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.
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)
(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!
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