Thanksgiving and Eid Al-Adha: My Dad's Visit

So here is the last of my "catch-up posts." I will try harder to stay up to date from now on since you all gave me a good talking to while I was home for Christmas on how I had failed up update my blog. Sorry!

So we actually had some time off for Thanksgiving because it lined up with the Islamic Holiday of Eid Al-Adha. I will defer to wikipedia to define the holiday for you:

"Festival of Sacrifice" or "Greater Eid" is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, but instead was able to sacrifice a ram (by God's command).[1] Eid is also about spending time with family and friends, sacrifice, and thanksgiving for being able to afford food and housing. In traditional or agrarian settings, each family would sacrifice a domestic animal, such as a sheep, goat, cow, or camel, by slaughter (though many contemporary muslims do not sacrifice an animal as part of their observance). The meat would then be divided into three equal parts to be distributed to others. The family eats one third, another third is given to other relatives, friends or neighbors, and the other third is given to the poor as a gift.
So actually, it's almost a perfect corresponding holiday to our Thanksgiving.

I had the fortunate opportunity to have my Dad come visit during this time! He arrived and I picked him up at the airport very early in the morning, around 2:30am. I took him and got him checked into a hotel on the Corniche so he would have a nice view of the Mediterranean when he woke up. I then ventured back to my apartment because I had to get up for class in the morning. It was an interesting journey back to my apartment. I though it would be easy to catch a taxi on the corniche because there are usually a lot, but it was super early in the morning, about 4am. Instead, I had three cars pull over, mistaking me for a prostitute. Nevermind that I was wearing a long sleeved sweather and a scarf over my neck, apparently according to Egyptians, a young girl out by herself at that hour could only mean one thing. I angrily shooed them off and finally got a cab home.

The next day after class I went and picked up my Dad from his hotel and we went to the Alexandria Library and to a cafe across the street for some lemonaide and shisha. Afterwards we met up with some of my friends from the program and had Egyptian donuts- yum! I took my Dad on the tram for the first time. I'm sure he found it interesting. We actually ran into a American who is living in Egypt on business and he talked to my Dad for a little while while I was talking to an Egyptian girl whose attention I had attracted. When I finally rejoined the conversation, the man asked me if I had lived in the same city and how we met. Did we work for the same company? I replied that this was my father. The man was surprised. Apparently he though we were married. That was the first, but not the last time that happened on the trip. Awkward. Apparently they don't get many fathers and daughters traveling together in Egypt.
The next day we slept in and I took my Dad to the citadel. Later that evening we hopped on a train and headed for Cairo.

When we arrived in Cairo, it was super crowded, more than usual, because of the holiday. When we came in to the train station, the third class platform was literally overflowing with people. It took us forever to get to our hotel, which was not that far from the train station because of the heavy traffic and all the people in the street. We finally made it and headed to bed, so we could get up early and see the pyramids!

The next day we hired a driver and went to the pyramids in Doshur, Saqqara, and Giza.

We had to drive through the countryside outside of Cairo to get to Doshur, which was very interesting. It's a poor area and there's lot of trash lining the canels there. I even saw several dead water buffalo carcasses laying bloated in the canel. People take out their trash by taking it in a bucket and dumping it along the canel bank. Also driving through the village, we saw people slaughtering animals for Eid. Cow and sheeps heads all over the street. We saw similar sights in Cairo when we were walking around later. I think that was a new sight for my Dad.

Where were we on Thanksgiving? Inside a pyramid- the Red Pyramid at Doshur to be exact. We had a lot of fun touring around and shooing off the over zealous Egyptians trying to sell us stuff. We saw a lot and took a lot of pictures. We finished in the early afternoon, took a nap, and then had a nice dinner in Zamalek. The next day we woke up and went to see the Egyptian museum during the day and then hopped on a plane that evening to Luxor in southern Egypt. We arrived in Luxor around 11pm, checked into our hotel and went to sleep, preparing for another early morning of touring.

We once again hired a driver the next day and headed over to the East bank of the nile. We spent the day seeing the Valley of the Queens, the Valley of the Kings, Hapshetsut Temple, and Ramses Temple. The tombs were amazing. At first, I wasn't impressed. I was like, Ok, we're going to see some holes in the ground. But when you get inside there are heirogliphics that look like they were just carved and painted yesterday all over the walls. Some of the tombs are enormous! It was beautiful. The temples were equally impressive. They were absolutely massive. I couldn't believe it! We walked around and took pictures and enjoyed the sights.

Eventually and inevitably our driver insisted on taking us to an alabaster shop, one "owned by his family." We saw a demonstration on how the alabaster was made and then escorted into the shop to look around and have tea. The owner was particularly friendly and impressed that I spoke Arabic and chatted us up. He also assumed we were married (as did our drivers in Cairo and Luxor) and when he found out that I was with my father, he became increasingly interested. This conversation ended with him offering my Dad his entire shop to marry me. Luckily we escaped with a coupld of really nice candle holders instead.

We then journeyed back to the west bank of the nile and had dinner and visited Luxor temple while it was all light up at night. I love Luxor temple. It is once again, enormous! It was beautiful with all the lights at night. A perfect ending to the day.

The next day we caught a plane back to Cairo and then the train back to Alexandria. We just hung around and relaxed that night. The next day we did a little shopping, stopped at the beach for my Dad to pick up some sand to bring home, and I took him to my favorite icecream place in Alexandria. We finished off the night with a wonderful dinner at the four seasons cafe and I dropped my Dad off at the airport later that night.

I was sad to see him go, but I was excited that I would be coming home for Christmas break in two weeks time. Dad was a great travel partner- very easy going and up for almost anything. He found Egypt to be interesting, but was glad to be heading home too. He put on a slide show with all of the pictures that we took at work, twice, and had people come both times because they thought it was so interesting. So if you see him, ask him to show you!

Flagship Family Thanksgiving

Since we were all getting a little homesick and were going to be in Egypt for Thanksgiving, we decided to have a family style dinner together where everyone cooked something. The boys managed to find a huge, 27 lb turkey that barely fit in our oven. What came wrapped up with the Turkey? Oh yea- the head. Apparently you get the head and all when you buy a turkey in Egypt. I made an apple crumble dish that was a cross between apple sauce and apple pie filling. We had the most ghetto pumpkin pie ever which my roommate Hannah made. We're not even sure we used a pumpkin, but it was some sort of gourd. We had to evaporate our own milk, build a steamer out of multiple pots and pans, make the crust, and then the only container we had to cook it in was a frying pan. It actually turned out super delicious!

We had salads, hummus, mashed potatoes, yams, veggies, pie, torte, potato salad, etc. Everything was super delicious.

During the cooking and dinner I was trying to watch the UM v. OSU game online, but because of the slow internet, I could only watch the ESPN gamecast. Of course I was super bummed when we lost. Sigh. Maybe next year.

Siwa round 2 (a little late)

Ahlan!
Ok, so it's been a while. I apologize. Things were a little crazy in the last few weeks leading up to Christmas break and I was waiting to grab a video, to be included in this post, from Rob. I was also waiting to get home for Christmas because the Internet is much faster and I can upload videos a lot quicker! I also grabbed a bunch of pictures from Rob since I didn't bring my camera to Siwa because it is not sand proof and as you can imagine, there is a lot of sand. So all of the pictures in this post are courtesy of Rob. Thanks!
Siwa was awesome the second time around!! We did lots of the same things, including the safari, sand boarding and sleeping in the desert. But I'll give you the comprehensive run down. This time, I went to Siwa with the people in my program plus Scott and Elizabeth, my awesome roommates from Western Michigan, plus a few Egyptian guys from the men's dorms that I don't know. So we arrived late as usual. It seems our tours can't actually get anywhere on time. We arrived and dropped our stuff of in the hotel and grabbed a quick dinner.Afterwards, a small group of us took a trip to a hot spring for a late night dip. The weather was a little chilly, and it was nice to climb into the warm spring. It was so warm in fact, that you could only stay in for a little while before you felt like you needed to get out and roll around in the cool sand! The stars and moon were out in full force and the view was breathtaking. After swimming for a while, we decided to head back. Unfortunately the truck we were in got stuck in the sand. We tried everything to get it out. We pushed. We dug. We frolicked. Actually, Jake frolicked and it wasn't all that helpful, but it was fun to watch. I wish there was a video of that. Finally, our Bedouin guide and driver called for backup and another truck came and pulled us out. We went back to the hotel, slept for a few hours, and were up bright and early thanks to a very vocal goose next to the hotel (seriously, it sounded like a donkey) and ready for our safari day.
On the safari, we rode around the desert in jeeps, cruising over the dunes like a roller coaster. We stopped and sandboarded again. I had one of the longest runs, thanks to my previous snowboarding experience. We ate lunch by a gorgeous salt lake and made our way to another hot spring. Unfortunately, the jeep I was in broke down on the way to the spring and we were stopped for a while while the Bedouins fixed it. We had a desert dance off with music playing from the jeep and Rob wandered off and came back with the bone of a camel thigh that had been bleached white by the sun. We finally got the jeep going again and made it to the hot spring in time to watch the sunset. Then we made our way over to camp for the night.
At camp, the Bedouins cooked an amazing dinner on the camp fire and we once again had a dance off. I think the Bedouins won though, there dancing was pretty awesome. We even got them to brake it down to some modern hip hop! The weather was pretty chilly, so we all bundled up. You wouldn't believe how cold it gets in the desert! I had on two pairs of pants and something like 5 shirts. We spent the rest of the evening sitting by the camp fire or wandering around a little. Again, I don't have words to describe the view. The moon was much fuller than when we were in Siwa over the summer, so the stars weren't as bright, but it was still beautiful!
So of us decided we should use the buddy system in case we wandered off. I was buddies with Tom and every time we did a buddy check, we used our secret sign- which was to Moo.

That way we would know where the other person was. It sounds strange, but let me tell you, if you are in the desert for long enough- the desert madness sets it. It's a fact. Once it sets it, you just start getting silly.
We finally all fell asleep, except I found it difficult to really get comfortable- you wouldn't believe how hard sand can be! I only slept a few hours. I got up in time to climb to the top of a large dune and watch the sun rise.
Once we were all awake, we packed up and headed back to the hotel. Those who hadn't been to Siwa took the donkey cart tour around town. Those of us that had gone in the summer stayed at the hotel and napped. We woke up in time to meet up with the touring group for lunch by the Cleopatra spring. After that we made our way back to the hotel, where there was a Bedouin music and dance show. We sat by the fire and talked and ate some dinner and watched the show. Later, we took a second trip to the hot spring for a late night dip.
We managed to have car trouble again on the way home from the hot spring, our truck running out of gas before we reached town. Luckily, our driver called someone else to come pick us up and take us back. The next morning, we got up early and ate breakfast and ran into town to buy some dates. I bought chocolate and almond dates which were delicious! I also found an awesome green scarf. We then piled back onto the bus and made our way back to Alexandria.
Siwa the second time around was very different, with a new, larger group of people and a few different activities, but still just as fun as the first time. It remains one of my favorite places in Egypt!

Happy Halloween!

So last week was the end of October and we've knocked off another month. It went by surprisingly fast. To celebrate the all important holiday of Halloween we had a scary movie night where we watched two films: Dead Snow and Nightmare on Elm Street. Dead Snow is a Norwegian comedy horror film. There is no English spoken and there are Arabic subtitles, but its easy to understand. The storyline: Nazi zombies attack a group of friends in a cabin in the woods. Good and terrible times ensue.

The next night we had a costume party at our apartment. Hannah and I were the underrepresented demographic of hot lumberjacks and Elizabeth was a cavewoman. We all made fun little decorations out of construction paper and plan on leaving them up until its time to decorate for Christmas. Other costumes included: two greeks/romans in togas, jonny depp from the 80s, Modanna, a guy and a girl dressed up as Egyptians, MIA, a South Asian frat boy, two tigers, a gypsy, an aviator, and a pirate.

My language partner, Rina, came dressed as the most awesome pirate! It was her first Halloween party because obviously, they don't celebrate Halloween here. Actually, the two people dressed as tigers came in costume and got some crazy looks as they tried to get a cab. However, the guys in the convients stores knew what was up and said happy Halloween to a few of our guests that wandered downstairs for more refreshments.

We all had to be super creative for our costumes since its not like we can just run to a costume store here. I was most impressed with Liz who made her cavewoman dress, which was very cute, from a fleece throw she found at the store. I was also impressed with Tom and Melissa, the tigers, because Melissa drew the stripes on their orange shirts. Sara was an awesome Modanna and managed to combine clothes she already had with a few new additions, and also cutting her hair. And Mona as MIA was great as well, her hair was blue.

You'll notice in the pictures that last week I decided to get my hair cut and colored! I now have short, very blonde hair! and I love it.

I'm looking forward to this week because we are going to Siwa this weekend, leaving on Wednesday on coming back on Saturday. We are spending one night in the desert and two nights in a hotel. I'm super excited to go back to Siwa and run around in the sand and swim in some springs!

Mysterious Smog

And the beat goes on. . .
So I’ve uploaded some videos. One is the audio recording I took at the café last week set to some pictures I’ve taken around Alexandria. The pictures are poor quality because I had to compress the video in order to be able to upload it, but enjoy anyway.
The second video is an audio recording I took standing on our balcony listening to the adhan, or call to prayer, in the evening. We have at least 3 or 4 different mosques in close proximity to our apartment, so we get a deep, rich chorus of voices at prayer time. My favorite time to hear the call to prayer in our area is the very first one of the day around 5am. The streets are so quite that it is the only noise around and it has a very strange, eerie echo. I will try to get a recording of that, but as you can guess, I’m usually asleep at that time. It woke me up the first couple of nights I slept in our apartment, but I sleep through it now.
Just a couple of updates from the week. First, the weather has been insanely hot and humid here this week. I mean, it blows your mind that one can actually sweat that much. There’s also a thick haze that settled around the city. It’s like a fog- you can see it down the streets when you look out our window. Normally when looking out onto the sea, you can see the coast of the city and the citadel in the distance. However, this week, you can see nothing but a white thick mist. We’ve heard several reasons from various Egyptians as to why this is. Reason A) it is pollution from Cairo that got carried in on some wind and will be blown out again before getting cold. B) It is sand blowing in from the desert. This usually occurs in the spring time, but rarely in the fall. Either way, it should clear out in a few days, we hope.
My roommates and I have switched from taking taxis in the morning to taking the tram. It actually turns out to take about the same amount of time because there is so much traffic on the roads that even the slow moving tram moves faster. It’s nice in the morning, but it’s rough taking the tram home. It moves a lot slower and it’s a ton more crowded. I was so packed in the tram today that I couldn’t lift or move my arms because I was pressed against other people. That’s why I always ride the women’s car- being that close to a bunch of men only invites trouble on the tram. But I was way more up close and personal with a bunch of Egyptian women that I ever really wanted to be today. Add the super hot humid weather we’ve been having- and you’ve got yourself one LONG tram ride.
Finally really starting to get into work at my internship. Mona and I are actually sitting down to write our article on the TAFL (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language) Center as we speak. It will be our first official accomplishment. We also got to attend a conference over the weekend hosted by an NGO that discusses issues in Egypt today and also looking into Egypt’s future. It was a very high level of Arabic, so it was difficult to understand, but a very interesting experience. The panel I attended on Thursday night talked about the opportunities and obstacles in Egypt’s future. The speakers seemed very worked up about the Iran-Israel-U.S. love/hate triangle, and also kept mentioning Turkey, though I couldn’t exactly pick up the context on that. Also, they were very concerned about Egypt being able to protect its own borders, though they never did say from whom, and also referred to the Iraq war as “America’s failure in Iraq.” Overall, very interesting to listen to. I attended a panel on Saturday about education and scientific research and development, but I understood far less from that lecture.
American Councils had its official meeting this week in Alexandria with all of the heads of the Arabic department of the Universities in flagship. I was super excited to get to see Dr. Rammuny. We all had a group meeting where we discussed our first impression in Alexandria and our classes. Then Valeria and I sat with Dr. Rammuny for a little while on our own and got to talk to him. It was nice to see him and it makes me miss being in Ann Arbor. على فكرة ala fikra- be the way- The wolverines totally kicked butt this weekend and OSU lost. GO BLUE!

Cafe Jam sessions, shisha, and a self sufficient ahwa

So we've settled into a shedule more or less.
We've got class in the morning 5 days a week, alternating between Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian, and Media. One day a week we have a translation class in the afternoon and one day a week I go to a class at the University. This week was the first time attending this class. I chose to take a class on Media and development. I was really afraid the first day, but I actually understood a lot of the lecture. I'm still not exactly sure what all the class will encampus, but I look forward to finding out!
On top of classes, I'm also studing for the GRE which I'll be taking in mid November. So overall I'm keeping very busy. I've been trying to scope out good places to study, and one of my favorites is a western style coffee house called Clay Cafe. I was there the other day studying and two guys, one with a guitar and the other with a harp like instrument I couldn't quite identify, came in and had a 3 hour jam session in the cafe. I've been trying at attach a sound clip with no luck which I recoreded of them. Of course it has a lot of background chatter, but if you close your eyes, maybe it will be like you are actually in the cafe! I'll keep working on it and hopefully get it up later in the week.
On another note- our apartment is well on its way to becoming a self sufficient ahwa, or coffe house. We have built up quite the stash of tea, and just recently purchased some American coffee that we make in my roommate's french press, and also some turkish coffee and a little plot to make it in. We also have several kinds of hot chocolate and have actually taken to making our own hot chocolate with milk, cocoa powder, and melted chocolate. It's delicious!! We also made homemade brownies the other night!!
To add to the ahwa atmosphere, we purchased a small shisha, or hookah. We set it up on our balcony and it's a fun way to pass time by sitting on the balcony, drinking tea and smoking shisha with friends.
Though I'm still not exactly crazy about being back in Egypt, I feel like I'm more or less adjusted again. I'm enjoying living in the apartment and especially getting to cook my own food. I will hopefully have some more pictures to post soon!

Back In Alexandria!

I've included some pictures from Alexandria while Brent was here that I didn't get to post before and pictures of my apartment.

So after two weeks in America visiting family and friends and eating as much pork as I could get my hands on, I'm back in Alexandria!! I have to say, at first I wasn't very glad to be back. Being home reminded me of all the people and things that I missed, but slowly I'm remembering all the people and things that I love here too. Although unfortunately I was reminded of all the things that I dont like first. For example- when I arrived at the airport, there was a huge globe of mass confusion at the passport control. Lines are not really Egyptian's thing. If you're at a McDonald's waiting in line, people will totally just walk right up to the counter and cut in front of you. Lines- not so much. So getting through the mess of people pushing and shoving took over an hour. One woman was trying to shove me out of the way, but I held firm, and she started complaining to the man next to her about me and I turned around and responded in Arabic. The man just laughed.

Then of course the taxi driver I found was trying to marry me/ get my phone number. Even after I told him I was engaged to try to deter him. He then tried the approach, "Oh, I'm like your brother, I'm just worried about you being alone in a big city. You should call me when you arrive safely in Alexandria." Yeah. Right. He also kept getting to stop and have lunch with him. Luckily I had a good excuse that I had a train to catch.

I arrived at the train station just 15 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave, so I rushed to the ticket counter and bought my ticket and rushed to find my car. I got on with what I thought would be 5 minutes to spare, and then the train left 45 minutes late. Of course.

Then the night I got back, one of my roommates, Hannah, and I went over to our friends' apartment because they were cooking us dinner. We arrived early while they were still grocery shopping, so we sat on the Corniche on the sea for a while and just talked about break. Ramadan is clearly over, because Egyptian men are back to their old selves- trying to talk to us as they walked by, sitting like 10 feet away in a group and talking about us, walking by us and then turning around 5 feet later to walk by again. Seriously guys? Then on our way home we were walking back to our apartment from the tram and a boy about the age of 13 ran up and groped Hannah all over, like a crazy, violating hug, and then ran away. We yelled and yelled after him, but he didn't seem bothered.

Welcome back to Egypt.

But there have been good things too. It's nice to see all of my classmates back and to start classes. I like being busy with classwork. We're all working our way back into speaking Arabic again. We've also gotten our apartment all set up (minus the toilet which is in the process of being fixed and we now have to use a hanger to flush). Hannah and I even have an awesome new roommate- Her name is Elizabeth and she is doing study abroad from Western Michigan. Since we finally have 3 people living in our two bedroom apartment, I've taken the living room area and converted it into a bed room. I set up a sheet as a kind of curtain room divider and i have an awesomely comfortable (way better than my bed in the dorm) couch to sleep on. I also have my own door to the balcony. Sweet. I've included pictures in this post of our apartment and the views from our balcony.






Tonight we are actually having a house warming party and while it was supposed to be for all of the students in our program, it's turning out to be a girl's night because most of the boys in our program live in the dorms and have been in quarantine the last few days. Apparently one of the guys in our program came back from vacation with the swine flu, so they were supposed to be in quarantine for seven days. From talking to them on the phone, it sounds ridiculous. Workers and teachers are allowed to come and go as they please. So, pleople are coming in and out of the building, thus defeating the purpose. Cigarettes were being used as a form of currency by the students. There were rumours of having to share thermataters for temperature taking.

Apparently last night some of the guys broke out and went and had a beer on the beach. I don't know the whole story, but the term "hole in the fence" was used. My question is, did they dig a tunnel and was Steve McQueen involved??

This morning we heard that they are being let out today. Hopefully that won't happen again!

Meanwhile, while we've started our language classes in our center, University classes have been delayed to give the University time to prepare the buildings for swine flu. I believe that means installing new airfilters or something. With all that is going on. I hope we don't have an actual outbreak of swine flu this year since the officials seem to a) overreact to all things swine flu related and b) not really know exactly how to conduct real health safety measures.

The Egyptian government is actually really regretting killing at the pigs earlier this year because now there is a severe trash build up in Cairo. The pigs used to eat all the organic waste, and apparently other animals, such as goats are being used to a small degree, but can't consume the amount that the pigs were consuming. Hopefully next time they'll make a more informed decision.