I want to be here...

with this beer.
This photo is by Adham too. Stella is the official beer of Egypt. Not to crappy and I don't really like beer that much.

102 in May

It was apparently 102 degrees Fahrenheit in Cairo, Egypt. Thank Allah, God, Ganesh, Gaia, and whoever that my classroom's ac was working.

The bus ride home was miserable and I have no ac in my room. I want to be drinking beer, white wine, rose or a gin and tonic by a pool. Instead I have to teach. ugggggggghhhhhhhh

ps. The photo is courtesy of my friend (I met him through Hend) Adham who takes awesome shots. I am going to more of them up soon!

roomies blog

Katie and Paul have a shared blog. Check it out for stories about other places in Egypt and their life here, we do a ton together too.

www.triumphantcity.blogspot.com

May 8th, 2009

May 8, 2009 happens to be a Friday and Fridays in Cairo are the best day. The vast majority of people are off work and spend their mornings sleeping only to wake up and go to services. The streets are quite, you can cross them almost without looking and life always seems calm, a rarity. Like every Friday at one in the afternoon the call to prayer is going off, a sound I resent and find fascinating at the same time. On Fridays the services are broadcast out loud, forcing you to listen to the Muslim version of a Sunday service. As a complete nonbeliever it is hard not to want to shut the windows and block out the babble, but you can’t really. I catch the few words I understand, “why,” “God,” “thanks be to God,” “easy,” and “what is this?” The whole thing is forced upon everyone within earshot, making the service and devotion feel contrived in my mind. But, I am wrong. People here have genuine faith and use religion as a real guide for social and spiritual order.

So, I am sitting on our balcony, trying to block out services with Bob Marley and am struck by a strong desire for the most familiar things. I want my friends here with magazines and coffee, I want the smell of Seattle spring time, I want rain and clouds interspersed with sun, I want the sounds of birds instead of services, I want books instead of bad movies on TV, I want to be able to walk around in a tank top and short skirt, and I want to be able to find mountains peeking out between rows of houses. My wants are especially conflicted as our school year comes to a close, my roommates are all getting ready to leave by the end of the month, and my lack planning for life past July becomes more obvious. Yet, at the exact same time I could not be more happy and excited about still being in this very unfamiliar place and getting to know it more. I am still happy figuring out how to adapt to the lack of short skirts and walking paths, the lack of used bookstores and small boutiques with carefully selected spring fashions on the racks, and best friends and family within a ten minutes drive.

I guess the point of going to another place is to figure out how to bring the essentials of your familiar life to a non-familiar place, how to adjust to the conflicted feelings. Maybe Nescafe on the balcony instead of Americanos in the kitchen, and Bob Marley rivaling prayers instead of KEXP’s Positive Vibrations rivaling NPR next door is my way of bringing my familiars to this totally unfamiliar place.

The coffee is different, the music is not as varied, there are no other women within site, and the screeching of this priest is driving me nuts, but the idea of a Saturday morning is present and that makes me happy. It is good to be happy in such a strange place. It is good to be happy in any place.

Trip to Alexandria with the pros

Katie and Paul's friend Nate came to visit this past month and we all used him as an excuse to visit Alexandria one more time. Katie and Paul are Alex pros, having gone by themselves and with Katie's parents. We did not even need a guide book. The four of us found a pretty nice hotel room, tall ceilings and pink walls, at a very decent price. We also found the Mermaid bar with cheap Stellas. The Mermaid gave us a blackout for a little less than an hour and we got to drink our beers by candle light overlooking the Med Sea while Nate played a guitar that our waiter brought out for no reason. Mainly we walked around and just gazed at the sea and the general craziness of a different Egyptian town. We were there for a weekend and had a wonderful time, yeah Alex.

Big girls need love too, so do Panda Big Girls

If I ever have kids they will never be allowed to go to this amusement part because they will die. Either from the goats everywhere or from the crapptastic rides. Or maybe they will get shot by other kids playing shooting games. I do love Egypt though, do love it.

What Disney princesses are really like

The bay

Alexandria is home to a legitimate wooden ship yard, a very lost art. These small boats are everywhere in the bay and used for fishing, but they also make huge yacht. I did not think people made yacht likes the one below out of wood, figured they were all fiberglass. Who needs modern technology though when you have epic craftsmanship.

Just a small part of the fish market we walked past. Fish basket market really.

The bay again

We of course had to check out the library. These are some shots from the inside, I should have outside shots in an older post from my first trip to Alexandria.



Fabulous books being sold outside of the library. These two were right next to several translations of Mein Kampf, by Hitler. Ironic?

HAHAHAHAHA