Khamseh Sifr Thamaneya

The past few days have all kind of meshed together. It's weird, but I've found I'm slowly beginning to have no concept of time. Since my phone doesn't work internationally, I can't even get the time on my cell phone, so apart from my computer, I've really had no sense of time. While it's somewhat relaxing to not constantly be worried about time, it's stressful to rely on morning wake-up calls (which don't always come) and other people (who aren't always reliable).

The hotel personnel at the front desk know us all by room number; when we approach the front desk to get our key, they hand us our key without even asking what room we're in. One of them in particular, Ashmat, is trying to teach me how to say '508' in Arabic. I must be so disappointing, because every time I approach the desk for my key, I can't even remember the first part of the number. So today, I asked him to spell it out for me on a piece of paper so I can learn it. He spelled it out in Arabic. Great. So after listening to him sound it out a few times, I wrote down what I thought I was hearing. After checking online, the English pronunciation is something like "khamseh (five) sifr (zero) thamaneya (eight)". I've promised to learn it, so I need to remember it. Arabic class starts on Wednesday, and so far my Arabic is absolutely terrible, so I'm hoping I can at least learn some survival phrases.

There's a bagel shop about ten minutes away from the hotel called Munch & Bagel. I went there with my friend Zach the other day after Kelly and Clancy, two of the girls in my photo class, happened to find it and tell us about it. It's pretty Americanized - the people making your food even wear gloves! The owner was really nice and talked to us while we were waiting for our food. Apparently his wife, who's Polish, makes all of the bagels from scratch. Since I'm an absolute bagel fiend when I'm back home, it's been difficult for me to not have a bagel every day. Needless to say, I'll be stopping by there on a fairly regular basis.

On Friday night, we went to an X-Games motocross exhibition, held in front of the pyramids. We got there a few hours before the event started, so we got to watch the sun go down behind the pyramids and the sphinx. When it got darker out, the lights beneath the pyramids came on, and they were lit below, as was the sphinx. Words can't describe how surreal the whole experience was - standing beside the pyramids, watching guys do absolutely ridiculous stunts on motorbikes. The show itself was pretty neat, but it was all formatted the same - rider approaches ramp, rider goes up ramp, rider does sick jump. Cool, but it got old after a while. It was more the atmosphere and the people that made the night memorable. I'll try to post pictures fairly soon.

Yesterday we went on a tour of Coptic Cairo. We saw a number of churches and buildings, including St. Barbara's Church, St. Sergis Church, St. George Church, and the Hanging Church. St. George's church was easily my favorite - it used one of the two Roman towers used in the fortress of Babylon as its foundation. It was circular, which apparently is an odd shape for a church, and a Greek Orthodox church in particular. It was perched above most of Coptic Cairo, and off in the distance, you could see other parts of the city as well. The stained glass windows inside the church were beautiful too.

After visiting Coptic Cairo, we went to Abdu's house for lunch. Abdu is one of Professor Sullivan's longtime friends here, and each year he's nice enough to host the group of dialogue students at his house for dinner. His wife and daughter spent days making food for the 40+ students here and it was absolutely delicious - turkey, rice, cheese-stuffed pastries, eggplant... so much amazing food! Abdu has also been helping us coordinate a lot of our trips and bus rides, which he does all as a favor. Basically, he's the man.

That night, we went out on a felucca ride at sunset. Getting there was quite the adventure. As I'd mentioned, it's really hard to have a sense of time here, and we're never really given exact times for when to meet for things. I thought we were meeting at 6:30 for the vans, but apparently we met at 6:15 instead. So when I got to the lobby at 6:20, only two minutes after my roommate went downstairs, the vans had left. Since I don't have a working cell phone in Cairo, I went to my friend Kristine's room and tried to call Rob. Her phone can text but not call, so took the phone number, went downstairs to the lobby, and asked to use their phone. I finally got in touch with Rob, and at that point the vans were already at the docks. They were still waiting for a second felucca, so I had a small window of time to get there before the boats went out. I was told they were across from the Four Seasons, so I grabbed a cab and headed over. My cab driver didn't speak a word of English, and since there are apparently two different Four Seasons hotels in Cairo, it was pretty interesting trying to communicate where I was going.

When I arrived at the Four Seasons, I had no idea still where everyone else was. The vans were nowhere in sight, and neither were any of the other students. I started walking towards the Nile and went down to the first dock - no luck. No one on the second dock either. Thankfully, third one was the charm, and I saw everyone waiting for boats. Half the students were already on one boat, and the second half were waiting for the other felucca to dock to get on it. I made it over to a completely unfamiliar part of town with only minutes to spare, in Cairo traffic, without a cell phone, with a cab driver that spoke only Arabic. I'm actually quite proud of myself for getting there at all.

All the same, I'm pretty hurt no one noticed I was missing when the vans left from the hotel. The felucca ride was something I'd been looking forward to since getting here, and I'd been talking about it with people too, so it's not like anyone should have thought i was opting out. Everyone here has been splitting up into cliques, and I'm not really terribly close with anyone here. Everyone has their one or two people they hang out with most of the time, and I just don't. My roommate on the trip is here with her roommate from back home, so they always go out and never really think to ask me to join. I really don't know why they didn't choose to room together during the trip, since they more or less do everything together anyway. Just in general, I don't feel like I'm really close with anyone here, and at times it just sucks.

I'll try to post pictures from the past few days soon - there aren't many, but once I've edited them I'll post a few.