2nd week in Cairo

Finally I can post my last Cairo entry:

My time in Cairo never quite matches the intensity of that first day, but I did have a great last week in Cairo.

Culture Shock: I start to experience a slight case of culture shock at the beginning of the program. This, combined with a beautiful apartment, no Arabic-speaking Dani to hold my hand, and a small illness, cause me to stay in for a few days. I quickly diagnose myself with vitamin deficiency and quickly prescribe myself supplements, solving the problem. After three days I become disgusted with myself and force myself out of the apartment to go to the Egyptian Museum.

Khan-el-Kallili: This is the famous tourist market. I practice bargaining, buy a few trinkets, and meet an Egyptian family who love that Dani speaks Arabic (and that we bought several items from them). They insist we sit down with them, meet the whole family, play with their semi-adopted kittens (so cute!), drink tea, and transcribe spices in English for them to write for their stand. We talk with them for an hour and receive a bunch of random, free stuff. We even get ourselves invited to iphtar (Ramadan breaking of the fast meal). When we leave, I try to buy some tea leaves off them to make up for the free stuff they kept heaping on us, but they refuse my money. Super nice and all around good day.

Egyptian Museum: This is the 1^st time I branch out on my own. I have a couple of slight mishaps, which includes being lured into an Egyptian shop and guilted to buy perfume. But, other than these instances, I do fine. I get lost for a little while, but use my Arabic skills to get directions. I crossed the wide street in front of the museum with ease (yes, I am proud of myself - crossing the street in Egypt is like a game of Frogger).

The Egyptian Museum is overflowing with interesting artifacts, but they don’t allow you to take pictures. The museum itself is highway robbery for Egypt - even with my student card I spent $25. A family could easily visit the museum and spend over $100. That’s a lot in Egyptian pounds. I liked the Royal Mummy Room the best - you get to see the mummified bodies of some of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs and queens. It’s gross and awesome at the same time. It’s also unbelievable how well they’ve been preserved for 4,000 years. You can still see hair and teeth. Just crazy.

Concert: I go to this concert of a self-proclaimed “contemporary Egyptian jazz” band. They are awesome - they combine all of these traditional and modern instruments to create a fusion of different sounds that are creative and beautiful together. The instruments they play included oods (traditional Middle Eastern guitar-like instrument), guitars, Indian drums, Spanich drums, African drums, etc. My favorite was Ghiza, a drum player. What I love so much about him is that he doesn’t play to notes, he plays to the feel of the music. He played the African way - his musicality was brilliant and you could tell he loved every moment he was playing.

Pyramids: A little overrated, but they’re cool to go inside. You go down a tiny passage about 3 feet high. Then you go up a tunnel of the same size to reach an empty, undecorated tomb room. It’s mind-blowing imagining the people excavating the pyramids - they had to do all of this crawling into the unknown in the dark. But the tomb room is anticlimactic and you think “Really? All that work for this?” To think, they built the large pyramid for that tiny, unmemorable room. But the blocked off passageways looked cool.

Camel: I ride a camel. I’m a little afraid. I clutched onto Dani, particularly when the camel was standing and sitting (you’re at a 45 degree angle!). I may have earned myself a reputation as the camel squealer among Dani’s program group, but they are nice about it. Dani wasn’t as nice, though. She took a video of me on my light-headed “what if I die” trip and made a point of showing everyone who would watch.

So that was my 2^nd and final week in Cairo.

Love,

Nancy