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!! :-)