake up call was a killer.

I'm going to post more about the trip later so I can add pictures to each entry, which takes a little time because of the slowness of the internet. Plus we've been having some electricty issues in the dorms the last two days, so I've got to work around that as well. But I will post more about Cairo as soon as possible!!

Also- I think I'm going to start a short blog totally in Arabic, and I'll post the link to it as soon as I get it started. Even if you can read Arabic, it may still be fun to look at.

Ok, off to work on homework now!

مع السالمة!! "ma'a salama!" Goodbye!

Blog Title

If anyone was wondering where my blog title came from- it's the title of a song by one of my favorite bands- Jacks Mannequin

you can listen to it on youtube if you like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4KUOzqpZ38

(you can stop the video when the song ends, I'm not sure why it goes on for six minutes, there's nothing after the song)

Posting Comments

My Mom told me a few people had tried to post comments and could not. I think I fixed the problem. If not- let me know!!

Greetings!
Unfortunately this weekend I did not get to go to the beach because I was sick- :-( But I did make it out on Thursday for ice cream and bought the cutest pair of sandals for 8 and 1/2 guinea, which is somewhere around 1.5 dollars.
Hopefully having been sick means I've built up some antibodies and won't get sick from the food or water again for a while. Being sick was interesting as I had to try to explain to the women in the dorm who don't speak English what was wrong.
From what I heard from my roommate I didn't miss much at the beach. Because of a reservation mix up, it wasn't a private beach. Therefore, some of the girls who went swimming got a lot of unwanted attention. شوية Shwaya awkward. Shwaya= a little
Today we went to class and then spent most of the in the Dar دار (means house), which is the program classrooms and common room, located on the third floor of one of the university buildings. Then a few of us went to an Arabic mass at a local Catholic church. It was really nice. The church was beautiful!! The priest spoke really slowly, so it was good language practice. On the way home we stopped at a small مطعم Mat'am (restaurant) and had some pizza and fitah, which is like layered dough. Very good!
Tomorrow I'm going to watch a soccer match at a cafe with a group of Egyptian girls who will have just finished their final exams and my language partner. Her name is Rina. I will ask her to take a picture with me so I can post it on the blog! I met with her briefly on Friday and she is really awesome!!
I almost forgot- we also had a brief health meeting about swine flu. Mostly just common sense stuff about hand washing and such, but it seems to have people really concerned here. More so than in the US. They said they were maybe going to be distributing masks at the University.

One of the things that I've decided I like best in Alexandria is hearing the call to prayer form the masques throughout the day. It kind of marks the passing of time. And the Arabic is beautiful.

PS- It's time for our second daily temperature checking as I write this!! :-)

The First Week

We've seen a lot in the first week we've been in Alexandria!
view from outside a window in the dorm

I've taken a few walks along the Qurneesh- the 10 lane highway that runs along the beach along the sea. Traffic is a bit insane here, especially on the Qurneesh. There are 10 lanes, and I use the term lanes loosely, because no one really follows them. Traffic is maintained through lots of honking of the car horn and flashing of the lights. Some people actually try to cross this road, but we just use the tunnels that go under the road and are located along the sidewalk every half kilometer or so.
The Citadel
We did a scavanger hunt across the sitting in groups as part of our orientation. It was an exercise in asking for directions. I ended up in a group where no one was very well spoken in Egyptian Arabic and we got a little lost. But we ended up making it back ok.
What I didn't like about that trip was the attention I was getting. It's hard being a foreigner in Alex, you definitely stick out. Even though I was with three guys, I was still getting some cat calls. Luckily, they are pretty harmless. Guys just say things like "beautiful foreigner!" or "hottie" in Arabic, or "welcome!" in English. The whistle and hiss at you too. Kind of interesting.
View from the Citadel
Having to takes taxis has been a little hard too. No one uses the meters so you have to kind of just know how much the fair should cost. If you're a foreigner, of course they are going to try to over charge you because they think you don't know any better. I've been taking taxis in groups and hadn't really had any problems until today. The taxi driver got out of the car and followed me and the guy from the program I was with into the bank and demanded more money even though it was a short ride and he had to stop and ask for directions twice. He didn't even get us to the right spot, we just decided to get out the second time he got out of the taxi to ask for directions because we'd been driving a long time for what was supposed to be a short ride. It's something to get used to.

In Cairo there have been several cases of American students at American University of Cairo (AUC) with swine flu. One of the dorms is in quarantine. My friend from UofM, Rob, who has been interning at AUC for a year is stuck in the dorm. He was supposed to come to Alexandria for dinner on Tuesday, but no one was being let out.
At Alexandria University, one of the girls in our program went to the hospital with an ear infection this morning and because she had a temperature, apparently health officials are afraid there may be swine flu here too?? Actually the information as to why isn't that clear, but we are now required to have our temperatures taken twice a day by women in the dorm.
Flagship People!
One of my favorite things has been the Coffee house on the sea. We went there with a large group of students one night during the week and stayed and talked in Arabic and English, smoked shisha (hookah) and drank tea, coffee, and juice. It was a lot of fun and the weather is so beautiful at night, especially along the sea. There's a nice cool breeze!

Saturday we are going to a private beach with gardens near by to swim and socialize and realax. We can't swim on the public beaches, it would attract too much attention. Egyptian women who swim in the sea on the public beach go in fully clothed, which is kind of strange to see. There are people swimming day and night though. In a couple of weeks, 3-4 million people will be flocking to Alexandria to escape the heat from Cairo and other places in the Middle East. It's a popular tourist place because it's inexpensive.

Classes have started, but luckily I don't have too much homework yet so I should be able to enjoy the weekend and keep practicing my Egyptian Arabic!

Fee Misr! In Egypt!

Hello Everyone!

I made it to Egypt safe and sound.
I am probably not going to be able to blog as much as I would like right now because my computer is broken. I bought a netbook the day before I left because I figured I didn't need to drag my whole computer with me (which is relatively new) and it broke literally 2 days later. I am going to take it with me to orientation tomorrow and hopefully one of my teachers will know how to fix it or where I can get it fixed. Until then I'm on my roommate's computer only about once a day, so be patient with the blog and emails and such!
I took a bunch of pictures today and I will try to upload them as soon as I can but it may be a while! but as they say in Egypt- mish mushkila (no problem)!

We had two days of orientation in Washington DC. The weather was terrible! It was chilly and rainy the whole time! But we managed to make it to Georgetown for cupcakes anyway. We actually arrived to the cupcake shop after it closed, but the owner was standing outside and one of the girls in the program, Sousan from Michigan, said something in Spanish, and the owner speaks Spanish, so they had a short conversation and gave us 2 boxes of cupcakes for free!
We left DC at 10pm on Friday night and flew to Frankfurt. The plane ride was long but I didn't get much sleep. We went into the city at Frankfurt and had lunch at a cute German restaurant. I had weisswurst (white sausage) and a pretzel and beer. We then left Frankfurt at 9pm (Frankfurt time) and flew to Alexandria.

We arrived in Alexandria at 2am (Alex time) and went through passport control and customs which was organized chaos. We took a bus and arrived at the dorms around 4am. We started orientation at noon.

We've had orientation the last 2 days. Yesterday we had our evaluation interviews so they could place us in class. Today we took a bus tour and went to the citadel and a mosque. It was very beautiful. Alexandria is located right along the sea so the view is awesome! After dinner we went to a cafe on the sea and smoked shisha (hookah) and drank tea and juice.

It's an adjustment, but I'm really starting to love Alexandria! All the students in the program are awesome and we get along well! The Egyptian girls in my dorm are really nice and friendly as well! I'm having some trouble with the language. It's amazing that after four years of standard Arabic one can still have so much trouble understanding the local dialect. But I'll get there. It's only the second day and I feel like I'm understanding more already.

Tomorrow we are going to tour the Alexandria library! Very exciting! And classes start on Wednesday.
I'll hopefully have lots more soon!

The Last of Germany

Home safe and sound from Germany! Unpacked (kind of) last night and doing laundry today and such. Getting ready to pack for leaving for Egypt for next week! Let me catch up on the last week of my trip to Germany. From Tuesday to Thursday of last week we were in Berlin. We took the bus and almost missed it on Tuesday morning! We had to run to catch it. The bus ride wasn't bad. Went through a lot of pretty countryside with many windmills. We arrived in Berlin in the East Train Station and luckily our hostel wasn't too far away.

We stayed in the eastern part of Berlin. We couldn't check in until 4 o'clock, so we left our bags in a closet at the hostel and walked around the city.  

  We started at Alexanderplatz, where the Berlin TV tower is located. The TV tower is 365 meters high- one for every day of the year. We went up in the tower and took a look around Berlin. The view was amazing! You could see all around the city. 

We decided to go look at the Berlin dome (large church) next. We walked to the Dome and my camera ran out of battery. Not cool! I was so mad that I forgot to charge it the night before! So I stole my Mom's camera for the rest of the day. So it worked out OK. After walking by and taking a look at the church we just decided to continue walking down Unter den Linden- the main road in the center of Berlin. 

We walked by the Bebelplatz- where the Nazis burned the books in the 1930s (1933 I think??), the Germany History Museum, site of one of the many assassination attempts on Hitler, and the Berlin opera house. When we were taking a break sitting on a bench, and English tour walked by and the guide sounded really informative, so we asked him about the tour company he was with. We would take that tour the next day. After meeting the tour guide, we decided to go explore another part of the city. 

I suggested the Berlin zoo. My mom and Arjang made fun of me for wanting to go to the zoo, but it was really cool. The Berlin zoo is very large and has lots of animals! We saw the famous polar bear Knut too!! After that Arjang took us to a Vietnamese restaurant he and his friends always visit when they are in Berlin and then headed back to the hostel for the night. The hostel was OK, but the bunk beds were uncomfortable and very very squeaky. So everytime one of us rolled over, it would wake everyone up. Yeah, no one slept really well.  

The next day, Wednesday, we took a free 3.5 hour walking tour through Berlin with Epsin- our tour guide. It was an English speaking tour and we had people from England, the US, Australia, Ecuador, and Africa. Our guide was a tour guide by day and the singer in 2 rock bands by night. After the tour he was going to work on recording an album with one of his bands. The tour was really great. Lots of interesting facts and sites. 

We saw some of the same things we did walking around the day before, and the Brandenburg Gate, the location of Hitler's bunker, a large section of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. 

     Since the tour is free, at the end you just tip the guide whatever you felt it was worth. 

After the tour we went up onto the roof and in the glass dome of the Reichstag- the federal building of lower German parliament. It was another great view!! 

     The glass dome is supposed to represent transparency in government, and there is a series of mirrors which was supposed to reflect light into the chamber where votes were cast in order to shed light on governance. We then went to another Vietnamese restaurant, this one recommended by our tour guide, for dinner. After that, Arjang and I dropped Mom off at the hostel and Arjang took me to a Reggae bar to meet with some of his friends. The bar was pretty much just a little shack. It wasn't exactly my scene, but it was cool. After the bar we walked to a Shisha (hookah) bar and hung out for a while. We sang Happy Birthday to Arjang after midnight because it was his 23 Birthday on Thursday! On Thursday morning, we got up and checked out of the hostel, put our bags in a locker at the train station, and went to see the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church. 

     This is the one which a large part of it was destroyed in WWII, and when they rebuilt it, they left the steeple with the damage as a reminder of war. We were going to walk through the Tiergarten (large park) after that, but it was raining. 

Instead, we went to the Pergamon Museum. The Museum had a ton of Greek and Roman statues and art, as well as a whole floor of Islamic art. The Islamic art was my favorite and what I found most interesting.  

After the museum, we took the train to Curry 36, a very delicious, somewhat famous, currywurst place. After that we went to the train station for icecream. The best icecream I think I have ever had!! Finally, we made our way back to the East Train station and caught the bus home. Friday, we slept in and Arjang's mom picked up my Mom from his apartment in the afternoon. Arjang and his friend were having a Birthday part in his apartment that night and Mom didn't want to be around for it. Arjang's mom speaks very little English and my Mom speaks very little German, so they had a hard time communicating, but I think she had fun. At Arjang's, we had a bunch of beer and to eat- pasta salad and garlic bread. The party was a fun. Most of Arjang's friends spoke some English, so I got actually got to talk to people! yeah! Although incredible drunk Germans trying to speak English is really, really funny. Saturday, we slept in again, and then got up, packed stuff up, and Mom came back in the afternoon. We then went to a nice steakhouse for our last dinner in Germany. White asparagus is in season and it was really delicious! After dinner, Arjang and I went to the stadtpark to the planetarium and saw a laser light show in their imax theater. It was lasers and smoke and trippy patterns all set to Pink Floyd music. Very interesting! We then finished packing and went home the next day. I'm glad to be home, but I do miss everyone walking around in the middle of the day with a beer. Oh Germany!

More From Hamburg

Guten Abend! Just relaxing after a fun weekend in Hamburg. We are leaving for Berlin tomorrow and staying through Thursday. I'm super excited! But first what we did this weekend: 

Saturday we went to the "Long Night at the Museum" in Hamburg. There were over 40 Museums participating! We went to the Hamburg history Museum. In addition to the normal exhibits, there was a fashion show planned for 11 pm. We were there early, so we didn't see the show, but we did get to watch the dress rehearsal. Then we went to the Rathaus (city hall) and the Rathaus art gallery. I got to see some famous photographs which I remembered from my Art History course my freshman year, including some stuff by Man Ray.   We then went to the art museum, which was really large so we stuck to viewing the contemporary and modern galleries. Some really interesting and strange stuff. There was an exhibit with a bunch of stuff from Sigmar Polke. One included a time lapse video of a small house by the highway which all of the sudden blows up. My favorite was an exhibit that looked like plaster teletubbies with glowing eyes. Interesting.

When we walked outside of the museum there was a colorful slideshow playing on the side of the building.  

Next we went to the International Art Exhibit which I think I like the most of all. There were a lot of large, colorful, abstract paintings. Across from that building was another photography exhibit which we visited. Finally, we took a super long bus ride to Astronomy Park to an observatory but when we got there it was too cloudy to see any stars. Bummer. So we hopped on the bus to come home and our bus driver was lost and had to ask a passenger for directions. We eventually made it back. We then headed home, but stopped to walk through the Red Light District. There was a ton of sloppy, loud, drunk people and I think it is best characterized by the McDonalds located between two topless bars. I thought it was cool to see but I think my mom was horrified. We stopped at a bar on the way home, close to the train stop for Arjang's apartment and got a beer and some fries. It was kind of funny to be out drinking with my mom at 3:00 am!  

Today- Monday, we took a tour of the Hamburg harbor with Arjang and his roommate Tim, and it is absolutely huge!! We even took a short ferry ride. Then we took the train to the area where I was with Arjang and his friends on Friday night, along the Elbe, called Blankenese. The weather was gorgeous! We walked along the river and stopped and had a snack and a beer at a small restaurant on the beach- the tables were literally in the sand! 

Then we made our way home on what was one of the more interesting train rides. First, a very drunk man got on and was at least coherent enough to pick up that we were speaking English and tried to hit on my mom saying, "oh beautiful English lady!" Then he got off and a group of punks came on, wearing lots of black leather, with 2 small black dogs and a portable radio which they proceeded to play for the duration of their trip. At the same stop, a woman got on the train and sat down next to us. It took me a minute to notice, but she was holding a rat. Apparently she is homeless and keeps the rat as a pet. He was actually kind of cute. Arjang talked to her and she even talked to us a little in English and wished us a happy visit. We switched trains and at one stop two young men got on (one with a guitar) and started singing Brown Eyed Girl and got off at the next stop. Then finally we were home.