of course someone took pictures. everyone there except for me had a camera, which is why i maintain that i dont need one. as soon as i get around to it i will steal pictures from eric and kat and post them on facebook, and there are about 80 from various other people posted there already, so just get on facebook and you can see. alternatively, luke posts his pictures on an open site, so you dont need a login to see them; the link- http://picasaweb.google.com/underageaoler/MisrAlQahira#
misr means egypt and al-qahira means cairo, fyi.
and i was going to do a real entry but i got lazy and distracted and now i have a plane to catch, so ill let you kids know how everything is when i get back on the sixth. or maybe ill find an internet cafe in beirut. anyhoo, no stories at the moment.
Saturday 27 September 2008
Saturday 20 September 2008
please dont antagonize the barracuda
longest weekend ever.
because eric (one of the 2 other people taking the open water class) had school until like 10 pm on thursday, we had to take the 1245 bus out of cairo to hurgada, which meant that we arrived at this filthy little tourist town at about 830 in the morning. seriously, hurgada is lovely when you are on the red sea, but the town is basically a long strip of nice looking hotels and condos along the beach with a huge pile of debris and trash in back. we called our dive instructor, osama, when we disembarked and he told our cab driver where to go; we arrived at the hotel, sorted out our gear, and were out to sea by nine. loay was there too (he was one of the guys who helped train us in the pool last week), and between the two of them they had like 12 years of experience in the red sea, so we were in pretty good hands.
id like to get the negative part out of the way first, just so that the whining doesnt come out through the rest of the story. i think im allergic to cairo; it is horribly polluted and everyone smokes, and this combination has given me a sinus infection that just wont quit (at least thats my theory, although it could easily be something completely different; who the heck knows, maybe im allergic to luke). in all of the diving dvds that i watched for my class, they stressed not diving with congestion or a cold, but i pretty much completely disregarded the warning despite the fact that my snot is a lovely shade reminiscent of shamrocks. and now my head feels like it just might explode; its like the worst hangover i have ever had, only i dont really get hangovers and i didnt drink, so its like i would imagine the worst hangover would be. infected snot and triple atmospheric pressure just dont mix. but anyhoo, thats all that was bad about the weekend. enough of that.
we were in the water at about ten and we spent the first half of the first dive working on skills: flooding and clearing the mask, removing and cleaning the respirator, achieving neutral buoyancy, etc. as the dives progressed, we spent less and less time on skills until on the last one we spent 50 minutes diving and 2 minutes practicing how to swim up fast if you are out of air.
the visibility in the red sea is amazing. even from above the water you can see all the way to the bottom in most places; where we were it was usually only about 12 to 15 meters deep, but still, thats some clear water. i will try to rattle off as many fish as i can remember, but the point of the matter is that some of these were the most colorful and arguably the most beautiful animals i have ever seen. we have the parrot fish (a weird blend of green and purple with a face that resembles a beak), soldier fish, angel fish, lion fish (yeah, the awesome one at the zoo that looks like it has feathers; i could have touched it), clown fish (yes, like nemo, chilling in the anemone), sea snake, blue spotted ray, barracuda (mostly small, but some as big as a meter; we avoided these), trumpet fish, some sort of eel (i didnt see it, but apparently i wasnt looking in the right place) puffer fish (un-puffed, alas), tiger fish (orange and purple striped, very beautiful), some crazy purple-and-green-striped thing whose name i forgot but which was my favorite, go figure, flying fish, um... thats all i remember. there were tons of tiny fish that osama didnt give the names of, too, and there were supposedly turtles, octopi, calimari, and dolphins, but accounts vary and i didnt personally see any of those. it was still rocking, though.
and, naturally, there was some coral in addition to the fish. there were several points where i was swimming through a fat canyon with walls of coral on both sides and underneath: quite breathtaking, which was unfortunate since i was underwater (little joke there, eh). the coolest formations, though, were the random 3 or 4 meter pinnacles out in the middle of nowhere. we would be swimming by some huge wall of coral and then out toward the open sea a ways there would be this little outpost of coral with its own collection of fish and everything. these tended to have the most colorful populations, but i dont know the names of any corals (except brains) so its sort of hard to describe.
and some random dude followed us around (including underwater) with a video camera and then tried to sell us the dvd of our first dive for 35 euro a piece (ridiculous), but eric and kat haggled him down and bought 1 for 150 pounds (like 30 usd) so as soon as i get a burned copy ill... i dont know. do something with it. im sort of technologically impaired, so i might just use it as a coaster, but luke will probably post bits of it on youtube so ill give the link out.
i honestly enjoyed the boating more than the diving. i mean, being underwater and looking at fish for an hour is all well and good, but nothing compares to sitting in the sun smelling the salt air and looking out across miles of clear blue (actually we could see land in 3 directions since we were in the northernmost tip of the red sea, wedged between egypt and sinai, but that didnt take away from the effect at all). our boat was surprisingly nice, too. i sort of expected osama just to take us to the beach so that we could wade into the water and swim around, but we actually got into a yacht-like contraption complete with three decks and a galley. i will probably halfheartedly continue to scuba dive just as an excuse to boat :)
another cool thing about hurgada is the fact that it is a pretty hardcore tourist trap which means that it was filled europeans which means that it was filled with eye candy. there were so many bikinis... and just as many speedos. the first day we were at a very crowded dive site; there were probably 30 boats out there, all at least as big as ours (that is, about 12 divers), and there were several that seriously unloaded like 30 snorkelers. so when we werent underwater, we were on the top deck checking out the scenery. eric complained the first day that we didnt have any hot chicks tanning on our boat, but i pointed out that the other boats more than filled the quota, plus our boat was also devoid of fat, hairy men in speedos, which i think balanced out the aforementioned lack. and plus the second day we did have two very attractive russians who tanned pretty much all day, so karma, i guess. and there was, believe it or not, a girl who snorkeled in a thong. that really just made me laugh because, come on, darlin- your bare butt is just sticking right out of the water for all to admire.
osama (the instructor) was a super cool guy, and not just because he was cool by nature but also because he let us crash at his house for free. he had about the most amazing house i have ever seen; the walls were painted ridiculous colors, including a pink and black checkered bedroom; the kitchen was covered with pictures of pink elephants; the toilet seat was filled with barbed wire (transparent seat, not painful, just weird); and he had what looked like a gigantic cut out paper slowflake woven into cascading rings dangling from the ceiling (i later discovered that this was a lamp). in addition to letting us crash with him, he cooked us dinner for iftar, so we broke fast with him and loay (not that we were breaking fast; it was my fourth meal of the day). osama swore that he didnt know how to cook, despite the fact that he has been living alone since he was like 14, but the next thing i knew the stove was covered with pans of vegetables and rice and chicken which was all delicious, so i called him out on being able to cook and loay admitted that everything but the rice was frozen and pre-made. alas.
its late; thats all.
because eric (one of the 2 other people taking the open water class) had school until like 10 pm on thursday, we had to take the 1245 bus out of cairo to hurgada, which meant that we arrived at this filthy little tourist town at about 830 in the morning. seriously, hurgada is lovely when you are on the red sea, but the town is basically a long strip of nice looking hotels and condos along the beach with a huge pile of debris and trash in back. we called our dive instructor, osama, when we disembarked and he told our cab driver where to go; we arrived at the hotel, sorted out our gear, and were out to sea by nine. loay was there too (he was one of the guys who helped train us in the pool last week), and between the two of them they had like 12 years of experience in the red sea, so we were in pretty good hands.
id like to get the negative part out of the way first, just so that the whining doesnt come out through the rest of the story. i think im allergic to cairo; it is horribly polluted and everyone smokes, and this combination has given me a sinus infection that just wont quit (at least thats my theory, although it could easily be something completely different; who the heck knows, maybe im allergic to luke). in all of the diving dvds that i watched for my class, they stressed not diving with congestion or a cold, but i pretty much completely disregarded the warning despite the fact that my snot is a lovely shade reminiscent of shamrocks. and now my head feels like it just might explode; its like the worst hangover i have ever had, only i dont really get hangovers and i didnt drink, so its like i would imagine the worst hangover would be. infected snot and triple atmospheric pressure just dont mix. but anyhoo, thats all that was bad about the weekend. enough of that.
we were in the water at about ten and we spent the first half of the first dive working on skills: flooding and clearing the mask, removing and cleaning the respirator, achieving neutral buoyancy, etc. as the dives progressed, we spent less and less time on skills until on the last one we spent 50 minutes diving and 2 minutes practicing how to swim up fast if you are out of air.
the visibility in the red sea is amazing. even from above the water you can see all the way to the bottom in most places; where we were it was usually only about 12 to 15 meters deep, but still, thats some clear water. i will try to rattle off as many fish as i can remember, but the point of the matter is that some of these were the most colorful and arguably the most beautiful animals i have ever seen. we have the parrot fish (a weird blend of green and purple with a face that resembles a beak), soldier fish, angel fish, lion fish (yeah, the awesome one at the zoo that looks like it has feathers; i could have touched it), clown fish (yes, like nemo, chilling in the anemone), sea snake, blue spotted ray, barracuda (mostly small, but some as big as a meter; we avoided these), trumpet fish, some sort of eel (i didnt see it, but apparently i wasnt looking in the right place) puffer fish (un-puffed, alas), tiger fish (orange and purple striped, very beautiful), some crazy purple-and-green-striped thing whose name i forgot but which was my favorite, go figure, flying fish, um... thats all i remember. there were tons of tiny fish that osama didnt give the names of, too, and there were supposedly turtles, octopi, calimari, and dolphins, but accounts vary and i didnt personally see any of those. it was still rocking, though.
and, naturally, there was some coral in addition to the fish. there were several points where i was swimming through a fat canyon with walls of coral on both sides and underneath: quite breathtaking, which was unfortunate since i was underwater (little joke there, eh). the coolest formations, though, were the random 3 or 4 meter pinnacles out in the middle of nowhere. we would be swimming by some huge wall of coral and then out toward the open sea a ways there would be this little outpost of coral with its own collection of fish and everything. these tended to have the most colorful populations, but i dont know the names of any corals (except brains) so its sort of hard to describe.
and some random dude followed us around (including underwater) with a video camera and then tried to sell us the dvd of our first dive for 35 euro a piece (ridiculous), but eric and kat haggled him down and bought 1 for 150 pounds (like 30 usd) so as soon as i get a burned copy ill... i dont know. do something with it. im sort of technologically impaired, so i might just use it as a coaster, but luke will probably post bits of it on youtube so ill give the link out.
i honestly enjoyed the boating more than the diving. i mean, being underwater and looking at fish for an hour is all well and good, but nothing compares to sitting in the sun smelling the salt air and looking out across miles of clear blue (actually we could see land in 3 directions since we were in the northernmost tip of the red sea, wedged between egypt and sinai, but that didnt take away from the effect at all). our boat was surprisingly nice, too. i sort of expected osama just to take us to the beach so that we could wade into the water and swim around, but we actually got into a yacht-like contraption complete with three decks and a galley. i will probably halfheartedly continue to scuba dive just as an excuse to boat :)
another cool thing about hurgada is the fact that it is a pretty hardcore tourist trap which means that it was filled europeans which means that it was filled with eye candy. there were so many bikinis... and just as many speedos. the first day we were at a very crowded dive site; there were probably 30 boats out there, all at least as big as ours (that is, about 12 divers), and there were several that seriously unloaded like 30 snorkelers. so when we werent underwater, we were on the top deck checking out the scenery. eric complained the first day that we didnt have any hot chicks tanning on our boat, but i pointed out that the other boats more than filled the quota, plus our boat was also devoid of fat, hairy men in speedos, which i think balanced out the aforementioned lack. and plus the second day we did have two very attractive russians who tanned pretty much all day, so karma, i guess. and there was, believe it or not, a girl who snorkeled in a thong. that really just made me laugh because, come on, darlin- your bare butt is just sticking right out of the water for all to admire.
osama (the instructor) was a super cool guy, and not just because he was cool by nature but also because he let us crash at his house for free. he had about the most amazing house i have ever seen; the walls were painted ridiculous colors, including a pink and black checkered bedroom; the kitchen was covered with pictures of pink elephants; the toilet seat was filled with barbed wire (transparent seat, not painful, just weird); and he had what looked like a gigantic cut out paper slowflake woven into cascading rings dangling from the ceiling (i later discovered that this was a lamp). in addition to letting us crash with him, he cooked us dinner for iftar, so we broke fast with him and loay (not that we were breaking fast; it was my fourth meal of the day). osama swore that he didnt know how to cook, despite the fact that he has been living alone since he was like 14, but the next thing i knew the stove was covered with pans of vegetables and rice and chicken which was all delicious, so i called him out on being able to cook and loay admitted that everything but the rice was frozen and pre-made. alas.
its late; thats all.
Wednesday 17 September 2008
ive been here a month???
in case you havent already caught on (and actually even if you have; its sort of odd to start a sentence like this with a conditional since the following statement is true regardless of your amount of understanding or attention, i.e. its not as though cairo is fairly conservative if you havent caught on and extraordinarily liberal if you have caught on, if you understand my meaning), cairo is a fairly conservative place. some of the women on the street are in full burka, covering their entire faces; most of them have at least shawls over their hair and necks; and even the ones who are uncovered are wearing long pants and modest shirts. even at school, where a surprising number of girls uncover and let their hair down, so to speak, no one wears skimpy shorts or shirts. the population of the egyptian museum, however, consists mostly of americans and europeans, and so, for me at least, after spending a month of seeing nothing but facial skin, walking into the egyptian museum was a lot like walking off a street in america into a strip club. (not that i have been to a strip club, but you understand the alalogy.) that place was filled with girls wearing the tiniest shorts i have ever seen, super-tight spaghetti strap shirts, no bras... you name it. there was even this russian chick who had on a blue bikini covered with some entirely transparent lace thingy. i know that reporting all this may make me sound like some sort of sexual predator, but some of these european chicks were dressed like sluts even by american standards. i totally understand why egyptians think that white women are loose; after 35 years of interacting with women in long dresses and hair wraps, a girl in shorts must appear scandalous indeed.
oh, and there were lots of egyptian artifacts there also. whatever.
actually the museum itself is a little overwhelming, even for me, and i consider myself a pretty experienced museum-goer. (i rarely consider myself thus out loud, but still.) it isnt a huge building- i could walk end to end in about five minutes, and i walk really slowly. but the place is comprable to a warehouse in some places. it is just chock full of tiny statues and sarcophogi and jewelry and mummies and weapons and chariots and giant statues and heiroglyphics... im told that if you spent a minute looking at every artifact in the place, it would take (a lot of) years to complete your trip. personally, i got my fill in one go because i dont really care about ancient egypt, but most people return many, many times. oh, and also, only about a tenth of the artifacts are labeled, and a lot of the labels are just note cards with arabic scrawl on them, so its really difficult to tell what anything is or what it did. fortunately for us, we brought an egyptology major along, so she was able to explain a lot of the carvings and statues and symbolism and whatnot. unfortunately, she was actually doing the "spend a minute looking at every artifact" thing, so most of the group ditched her pretty quickly. luke, jonah and i got our fill after about 3 hours; im not set for life on ancient egypt. huzzah.
on wednesday luke and i went to the downtown campus for a meeting with the scuba diving club. we wandered around for a while looking for the meeting, but it was nowhere to be found, so we finally asked the sports club manager, who also, it seemed, worked as a janitor at night, and he said that the meeting was the next day, so we sat around talking to hot chicks until the shuttle came to take us back. we were out in the courtyard in these lovely wicker chairs just relaxing when this guy walked up with a big stack of papers and said "scuba?" and we said yes and thus commenced the meeting. needless to say, it was pretty informal. but the guy gave me a packet and a price list and, after conferring with luke about prices in america, i decided to give it a shot (its way cheaper here, plus you get to learn in the red sea as opposed to some lame american freshwater lake). i went to the dive shop on sunday- i was alone, but i figured that other kids would show up and we would have a grand old time learning together, but no. i paid for the class and waited with the instructor for a while but no one else came, so i had my own private scuba tutor for the next 2 days. then yesterday (wednesday) luke (who needed to take a refresher course) and i went to the pool with this other guy, eric, who had taken the class at a different time, and we met the instructor for a confined water dive.
we reviewed all of the signals and went over putting on and taking off the gear, and then we suited up and "giant stepped" into the pool. it was rather sensational, despite the fact that my rental mask felt like it was going to devour my nose. we swam around and practiced emergency air sharing and learned to neutralize our buoyancy and just generally got used to breathing underwater. about halfway through, the swim team showed up (seriously), so as we were working on stills, kids in speedos and goggles were paddling by above us. i was really astonished at how lackadaisical everyone was about having practice on top of half a dozen scuba divers, but i guess that sort of thing happens all the time in egypt (??); at any rate, no one stopped and pointed.
the confined dive complete, we headed to the bus station to buy tickets to hurgada (sp?) where i will complete four open water dives to finish my open water certification. we leave tonight at 1130, so basically we will sleep on the bus, wake up in hurgada, and be out on the water by 8 am tomorrow. they dont mess around with scuba here :)
my last story of the moment requires a return to those guys who luke and i met at the arabic speaking contest. we met up with the one i was talking to, hassan, on tuesday and accompanied him, after 2 taxi and 2 subway rides, to his enormous and beautiful mosque. this was the first time i had been inside a mosque before so i was quite intrigued; it was nothing (to my ignorant Christian surprise) like a church at all. it was basically all open space, which makes sense since muslims spend most of their "church time" prostrate and praying. we walked into a great marble courtyard and then into a huge carpeted room filled with muslims praying. i felt sort of out of place, but there were random egyptians lying down and talking and sleeping in the back of the room, so luke and i sat among them while hassan prayed and few people even looked at us twice. then hassan came back and the three of us sat and talked for a while, and then he opened his bag and began to dole out muslim information books. im going to give the titles of the books because both the names and the sheer quantity of literature are rather amusing:
"women in islam"
"the Qur'an and modern science: compatible or incompatible"
"muhammad, the messenger of Allah"
"human rights in Islam and common misconceptions"
"Islam, the religion of all" (not Allah, mind you- "all," as in everyone. even you.)
"a brief illustrated guide to understanding Islam" (yes, illustrated)
"stories of new Muslims"
"is the Bible God's word?"
"the true message of Jesus Christ"
and finally, my personal favorite,
"the truth about Jesus"
so apparently i was right in thinking that mr hassan wanted to convert me.
but we stayed and talked for a while longer anyway and gradually we started to build up a little crowd; eventually luke and i werent even talking to hassan or to each other. luke was talking linguistics and language with two random guys (usama and ahmed, if i remember correctly) and i was talking religion with an indonesian guy named nadi, so we were both pretty much in our element and i found the evening very satisfactory.
and plus we set up a date with hassan for next tuesday; he is going to come to tutor us in arabic and we are going to "learn him" english. i think the first lesson will have to be days of the week, because setting up a date with this guy is neigh impossible. you cant just say "tuesday at seven," you have to start with today and work your way into next week or he gets lost. in his defense, though, i do the same thing with arabic days of the week...
and, insha Allah, luke and i are going to syria next week, along with whoever else wants to come, assuming that we are able to get visas, so between scuba diving in the red sea and exploring damascus, my next few entries should be pretty rocking.
oh, and there were lots of egyptian artifacts there also. whatever.
actually the museum itself is a little overwhelming, even for me, and i consider myself a pretty experienced museum-goer. (i rarely consider myself thus out loud, but still.) it isnt a huge building- i could walk end to end in about five minutes, and i walk really slowly. but the place is comprable to a warehouse in some places. it is just chock full of tiny statues and sarcophogi and jewelry and mummies and weapons and chariots and giant statues and heiroglyphics... im told that if you spent a minute looking at every artifact in the place, it would take (a lot of) years to complete your trip. personally, i got my fill in one go because i dont really care about ancient egypt, but most people return many, many times. oh, and also, only about a tenth of the artifacts are labeled, and a lot of the labels are just note cards with arabic scrawl on them, so its really difficult to tell what anything is or what it did. fortunately for us, we brought an egyptology major along, so she was able to explain a lot of the carvings and statues and symbolism and whatnot. unfortunately, she was actually doing the "spend a minute looking at every artifact" thing, so most of the group ditched her pretty quickly. luke, jonah and i got our fill after about 3 hours; im not set for life on ancient egypt. huzzah.
on wednesday luke and i went to the downtown campus for a meeting with the scuba diving club. we wandered around for a while looking for the meeting, but it was nowhere to be found, so we finally asked the sports club manager, who also, it seemed, worked as a janitor at night, and he said that the meeting was the next day, so we sat around talking to hot chicks until the shuttle came to take us back. we were out in the courtyard in these lovely wicker chairs just relaxing when this guy walked up with a big stack of papers and said "scuba?" and we said yes and thus commenced the meeting. needless to say, it was pretty informal. but the guy gave me a packet and a price list and, after conferring with luke about prices in america, i decided to give it a shot (its way cheaper here, plus you get to learn in the red sea as opposed to some lame american freshwater lake). i went to the dive shop on sunday- i was alone, but i figured that other kids would show up and we would have a grand old time learning together, but no. i paid for the class and waited with the instructor for a while but no one else came, so i had my own private scuba tutor for the next 2 days. then yesterday (wednesday) luke (who needed to take a refresher course) and i went to the pool with this other guy, eric, who had taken the class at a different time, and we met the instructor for a confined water dive.
we reviewed all of the signals and went over putting on and taking off the gear, and then we suited up and "giant stepped" into the pool. it was rather sensational, despite the fact that my rental mask felt like it was going to devour my nose. we swam around and practiced emergency air sharing and learned to neutralize our buoyancy and just generally got used to breathing underwater. about halfway through, the swim team showed up (seriously), so as we were working on stills, kids in speedos and goggles were paddling by above us. i was really astonished at how lackadaisical everyone was about having practice on top of half a dozen scuba divers, but i guess that sort of thing happens all the time in egypt (??); at any rate, no one stopped and pointed.
the confined dive complete, we headed to the bus station to buy tickets to hurgada (sp?) where i will complete four open water dives to finish my open water certification. we leave tonight at 1130, so basically we will sleep on the bus, wake up in hurgada, and be out on the water by 8 am tomorrow. they dont mess around with scuba here :)
my last story of the moment requires a return to those guys who luke and i met at the arabic speaking contest. we met up with the one i was talking to, hassan, on tuesday and accompanied him, after 2 taxi and 2 subway rides, to his enormous and beautiful mosque. this was the first time i had been inside a mosque before so i was quite intrigued; it was nothing (to my ignorant Christian surprise) like a church at all. it was basically all open space, which makes sense since muslims spend most of their "church time" prostrate and praying. we walked into a great marble courtyard and then into a huge carpeted room filled with muslims praying. i felt sort of out of place, but there were random egyptians lying down and talking and sleeping in the back of the room, so luke and i sat among them while hassan prayed and few people even looked at us twice. then hassan came back and the three of us sat and talked for a while, and then he opened his bag and began to dole out muslim information books. im going to give the titles of the books because both the names and the sheer quantity of literature are rather amusing:
"women in islam"
"the Qur'an and modern science: compatible or incompatible"
"muhammad, the messenger of Allah"
"human rights in Islam and common misconceptions"
"Islam, the religion of all" (not Allah, mind you- "all," as in everyone. even you.)
"a brief illustrated guide to understanding Islam" (yes, illustrated)
"stories of new Muslims"
"is the Bible God's word?"
"the true message of Jesus Christ"
and finally, my personal favorite,
"the truth about Jesus"
so apparently i was right in thinking that mr hassan wanted to convert me.
but we stayed and talked for a while longer anyway and gradually we started to build up a little crowd; eventually luke and i werent even talking to hassan or to each other. luke was talking linguistics and language with two random guys (usama and ahmed, if i remember correctly) and i was talking religion with an indonesian guy named nadi, so we were both pretty much in our element and i found the evening very satisfactory.
and plus we set up a date with hassan for next tuesday; he is going to come to tutor us in arabic and we are going to "learn him" english. i think the first lesson will have to be days of the week, because setting up a date with this guy is neigh impossible. you cant just say "tuesday at seven," you have to start with today and work your way into next week or he gets lost. in his defense, though, i do the same thing with arabic days of the week...
and, insha Allah, luke and i are going to syria next week, along with whoever else wants to come, assuming that we are able to get visas, so between scuba diving in the red sea and exploring damascus, my next few entries should be pretty rocking.
Saturday 13 September 2008
i was going to do this tomorrow, but since ben asked so nicely i guess i can stay up an extra hour on a school night...
i actually wrote a really nice blog about the first week of school and all that jazz on thursday, but when i tried to copy it on to word my computer exploded (and by that i mean froze obnoxiously and had to be restarted) and i lost all of it. and no, smart alecs, i couldnt do the document recovery thing; my computer is just that awesome. whats more, luke just told me that i can spell check on this very website instead of copying into word, so im extra bummed. but anyway, thats my excuse for such a long gap between updates. im not dead.
so school started. i have had one week, and the jury is still out on the institution overall, but all in all it seems quite better than neutral. i dont know that i prefer it to tech, but i definitely like most of it.
auc has 2 campuses at the moment; one is in downtown cairo (which is a six pound cab ride from my front door) and the other, the new campus, is in new cairo, which is about 45 minutes away in the early morning lack of traffic. all undergrad classes are on the new campus, so i get to get up at 745 every day to catch the 830 bus to new cairo. it is remarkably reminiscent of middle school, actually, but i have decided that its a good deal because i have nothing to do on those bus rides but a) read or b) talk to people, so i will either get all of my homework done with time to spare or i will make lots of new friends. it will probably be the former, but its a plus either way. of course, coming home at 5 in the afternoon (during the rush as all of cairo tries to get home for iftar) usually takes about 2 hours, but whatever, more time to learn about muhammad.
the first time i saw the school itself, i seriously thought that it looked like a prison, an extremely lavish and artistic prison. it is all gray stone, and all of the outside is fenced. im not sure who they are trying to keep out, since the school is in the middle of the desert, but there are only two entrances and both are guarded by at least three men checking ids at all times. this was a pretty radical change from tech, where bustling atlanta streets run straight through campus at several places and bums can just wander right up to your classroom door.
another gross difference is that there is no green anywhere on the new campus. there are a few gaps in the expansive stone courtyards, but they are all filled with sand as though someone thought that grass might be a good idea but then got preoccupied. there are palm trees, though, which are better than nothing...
in typical egyptian contractor style, the construction is way behind schedule, so the first week many of the classrooms had no air conditioning; some lacked electricity; and all had various technical difficulties. chairs and tables (and sometimes ladders and scaffolding) were just piled into classrooms, nothing was set up, and everything was rather dirty. and, to top it all off, the cafeteria is totally inaccessible so i, refusing to pay eight pounds for a bagel every day, just fast during the school week. which is okay because its 70% muslim so everyone is fasting so who cares. my philosophy teacher walked into the first class literally punching the wall because he was so frustrated that nothing worked and he couldnt get into his office because he couldnt find it and his id wouldnt scan him in to the right building... its is unbelievably chaotic.
but the teachers are pressing on anyway, and classes are very promising. im taking electricity and magnetism because it is way easier than e and m at tech (enough said about that); islamic philosophy; studies in the Qur'an; and modern standard arabic. yes, that is only 4 classes and only 13 hours and its less than i have ever taken in college, but i really did try to add another arabic class, one focusing on egyptian colloquial, but that would have put me at 16 hours. apparently study abroad students are only allowed to take 15, so the school would have charged me 1000 american dollars for the extra hour, so i said screw that, ill just have an easy semester.
my arabic teacher is a little bit insane; she has spent 15 years developing this odd new way of teaching the language, and we are the rats forced to study her experimental book. we have had four days of class thus far and we have spent every one "reading" arabic sentences (with english translations underneath), but she has yet to teach us the individual letters. she reads the words to us sometimes, but she hasnt told us what sounds go with what symbols. she says that we should become familiar with the shapes of the letters before we learn what they mean... whatever. i decided to give her a shot. by the way, modern standard arabic is sort of the arabic equivalent of shakespearean english, that is, no one speaks it. but the arabic world is filled with different dialects, and everyone understands msa, so it is more practical than learning egyptian colloquial, for example, because people in morocco speak a completely different dialect. and also, there is not a written form for any of the dialects; all publications in arabic are in msa. so i will be able to read and everyone will be able to understand me, even though they will make fun of me for speaking so formally (imagine if someone walked up to you on the street and asked a question in 16th century english; you would understand the question, but you would think they were retarded).
islamic philosophy promises to be quite a spectacular class. it is, as the professor has stressed ad nauseum, not the philosophy of the islamic religion but of the islamic civilization which, over the course of history, has included huge numbers of non-muslims. the philosophy itself is a fun combination of western and eastern philosophy. it is not nearly as straightforward and rational as western thought, but it is equally distant from stereotypically existential eastern thought that centers on smoking and yoga, and it all, of course, focuses on Allah. the professor is quite a fascinating speaker; he usually says about 10 lines of relevant material in an entire lecture, and he spends the rest of the time on tangents about linguistics or nuances in translations or thought processes or "some guy that i met in china who spoke flawless fus-ha."
studies in the Qur'an will probably be equally spectacular, though it will surely be more challenging. our reading list is 25 or 30 books long, plus the Qur-an, some of which, im told, we will be expected to read in the original arabic. so not only do i have to read and comprehend the scriptures from a holy book of another religiou, but i have to do it in a language whose alphabet i have yet to learn. but the class is chill and the professor is this really soft-spoken old arab guy who says "yani" a lot (yani is the arabic equivalent of "like," so he, like, says, like, like, a lot, like, you know, whatever).
enough about that. i do have some actual stories from the week.
first off, luke and i went to a meeting for the scuba diving club. i signed up for classes (luke is already certified, alas), and so i will hopefully have my first class tomorrow. the whole deal entails 2 days of theory in class, 1 day in the pool, and then 9 or 10 actual dives. the super exciting part is that the dives are in the red sea. if you dont know about diving in the red sea, look it up now; its sort of a big deal. so maybe as soon as next weekend i and whoever else signs up for the class will be taking weekend trips to dahab and sharm to go scuba diving. huzzah. of course, the downside is that i have to live off of spaghetti for the next 4 months because the class is so expensive, but thats okay.
on a not at all similar note, this girl in my philosophy class randomly invited me (it wasnt that random, but the story of the conversation is really long and not that interesting so i will say random for the sake of flow) to accompany her downtown to 1) meet some sudanese refugees and 2) have dinner with her mom's neighbor's daughter who the girl had never met. i know that sounds like the most ridiculous invitation ever, but i was intrigued so i went. and i met some sudanese refugees... not such a good story. and then we left the shelter place and met this other chick, who also had 2 other friends with her, only then the girl from my philosophy class had to leave, so i was caught in downtown cairo with my friend's mom's neighbor's daughter and her two friends. so that was weird. but they were like, show us cool places to see and take us somewhere cool to eat, and i was like hey, why not. so we wandered around downtown for a few hours and watched iftar, and then we cabbed back to a cafe in zamalek and ate and smoked and talked about politics and religion for like 3 hours; it was actually very pleasant, which was unexpected given the inauspicious beginnings.
k so some background for this next story. last weekend when we went to the bus station to find a bus to al-fayoum, luke and jonah and i were standing in the middle of this big square and some random egyptian dude came up and said "american?" and a conversation ensued. he ended up getting luke' s number and promised to call so that we could hang out later. whatever, no way that random guy is going to call us, we will just forget about it. but no, contrary to our wildest expectations he called luke tonight and asked if we wanted to do something. i believe my exact words were "hell yeah; wait, let me take the money and credit cards out of my wallet just in case he decides to mug us." so we went to the cultural center to meet this guy, and he told us that we were going to watch an arabic speaking contest. i was like... wtf, thats your native tongue, what kind of a contest is that? but no, the contest was for modern standard arabic (fus-ha), which, when you get into the grammatical nuances, is incredibly complicated and difficult. our new friend participated in the contest, along with 3 or 4 others (the auditorium was almost empty, believe it or not), and he ended up winning 200 pounds, which is pretty cool since all he had to do was talk. but it worked like this: you stand on the stage and talk in msa for a minute, and if you make a single mistake you are disqualified. if you make it to "round two," you start with a possible 500 pounds and you have to talk for 10 minutes in msa, and every time you make a mistake you lose 50 pounds. admittedly it would have been more interesting if i understood any of the words, but it was still neat to watch.
after the contest, luke and i went with our new friend and some of his friends to a cafe across the street where we all had tea and talked for like an hour; they were all moderately proficient in english, and we both suck at arabic (luke much less than i), so the conversations were difficult, but i made friends with an arabic teacher who promised to take me to a mosque and give me lots of literature about islam and about muhammad. i think me might want to convert me, but that could be interesting... and he also offered to tutor me in msa for free, which is pretty cool. it was amusing, though, because every time an english speaker would use the verb "like" he used the word "love," so he said "because i love you, i will learn you arabic free," and i was like ...whats that now?? but we got it settled in the end.
and now it is 2 am and ben i hope you enjoyed reading this.
and also, screw spell check. sorry if i mistyped, but ive been awake for a long time.
so school started. i have had one week, and the jury is still out on the institution overall, but all in all it seems quite better than neutral. i dont know that i prefer it to tech, but i definitely like most of it.
auc has 2 campuses at the moment; one is in downtown cairo (which is a six pound cab ride from my front door) and the other, the new campus, is in new cairo, which is about 45 minutes away in the early morning lack of traffic. all undergrad classes are on the new campus, so i get to get up at 745 every day to catch the 830 bus to new cairo. it is remarkably reminiscent of middle school, actually, but i have decided that its a good deal because i have nothing to do on those bus rides but a) read or b) talk to people, so i will either get all of my homework done with time to spare or i will make lots of new friends. it will probably be the former, but its a plus either way. of course, coming home at 5 in the afternoon (during the rush as all of cairo tries to get home for iftar) usually takes about 2 hours, but whatever, more time to learn about muhammad.
the first time i saw the school itself, i seriously thought that it looked like a prison, an extremely lavish and artistic prison. it is all gray stone, and all of the outside is fenced. im not sure who they are trying to keep out, since the school is in the middle of the desert, but there are only two entrances and both are guarded by at least three men checking ids at all times. this was a pretty radical change from tech, where bustling atlanta streets run straight through campus at several places and bums can just wander right up to your classroom door.
another gross difference is that there is no green anywhere on the new campus. there are a few gaps in the expansive stone courtyards, but they are all filled with sand as though someone thought that grass might be a good idea but then got preoccupied. there are palm trees, though, which are better than nothing...
in typical egyptian contractor style, the construction is way behind schedule, so the first week many of the classrooms had no air conditioning; some lacked electricity; and all had various technical difficulties. chairs and tables (and sometimes ladders and scaffolding) were just piled into classrooms, nothing was set up, and everything was rather dirty. and, to top it all off, the cafeteria is totally inaccessible so i, refusing to pay eight pounds for a bagel every day, just fast during the school week. which is okay because its 70% muslim so everyone is fasting so who cares. my philosophy teacher walked into the first class literally punching the wall because he was so frustrated that nothing worked and he couldnt get into his office because he couldnt find it and his id wouldnt scan him in to the right building... its is unbelievably chaotic.
but the teachers are pressing on anyway, and classes are very promising. im taking electricity and magnetism because it is way easier than e and m at tech (enough said about that); islamic philosophy; studies in the Qur'an; and modern standard arabic. yes, that is only 4 classes and only 13 hours and its less than i have ever taken in college, but i really did try to add another arabic class, one focusing on egyptian colloquial, but that would have put me at 16 hours. apparently study abroad students are only allowed to take 15, so the school would have charged me 1000 american dollars for the extra hour, so i said screw that, ill just have an easy semester.
my arabic teacher is a little bit insane; she has spent 15 years developing this odd new way of teaching the language, and we are the rats forced to study her experimental book. we have had four days of class thus far and we have spent every one "reading" arabic sentences (with english translations underneath), but she has yet to teach us the individual letters. she reads the words to us sometimes, but she hasnt told us what sounds go with what symbols. she says that we should become familiar with the shapes of the letters before we learn what they mean... whatever. i decided to give her a shot. by the way, modern standard arabic is sort of the arabic equivalent of shakespearean english, that is, no one speaks it. but the arabic world is filled with different dialects, and everyone understands msa, so it is more practical than learning egyptian colloquial, for example, because people in morocco speak a completely different dialect. and also, there is not a written form for any of the dialects; all publications in arabic are in msa. so i will be able to read and everyone will be able to understand me, even though they will make fun of me for speaking so formally (imagine if someone walked up to you on the street and asked a question in 16th century english; you would understand the question, but you would think they were retarded).
islamic philosophy promises to be quite a spectacular class. it is, as the professor has stressed ad nauseum, not the philosophy of the islamic religion but of the islamic civilization which, over the course of history, has included huge numbers of non-muslims. the philosophy itself is a fun combination of western and eastern philosophy. it is not nearly as straightforward and rational as western thought, but it is equally distant from stereotypically existential eastern thought that centers on smoking and yoga, and it all, of course, focuses on Allah. the professor is quite a fascinating speaker; he usually says about 10 lines of relevant material in an entire lecture, and he spends the rest of the time on tangents about linguistics or nuances in translations or thought processes or "some guy that i met in china who spoke flawless fus-ha."
studies in the Qur'an will probably be equally spectacular, though it will surely be more challenging. our reading list is 25 or 30 books long, plus the Qur-an, some of which, im told, we will be expected to read in the original arabic. so not only do i have to read and comprehend the scriptures from a holy book of another religiou, but i have to do it in a language whose alphabet i have yet to learn. but the class is chill and the professor is this really soft-spoken old arab guy who says "yani" a lot (yani is the arabic equivalent of "like," so he, like, says, like, like, a lot, like, you know, whatever).
enough about that. i do have some actual stories from the week.
first off, luke and i went to a meeting for the scuba diving club. i signed up for classes (luke is already certified, alas), and so i will hopefully have my first class tomorrow. the whole deal entails 2 days of theory in class, 1 day in the pool, and then 9 or 10 actual dives. the super exciting part is that the dives are in the red sea. if you dont know about diving in the red sea, look it up now; its sort of a big deal. so maybe as soon as next weekend i and whoever else signs up for the class will be taking weekend trips to dahab and sharm to go scuba diving. huzzah. of course, the downside is that i have to live off of spaghetti for the next 4 months because the class is so expensive, but thats okay.
on a not at all similar note, this girl in my philosophy class randomly invited me (it wasnt that random, but the story of the conversation is really long and not that interesting so i will say random for the sake of flow) to accompany her downtown to 1) meet some sudanese refugees and 2) have dinner with her mom's neighbor's daughter who the girl had never met. i know that sounds like the most ridiculous invitation ever, but i was intrigued so i went. and i met some sudanese refugees... not such a good story. and then we left the shelter place and met this other chick, who also had 2 other friends with her, only then the girl from my philosophy class had to leave, so i was caught in downtown cairo with my friend's mom's neighbor's daughter and her two friends. so that was weird. but they were like, show us cool places to see and take us somewhere cool to eat, and i was like hey, why not. so we wandered around downtown for a few hours and watched iftar, and then we cabbed back to a cafe in zamalek and ate and smoked and talked about politics and religion for like 3 hours; it was actually very pleasant, which was unexpected given the inauspicious beginnings.
k so some background for this next story. last weekend when we went to the bus station to find a bus to al-fayoum, luke and jonah and i were standing in the middle of this big square and some random egyptian dude came up and said "american?" and a conversation ensued. he ended up getting luke' s number and promised to call so that we could hang out later. whatever, no way that random guy is going to call us, we will just forget about it. but no, contrary to our wildest expectations he called luke tonight and asked if we wanted to do something. i believe my exact words were "hell yeah; wait, let me take the money and credit cards out of my wallet just in case he decides to mug us." so we went to the cultural center to meet this guy, and he told us that we were going to watch an arabic speaking contest. i was like... wtf, thats your native tongue, what kind of a contest is that? but no, the contest was for modern standard arabic (fus-ha), which, when you get into the grammatical nuances, is incredibly complicated and difficult. our new friend participated in the contest, along with 3 or 4 others (the auditorium was almost empty, believe it or not), and he ended up winning 200 pounds, which is pretty cool since all he had to do was talk. but it worked like this: you stand on the stage and talk in msa for a minute, and if you make a single mistake you are disqualified. if you make it to "round two," you start with a possible 500 pounds and you have to talk for 10 minutes in msa, and every time you make a mistake you lose 50 pounds. admittedly it would have been more interesting if i understood any of the words, but it was still neat to watch.
after the contest, luke and i went with our new friend and some of his friends to a cafe across the street where we all had tea and talked for like an hour; they were all moderately proficient in english, and we both suck at arabic (luke much less than i), so the conversations were difficult, but i made friends with an arabic teacher who promised to take me to a mosque and give me lots of literature about islam and about muhammad. i think me might want to convert me, but that could be interesting... and he also offered to tutor me in msa for free, which is pretty cool. it was amusing, though, because every time an english speaker would use the verb "like" he used the word "love," so he said "because i love you, i will learn you arabic free," and i was like ...whats that now?? but we got it settled in the end.
and now it is 2 am and ben i hope you enjoyed reading this.
and also, screw spell check. sorry if i mistyped, but ive been awake for a long time.
Saturday 6 September 2008
the only downside is that now my shirts smell like smoke...
we had definite plans to go to alexandria for a couple of nights, but meeting zach and muniir really threw a kink into those plans. they were only in town for two days and they called me up and said come get drunk with us and then come to the other oasis tomorrow, and most of my room said yes and so we did. the night out wasnt that spectacular, i suppose; we went to an english pub (because it is the only place where one can buy alcohol during ramadan) and i found out that i dont like egyptian beer, either. so then we got up way too early the next morning and set out for al-fayoum.
we had heard a rumor that we could catch a 6 pound, hour long bus ride easy as pie, but in the end getting to the flipping town was quite a lengthy and complicated endeavor involving a taxi ride to a bus-less station, a subway ride to another bus-less station, and then another taxi ride to a gigantic parking lot filled with probably 500 mini-busses (which are basically vans with very shady reputations). luckily muniir speaks, like im sure i have mentioned in awestruck tones, about 15 languages, so he found the right flipping bus and we hopped aboard and made our way to this tiny little town. on the way, i was looking up the place in lonely planet and i discovered that it has some of the tightest tourist security in the country; westerners arent allowed to travel around anywhere without an armed police escort. naturally we were all pretty pumped about being potential terrorist targets (sorry mom), but we had already spent so much time and money getting to the place that we decided to bite the bullet.
unfortunately this tiny town is ringed by colossal monuments that are all at least 10 kilometers away from both the town and from each other, so a walking tour in the blazing sun is quite impractical. we hired a cab to the first place, which was this really old (and therefore quite ruined) roman city complete with several pagan temples and a Christian church. the cab driver stuck around during our little tour because he was brilliant and realized that he had struck gold with this group of white kids. there were 8 of us and he probably had the only cab able to seat so many in the whole town, and plus the ruins were pretty much in the middle of nowhere so he knew we had no other escape. he fairly systematically overcharged us as he drove us to the beach and then to a random mineral spring, just a couple of the myriad of fabulous sights that al-fayoum has to offer. on the plus side, he waited around for us to check out all of the sights, so it was convenient in the end. then he took us to the only hostel in town (its only competition was a fabulously expensive hotel, so it basically held a monopoly and was able to charge whatever it wanted to poor students like us) and we haggled with him about how much he should charge to pick us up in the morning and drive us around all day. im proud to say that i was responsible for getting a 50 pound discount even though i dont speak much arabic at all, so hooray for that.
then we went into the hotel to chill and wait for iftar to pass so that we could eat. yeah, i guess i didnt mention that i had fasted all day. this had nothing to do with ramadan and everything to do with the fact that in a small, strictly religious town like this one everything closes during the day and opens after sunset. everyone is Muslim so noone is eating so there is no reason for restaurants to be open. finally the stupid sun set and we headed out, but we couldnt leave the hotel without an undercover police officer. he was really good to have around, though, because he took us to the atm and the ice cream shop and to the store so that we could buy food so that we wouldnt have to fast the next day. but first he took us to my favorite restaurant in egypt. the main reason that i loved this place was the fact that they had these amazing crepe things that were folded up and filled with deliciousness. i got one filled with cheese and vegetables and another filled with chocolate (chocolate!) and they were both the best things ever. and then i had rice and tahini and water (which they charge for) and sheesha; we were there for over two hours, and the best part is that we paid 20 pounds a person. thats like 4 dollars for a gigantic, delicious meal plus hookah. like i said, the exchange rate rocks.
then we went to bed, and in the morning (i didnt hear about this until later) the girls were awoken by the cab driver banging on their bedroom doors, which i thought was really inappropriate since guys and girls arent usually allowed in the same private rooms in this country. but anyway, we drove around all day packed into his car- we met another girl who decided to come with us, so, including the driver, there were 10 in a 7 seat car. it was cozy. we went to a really amazing temple that was incredibly well preserved surrounded by a (destroyed) city named after dionysus (the roman god of wine, in case you didnt know). and then we went to 3 of the oldest pyramids in egypt. the last one of the day, the step pyramid, was 4600 years old and was the first pyramid every built. unless im totally overlooking some other really old civilization, it is the oldest manmade thing anywhere, other than footprints and stuff like that. we went inside of it, 57 meters down said the guide, and then up several ladders into the actual tomb on some pharaoh. i know calling him "some pharaoh" is anticlimactic, but i dont remember and its 2 am and i dont care enough to look it up. and then we went next door to these other random tombs and another guide took us down this incredibly dusty and low and narrow tunnel and then down this sketchy, rickety ladder and then across some planks spanning random deep holes in the floor until we finally arrived at the tomb of all of the children of the pharaoh to whom we had just paid respects. it was like spelunking in a grave- very cool. and then we got our driver to take us all the way back to cairo, which was extra fun with 3 too many people in the car (please refer back to my previous notes on egyptian driving).
then back in cairo we piddled for a few hours and then went to eat and then went back to that same pub, which is why my title is thus.
and school starts tomorrow and thats awesome. ive decided (i think) to take both modern standard arabic and egyptian colloquial arabic in order to speed the learning process. its really too bad that i dont go to a school at which i could use all of these fine art and language credits :)
we had heard a rumor that we could catch a 6 pound, hour long bus ride easy as pie, but in the end getting to the flipping town was quite a lengthy and complicated endeavor involving a taxi ride to a bus-less station, a subway ride to another bus-less station, and then another taxi ride to a gigantic parking lot filled with probably 500 mini-busses (which are basically vans with very shady reputations). luckily muniir speaks, like im sure i have mentioned in awestruck tones, about 15 languages, so he found the right flipping bus and we hopped aboard and made our way to this tiny little town. on the way, i was looking up the place in lonely planet and i discovered that it has some of the tightest tourist security in the country; westerners arent allowed to travel around anywhere without an armed police escort. naturally we were all pretty pumped about being potential terrorist targets (sorry mom), but we had already spent so much time and money getting to the place that we decided to bite the bullet.
unfortunately this tiny town is ringed by colossal monuments that are all at least 10 kilometers away from both the town and from each other, so a walking tour in the blazing sun is quite impractical. we hired a cab to the first place, which was this really old (and therefore quite ruined) roman city complete with several pagan temples and a Christian church. the cab driver stuck around during our little tour because he was brilliant and realized that he had struck gold with this group of white kids. there were 8 of us and he probably had the only cab able to seat so many in the whole town, and plus the ruins were pretty much in the middle of nowhere so he knew we had no other escape. he fairly systematically overcharged us as he drove us to the beach and then to a random mineral spring, just a couple of the myriad of fabulous sights that al-fayoum has to offer. on the plus side, he waited around for us to check out all of the sights, so it was convenient in the end. then he took us to the only hostel in town (its only competition was a fabulously expensive hotel, so it basically held a monopoly and was able to charge whatever it wanted to poor students like us) and we haggled with him about how much he should charge to pick us up in the morning and drive us around all day. im proud to say that i was responsible for getting a 50 pound discount even though i dont speak much arabic at all, so hooray for that.
then we went into the hotel to chill and wait for iftar to pass so that we could eat. yeah, i guess i didnt mention that i had fasted all day. this had nothing to do with ramadan and everything to do with the fact that in a small, strictly religious town like this one everything closes during the day and opens after sunset. everyone is Muslim so noone is eating so there is no reason for restaurants to be open. finally the stupid sun set and we headed out, but we couldnt leave the hotel without an undercover police officer. he was really good to have around, though, because he took us to the atm and the ice cream shop and to the store so that we could buy food so that we wouldnt have to fast the next day. but first he took us to my favorite restaurant in egypt. the main reason that i loved this place was the fact that they had these amazing crepe things that were folded up and filled with deliciousness. i got one filled with cheese and vegetables and another filled with chocolate (chocolate!) and they were both the best things ever. and then i had rice and tahini and water (which they charge for) and sheesha; we were there for over two hours, and the best part is that we paid 20 pounds a person. thats like 4 dollars for a gigantic, delicious meal plus hookah. like i said, the exchange rate rocks.
then we went to bed, and in the morning (i didnt hear about this until later) the girls were awoken by the cab driver banging on their bedroom doors, which i thought was really inappropriate since guys and girls arent usually allowed in the same private rooms in this country. but anyway, we drove around all day packed into his car- we met another girl who decided to come with us, so, including the driver, there were 10 in a 7 seat car. it was cozy. we went to a really amazing temple that was incredibly well preserved surrounded by a (destroyed) city named after dionysus (the roman god of wine, in case you didnt know). and then we went to 3 of the oldest pyramids in egypt. the last one of the day, the step pyramid, was 4600 years old and was the first pyramid every built. unless im totally overlooking some other really old civilization, it is the oldest manmade thing anywhere, other than footprints and stuff like that. we went inside of it, 57 meters down said the guide, and then up several ladders into the actual tomb on some pharaoh. i know calling him "some pharaoh" is anticlimactic, but i dont remember and its 2 am and i dont care enough to look it up. and then we went next door to these other random tombs and another guide took us down this incredibly dusty and low and narrow tunnel and then down this sketchy, rickety ladder and then across some planks spanning random deep holes in the floor until we finally arrived at the tomb of all of the children of the pharaoh to whom we had just paid respects. it was like spelunking in a grave- very cool. and then we got our driver to take us all the way back to cairo, which was extra fun with 3 too many people in the car (please refer back to my previous notes on egyptian driving).
then back in cairo we piddled for a few hours and then went to eat and then went back to that same pub, which is why my title is thus.
and school starts tomorrow and thats awesome. ive decided (i think) to take both modern standard arabic and egyptian colloquial arabic in order to speed the learning process. its really too bad that i dont go to a school at which i could use all of these fine art and language credits :)
Wednesday 3 September 2008
the desert is awesome
i just got back from an oasis called siwa. we left cairo early in the morning on sunday and basically rode a bus all day; we went through matruh (a little city on the med coast) and arrived in siwa at about 10 pm. this oasis is about the most relaxed place on earth; im told that until december of last year they didnt even have cars on the road. as it was, there were more donkey carts and bicycles than automobiles, and the town was so tiny that you could walk most places anyway. so we walked into the hostel and got three rooms (there were 6 of us; my 3 roommates, 2 random chicks and me) for a grand total of 70 pounds a night. that is, in case you havent caught on to the exchange rate math yet, about 2 dollars per person per night. 60 dollars to stay at this place for a month. unbelievable, i know.
we dropped our stuff and set out a-wandering; about 50 yards from our front door was something called the "melting city;" this fortress is, im told, almost 2000 years old, and people still live inside and keep animals in the rooms. unfortunately it is made mostly of mud, plus a little bone and a little palm wood. this isnt usually a problem in the desert, but sometime in the 50's it rained for like 3 days straight in siwa, hence the name "melted city." most of the roofs are gone, the sidewalks and stairs run together, and the place is altogether a picturesque ruin. but even so, several families have just slapped roofs back on to buildings in the lower levels, and during our exploration we accidentally walked in to what ended up being a shop filled with these beautiful scarves and dresses handmade by these two girls who just ... live in ruins in the middle of the desert and sew, i guess. it was weird. but they were really nice; we bought some stuff from them and then as we were walking away they chased us down and gave us presents. they gave me this cute little hand-woven bowl- very nifty.
anyhoo, we left the ruins and the random shop and went to the restaurant across from our hostel; this turned out to be an utterly incredible restaurant starring these weird crepe-pancake thingies filled with whatever you want. that night we had them filled with veggies and cheese, but later we had them filled with bananas and chocolate and jam and lemon stuff and powdered sugar... (not all at the same time) ...they were delicious. add in hummus and pizza and variously cooked eggs and tahini and couscous and make everything cost less than 3 dollars and you will start to understand the awesomeness of this place. plus it was filled (just like the entire town) with extraordinarily friendly people who were all at least proficient, if not fluent, in english. then after dinner we talked to a guy about a safari into the desert and we haggled him down to about 40 pounds less than anything listed in my guidebook, so that was exciting. and then we went to sleep.
we were out by about 10 the next morning; we headed straight to a rental shop and got bikes and then rode out to what was listed on the map as "cleopatra's well." i didnt know whether this was really a well or if it was a spring or a river or what, but we had swimming stuff just in case. when we got there we saw that it really did look like a well except for the fact that it was about 30 feet across and filled with little swimming siwan boys. so we changed and jumped in; the water (which did, in fact, come from an underground spring) was so amazingly cool after riding through the desert. then, in spite of language barriers, this 20-something siwan guy started a diving contest. he and i and luke got giant running starts and dove and flipped into the well and jumped over branches held by other little boys (actually luke mostly just crashed into the branches and fell into the well, but whatever). and then the guy taught me how to do a backflip which i was psyched about. terrified, but psyched. so we chilled at the well for a while, and we would have eaten lunch at the restaurant there, which reputedly serves camel upon special request, but it was the first day of ramadan and all the restaurants were closed during the day (which sucked, by the way). so we just rode on to some more ruins. we saw what was left of a busted temple that one of the girls said was 2400 years old, and then we went to the temple of the siwan oracle, or what is left of it, which is also more than 2000 years old. they were really interesting, but they were ruins so im not going to spend words describing them. use your imagination.
then we went back and met up with the guy who was driving us on our safari. i thought this was a really misleading term, actually, because there arent really any spectacular animals in the great sand sea (aka the western desert). but it turns out that "safari" in arabic just means "desert trip," or something close to that, so its actually remarkably appropriate. anyway, the six of us piled into muhammad's four wheel drive jeep and headed off for the dunes. our guide, in addition to being really friendly, was very experienced at freaking people out while driving in the desert; it was literally like a roller coaster in a car. and when youre coming up to the top of a dune, you cant tell whether it shoots straight down 150 meters or just sort of coasts down a few feet, so flying over these things was pretty exhilarating. some of the dunes that we drove (or slid, as it were) down were so steep that i, sitting sideways in the very back, was literally falling over the seats in front of me onto the backs of my friends. muhammad would just stop at the top, which is why we slid, which was extra scary. and then our jeep broke down. seriously. in the middle of the desert, it just died. so he yelled and hit it with a wrench for a while, but he couldnt get it to start, so he sent us out to play in the dunes while he checked the engine. you might not think it, but running to the top of a dune is about the most exhausting thing ever. screw rowing or cross country skiing- dune sprinting takes the cake. eventually he got the truck going long enough to make it to an oasis, so we got out and swam in this moderately sized lake in the middle of the desert while he fixed the car. a couple of brits were doing the same safari thing that we were doing, so we chatted with them while we swam, and then muhammad called us to pile back in the jeep to head off to the hot spring. you might be wondering why anyone would want to sit in a hot spring in the desert, and... thats a good question. but it was there and i got in and it was lovely and smelled like sulfur. and then we got back into the jeep to go to muhammad's favorite spot to watch the sunset and we jammed to techno music from luke's iphone while we watched. i will try to describe, but you might just have to wait for me to steal pictures from jonah and the girls. the entire horizon was covered with huge, graceful dunes, but directly ahead, just under the sun, was the cold oasis where we first swam, a random patch of green in the middle of enormous yellow waves. eh, i cant even do it justice. it was nice, though. and as soon as we got back into the car muhammad started eating dates and chugging water because he had been awake since 5 am without food. and then we went to this hut place (did i mention that the safari was overnight?) and ate dinner with another random siwan, and then we wandered in the dark, cold desert for a while. muhammad went back to town so his friend followed us around wherever we went, which i thought was weird until i turned to go back to camp and realized that it was pitch black and everything was sand. so i guess technically he was useful to have since he kept us from being lost in the desert for who knows how long. and he also dug holes and buried people (sand baths are supposed to be very healthy) and he gave luke a massage. then we went back to the hut place and the six of us crashed on blankets in the sand and watched the stars and told stories. there are so many stars in the desert. and of course we saw, literally, dozens of shooting ones, plus what one girl swore was a ufo. questionable, but splendid nonetheless. then i didnt sleep all night because the flies in the desert are horrible and bite all of your exposed skin, but i wont dwell on that because it was pretty much the only bad thing that happened during the entire trip. i got up at like 530 in the morning and just sat in a chair and killed flies for 2 straight hours, though, to exact revenge. gradually the others woke up and we ate and muhammad drove us back to town.
rereading that i realize that i am overusing the word "literally," but i fear that some of this stuff sounds exaggerated. it usually isnt; exaggeration isnt even necessary.
so back at the hostel we met a couple of other travelers and made plans to hang out with them later, and then i took a shower and went to sleep. we were all up and about at about 1 and we met up with the other guys, zach and muniir (from michigan and jerusalem, respectively), who had conveniently hired a truck and driver, so we tagged along with them to some other fun ruins. true to tradition, i climed a mountain barefoot, only this time there was a huge plain on the top that was covered with, believe it or not, shells. apparently most of the great sand sea was at one time an actual sea; some parts house huge shark and whale fossils, and the mountains are covered with shells. i figure that walking on broken shells isnt as bad as walking on broken glass, but it still hurt a lot so i climbed down and we went to another well. this one was salty but just as cold, which was vastly refreshing, and it was surrounded by date trees, so we spent about half an hour swimming in the middle of a palm forest eating dates just picked off of the trees. best day ever? it actually gets better.
we went back to town and zach and muniir went off on a safari of their own, but we made dinner plans (theirs wasnt overnight). then we just chilled and shopped until sunset, and at dark we went to the restaurant across from the hostel again. we met the other guys and had another amazing dinner of pancakes, etc. and it turned out that our new friends had the same driver for their safari, so muhammad invited all of us to his shop to drink tea and look at amazing pictures of the desert. then we had a dance party in his scarf room, and then he invited us to come smoke sheesha with him. but first i had to buy some dates, because siwan dates are amazing, so i went to a shop and got a couple of boxes of fresh dates plus a liter of olive oil (siwan olive oil is famous, too, actually) for like 45 pounds. then the girls and i went to this tapestry shop and one of them bought a really nice wall hanging, and the shop owner was really friendly and invited us to have tea with him too, so we did. and then the other guys came up and we were all like, ah, we have to smoke with muhammad, so we ran to this garden in the middle of the city and smoked and talked and drank hibiscus extract juice (most delicious drink ever) until about 1 in the morning. the town was hopping the whole time, too, because everyone works at night there because its so flipping hot during the day, and plus you cant eat during ramadan... it was like the whole town was at our party.
so this guy who we met, muniir, is a professor in jerusalem, and he is really one of the most interesting people i have ever talked to. first off, he speaks about 6 languages, plus at least 4 dialects of arabic, so that was really impressive to all of us aspiring linguists (especially luke, who is, in reality, a linguistics major). we spent the evening talking about linguistics and learning fun phrases in arabic and hebrew and french and swahili and german and listening to muniir tell amazing stories about stuff that he has done. and he invited us to crash with him when we go to jerusalem, so huzzah, free place to stay.
then we went to bed, got up at 630 and came back to cairo.
as you can tell, 2 of the longest days of my life :)
we dropped our stuff and set out a-wandering; about 50 yards from our front door was something called the "melting city;" this fortress is, im told, almost 2000 years old, and people still live inside and keep animals in the rooms. unfortunately it is made mostly of mud, plus a little bone and a little palm wood. this isnt usually a problem in the desert, but sometime in the 50's it rained for like 3 days straight in siwa, hence the name "melted city." most of the roofs are gone, the sidewalks and stairs run together, and the place is altogether a picturesque ruin. but even so, several families have just slapped roofs back on to buildings in the lower levels, and during our exploration we accidentally walked in to what ended up being a shop filled with these beautiful scarves and dresses handmade by these two girls who just ... live in ruins in the middle of the desert and sew, i guess. it was weird. but they were really nice; we bought some stuff from them and then as we were walking away they chased us down and gave us presents. they gave me this cute little hand-woven bowl- very nifty.
anyhoo, we left the ruins and the random shop and went to the restaurant across from our hostel; this turned out to be an utterly incredible restaurant starring these weird crepe-pancake thingies filled with whatever you want. that night we had them filled with veggies and cheese, but later we had them filled with bananas and chocolate and jam and lemon stuff and powdered sugar... (not all at the same time) ...they were delicious. add in hummus and pizza and variously cooked eggs and tahini and couscous and make everything cost less than 3 dollars and you will start to understand the awesomeness of this place. plus it was filled (just like the entire town) with extraordinarily friendly people who were all at least proficient, if not fluent, in english. then after dinner we talked to a guy about a safari into the desert and we haggled him down to about 40 pounds less than anything listed in my guidebook, so that was exciting. and then we went to sleep.
we were out by about 10 the next morning; we headed straight to a rental shop and got bikes and then rode out to what was listed on the map as "cleopatra's well." i didnt know whether this was really a well or if it was a spring or a river or what, but we had swimming stuff just in case. when we got there we saw that it really did look like a well except for the fact that it was about 30 feet across and filled with little swimming siwan boys. so we changed and jumped in; the water (which did, in fact, come from an underground spring) was so amazingly cool after riding through the desert. then, in spite of language barriers, this 20-something siwan guy started a diving contest. he and i and luke got giant running starts and dove and flipped into the well and jumped over branches held by other little boys (actually luke mostly just crashed into the branches and fell into the well, but whatever). and then the guy taught me how to do a backflip which i was psyched about. terrified, but psyched. so we chilled at the well for a while, and we would have eaten lunch at the restaurant there, which reputedly serves camel upon special request, but it was the first day of ramadan and all the restaurants were closed during the day (which sucked, by the way). so we just rode on to some more ruins. we saw what was left of a busted temple that one of the girls said was 2400 years old, and then we went to the temple of the siwan oracle, or what is left of it, which is also more than 2000 years old. they were really interesting, but they were ruins so im not going to spend words describing them. use your imagination.
then we went back and met up with the guy who was driving us on our safari. i thought this was a really misleading term, actually, because there arent really any spectacular animals in the great sand sea (aka the western desert). but it turns out that "safari" in arabic just means "desert trip," or something close to that, so its actually remarkably appropriate. anyway, the six of us piled into muhammad's four wheel drive jeep and headed off for the dunes. our guide, in addition to being really friendly, was very experienced at freaking people out while driving in the desert; it was literally like a roller coaster in a car. and when youre coming up to the top of a dune, you cant tell whether it shoots straight down 150 meters or just sort of coasts down a few feet, so flying over these things was pretty exhilarating. some of the dunes that we drove (or slid, as it were) down were so steep that i, sitting sideways in the very back, was literally falling over the seats in front of me onto the backs of my friends. muhammad would just stop at the top, which is why we slid, which was extra scary. and then our jeep broke down. seriously. in the middle of the desert, it just died. so he yelled and hit it with a wrench for a while, but he couldnt get it to start, so he sent us out to play in the dunes while he checked the engine. you might not think it, but running to the top of a dune is about the most exhausting thing ever. screw rowing or cross country skiing- dune sprinting takes the cake. eventually he got the truck going long enough to make it to an oasis, so we got out and swam in this moderately sized lake in the middle of the desert while he fixed the car. a couple of brits were doing the same safari thing that we were doing, so we chatted with them while we swam, and then muhammad called us to pile back in the jeep to head off to the hot spring. you might be wondering why anyone would want to sit in a hot spring in the desert, and... thats a good question. but it was there and i got in and it was lovely and smelled like sulfur. and then we got back into the jeep to go to muhammad's favorite spot to watch the sunset and we jammed to techno music from luke's iphone while we watched. i will try to describe, but you might just have to wait for me to steal pictures from jonah and the girls. the entire horizon was covered with huge, graceful dunes, but directly ahead, just under the sun, was the cold oasis where we first swam, a random patch of green in the middle of enormous yellow waves. eh, i cant even do it justice. it was nice, though. and as soon as we got back into the car muhammad started eating dates and chugging water because he had been awake since 5 am without food. and then we went to this hut place (did i mention that the safari was overnight?) and ate dinner with another random siwan, and then we wandered in the dark, cold desert for a while. muhammad went back to town so his friend followed us around wherever we went, which i thought was weird until i turned to go back to camp and realized that it was pitch black and everything was sand. so i guess technically he was useful to have since he kept us from being lost in the desert for who knows how long. and he also dug holes and buried people (sand baths are supposed to be very healthy) and he gave luke a massage. then we went back to the hut place and the six of us crashed on blankets in the sand and watched the stars and told stories. there are so many stars in the desert. and of course we saw, literally, dozens of shooting ones, plus what one girl swore was a ufo. questionable, but splendid nonetheless. then i didnt sleep all night because the flies in the desert are horrible and bite all of your exposed skin, but i wont dwell on that because it was pretty much the only bad thing that happened during the entire trip. i got up at like 530 in the morning and just sat in a chair and killed flies for 2 straight hours, though, to exact revenge. gradually the others woke up and we ate and muhammad drove us back to town.
rereading that i realize that i am overusing the word "literally," but i fear that some of this stuff sounds exaggerated. it usually isnt; exaggeration isnt even necessary.
so back at the hostel we met a couple of other travelers and made plans to hang out with them later, and then i took a shower and went to sleep. we were all up and about at about 1 and we met up with the other guys, zach and muniir (from michigan and jerusalem, respectively), who had conveniently hired a truck and driver, so we tagged along with them to some other fun ruins. true to tradition, i climed a mountain barefoot, only this time there was a huge plain on the top that was covered with, believe it or not, shells. apparently most of the great sand sea was at one time an actual sea; some parts house huge shark and whale fossils, and the mountains are covered with shells. i figure that walking on broken shells isnt as bad as walking on broken glass, but it still hurt a lot so i climbed down and we went to another well. this one was salty but just as cold, which was vastly refreshing, and it was surrounded by date trees, so we spent about half an hour swimming in the middle of a palm forest eating dates just picked off of the trees. best day ever? it actually gets better.
we went back to town and zach and muniir went off on a safari of their own, but we made dinner plans (theirs wasnt overnight). then we just chilled and shopped until sunset, and at dark we went to the restaurant across from the hostel again. we met the other guys and had another amazing dinner of pancakes, etc. and it turned out that our new friends had the same driver for their safari, so muhammad invited all of us to his shop to drink tea and look at amazing pictures of the desert. then we had a dance party in his scarf room, and then he invited us to come smoke sheesha with him. but first i had to buy some dates, because siwan dates are amazing, so i went to a shop and got a couple of boxes of fresh dates plus a liter of olive oil (siwan olive oil is famous, too, actually) for like 45 pounds. then the girls and i went to this tapestry shop and one of them bought a really nice wall hanging, and the shop owner was really friendly and invited us to have tea with him too, so we did. and then the other guys came up and we were all like, ah, we have to smoke with muhammad, so we ran to this garden in the middle of the city and smoked and talked and drank hibiscus extract juice (most delicious drink ever) until about 1 in the morning. the town was hopping the whole time, too, because everyone works at night there because its so flipping hot during the day, and plus you cant eat during ramadan... it was like the whole town was at our party.
so this guy who we met, muniir, is a professor in jerusalem, and he is really one of the most interesting people i have ever talked to. first off, he speaks about 6 languages, plus at least 4 dialects of arabic, so that was really impressive to all of us aspiring linguists (especially luke, who is, in reality, a linguistics major). we spent the evening talking about linguistics and learning fun phrases in arabic and hebrew and french and swahili and german and listening to muniir tell amazing stories about stuff that he has done. and he invited us to crash with him when we go to jerusalem, so huzzah, free place to stay.
then we went to bed, got up at 630 and came back to cairo.
as you can tell, 2 of the longest days of my life :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
