Tragedy Inspiration With Optimism and Fun

Yeah.

I haven't written in a while... sorry. But I probably wouldn't have written anything worthwhile, so it's cool.

What's up? Nothing really. I have exams but that's not really a big deal. I fully expect to fail English and Literature, given I haven't read any of the stories required for the literature exams (which I just took) and the English teacher hates me.

I'm leaving soon. Really soon. Less than a month soon. I go to Cairo the 11th and leave the 13th. The latest thing after that that I know is that I'll be in Frankfurt by 8 on the 13th. Isa (this is Egypt, they might be too lazy to take off...)

I'm sad and not. It's not the normal way most people are sad, you want this, you don't want to lose this, you'll miss this person but you want this other one to take a long walk of a short pier... It's that if I could I would stay here for a long time, but since I can't I just want it to be over. Egypt's kinda feeling dead right now. I realize that sounds super emo and dramatic, but what I mean is that, since I'm leaving in a month, I can't make summer plans. I can't go on trips. I can't promise my classmates I'll see them next year or get a dress for my host sister's wedding. Why bother at school if I've only a week left? These people didn't care about me when they thought I was gonna be at VAC until I graduated. Why would they care about me if they found out I wasn't coming back? (I've told them but they haven't figured out yet that when I say, "I am leaving for America in a month. For good. As in I am not coming back" I am leaving for America in a month. For good. As in I am not coming back.)

I'm gonna miss a lot of stuff. The sea, the streets, the tram, the mushrooa3s, the trips, the craziness, going out all the time and never having to take classes. Some of my classmates I'll miss, and the AFSers I will definitely miss a ton, and my host family I will also miss very much. I love how random this place is. Did you know that the World Institute for Cataracts is right here in Alex? I didn't either. I passed it yesterday. I love how one of the clothing store's has a sign that says, "Tragedy inspiration with optimism and fun". I love how Oprah, Jif, and Subway are all clothing stores. I love how if you want to get your hair done you can go to the "Tonight Butte Center".

There's a lot of stuff to hate, but that's true of any place. For one, Egyptians are difficult. Incredibly difficult. You. Have. No. Idea. And it's hard to do the right thing, culture wise. I miss having guy friends, I miss being a brunette (here people call me blond...), I miss being funny (ish... kinda...). I miss my friends and my family and running and food and green. But crazy things happen here. You find yourself on paddle boats out on sea or crammed into tiny cafes or running into these incredible people on the street...

Oh well.

Swine flu is a big deal here, by the way. Like, huge. It's pretty much what everyone's been talking about. You're not supposed to kiss people on the cheek, wash your hands every two hours, kill all the pigs... It's ridiculous, though. I've yet to hear of ANY swine flu here. And unless the pigs here have been taking siesta with some cerdos mexicanos they don't have it either. This kind of pisses me off. They want to look proactive but they just look ridiculous. They've said it's not because of swine flu, that the pigs are dirty, they eat garbage. Well, they do. The apples and banana peels you throw into the waste, the pigs are eating that. They're probably cleaner than the pigeons, cows, and camels I've seen butchered here. And if you drive between Alex and Cairo, all the trash that people throw out the windows of cars gets tilled into the farmers fields. So you can't go and slaughter all pigs because they're "unclean" .

Ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe it.

The only thing that really worries me about the swine flu here is the fact that, if it were to come to Egypt, I am convinced that every other Egyptian would be convinced that they had it. One cough and they'd rush over to the hospitals, crowd them so much that if anyone had it they couldn't get treatment. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but that on a smaller scale really freaks me out. I told you. Egyptians are difficult.

Finally, because this post seems kind of... without substance, I thought I'd write about something I'm coming to know quite well... the Egyptian wedding. I think it goes a little something like this;

The man approaches the woman, I think over lunch or something, and asks her if she would be willling to marry him. If she says yes, she speaks to her parents, and if they consent he and maybe his family come over and eat gatou and drink soda. There follows a small ceremony where they essentially say that they're engaged, and everyone wears nice but not formal clothes. Following this is the engagement, which can be a pretty big deal. For one of my host sisters, it meant dressing really nicely, having both families meet in a nice flat, eating gatou and cake and pastries and drinking soda, some people dancing, and a clean and beribboned compact car picking them up and bringing them to a nice cafe for the night. For my other sister, who is no longer engaged, it meant going through a wedding ceremony, just not getting legally married.

My host sister wears a scarf, but for the engagement she went unveiled with a strapped dress, and up-do, and little applique tattoos. We went to the 2u3a, the wedding... I dunno. The place just used for wedding and engagements. It doesn't really have a word in English. A band came and serenaded them out front for about 10 minutes, then we went inside. People danced to loud, Arabic music, there were pastries and a sugar drink called Sherba. Then things started getting crazy. My host sister's fiance was... not the best guy. And my host sister has male friends, which is normal here, from her work or her high school or her college, whom she had invited. One of them grabbed a chair, put it in the middle of the dance floor, and started belly dancing on it.

What went down would live a long and happy life on youtube.

The fiance got jealous. Very. He started yelling, trying to pull him down, making fun of him. Everyone immediately around them started freaking out, trying to calm him down and normalize things. But he just got madder. And my host sister had this horrible, sad look on her face. And the dude on the chair didn't notice and just kept dancing.

Finally he got down and saw what was going on... but it was pretty intense. I would've thought it inappropriate to write about but when we watched the wedding on video, my host family played the fight 3 times in a row, so I think it's cool.

After this people got tired and everything started to cool down. But apparently at a wedding that just doesn't work. The 2u3a wants to fix this. They send it specialists. Two black men come in, doing a sychronized dance.

I am not kidding.

Wearing red hoodies and sagging their jeans, they had this shuffley sort of step dance they'd do as they'd mouth along to the Arabic songs. IMMEDIATELY people started filling the dance floor. It was like these dudes injected energizer into the air. It was intense.

But, all good things must end, and after a while the dudes shuffled out and people stopped dancing and my host sister and her fiance drove away in the fancy car, and the rest of us went home to sleep.

My host sister broke off the engagement not long after that, but my other host sister is still engaged, and she'll be having her wedding in July. While waiting for the happy day, they've been buying stuff. Lots of stuff. From the beginning of their marriage Egyptian couples save things to give to their children when they get married. They use this stuff, and the mountains of stuff they buy, to decorate their child's new flat. In Egypt, men pay the dowry, the dowry being a flat and furniture. The women buy the sheets and the rugs and the toothbrush holders and singing sugar bowls.

Which pretty much sums up my superficial knowledge of Egyptian weddings. Whoo!

I feel bad, this seems like a pretty bitter post. I always feel like when I write this stuff down I come off like an old B movie. Oh well.

Not much is up, other than all that. I'm trying to go to Cairo soon, to go to Khan al Khalili, see a bit more of the city, and hang out with some friends. Other than that, just buying gifts and souvenirs and trying to last the last few days of school.

Anything you guys wanna know? Any particular stuff you want from Egypt?

Lots of love,
Cera

Captain Tomato

So. I really should've written ages ago. Sorry.

This is how the trip went down.

The 28th I left right after lunch for the train station. I got to Cairo after 2.5 hours. Alone. It turns out that all of us students are now running on Egyptian time. Which meant I had to hang out at the train station for a while. After thoroughly pissing off the waiters at a cafe my friends arrived. We got on a train for Aswan. Luckily for us, it was a normal train, not a sleeper. You can't beat toilets AND seats that smell like piss. Actually it was kind of fun to hang out in the almost empty cars and watch Egypt roll by, even if by night. The ride pretty much went smoothly until the end, when one of my friends, trying to help out a few very confused tourists, almost got sent to jail. Eventually we arrived in Aswan, and headed out to a friend's house outside of Aswan.

We settled into tents and hopped onto a boat. We got to visit some Nubian ruins, an old church (I think...) and then went to some random sand dune, one singular hill of sand mounted on the side of some random rocky outcropping. We then went crazy. The Egyptian boatmen with us probably thought we were mental. Who's to say they're wrong? We cartwheeled and raced and jumped about in the sand. It was le awesome. We then rode back and hung out until 3 in the morning, when we got on a bus for Abu Simbel.

Abu Simbel is supposed to take about 3 hours by bus. We have no idea why, but we all woke up seconds before arriving... five hours later. We do not know what happened. Anyways, only 40 km from Sudan, it's a pretty interesting place, with two big temples. With... big temples. And statues. And stuff. Again, typical students, we looked at both, poked about a bit, and then left. Thankfully, the ride back only took three hours.

I don't have much time so I am going to summarize the next few days below (we only slept one night anyways so it's all like one day anyways). During this trip, I....

-Swam in the Nile (in the south it's clean)
-Visited the temple of Pharos
-Went to the tourist market (the Souk)
-Threw a gallabeya
-Partied around a campfire
-Went to the sand dune twice
-Climbed big rocks
-Walked through downtown Aswan

But mostly we hung out. It was... really fun. But, of course, it had to end, and after a few days of hanging out we took a taxi to Luxor (3 hours and 300 pounds, like 60 dollars). This was... interesting. We kept getting stopped at... check points? I'm not sure the right word. I just know that at every one a police officer would come up to the cab and ask, "Do you want to drink some tea?" and at this point we would give him five pounds. At the second to last stop, though, this guy in plain clothes came up through the police officers and demanded 50 pounds and started screaming at us. That was... fun.

We got to Luxor and for two nights and days we saw all 6 major monuments, including valley of the kings, and hatshepsut. We also visited the Souk and got followed by police. At two in the morning. They got out of the moving car, started walking with guns and following us. Again, fun.

Our friends from Aswan joined us on the last night to go on a last minute extension we had planned. We didn't intend to do anything wrong, I'd argue we didn't, we just... extended the days. But AFS heard. We got to Minya, a city between Cairo and Luxor, and AFS called and screamed at us. Regardless of the fact that we were staying with police protection (unvoluntary), and with the support of all three Minyan volunteers, the head of AFS Minya, and the host family of Minya, AFS deemed it unsafe. I guess in actuality they heard that we were staying at a hotel and assumed that we would have an orgy or something.

I really do not like AFS.

After this we headed home.

The trip itself was incredible, but it's hard to write out the great stuff without sounding incredibly tedious. We had great conversation at dinner, now have heaps of inside jokes, matching galabeyyas and have ridden hantoors. But, again, writing and explaining this stuff just ends up being excessive. I was... very sad to end up here again.

My host family is incredible, it's not that, and Alex is incredible, too. But school here has become horrible. These people are screwed up, I swear. The good news is attendance is voluntary, so I'm going to start doing some exploring during the day or running by the sea or something. And the great thing is that I can pass the tests with my eyes closed, so I'm not missing anything.

Other than that not much is up. I have four friends in my grade at school,but 1) shows up so infrequently that there's a rumor he's in prison, 2) had surgery and therefore skips school, 3) left for Canada, and 4) turned out to be a terrorist. I am not kidding. I have friends in other grades, but... it's just hard. Alex itself has almost reached summer weather, which is lovely. There's a special holiday here, it comes from ancient Egyptian times, to celebrate spring, and to celebrate it I went with my host family to a resort on the North Coast where I turned into Captain Tomato. Now everyone asks, "What's wrong with you???". They mean, "Why's your face red?", it just comes out... Egyptian. And then I have to explain that I'm white. And it just works out that way.

Anyways, I'm gonna go.

Sorry about the writing this time, I'm kind of tired and listening to weird music so the words might come out funny.

Lots of love,
Cera,

Crashed

So. Yallabina.

I thought I'd do a picture post for the first time in a loooong while. Here we go.

I kind of feel like I haven't shown enough of Alex. This is Alex at sundown on the corniche (which I heard is the most dangerous road in Egypt?). It's really beautiful when the sun sets, though the gorgeous colours can probably be credited to the pollution.

This, below is the yellow sort of day I think I once described, where the world turns foggy and misty and, well, yellow? It's actually pretty cool, like you've been stuck inside a dream world, but it gets old after a while.

The bottom two pictures are from Siwa, one's a picture of the small mountain next to our hotel at sunrise, the other is three other exchangers (the two on the right are my bamf friends from Alex), hanging out at a well in Siwa.

Then there's a picture of a group of us at Hatshepsut, in the Valley of the Queens. Typical students, we climbed to the top, blinked a few times, they went back down as fast as we could. Now we can say we've done it at least.

Now I have NO idea what's going on with formatting here, Arabic Blogger isn't helpful in the least, so forgive me for the layout.

I am now going to try to upload more pictures.

Jew Anne

I feel horrible writing blog posts, because I really can't think of anything to write about. I will give it another attempt I suppose.

Tomorrow, I leave for Cairo, to leave for Aswan. I really can't wait. I'm not really sure who's going or what we're going to be doing. I'm just glad we're doing it.

School has been... plenty interesting. I mostly hang out with the kids who lived in America, the Netherlands, England... etc. because I'm able to communicate with them. They like to play tricks on me, though, which is less than amusing. Like telling me phrases in Arabic but not telling me how severe they are. Given, "Oh darn!" is pretty much a swear word here I should've seen it coming.

English class is JUST as miserable. That dude has absolutely no idea what he's doing. When he wants us to stop writing he shouts, "Leave your pens!" When I keep on writing, not knowing how to leave my pen, (I'm just so sorry, I found another pen, we can still be friends?) I keep on writing. He hates me because I correct him. I know I shouldn't but he's wrong ALL. THE. TIME. Our literature teacher is nicer, and speaks better English, but still has his moments. He tries REALLY hard to be cool in English. And fails. It's actually almost painful. The only beef I have against him was his pronunciation of the name 'Juan'. We were reading a translated story by Luisa Valenzuela. It was talking about Juan, a censor. He kept saying Juan like "Jew Anne". Which was kinda weird. It didn't hit me until I had to write it though how weird that was. Jew Anne, he became a censor. Jew Anne faithfully censored each letter. Jew Anne's mother didn't know what to do... etc. My best teacher is our biology teacher.

But.

You know that really fun aspect of biology class? The part where you learn how babies are made? We totally had to cover that. In class. With Egyptian boys.

Luckily, (though unfortunate for the story), it went pretty well. When we learned about the male parts the teacher made all the girls sit up front. The boys asked questions such as, "What's ejaculation? Erection? I saw in a movie once that semen came out red, can that happen? What's masturbation?" Which was.... insanelyhorrificallyawkward.

Learning about the girls' bits and pieces was pretty calm, which surprised me. When the teacher drew a vagina on the board, though, the boy behind me started saying, "blessed be to god, thank you lord, god is great" etc. in Arabic.

Again. Awkward.

I should probably write more about Egyptian culture? I don't really do that.... ever.

Here are some fun things.

Microbuses: About January I started taking microbuses. They are MUCH cheaper than taxis, and in my opinion, they're safer, because you're not the only other person in the vehicle. I shock my classmates by taking them, they're under the false assumptions that, 1) I am incapable of doing anything ever, and 2) I, like them, will ONLY take taxis, because projects (Yay! Egyptian slang! Microbuses = projects (mushroo3a)) are unclean/unsafe/crowded.

Cairene AFSers: A group of people from Cairo came up last weekend, which meant us AFS Alex people tagging along. It was fun, I guess, but their hotel in Alex was like ours in Siwa; no water, no doors, no electricity. Fun, sa7? So they didn't have the best time in Alex. Oh well.

Slang: I am very quickly gaining the vocabulary of a very vulgar Egyptian girl. Keep in mind vulgar here doesn't mean swearing like a sailor but instead using expressions that are deemed low class. To me they're just plain fun. Here are some;

-mushroo3a = project = microbus
-2ishta = cream = cool
-ya mama = hey mama = sistah
-izzayek = what's up?
-bigad = seriously/really (sarcastic)
-yasalem = no really (sarcastic)
-3owza = 3aiza = want
goma = eraser
mastika = gum
falafel = ta3ameya = falafel
da7e7(a) = nerd/geek
sa7 = right
7umar = ass = donkey
etc.


It's different when an Egyptian girl says it, then it's just low class, but when I, the foreigner, say it, it's cute. I actually make friends by screwing up their language. Yay!

EX:

-3owza terkab mushroo3a ya mama?
-Meshi, 2ishta.

-Sistah, you wanna ride a project?
-Okay, cool.

-Ya baba, inta taweel.
-Yasalem.

-Brotha, you're tall.
-No kidding.

I really like how... unsurprising Egypt has become. How mundane it is for me now. I like that. I feel like if you can make do in Egypt, you can pretty much get along ANYWHERE. I've ridden projects and donkeys and camels, I've eaten liver and sheep brain and "meat" (I don't want to know), I've seen sooo many things. And when they don't surprise me anymore, that's actually kind of nice. When I first came here everything hit me like a brick, the sounds, the smells, the sights, the thousands and thousands of sights.... but now it's just life. I can sleep through the old guys screaming at each other at the sheesha cafe at 3 in the morning. The car collisions which occur at the same time. I am no longer surprised seeing bloody handprints left from 3aied or the sea everyday.

2ishta kida.

K, I'm gonna go buy stuff for the trip tomorrow.

Love you all,
Cera

Musical Chaos

I'm sorry I haven't written in a while, things have been CRAZY.

You see, it's possible that two of my host sister's are engaged. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not sure. Well, one of them definitely is and we have been moving between two flats for the past few weeks because of it, and one of the flats doesn't have internet. Also, school is exhausting and I pretty much pass out after it daily. And friends keep coming up to Alex and I have to show them around. Which is good and fun and leaves no time for computer.

Other than that not much is up really.

After we got back from Siwa school started again, and not long after I went to my first concert in Egypt.

The word that would sum it up? Lame. I sound so negative, but it's true. It was a rock concert, which to me means a tiny room packed with people, 20 degrees hotter than the weather outside, loud, crazy, incredible.

This took place at the Bibliotheca, which mean an auditorium with cushy seats and open minded Egyptian grandmothers. It kind of made me homesick.

The next day I brought a friend over to my house, she was getting ready to leave Egypt and she wanted to learn how to make Egyptian food from my host mother. I now can make Ma7shi, Koshary, and Kibda. Woot!

My friend left, though, which is quite sad, but other than that really not much is up. I guess it's summer here - they're selling t shirts in the shops, summer fruits are in the market, the weather is warm, people are happier... That's good, I suppose.

Next weekend a bunch of exchangers are coming up, which'll be fun, and I hopefully will go to Aswan/Luxor/Sharm el Sheikh with AFS at the end of March. School's okay, I guess, better than EGC. I have friends (I think). It kind of depends on the day.

All in all not much to write about.
Yay!

Lots of love,
Cera

I Speak English

So.

Siwa was, in a word, awesome. I expected it to be a very touristy town, and it is, but not the way that you'd think. I thought there'd be hotels and white people and fancy shops... instead I think it's the same town it was before the tourists, just with more souvenirs. This, however, makes it awesome.

We got on the bus at 10 at night. I couldn't sleep, so until 6 in the morning I was, ahem, partying on the bus. Which meant playing my music while everyone slept. It was a party enough for me. Anyways, when we arrived, it was FREEZING. Siwa is an oasis in the middle of the desert, which means the days are hot and the nights are frigid. We were blue in the face when the hotel transportation picked us up. I'll write about that later. We rode to the hotel with the wind (cold) blowing on us through the windows (which I had my head stuck through, for I was sitting on my friends lap (I was afraid of ankaboot, spiders)), luggage sticking into us. It was a relief to arrive at the hotel, just in time to see the sun rising over the mountains (sort of). It was kind of a bittersweet arrival, though, for our hotel was... not the sort you'd expect.

In a way, it was awesome. While we were tourists there, because of this hotel, the people who worked at it, and the way we spent our time, we were considerably less touristy than most. This place served home cooked Egyptian meals, had a fire every night (but the first, and coldest, one), towed us about Siwa in very local transport, let us hang out with Siwans, etc. In this respect, this place couldn't have been better. But a shower or a mattress or a door that shut might have been nice.

That first night I slept one hour, from 9-10 in the morning. I was... oh so ready for the day. It was absolutely, numbingly cold when we ate breakfast. We had bread, eggs, jam, and cheese (3aish, bayd, muraba, gibna) for breakfast, which... is pretty much what I have every morning. It tasted really good, though. The wind was blowing fiercely, though, and since our rooms weren't any warmer we huddled outside together and had the sort of sleepy, odd conversation you have after sleepy, odd nights.

After a bit, when the weather all of a sudden turned to the sort of summer heat you thrive in, we went to a well to swim in. It was quite nice, until a bunch of guys from the army came and stared at us. We then saw some ruins, ate at a Siwan restaurant, and returned to the hotel. After a bit, we went to the desert for a dance show for the Egyptian tourists. Siwa really encourages inside tourism so this wasn't the sort of place you saw people like, well, us. Tents were set up and men were playing/singing live music, and people were dancing. The dancing about and acting crazy bit was fun, until we figured out that the traditional Siwan dancers were not so nice. We then sat by the fire for a bit, returned to the hotel, and sat by the fire there. I was up until maybe 4 in the morning, but when I went to bed I could barely sleep for shivering, so I went out to the fire for a little while longer.

I realize I'm not making this sound like too much fun, but it really was. So far we'd seen... such a different reality than what we'd experienced in Alex. And while this is set up for tourists, a lot of it is just regular life there. The Egyptians and Siwans I talked to just said, this is Siwa. And it's an incredible place.

The next day I was... super tired. Really, really tired. But that's okay. We took a drive waaaay out, I don't know where we were, to a water factory (we went for the free water, since our hotel didn't have working taps), and then to another well. We headed back to the hotel and sat by the fire. I think it was this night we went to the downtown? There's really not much to do downtown but shop, so we did that. And then we went to a park. And the to the fire again, where I went to bed relatively early (5.)

The third day we went out of the city a bit and resort. Which was nice. And then we went to a park. And ate by a fire. I went to bed at like 5.

The fourth day was, sadly, the last. This was the day we went on the Safari. By now, everyone was tired, smelly, and a little bit sick of each other. We got into big SUVS and headed out. Unfortunately, and of course, I ended up with the cautious driver. We had to make a Mosque stop (it was Friday) so us non-Muslims looked about some caves. This is when the worst thing of the whole trip happened. I had been taking pictures and having fun and whatnot, and all of a sudden... BAM. Camera stops working. It hadn't touched sand, I'd been holding it the whole time... My baby is dead. So I was in a pissy mood when we went into the actual Sahara. Which was amazing. Vast dunes, millions of tons of sand, the sun and the footprints.

They call it the Great Sand Sea, and for good reason, because the dunes, wave like, lead on for miles. When you take a step sand trickles down the sides of dunes like water. But part of me kind of was disappointed. We'd been warned, "Don't wander. If you do you're screwed". Which... wasn't true. I was kind of hoping to see total desert isolation, but really it isn't like that. From the tall dunes you can see dried salt plains, mountains, even the city. It was incredible, but not really the isolated, scary place I'd imagined. Our driver would slowly up and down the dunes while the others flew, but we all ended up making to the salty oasis (which... really isn't much of an oasis if you ask me) of cold water, and the warm oasis. My car had to push our SUV out of the dunes twice, which was surprisingly fun. There is almost nothing cooler than pushing a monster like that out of a sand trap, because the feeling you get when it pushes and finally gives, is incredible. You're surrounded by desert, you know there's no water around for miles, the sun beats down, it's trying to take you.... but you win. Afterwards we parked not far away from the desert to have a traditional Siwan meal - rice and zucchini cooked over the fire with olives and an entire sheep cooked underground.

After this we headed downtown, got on the bus, and left. I slept a bit on the bus but not a lot, so I got to experience the joys of a Marsa Matruh squat toilet, hear about what it's like to hunt in the desert, and freak out English tourists.

Getting home was bittersweet, because once you're there, the trip's over. It was kind of like a last hurrah, for two of the girls who went are community service, and their program ends the 26th. I kind of feel like it's the beginning of the end. They're leaving. Soon enough we are. It's kind of hard, really.

Anyways, other than that, it's back to school. Victoria College is... definitely not what I expected. The classes are pretty much just as crappy as EGC, except they speak more English and the teachers think I'm mentally challenged. They keep asking me if I know what words mean in English. "Troop", "Smuggle", "Essay", Sara, do you know those? Um... thanks.

I actually got into a fight with the teacher today. He's the English teacher. He screws up tenses, grammar, spelling... he has NO idea what he's doing. None. And I pointed something wrong out in class today and EVERYONE took his side. They believe in the teacher without question, for he is the teacher therefore he can do no wrong.

He's a moron and he has it out for me now.

But I'm the one that speaks English.

Other than that, though, I like VC soooo much more. The students are cooler, and the guys leave me alone, because I don't play along with their games. If they pull my hair or call my name repeatedly or do any other crap I just ignore them. I still talk to them and get along with them, I just don't encourage the dumb stuff. The girls are awesome, too, though they don't like me anymore because I questioned the English teacher. Funny, cause they were the ones telling me to talk to him. Oh well.

I suppose I should go. It's a bit late. I love you guys a lot!

Here is random stuff that is up with me so you know that I'm not too different (i.e. I haven't become normal)

-I'm learning to cook Egyptian food thursday!
-I joined last.fm and after looking at the genre "gypsy" I was able to recognize like 1/4 of the names. Which, in a normal person's book, is a 1/4 too many.
-I might go to Sharm El-Sheikh. Maybe.
-I'm gonna see if I can annoy my friends in Cairo by rooming with them in a few weeks.
-I'm going to try to check out the synagogue here to see what's up with the Egyptian Jews
-Tomorrow I'm going to EGC to get grades.... *Shudder*


Yes. So. I'm weird as always. Be comforted.

Someday soon I think I'm gonna write one of those lame entries where I answer general questions about Egypt, like;

Is there electricity?
Yes.

Do normal people ride camels?
A normal person hasn't seen one.

Is there really hash?
Unfortunately, yes. (ESPECIALLY in Siwa. I saw water bottle bongs there. Holy crap. I am a naive girl from Minnesota, I thought they were sheeshas in a bottle. Pretty much all of Siwa laughed at me).

Do people bellydance?
Yes. I believe it's genetic, because EVERYONE can belly dance.

Do you have to wear a veil?
Nope. I go in a t-shirt everywhere and I know enough Arabic now that people don't mess with me. And if they do they don't try it again. ( : I can pretty much convince people that, while I don't look it, somewhere along the line I have Egyptian blood in me, so I know how to tell the difference between crap and non-crap. yay!

K.

I really should go.

Love you guys a lot!!

Cera

Peligrissima

So. Today I go to Siwa! Yay!

Other than that there's really not much to say.

I was gonna write to replay to all of the many emails I've neglected... but then I went out of the flat to get something and the door locked behind me and I was stuck in the stairway for an hour. And now I am (well, should be) packing and then we'll eat lunch and... I dunno. I'm really, really sorry. I love you all lots though!

I recently got a package from my aunt, a lovely letter from another, letters from my dear friends, and two lovely transcripts. Thank you guys all... so much. Love you all.

Other than that, I guess I've not much to say, or at least not the time to say it. I've been on winter break so not much has actually happened. Tonight at 10 the bus leaves for Siwa (Expected arrival? 6. UGH.), and then we're gonna go and swim in a bunch of wells that supposedly cure skin disease. Whoot!

I'm kinda nervous, though, cause yesterday we had a meeting where the volunteers warned us; Siwa is not like you think. I guess it's a VERY conservative community. Yay. They were debating about whether or not we'd be able to wear tshirts. Fun.

K, I love you all lots, write you all in a week (Insha'allah),
Cera