i really dont like the concept of a glass jar of honey.

im used to honey being in plastic jars. honey here is in glass jars, but i still treat it like plastic, apparently, which is why i have broken a full three jars of honey in the past week. three. thats three liters of honey. what a waste. and i cant even salvage it off the floor like i would if it were only spilled because the remnants are full of glass shards.
but anyway, ill try to remember what i have done since the last entry. i guess we are going like two weeks back- the details are lacking.
katie and sarah came back to cairo and we hung out some; they went on grand adventures and i went to school, but they told me about said grand adventures over dinner, so that was something, at least. and then they left, so thats the end of that.
at some point in time we did another faluca trip; this one was infinitely more successful. we had twenty-some-odd people and the boat was quite exciting. and someone made guacamole.
last weekend i found out just how much sheesha i can hold (although it was sort of a skewed amount since i drank a lot of rum along with it); i smoked until i **almost** got sick, so now i have a limit, and thats always useful to know.
luke and chelsea and i tried to go to this super nice park to play frisbee, but the cab driver took us to the wrong place and we decided to walk the rest of the way but we werent entirely sure where to go and when we found the park it was all fenced off and we couldnt find the gate so we wandered for a while and by the time we got there it was almost time to close, so that was rather sad. but that was last weekend, and we made plans to come again this weekend, along with lots of other plans that quite thoroughly fell through.
i really dont even remember anything else from the past 2 weeks. im sure i did stuff, but ill have to ask around to find out what.
i do remember this weekend, though, which was pretty much the best one ever. the players in these stories are no big surprise: luke and chelsea, and also introducing sarah and kira. huzzah. on thursday night, i dont remember what i intended to do, but it wasnt anything super special. and then sarah called me and asked if i wanted to go to a puppet show, and, naturally, i said heck yeah. so i met up with her and kira and their friend kelbie, and then we somehow found luke and chelsea and wandered around downtown looking for the puppet theater. we had no idea where to go, though, and no one knew the word for "puppet," so kira and i just wandered around making puppet shapes with our hands and saying "fen? fen?" (which means where? where?). we were being completely facetious about seeking directions like that, but it worked; some random egyptian laughed and then said some arabic words including "theater" and told us where to go, which just goes to show you that if you are white, no one cares if you act retarded.
so we found the theater (after a few more puppet imitations and "fen" queries) and went into the show, only an hour late. it was pretty stupendous, as puppet shows go. the stage was huge and filled with excellent neon-glowing props and all of the characters (except for two real people) were cute little marionettes with humans dressed all in black standing behind. and there was a guy in a dinosaur suit, too... and a huge creepy moon-face that looked like a woman but definitely talked like a man. im not sure what the show was about since it was all in arabic, and the only words i understood were 'yes, twenty-seven, big, and thank God.' then we left the puppet show, grabbed some food, and headed to the circus. actually chelsea didnt come because she was protesting the cruel treatment of the animals or something like that, but i figured it would be okay.
so we wandered up to this huge, brightly lit and colorful tent. there was a lioness sitting outside for pictures, but she was all drugged up and hardly even looked alive. we didnt take pictures with her, alas. inside the tent, it was a real circus, and by that i mean the kind of circus you read about in books starring gypsies. there werent any sound or light special effects, but there were acrobats and clowns and a dwarf. and there were knife throwers, and they asked for volunteers from the audience to have knives thrown at them and i tried awfully hard to get their attention but failed, unfortunately. but in retrospect i realized that they probably wouldnt have picked a white person anyway, since if they happened to kill me they would probably start some sort of revolution. and then the lions and tigers came out (after they spent 20 minutes or so constructing a very rickety looking cage). it turns out that chelsea was mostly right in refusing to come based on poor animal treatment. there were two times during the act when a helper outside of the cage held a lion down by his collar while the ringmaster beat it with a stick until it roared, so that was kind of awful. but the egyptians clapped quite a lot, so maybe that is cool here. they did some fun tricks, though, and were in general very cute and scary.
then we left the circus and kelbie wandered off somewhere, so luke and i went with sarah and kira to a birthday party where they had promised to make an appearance. the plan was just to walk in, say hi, and go, but it turned out that i knew a lot of people there, so we went in and left and found the girls a cab home and then luke and i went back upstairs. unfortunately, during that ten minute interlude the party had relocated; everyone was either gone or on their way out to some bar or other. there were a few people staying, though, including one girl who actually lived in the apartment, so i decided to stay, but then (and im not completely sure why all of this happened, but im sure that illicit substances played a part) all of this hostility broke out and these two guys came really close to fighting over what i interpreted as the stupidest reason ever and in the end we all got kicked out.
this was around 130 in the morning, i suppose, so i walked back to the dorm to go to bed. however, my friend heather (who has been sitting outside on the dorm steps every single time i have come home late this semester) was sitting outside on the dorm steps when i got back, so i sat and talked to her for a while and then her ride pulled up, and it turned out that i knew her ride so i went out again with them. we drove around and eventually found some place to smoke sheesha, and then went back to ak (the driver) 's apartment and hung out for a while. heather and the other people from zamalek went home at around 6, but i just went to bed because ak lives super close to sarah and kira, and i had promised to come with them to church.
so i woke up at about 830 (yeah, less than three hours of sleep, huzzah), still buzzed from the sheesha, and got some really shaky directions to the church from ak's friend who is only mostly fluent. i started walking through this strange neighborhood and pretty much just turned when the time felt right, and i eventually found the church. the story of that walk is actually really dramatic and sort of hilarious, but i dont want to put it down in type because its also quite embarrassing and a little disgusting and definitely doesnt need to endure forever on the internet.
i got to church and met kira and sarah; the service that particular friday was african themed, and not egyptian african but actual congo (when there was a congo) africa, so there were lots of really dark people clad in really bright clothing and there was a lot of crying out to Lord Jesus. it was entertaining but not at all what i was expecting when they invited me to english church. then the preacher spoke, and he was surprisingly good. i expected, well, the stereotypical african sermon about Jesus and sin and heaven, but the guy actually spoke about evangelism, and he had some useful things to say about it.
and then church was over and i went back to zamalek. between walking lost through ak's neighborhood looking for the metro station, riding the metro, and walking through zamalek to the dorm (which is on the side of the island opposite the metro station), it took about two hours to get home, and when i got there i took a shower and ate and left again, huzzah! remember, this is on 2.5 hours of sleep. but in the time that it had taken me to get home, kira and sarah had taught their sunday school class and eaten and were ready to go to coptic cairo, so luke and i hopped back on the metro and met them. we went into an abbey and saw an exceptionally beautiful greek orthodox church and then a huge cemetery with tons of broken tombstones and lovely greenery, and then we went into the cave where (supposedly) joseph and mary hid with Jesus when they fled from herod. it wasnt a cave, actually, so much as the basement of a chapel; it was actually quite nice and filled with paintings and shrines and stuff, but i assume that it wasnt like that 2000 years ago. then we went to the so called "hanging church," which apparently is suspended above some waterway, but you cant see the water or any of the suspension apparatus so it wasnt that special. and then we went back home and i took a nap.
and then we had a movie night. the plan was to do a disney movie marathon, but movie marathons never work out, eh? kira, sarah, luke and i went to chelsea's apartment and watched aladin, but by the end of it chelsea (bored) was in the other room doing homework and the other three were asleep. so i relocated, waking kira and sarah, and the three of us started kung-fu-panda, but sarah was asleep like 20 minutes into it and kira had to get up early the next morning, so the two of them left at like one, leaving me to watch the computer animated kung-fu animals by myself. it was a really good movie, though.
the house woke up at around eleven and we started making preparations for our picnic in that super nice park i mentioned earlier. luke and i went out and bought lots of fruit for a salad and chelsea made this rice-peanut-sugar concoction and, after lots of procrastinating, we left. there were seven of us, i believe: chelsea's roommate wolf (thats his real name, too) came, as well as trish, a friend from philosophy, and we met sarah and kira at the park. but then the guards wouldnt let us in because our pots were metal and you arent allowed to bring metal into the park... which i think is really stupid. so we sat outside and ate and luke started a frisbee game with some egyptian kids who were doing the same thing. we left our empty pots by the door and went inside where we played frisbee and hackey sack with more random egpytian kids; a huge swarm of twelve year old boys surrounded luke, wolf and me as we were kicking the hackey sack and they all wanted to play, so that was quite entertaining. language barriers can be really hilarious when they reduce us to pantomiming. and several of the boys got my phone number, i have no clue why, and one just called me a few minutes ago but he didnt speak english and i dont speak arabic so... yeah.
and then luke, chelsea and i went to christiana's with every intention of making a pie out of the pumpkin we bought sometime ago, i dont remember when. but then chelsea, the one who knows how to make pumpkin pie, went to sleep, so christiana and i carved masks from the pumpkin halves instead, and then luke and i went to the mall so that i could buy honey to replace the jar that i broke last week (2 jars for the price of one, what a steal). christiana and i watched grey's anatomy for a while and then went to sleep.
and then this morning, i was taking the jars of honey out of the wrapper that bound them together and somehow both jars ended up on the floor. i almost cried. and now i have no honey, but other than that it was a pretty stellar weekend.
i would proofread this for grammar and general coherence, but i have to go to class.