Nicole in Cairo

Golden Coast

2010-08-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Hi all, again it's been a long, long time between updates! I think probably readership has dropped off quite a lot, but the truth is that I'm still going through moving-home adjustment, and post-Cairo interviews, which still feels like part of the process. The good news is, I'm back in California finally for college! It's never looked so beautiful as when I've been gone for over year. I'm a senior now, so it's all going to be work work work for the next several months since I'm doing my thesis in the fall. It's due on my birthday, doesn't that figure?

In more academic news, I'm being asked to present my findings and experiences about AUC at a study abroad committee meeting, and make a recommendation regarding whether my college should pursue an official affiliation or not. I will be saying they should, much to my surprise, but it's not for the reasons one would expect. All of us who went to AUC experienced major problems with the bureaucracy, from things like adding and dropping classes, to getting our tuition checks processed (that one was me), to getting refunds at the proper time. It was frustrating, and terrifying (especially when I got dropped from my classes automatically from "lack of payment" which was simply my check lying around in the NY office), but the magic word for me was when my college called them on my behalf and threw around it's institutional weight. Suddenly everything was resolved, and I could breathe again when my check was finally found and processed and I was re-enrolled in my classes.

The fact of the matter is that I want other students at my college to have a way to do what I did, and I don't want it to be difficult for them, because living in Egypt is challenging enough as it is. I'm hoping if my college is supporting a program through which other students can go to AUC students going to Egypt will have less trouble with the bureaucracy, because the classes and experiences you get in Egypt are completely worth it. I was impressed with the Political Science department over all, and clearly the Arabic department is one of the world front-runners.

I know the blog seems dead now that I'm back in America, but I still would like to share experiences, maybe some guest posts, and articles/interviews my fellow students are writing. Here's one from a girl I met "over there" that I think was quite good and illustrates how life can go in Egypt from stagnation to breakthrough, and (if you stay long enough) back and forth all over the place again: http://networkedblogs.com/7lrbs

PS-Got an interview with Karim Nagi coming up on Gilded Serpent soon, stay tuned!

No Place Like Home & Gaby Shiba

2010-08-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

Here I am, back in Seattle! It's beautiful here, and the weather has been pretty darn nice. A lot of people reading this blog probably know how sick I was my last few months in Cairo, so I'm pleased to report that coming home to the cooler climate seems to have done the trick. I'm feeling much better and happy to be home!

New dance stuff is that I'm working on sort of processing and consolidating everything I learned in Cairo, as well as going over lots and lots of choreography to memorize and rehash. I'll be adding a couple Shaabi pieces to the few choreographies I have on hand, and next week I want to do two melaya pieces. I'll memorize everything sort of as I go this fall, but I wanted to get them marked out. Most of these were choreographed by teachers at Nile Group, but I found myself wanting to build on and adapt their choreographies to my style. This has been really interesting as a project actually, because I have previously been very squeamish about trying to choreograph as well as having some kind of mental block. Building on and changing around someone else's choreography has been a nice midway point since I have a lens for looking at the structures of the music and help me to see things like how verses repeat and where the changes are. I'm having fun making these choreographies into my own, and of course if I use them I'll credit the originators, except where most of it really has been changed in a significant way.

Otherwise. I'm going through music I got ahold of in Cairo and sewing a melaya dress! Pics to come, it looks like the construction may be done by the weekend and then I'll go on to doing the beading either next week or when I return to Oakland.

Next up on the list is a website overhaul, a haircut, and a photoshoot! I have lots of new pretty costumes that need some nice photos online!

Gaby Shiba
I just wanted to talk about another excellent teacher I took private classes with while in Cairo since I'm already writing this blog post. Gaby is originally Lebanese, and is one of Lebanon's most famous debke dancers. Of course he has expanded in his life into doing oriental style, Shaabi, and Egyptian folkloric as well, and now he teaches at Nile Group on a variety of topics (I took debke from him at the June 2009 festival, but he was teaching Khaleegy in 2010 for example). Since his studio was close to me in Maadi, I had the chance to take a series of lessons with him, which was interrupted a couple times by festivals or work. I did manage to go over 5 times though over the course of the month that I prioritized studying with him, and that gave me lots of food for thought. I did buy a couple CDs from him, since he has nice Debke music and I was curious about his theatrical production of Salome which I haven't had time to watch yet.

We covered some Shaabi, Oriental, and Debke. It was nice to have the variety, and Gaby is strong on all of those, however taking Debke with him is particularly special and I found his Shaabi style to be a bit more relatable than his Oriental style, which sometimes was too flamboyant for me. He charges pretty reasonable rates for his classes compared with other big stars in Cairo, and is a kind, patient teacher although he does tend to try excessively to make sure you aren't worrying about if you are making progress quickly or slowly, etc. I just smiled and nodded when he encouraged me to just keep trying and it was no problem if I didn't get it right away, etc. I guess it's his way of soothing students.

Gaby does base most of his teaching based on choreography, but he will do technique corrections which I found to be always useful and delivered fairly clearly (and yes, he will gently physically correct you with his hands when appropriate, which I actually found useful because a lot of stuff can be hard to communicate verbally). The choreographies were for me more of a device to show him in a comfortable framework how I was doing things so that he could give me corrections on technique but also attitude and musicality (especially for debke). I felt much less self-concious following his short choreograhies for each style and like it freed me up to focus on technique within a context, so I didn't mind studying choreography. He did give me a really difficult debke one at first since he's seen me in his workshops before though, but I had fun with it after chewing on some of the combinations a bit.

I would recommend Gaby hands-down if you want debke instruction. He's solid for both Oriental and Shaabi too, but if you can afford to get one of the-big name female, Egyptian dancers it's probably a better bet in some ways since Gaby mostly focuses on group-style choreographies for those styles. He's good if you want someone reasonably priced that you can go to a lot and get consistent corrections to take into workshops with big stars or private lessons. If you drop in, his studio is right across from Sakanat El Maadi Metro station (oh, my old Metro stop, how I miss it.....sort of?) and tell him Nicole said hi!

The Road

2010-07-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

As they say in Lord of the Rings (yes I do like Lord of the Rings!), "the road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began." That's how I feel now, sitting at "home" in Cairo and looking at my last 3 upcoming days and 4 nights here before I fly home. This part of my journey is about to end, but the road will keep going afterwards I have been realizing, this isn't the end of anything, and that I will probably be back to visit sooner than I realize. I've seen the road go down from many doors though by this point, and each time it does feel a bit jarring. I do worry that the dance training I have been working on and the stylistic aspects that I have been grasping due to watching Egyptian dancers may start to slip. I'll try my best not to let that happen, but I worry nevertheless.

It actually hasn't been so hard to say good bye so far (although there are still some very important ones coming up) because I know I will stay in touch with my friends here, and though it won't be the same, things never stay the same anyway. How bored would I be if they were? Our paths will all continue and we'll be able to tell each other about it from afar until we meet again.

I probably will not have much time to update until I arrive in Seattle, so don't look for lengthly posts until probably the 22nd. Yes, I do intend to continue this blog because I have a lot to recap and talk about still that I would enjoy to share with anyone who is interested. I'd also like to take some time to edit the blog and redo the tags and things so it will remain as a good resource for other students of dance or academia. Though I won't still physically be in Cairo, I feel like I'll be taking just a little pinch with me to talk about!

Madame Freiz, Shareen El Safy, Karim Nagi, and Randa Kamel... (part 2)

2010-07-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

So with now 10 days and counting left in Caro, here's my experiences with Karim Nagi and Randa Kamel:

Karim Nagi:
I've run into Karim a couple times before around the globe in the past couple of years, the last time in San Francisco. He's getting a lot of good work and publicity lately, and thus traveling tons to teach and perform so we never have spent much time face-to-face as he's a super busy guy. I bugged him to let me know when he would be in Cairo so we could hang out or do a low-key "lesson" and he indeed rolled in during Ahlan Wa Sahlan time to teach at the festival. I caught his excellent performance during the teachers' show too, of which Hallah said, "He's crazy! But I highly recommend his kind of crazy." Finally, I did manage to snag him for a half day of casual shop-talk and hanging out last week!

While waiting for his arrival, I found myself thinking back to Ozma of Japan's experiences she wrote about on her own blog and which you can (and should, because she goes in to much more detail than I will) read here:

Entries from 2008: 1, 2
Entries from 2009: 1, 2

Her experience as described is spot-on in her assessment of Karim's skill as a teacher and his excellent understanding of the relationship between music and dance which he is quite eloquent about. I completely relate to her talking about "teacher smitteness!" I think Ozma illustrated that in her writing much better than I can in my frantic pre-leaving state right now. The man is smart, articulate, and has a lot to offer dancers. I came out of our "hanging out"/"lesson" session full of food for thought and lots of notes.

We started off just talking about the community, Egypt, and the festivals for awhile. He asked me what I'd like to work on and I mentioned that I had danced to Lissa Fakker the previous week at Nile Group and been unsatisfied with it. I also explained that, having gone to the teacher's night at Ahlan Wa Sahlan and seen lots of good-but-not-amazing, and a few real star dancers, I was wondering what really made a real star dancer stand out from the pack. All the teachers at AWS were good, many were definitely considered "masters" in their home country, but only a couple really stood out to me. He said it came down to musical interpretation and charisma so, remembering Ozma's blog posts, I asked him to speak to me a bit about interpreting Oum Kulthoum and if we could use Lissa Fakker as an example.

I won't go into a huge amount of detail, because I do think people should give their time and money to study with him, but suffice to say it was illuminating. I came out of the experience with lots of new ways to look at music and many levels to draw from in my dancing from the octaves, tempo, maqam, emotional intensity, and so forth. It was a bit freeing after sitting through a week of Nile Group evening parties beset by people showing very similar interpretations of popular classic songs. There are some standard ways of interpreting classic songs that become quite stale and may not actually be executed according to what the music is telling the dancer to do.

I also came out of the experience with an even greater appreciation of the classic music like Oum Kulthoum. I've always preferred music my Egyptian friends seem to think of as "old fashioned," but the fact of the matter is that there is a lot more dynamics, sophistication, and subtlety going on than with pop music. It's been difficult for me to put my finger on why Oum Kulthoum is intriguing to me, but I always felt that there was a lot more depth and richness there. What I realized through Karim's explanations is that the music is cleverly crafted so that the words, mood, maqam, tempo, etc. do tell a story and work to support eachother to build up into that story. Great stuff, and invaluable to understand from a dance point of view.

I just wish we had both had enough free time to meet again before he left town, and we were intending to so, so I could interview him for Gilded Serpent, but we both went to Alexandria back-to-back and his time ran out before he had to run off to Rome. The poor, poor guy! Therefore, the interview will be coming out later, probably next month, and I will have to wait to really wrack his brains about other subjects I wanted to go over with him from folkloric dance to drum solo technique. So much knowledge to be shared, so little time! He's excellent though and I would highly recommend him for workshops or privates!

Check out one of his latest pieces which I like to think of as Mozart reimagined and to use his term, "arabized." Normally, I don't much care for fusion, but this was pulled off intelligently to produce something fresh, catchy, and different so I enjoyed it.

Randa Kamel:
Well I hate to carry on with the gushing over various teachers, but apparently I have to continue with Randa!
Here's a clip of her from Nile Maxim, when Shareen and I came to see her last month. I've seen her twice on the Maxim before but this time I felt she was particularly on this night and I liked the costumes a lot more than before.

After that, Shareen and I popped down to her dressing-room to say hi and get her card. She was cute, grinning while, hanging out and having a snack in-between the early and late sailing while re-curling her bangs using a round brush. As a side note, I happened to notice her fabulous nails--quite long, squared-off with big holographic glitter over lavender polish. Talk about bling! We talked a bit, me mostly smiling and nodding since Shareen was the one who actually knows Randa, but I managed to blurt out a request for a lesson on our way out the door which was rewarded with a big smile and, "of course, Habibi! Just call me!"

That was how, the following week, Shareen and I found ourselves trekking out to her villa near the pyramids (she has a school on Faisal street but wanted us to visit her at home) for some more shop talk and a short lesson. We spent most of the time discussing community politics and why she hadn't ended up teaching at Ahlan Wa Sahlan this year and so forth. Eventually we retired to her small home dance studio to do a swift half hour lesson, which actually proved to be enough for two me and Shareen who were still exhausted from Nile Group.

Randa gave us basically the introduction to a choreography set to a popular current pop music tune. It's not a song I particularly like, actually, so I was wondering how she was going to make it special, because whenever I see Randa dance she really brings something extra. This was no exception, as she took a song I barely liked and showed us a choreography that made it interesting.

I was particularly struck by the way she uses her arms, which was totally foreign for me. Shareen was joking that for Randa the arms are almost as important as the hips, which I agree with. She uses very unusual postures, and for the choreography she always made sure we knew which arm movements she wanted. It was difficult for me since I usually go for fairly casual, relaxed (but with proper technique) arm styling with occasional dynamic accents. I felt like I came out of the experience though thinking of my arm usage as LAZY. Randa's usage of her arms and her dynamic arm movements really make her look professional, polished, and like her entire body is engaged with the music, which I love. She just looks so alive and her movements are clearly very practiced and crisp. I remember her mentioning she spends hours a day in the dance studio working, and it definitely shows.

It was something to see and I love being pushed out of my comfort zone in dance when I feel the teacher has something relevant to share. In this case I think it was particularly necessary as I realized an important area I need to focus on. Of course now I'm seeking her out for a few more lessons before I leave!

Madame Freiz, Shareen El Safy, Karim Nagi, and Randa Kamel... (part 1)

2010-07-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

...an excellent combination for the week! I decided to really pile it on during and now post-Nile Group. I'm down to about two and a half weeks now, so I'm going to go hard with the dance lessons until I head out!

Shareen El Safy
I met Shareen at Nile Group through Hallah Moustafa, who studied with her back in California in the day. It was interesting, because she's told me about Shareen and I've been studying Shareen's technique through Hallah in a way. I was glad to meet the lady herself finally, and we spent a lot of time together during Nile Group chatting, hanging out, and me helping to decipher her new cell phone.

I took a private lesson with her during the insane Nile Group week up in her spacious hotel room to try it out and see if I wanted to try and catch more classes with her when we're both back in California, since she's down in Santa Barbara. It was a really interesting lesson, and I would definitely recommend her to anyone interested in getting at the heart of real Egyptian dance. She talks about the body in a way that is pretty unique, and again was something that reminded me of Alexander Technique with her descriptions of directing the energy in one's body and the energetic relationship between the different parts of the anatomy.

Shareen's technique involves a differentiation between skeletal movements and muscle movements, but not in the so literal way of the Suhaila butt-shimmy. What she's talking about is not just dancing by moving the bones into the right form, but having the muscles active and supporting the movement on a different level. This has, in my case, a lot to do with moving with "purpose" instead of just going through the skeletal motions. I enjoyed her discussion also of different ways of using the muscles in something as simple as walking on to the stage.

One other thing that Shareen talked to me about concerning movements is the preparation that comes before the movement itself. She was saying Egyptian dancers actually do the preparation and then the step, and they may show it clearly or not depending on the styling. It's a deliberate thing, that that sort of fed into what Farida Fahmy was speaking about in her workshop of how Egyptian dancers keep a "flow" in their dancing instead of moving in chopped up steps. It's a whole series of movement, not just individual movements, and I think the preparation plus the movement means there is more continuity. The other purpose it seems to serve is when you have a real belly dance drummer watching your every move in order to play the accents with the dancer. They then have the preparation and the movement itself to watch, which gives them more information about how the dancer is moving and how they will accent the rhythm. Interesting stuff...I will definitely be trying to corner Shareen for some private lessons back in California.

I did take her workshop as well at Nile Group which was a great choreography to Alf Leila, and I liked her enough to buy her DVD which I usually never, ever do! Will be writing about the workshop in my Nile Group report for Gilded Serpent!

Freiz
Everyone who goes to Nile Group Festival knows who Freiz is. She, Abou Shebika, and Aida Nour run the whole deal, but Freiz is kind of the big mama, the older, semi-retired dancer, the one who sits through all the shows every night until 5am cheering everyone on. I always liked Freiz, she seemed like a no BS, real down-home, Baladi girl with a big attitude but piles of sweetness. I decided it was about time to catch a lesson with her, so I did a a couple this week.

I arrived at her place in Mohandiseen right on time for my first lesson, and the place was luckily easy to find. I was ushered into her huge flat by her very quiet son, and the lady herself soon came out to kiss my cheeks, offer me a drink (I was swiftly cornered and told to drink tea so it wasn't exactly an 'offer' as one might think), and chit chat a bit in her limited English and my limited Arabic about the festivals and if was going to "Raqia's festival" Ahlan wa Sahlan. We got along and Freiz seemed to find me amusing to chat with, so we got down to business a bit later after establishing that I wanted to study anything she cared to work on and she smiled, saying we were going to do Shaabi at her suggestion.

We then dove straight into a Shaabi choreography loaded down with quick changes and combinations of moves! Luckily, I was familiar with most of the moves as she assumed, and was able to hold my own. After awhile though my brain began to implode with the sheer amount of choreography I was learning in a short amount of time. The breaks to swig some tea came more frequently with Freiz saying, "no, tea, tea!" if she thought I didn't seem ready to practice more. I was impressed at how much she gave me her full attention though and danced alongside me to show the moves, considering she's not exactly young and a lot of the grand Egyptian dancer figures like her have a reputation for not engaging physically in the private lesson as much as one would hope. Not Freiz, she was there beside me, watching me like a hawk or dancing right next to me holding my hand to emphasize her movements the entire time.

I really enjoyed the choreography as it was quick and clever, but with a very clear sort of chorus combination to bring it home that was solid and spunky. Freiz didn't do a lot of technique instruction for me, but I think that was partially due to the language difficulty. Luckily from training with the AUC folkloric group I know some dance terminology in Arabic, so I understood when she asked things like, "btlefi izzay??" She did show me some ways to make the moves more Shaabi, after shaking her head at me for being, "too oriental" a few times and shaking her finger at my foot pointing. That was helpful to see and encouraged me to get a taste of the Shaabi flavor from a real Egyptian, which I think will prove invaluable. If anyone plans on taking lessons with her, don't let her stern facial expressions fool you, she's actually pretty sweet.

To sum up, Freiz is excellent for choreography, and actually I made up my mind to take classes with her because she did several of the choreographies I saw in the opening and closing shows at Nile Group. I remember chatting with her daughter, saying that I found Camelia's shamadan segment of her show to be the best, when Su laughed and said, "well, actually my mother did that one!" She's got a great ear for the structure of the music and putting together clever combinations which I like, and if you have a pretty good eye you can pick up some of her Shaabi styling. Not only that, but because she choreographs for some big names, she is one of the sources of contemporary trends on the Cairo dance scene so it's important to go right to the source to see what's new in moves, styling, and music choices.

To other English-speaking dancers, be a bit warned that her English isn't fantastic, which led to some confusion at times, but she does make herself understood if she wants to. Su, her oldest daughter, translates at the lessons if you have one at a time she's awake and not at university, and her English is excellent. Her lessons are at her flat in Mohandiseen which is fairly easy to find on a major street, and she treats guests with Eygptian hospitality of course. She expects you to take tea or coffee and it's a bit rude to refuse, and she'll make sure you have biscuits or fruit after the lesson, saying, "eat, eat!" until she feels you're sufficiently stuffed of snacks and dance.

Still to come, a meeting with Karim Nagi and some great music discussion, and a lesson with Randa Kamel!

Hallah Article on Gilded Serpent

2010-06-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I took many private lessons so I have a big, two-parter blog post coming up about the fabulous experiences I had with various teachers, and my ruminations on dance sparked by studying with them. However, it's a long post so it will be a few more days, plus I am going to the beach for a few days to unwind so I'm hoping it will be up early next week!

I'm off to Alexandria tomorrow, but to tide you over, here is the link to my article on Gilded Serpent about working with Hallah Moustafa!

AUC Pics, Part 3

2010-06-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

Return to Nile Group

2010-06-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

I attended Nile Group Festival in full again this week, opening, closing, weeknight parties, workshops and all. I will be writing a review of the event and everything on Gilded Serpent soon--it was a big week so it may take a little time! Great festival though, I love the teachers and the atmosphere of all the organizers, teachers, and their students being a big family. Wonderful stuff!

I'd like to share with you one experience I won't include in my recap for Gilded Serpent, because this is an especially vulnerable experience I had, but I want to share it here on the blog. It was very interesting to be sure.

I danced in the second dance party on Saturday night, which I've been semi-frantically trying to practice for the last couple of weeks. In a way it was supposed to be a sort of culmination of the technique I've been studying with Hallah for the last months, so I was hoping to pull everything together and do a great show for the five minutes I would be granted in between masses of other girls and their friends taping them. The open dance evenings are always set up so the girls with the CDs dance first and then the band, which usually ends up playing on into the not-so-early hours of the morning, so I was prepared to be up quite late.

After ranks of girls from around the world showcasing their hottest moves and costumes, I was beginning to get a bit hungry after the band finished setting up by about 1:30am. By 2:00 I went to change and found out the order of the dancers had been changed around and so we were all getting on the list again, first-come-first-serve. I waited around in costume, slowly crumpling with hunger and tiredness, as some people wimped out as time rolled on from 3:00 to 3:30, and those of us who were still to dance kept on our game faces and shimmied around to warm up.

It was around 4:00 when they called my name, and I waited through the first opening bars of Lissa Fakir. I tried to let myself fill up with energy to that special, tingly, brimming, performance-ready place before I slowly walked out and up on to the stage.

The stage lights combined with those from the video camera guys were blinding, which always seems to make me instinctively look down, but I did my best to not bow to the assault on my tired eyeballs and keep my head up and smiling as I began to move. It felt difficult, draggy, and something was not quite clicking. I couldn't get the reverberation in my locks that I had practiced over and over at home, and my floor patterns felt repetitive and uncreative. I did things I hadn't rehearsed, and left out moves I had really wanted to use. I felt small out there alone with the wooden stage reflecting the lights back at me so I could barely see Madame Friez and Abu Shebika smiling at me like they so graciously do at everyone, all night. In my loneliness I knew my posture was collapsing, I was breaking my back posture in a habit I've tried for years to get rid of it. I tried to bring my arms up, keep the light, airy feeling of the song, but I honestly can't remember whether I succeeded or not.

I looked at the band, hoping for some anchor, some encouragement, some feeling. I always try to "feel" the music as my inspiration and listen to what it says, but in this case I couldn't connect. I imagined, from seeing many other dancers in Egypt and their bands, that dancing with a real Egyptian band would feel powerful and uplifting and encouraging, almost like riding an avalanche with that amount of power behind you. Instead, we politely smiled at each other and I felt nothing but polite indifference and fatigue from playing for hours on end. Even though there were smiles, there was no connection, and I couldn't grab on to any performance personality of substance, besides kind of classically pretty and emotive.

I did not impress any one, and most definitely not myself. Suddenly it was over, and they were not playing me a drum solo, like they do for the best dancers, but simply playing me off.

I went and grabbed my camera from my friend, feeling horrified and let down about my performance, and brushed off the compliments people kindly offered. I knew I was capable of better dancing, I had rehearsed several times and done good work back at home and at Hallah's studio. I didn't understand what had went wrong, and felt helpless and discouraged. I changed and plopped down in the dressing room to ponder on a forgiving sofa.

I realized I was starving. It was after 4 am. I looked around at other dancers when I crept back into the hall, tired and haggard-looking but hanging in there for their chance at a dance with the band. We were all just doing our best, everyone wanted everyone else to do well, and it WAS hard to stay up that late and dance well on an empty stomach. I wanted to be hard on myself, and I think I was, but I ended up forgiving myeslf a little bit for not giving the most riveting performance. Let's be honest, I haven't been on stage actually since I came to Egypt a year ago, so I am unsurprisingly rusty outside of rehearsal.

I watched the video later, and I found my dancing to be not great, but decent and passable. Maybe that's enough for me for now, but I am still disappointed. However, it was humbling to be reminded that I'm not the hot shot yet, I'm a student and I'm supposed to be here to soak up all the learning I can. We're all on a dance journey, and right now I'm in a particular place where I can't dance on stage at the level I want, so I will keep working. Intellectually everything is there, which is at least a step. It's in my private rehearsals too, so that's another step. I understand how I want to be dancing, and my body is starting to absorb my new learning (its been a whole week of new learning!) but it hasn't become second-nature yet to the point where I can get up on stage that tired and hungry and just do it. This is the goal I think, accustom and teach the body a new way of doing things, so that no matter how crazy the circumstances it can move beautifully and naturally with the technique I've been working on.

The main thing I need is self-confidence, which has been a slippery subject for me. While Cairo has toughened me up in some ways, it's also made me realize how young I am, that 20 actually isn't that old really. Amusingly, the memory flashed up after my performance of how a close friend in his 30s did call me a fetus awhile back just before I left for Egypt. I still have a lot more living to go through though for sure, and a lot more experiences to have, so I don't get to magically jump the line and have tons of self-confidence and assurance about the world because I am still exploring who I am as a person and a dancer. That's fine, I've been trying to embrace that and half self-confidence while in motion on my exploration of myself, which is definitely a work in progress.

Well, Nile Group is over, and that was probably the most personally intense part of it, but the journey continues. After the show I rode home across town in a taxi with some Oum Kalthoum music playing. The sky began to lighten gradually over the bright, neon lights of Cairo, which pierce the darkness until all the club-goers are ready to have a smoke and head home. I sipped on some tea the driver offered me and tried to just relax and enjoy where I am, because what else is there to do when you find yourself in Cairo?

AUC Pics, Part 2

2010-06-09T01:42:00.000-07:00

Cultural Moment of the Week

2010-06-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

We have new sewing people at work now, specifically two young ladies in their 20s who are lovely and giggly but are learning quickly and doing good work. This week I found myself catching a microbus home with them a couple days in a row instead of staying to do my usual lesson with my teacher right after work. It's always pretty funny catching the microbus anyway, because the drivers can be pretty silly and its just an over all rather sloppy affair with the running and jumping on to the thing, trying to figure out where one is going, fighting over who will pay for the rest of us, etc. In this case though, between the two girls (who barely speak any English) and our main bilingual assistant is was a complete giggle-fest. At some point the point was raised that I studied Japanese back in the day for a few years and thus the interrogation in Arabic began about what "izzayak" (how are you?) is in Japanese, how you say "Sabah il Kheir" in Japanese, etc.

It was a total crack-up to be sitting on a microbus, bouncing and bumbling along, listening to overloud Egyptian music, while trying to translate Arabic into English into Japanese. Seeing the girls smiling and saying, "ohaiyogozaimasu" over and over again to try and get it perfect was pretty great though! Tomorrow I think I'll tell them that "yalla" is "ikimashou" in Japanese to impress them.

AUC Pics, Part 1

2010-06-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

In no particular order, which suits AUC style anyway. More to come later!

Summertime

2010-06-01T15:47:00.001-07:00

...is still busy! And very hot!

I survived finals again, and this was actually one of the easier rounds of them, all things considered. Not that the material wasn't as hard, but the process was just somehow a lot less complicated than last semester. Most of my stuff was papers that were due the last day, so I wrapped all that up and then had one sit in before being done done done! I popped over to AUC to take lots of pictures for you all, but the weather was all gross and sandstormy so they look a bit nasty, but that's definitely not normally how it is. Will post separately a bit later!

Now I'm working full time doing costuming, which is including a bit of book-keeping, a bit of design, a bit of web design, and sales kind of. Hallah and I will be at the Nile Group festival in June vending, and yours truly will finally set foot on a stage for the first time in ages and ages. Now that I'm done with the semester I'm sliding back into a lovely "dance-all-the-time-more-more-more" schedule that I like to do. Last summer I was in Egypt being a lazy butt, but the summer before that I spent the whole thing tango dancing all night, all the time and dancing away the days which was awesome. Right now I'm trying to train hard and get back on the horse after the semester so I can be on stage later this month and not look like crap!

A trip to the beach is certainly in order soon, but probably not until after the festival, so for about three weeks. After that, I intend to take a nice long weekend and go out to Dahab.

Harassment

This week has been full of drama on various scales, and so today I was pretty annoyed when walking from my house to Gaby Shiba's nearby dance studio to book him for a private lesson. One poor young fellow picked the wrong day to follow a cute, little, unassuming foreign girl when I whipped around in response to his, "let me get to know you!" and let loose with a bilingual tounge-lashing of epic proportions.

I think he nearly peed himself while backing away, and I stormed off still cursing amid his "no, you don't get me!" half-hearted calls.

This is a saddenly common experience for pretty much every female in Cairo, although I think us foreigners get it a bit more because we seem more vulnerable or exotic or something. Every woman at the very least gets stared at, whether she is veiled or not. Most of us get comments that are in passing and easily ignored or responded to with a cold, no-nonsense glare. A lot of foreign women have said they've been followed, but nothing more aggressive. Some people have actually been touched, grabbed, pinched, or just generally abused. While the presidents wife may claim there is no problem of sexual harassment in Egypt, everyone knows that's a lie. On the one hand, it seems unlikely people will follow through violently on the harassment, but it still happens and makes simply walking down the street hard for a lot of women here.

The only good part about it is that the harassers tend to be pretty cowardly, so usually a strong, confident-looking woman is not targeted as much, and when women do get harassed, verbal confrontation usually scares the guy off. At least if it's a one on one interaction, but what worries every girl here is if they happen to get caught by a group of guys that won't back down. The problem is at a larger level of societal accepting and teaching of this kind of thing, to the extent that even little boys who don't understand sexuality know there is something funny or naughty about running after a grown woman and trying to grab her butt. The issue is being addressed by some women and men in Egypt and some organizations, but its hardly an extinct phenonminon. I heard recently about a girl from AUC who got a big group of women together and took to the street to harass the men, which sounded simply hilarious. Apparently some guys got totally confused, some were angry, some ignored them, and some even tried to talk them out of doing it.

I've read a couple interesting things on the subject from how to react verbally or physically, to how to dress, and the reasons behind why harassment happens. There's a few theories on the latter subject, such as the rising percentage of young people in the population (youth bulge), leading to less jobs, more economic frustration, and more young men unemployed and hanging around looking to prove their power over something. A related theory is that because marriage is so expensive, and people here must be married to be granted by society permission to be sexual beings, there is a waithood that happens before young people can be married and thus out of frustration men prey on women on the streets because it is the only way they can express themselves sexually. There's lots of ideas out there, which could help to unravel the problem, but most people are concerned with the day-to-day of getting around without being bothered.

It's simple to tell foreigners we should simply dress more conservatively, but what's the point when even women wearing hijab are not off-limits to this kind of thing? People told me to wear a scarf on my head when I came, that I would get treated with more respect, but there is nothing that screams, "I'm desperately trying to fit in but I'm so foreign!" as much as a head scarf that doesn't fit the fashion and style of everyone else's. That tactic only works in really touristy areas where you are then simply showing you are more respectful than other tourists. It's either wear hijab and wear it properly, or don't in most of Cairo. I remember in the AUC newspaper this semester a very small story of harassment of various girls from the community, veiled or not, in one area of town or another. I also remember in New Cairo driving back and forth on the AUC bus and closing the curtains of the bus when we passed a truck with 20 or so construction workers piled in the back, because they would scream and blow kisses and yell when they caught sight of a female face going by.

I don't know what to make of it for you readers, besides trying to get by on a harassment-free level on a day to day basis. The easiest way is to simply avoid the street--don't walk around more than necessary, take taxis, take the women's car in the Metro, but that seems like an unfair fix, doesn't it? On a last note I did read an article recently though that the women's car on the Metro is both a good and bad thing, in that it provides women a safe space from harassment, but also that it reinforces the need for them to be separated from men to ensure men's behavior. It reinforces the behavior, by making a women on the mixed car seem "out of place" and asking for attention, which in turn leads to strange power and gender relations.

Before I foray off into gender theory I had better stop, but if there is more anyone wants to know about harassment here don't hesitate to comment and ask. Stay tuned for AUC photos!

Finals!

2010-05-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

Another long silence again on the blog here I see. Finals are approaching and I've been caught in a deluge of papers and podcasts (the latter for Arabic class) in between being really ill. Earlier this week I got a nasty case of food poisoning AND we had a hot weather snap so I was puking my guts out in 100+ degree weather. Ok, yes I'm being a bit of a drama queen, but it sucked and it actually was that hot!

Now I seem to have recovered for the most part and am buckling down to do my finals, so bear with me in my distraction, and possibly read my entry from last semester about surviving finals: Ho, Ho, Ho Habbi. Yes I know, but it was December at the time and going home for Christmas was on my mind!

My last round of sickness was both the sickest I've been in years and definitely the most in Cairo, which has killed some of the novelty factor for me over here. I have never been so sick so often in my life as my time in Cairo, which sucks but the place is rough on the body. Or at least for us pink, squishy things that grew up in the mild and lovely Seattle! It's always been the case that I've been afraid to leave Egypt, as though if I blinked the memories might be erased in an instant. There is some truth in that the memories will fade with time and lack that certain emotional depth they once carried and felt so important at the time, but that's simply life and I'm starting to be able to look on the rather bright side of coming home. I wasn't anticipating a new level of adjustment a year into living here, but perhaps this is just the first phase of the adjust back to life in America.

What's starting to kill things for me in particular as well is the weather. I was raised in a MILD climate, people. I cannot take 100 degree weather all the time in any form except lying down in an air-conditioned box. Someone needs to tell this to the Egyptian summer weather! Winter is perfect, I haven't got a problem with it and being covered up isn't a big deal or uncomfortable during the winter, so dealing with social norms about dressing is never stressful. My only condolance is that on July 28 I will be flying back to lovely, mild Seattle for awhile to visit my parents before going back to California, because here in Cairo it will just be getting hotter and hotter.

Otherwise, life is going on as usual! I have an article coming out in Gilded Serpent soon about a teacher and friend here, Hallah Moustafa so stay tuned.

Egypt Fashion

2010-05-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

A question I got asked quite a bit when I came home to the US this past winter was, "what do you wear in Egypt?" which is a completely different question from "what do people wear in Egypt?" but hints at that. I think it's time to answer both on the blog, so that people get to know something they're curious about, and people thinking to travel here get a better idea of how to blend in and dress appropriately.

On the Street in Cairo
-Locals:

Men: Doormen, some laborers, some small shop-owners will wear a garment like a long robe or shirt called a galabeya which falls to the feet with whatever shoes. Most Cairo guys on the street wear jeans (of the semi-not-total-ball-crushing variety) and a T-shirt or casual collared work shirt in either long or short sleeves or a full-on suit if going to work. Young men usually stick to jeans and a T-shirt with sneakers almost unanimously. If they're real local they LOVE their fake designer-wear. If you're wearing a suit you better have some pointy-ish black leather shoes with either squared off or truly pointy toes. Extra local points if they're dusty and turn up at the tips from a rigorous life. Shibshib is what we call the Egyptian version of flipflops and they are considered very casual wear, mainly worn around the house, so not many men wear these outside and barely any women except in the poorer areas as it's a bit like going out in your sweatpants in the US. Because of that you can sometimes see people going around in shibshib, but not if they're going much farther than down the street to the store.

Women *: Here there is a huge mix, which you can see if you ride the women's car on the Metro. Many young women wear hijab here, but they also dress in often very colorful, tight clothing. The tightness seems immodest, so I don't exactly understand it except as a way to somehow make the clothes fit in with "modern" western clothing more. Matching is very popular, down to the accessories, no matter what esoteric hue they might be, so you can often see young hijabii girls rocking an outfit in 2-3 colors around town in a very fashionable way to them, which I as a Westerner could never pull off. Colors are matched from the (often layered) headscarves, to bangles, to footwear. Long, A-line or trumpet skirts are popular here (but not to the exclusion of pants which are usually skinny jeans on the younger girls), including in denim, which I thought was cute enough to buy a couple. Older women usually will wear simple long pants or skirts and blouses or long casual dresses like the male galabeyas, but a bit more form-fitting. Oddly enough it's my impression that is a generation of older women present in Cairo that don't veil possibly because of the events during their lives when the veil was considered "backward" or restraining. Few women wear complete veils, but maybe 3/4ths cover their hear. During the winter many girls were wearing skirts at the knee with tights or pants under tucked into cute ankle or knee boots.

*Please note: The veiling issue is very complicated and women on an individual basis have many different opinions and feelings about their personal choices regarding to be veiled or not. There are many works of scholarship out there about what veiling means or doesn't mean, but I think the most important point is to try and understand what veiling means to the individual and react to it on an individual basis, not on the penalty of assigning group homogeneity. There's my two cents! Lots of info out there for people to check out!

-Foreigners:
Women: Women are pretty safe in most major areas wearing long jeans, pants, or a skirt which falls beneath the knees; and any shirt that has at least short-sleeves. Sleeveless is a no-go, or at least throw a scarf or shrug on over your shoulders. Anything that shows much cleavage is probably best left at home or to other areas to be discussing following this section. No short shorts. Ever. Sensible footwear is good as the streets can go back and forth from sidewalks to none, to an inch of sand, to rubble, to puddles. However, Cairo is a major city, so impractical, flashy footwear and short heels will make you blend in more.

I typically wear: I have a certain way of dressing that I consider a baseline of modesty to go on when in Cairo or traveling in Egypt in general. It's important to wear long pants or skirts, and keep your arms partially covered, so I usually wear jeans and a T-shirt with a 3/4 sleeve shrug over, cute ballet flats for around town, or short wooden heels if I'm going to school or getting around on my own. If someone is driving me, I will wear heels if I know for sure we won't be walking far or taking the subway.

Men: Foreign guys pretty much wear what Egyptian men wear, with the exception that shorts are probably best left at home if you want to blend in at all, and the foreigners are usually the ones wearing more baseball caps than Egyptian guys because the latter don't like to mess up their carefully gelled hair-dos.

Nightlife and Clubbing in Cairo
There is no distinction between foreigner/local wear at clubs in Cairo, because the kind of Cairenes who go out to clubs are usually pretty westernized, international, and not conservative. I think most of my Cairo friends are conservative enough to not go clubbing, or they keep it to mainly dance-themed things like Salsa nights which are a bit more fun and innocent in a way than a hip-hop club or a belly dance cabaret.

Women: Hiiiigh heels, skinny jeans, mini-skirts, skanky earthquake-inducing tops--pretty much the same as the US. You will probably never see a Hijab while out clubbing, or if you do the girl wearing it is probably not going to be flouncing around like she owns the place as the truly outrageous Cairo girls do. I have seen Hijabii women out salsa dancing though, but not much in hip hop clubs or some of the racier venues. Egyptian ladies certainly like to dress it up, and then some though. And hey, why not? Egyptian girls are gorgeous! Us foreigners just drag out one of the two clubbing tops we brought "on the off chance I would be on the Red Sea or something.." and jeans. The key to getting in and out without being ogled to death on the street? Shrugs, scarves, jackets, getting rides from a friend or jumping into a taxi promptly after exiting any building, and large purses in which to stash a change of clothes to switch into in the bathroom!

Guys: Um...not much new here, jeans and T-shirts. Big watches.

Weddings in Cairo:
Guys: Suits, many suits. I've seen shiny platinum-colored ones, but most are basic black or navy with a tie that goes with it nicely.

Ladies: Huuuge variety here. Weddings are a bit of a chance for people to let their hair down as they're just around family and friends usually, which shows in women's outfits. You can see sleeveless and strapless dresses here on non-hijabii women from the mid-thigh to full-length ballgowns. It's always good to bring a scarf or shrug though in case you get a bit self-conscious and for walking to/from the car. The hijabii ladies just throw on a mesh long-sleeved turtleneck undershirt and are good to go! The bride will usually wear the hugest cupcake dress she can manage while still being able to actually dance, with a slightly-less-huge veil. It's adorable in a "awww, I fantasized about that as a little girl!" way. Usually the sisters of the couple will be in full-on gowns hovering around offering tissues and carrying stuff for the bride, while the mothers of the couple stalk around in pant suits beaming and joking for some reason. I don't get the pantsuits, not the beaming and joking of course.

At AUC:
Boys (there are no men at AUC except professors): The foreign guys obviously wear whatever they would wear at their home college. Egyptian guys like their designer shades, their brightly-colored T-shirts over carefully worked abs and biceps of a size that makes them walk around with their arms always slightly bent, designer jeans, designer sneakers. Huge, expensive, imported watches. They can afford it because this is the most expensive college in Egypt. Even the more modest guys are usually a bit better dressed than in the US, sticking to smart short-sleeve, button-down shirts and designer glasses. There is definitely a uniquely AUC fashion trend that's hard to put your finger on until you come here. Oh, also Egyptian guys wouldn't be caught dead carrying more than one single notebook at a time, if that.

Girls: Again, the foreigner girls wear whatever they would at their home college. The Egyptian girls at AUC are usually decked out in a way that makes foreign male tongues wag and foreign females roll their eyes. There is a specific co-ed group called the "Guccis" that everyone refers to as the absolute consumer-whoreist group of students at AUC and who are the butt of every joke, but besides them the girls in AUC generally make me wish I: a) had Egyptian genes, b) a lot of money, c) could actually justify buying skinny jeans, d) had more time in the morning to look like something other than a colossal wreck e) a driver so I could wear whatever I wanted without worrying about the gauntlet of the open street. Skinny jeans are prevalent. Everyone carries large purses instead of backpacks. They can afford to get their hair "did" regularly and stuff waxed and plucked to perfection. They look fabulous, and that sucks because Egypt hates my skin and my body generally.

On the Red Sea:
The Red Sea is home to many major tourist towns, and I think they've pretty much seen it all. Women can wear bikinis on the beach or in the club (which is also on the beach), or a mini-skirt, or tank-top. No one cares enough to give you crap or really say much about it, although expect the Egyptian males around to give you "a look" in a certain way at times. Again, guys pretty much wear...yep, jeans and a T-shirt or a T-shirt and swim trunks on the beach or even in the club.

Alexandria:
I wouldn't say Alexandria is much more conservative than Cairo per-say, but I haven't spent much time there. There are certain beaches you can wear bikinis, but beware strong surf causing boob-escapage (seriously, been there). When in doubt, throw on a long T-shirt over your suit and you're good to go! I'm not even going to mention guys this time, too boring. Otherwise I would say just do as you do in Cairo, although somehow I got away with wearing a tank-top one night, but I was accompanied by an Egyptian guy friend.

Up the Nile: Day 8 (Abu Simbel)

2010-04-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

This was the grand finale of my trip: The temples of Abu Simbel, on the edge of Lake Nasser, at sunrise. We were the only ones there, but sadly you can't take pictures inside of the most beautiful paintings yet on my trip. Walking alone through these temples gave me shivers!

Up the Nile: Day 7 (Aswan to Abu Simbel)

2010-04-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

Here's pictures of the drive over the old dam, looking out over the rocky first cataract, and then through the desert to Abu Simbel. I stayed at the Nubian Culture House there, which was basically a lovely Nubian-style B&B with good food, music, decor, and scenery. We caught the sound and light show at the temples, which I hear is pretty much the only worthwhile one on the Nile Valley trek, and which I did enjoy a lot. I slid into my mosquito-netted bed to catch a few hours sleep before the last day of my vacation...

Dance, dance, more dance....Ilhamdulillah

2010-04-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Just as I was getting set to put up the last photos of my vacation, here we go again--internet outtage! This time, however it was the neighbors who hadn't paid their bill, not us (as we've been being moochers) so there wasn't much my room mate and I could do except check out email frantically in between classes at school.

My article is finally out on Gilded Serpent here, do check it out and leave a comment! The editing process took a lot longer than I thought, so I feel a bit silly finally posting the link here after giving that teaser piece of writing so long ago, but that's life I suppose. Part 2 is to come later, at some point, which is entirely up to the editor I think, and frankly I'd rather leave it in her hands anyway seeing as how I'm too busy to even do my laundry at the moment!

Return to Reda
I have had next to no free time lately pretty much owing to the fact that I accidentally joined the AUC folkloric dance troupe. I'm totally happy about it, of course, but it was a bit of an accident and has been fairly rigorous. That's especially in light of the fact that I joined up after they'd been working on choreography for a couple months and now am being asked to learn several choreographies by Mahmoud Reda in a very short amount of time. My legs hurt due to going from minimal dancing to over 7 hrs in two days, but don't let me fool you into not thinking I'm pleased to be doing this and working on these particular dances.

So how did I join accidentally? I was wandering around the deserted parts of AUC that no one hangs out in, as per usual, and happened to be walking by the dance studio when I saw someone doing tahtib or a man's stick dance from upper Egypt. So of course I stuck my head in after going back and forth in my mind about it for awhile, and asked the group inside how I could get the room unlocked so I could practice sometime, which is something I've been wondering for awhile. The girl whose attention I got told me you had to be a student organization--bummer! Oh well, nevermind, but since I had a bunch of free time at that moment I asked if I could stay and watch their practice, which I ended up doing and then being persuaded into joining once I let slip I had studied with Reda himself last summer at Nile Group. The trainer (who spoke no English) told me to come back the next practice, so I assumed I was pretty much in.

Thus begins my re-entry into studying Reda folkloric style, which is always fun and a good challenge. He has some lovely choreographies, and I do like the style more now that I "get it" from living in Egypt and seeing him teach. When I first took a workshop with him last summer everyone seemed miffed that we weren't learning "folkloric" style, but then I went and watched videos of the Reda troupe myself. What everyone at the workshop sniffed at and called "oriental" is actually completely folkore--don't let the elegance, arabesques, and fancy footwork fool you, this is real REDA folkoric style. As I recall from taking a workshop with Sahra Saeeda (the excellent dance ethnologist and just general authority on much folkloric style due to her research), Reda was always a bit famous for showing a very presentable, elegant style of folkloric dance that would honor the people it was showcasing and not portray them as in any way backward or simple, etc. Call it controversial or not, this is the style that the Reda troupe is famous for, and it's what I'm studying now and hopefully it can inform my oriental style a bit more too. In any case it's great practice and really fun, despite struggling through translations and orders given in Arabic!

Nile Group
I went to Nile Group a bit last week with Hallah Moustafa to sell costumes and hang out, which was a good time, aside from the lack of people because everyone typically comes for the June festival. It was actually pretty tragic how few people showed up compared to that one. It seems that Nile Group has perhaps stretched itself too far, because the vibe just wasn't as fun and exciting as the June festival I went to last year which was great because of the masses of people at the opening and closing parties, as well as the totally diverse group of dancers you would be with in a workshop.

Just to see a bit of the community, feel like part of an industry was fun though and it was nice to see some familiar faces. Lots of famous, semi-famous, and wannabe faces glided by over the week which was interesting. People watching at a dance festival is always good entertainment, if a bit discouraging to see how many big egos are being brandished around in between the few genuine kind souls. Gaby Shiba was good to see and was as always a total sweetheart, and I was reminded that--helloooo--he has a dance studio just a 10-minute walk away in my own neighborhood if I want private dabke lessons or even oriental style. No idea how I forgot about that when I've been meaning to drop by. Aleya, another American living and working here, was there quite a bit so we got to finally meet offline and face-to-face which was totally fun, and she wore one of Hallah's costumes for the open stage night. It was great to see Hallah's work as it's meant to be presented on-stage! I have an article coming out next month maybe on Hallah for Gilded Serpent, so stay tuned!

The last part of my vacation pictures in Abu Simbel are coming soon, just as soon as I can get the internet at home sorted out!

Up the Nile: Day 6 (Aswan)

2010-04-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

My last day in Aswan was reserved for seeing the normal tourist attractions, unlike the somewhat esoteric St. Simeon monastery. I met Farouk's group bright and early, and we started off driving out of Aswan and over the old dam, which has stunning views over the rocky first cataract area of the Nile. We took a quick gander at the High Dam, looking out over the Nile below and Lake Nasser--the largest artificial lake in the world I believe, which was created by the construction of the High Dam and destroyed the Nubian civilization as it once was. In addition, many monuments would have been under water without the intervention of UNESCO and other international actors. I'm sure there's reading out there to be done about the controversy of the dam and the problems it has created/solved.

After our trip to the High Dam we headed down to the section of the Nile between the two dams to see the temple of Isis at Philae Island, which is one of sites that was moved and thus saved from being submerged permanently. The island it is now on has been landscaped and planted to resemble the original island, and the project was excellent at recreating the site without trying to restore it to former glory; just to present it how it was before it was moved.

On the way back into town we swung by the granite quarry which used to serve as the site for smashing out the massive stones the obelisks were made from. There is still an unfinished one left there, because a flaw was discovered in the stone (obelisks were made from one single piece of stone, so they had to be without any problems obviously) and thus it was discarded. If it had been finished, it would have been the largest obelisk we know of now!

Here are the pictures--as you can see, I was in love with the columns at the temple of Isis:

Up the Nile: Day 5 (Aswan)

2010-04-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

Finally I got a good rest after staying up all night carrying on with other solo travelers and the hotel staff in Luxor! I slept in luxuriously late my first full day in Aswan, before strolling down the Corniche. Once there I heard an American couple behind me arguing with one of the many felucca captains who lurk along the water trying to sell you on a felucca. Figuring I could perhaps help, or maybe join them, I turned around and asked where they were going, to which they said somewhere I didn't know. I'm always up for an adventure though so I offered to share with them, getting round to figuring out that we were heading across to the West Bank to visit the Monastery of St. Simeon. The monastery turned out to be about a 20 in walk uphill from the water straight into the desert, resting on a hard shelf above the soft dunes beyond. It's a striking and amazing ruin now, but was apparently quite the thriving settlement back in the day.

The rest of the day was spent chatting, drinking, and eating on floating restaurants and relaxing by the pool getting homework done before collapsing into bed early once again.

Up the Nile: Day 4 (Luxor to Aswan)

2010-04-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

The forth day of the trip saw me hopping on a bus bright and early with Farouk's group and driving south to Aswan. The drive was lovely, often taking in Nile views above fields and between palm trees on the right, while sandy hills rushed by on the left. The fields were vivid green and so alive looking! It was a suprise after the somewhat dusty vegetation of Cairo, which is prevalent but a with a certain jaded quality that was lacking in the fields down south which were so green as to scream of life and energy.

Arriving in Aswan, I headed to my hotel on an island in the Nile, on the way admiring the rock formations from the felucca. Aswan is near the first cataract, meaning a rocky area which breaks up the flow of the river, of which there are six in total on the Nile. It was beautiful sailing among other feluccas, lazy drifting back and forth between the smooth rocks with their white sails furled, running the flags of various nations.

That first afternoon and evening in Aswan was spent mostly relaxing, walking around town on the corniche, and eating. Here's some pictures from the day:

Up the Nile: Day 3 (Luxor)

2010-04-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

Day 3 of my trip saw me oversleeping to meet Farouk's group for their West Bank tour, but luckily the guys at my hotel (The Nefertiti, definitely recommended but rather basic) know tons of guides and I squeezed into a small tour group heading out at 8am. This is late by West Bank standards because the Valley of the Kings and the temple of Hatsepsut are situated in one of the hottest places on earth, so it pays to get there and get out nice and early. No matter, it was my last morning in Luxor so I had no choice but to go when I could so I cheerfully tagged along with an international group of travelers, including a good-humored Finnish guy from my hotel whom everyone assumed I was in a relationship with the whole day. We laughed and shrugged it off while wandering from tomb to tomb in the heat, playing a game of "spot the tourist with the most impressive sunburn!"

There are no photos allowed once you enter the Valley of the Kings complex, as the flashes damage the tomb paintings, and when they allowed photography at all the no-flash rule was never respected. Apparently tourists make quite a horrible eroding effect on these beautiful, ancient tombs, adding tons of moisture to the air, etc. So long story short, tombs are carefully rotated in and out of being off-limits to tourists, and flash photography is definitely verboten. We saw 3 tombs, which were in various styles and different time periods. I really believe you'd have to go there yourself to understand the experience, but I just kept finding myself thinking how exciting it must have been for the archeologists who discovered these treasures of painting and architecture. In the tombs we visited the colors were very well-preserved, and the lovely paintings were full of detail that you just wanted to oggle for ages, despite the thin air, floods of tourists, heat, and close quarters.

After that we drove around to the other side of this rock formation that the Valley of the Kings inhabits, to the temple of Hatshepsut (Deir al Bahri), which was amazing and rather hot. We scurried through amid scores of tourists, taking our time however to enjoy the small attached temple to Hathor with it's images of the cow-eared goddess and the shrine which the guard let us peek into around a curtain.

After that it was a quick stop by the Colossi of Memnon, two huge, weathered statues which are the only remnants of a massive temple complex. Everyone was exhausted by then so it was on to a felucca across the Nile for a buffet lunch, before my Finnish hubbie and I wandered back to the hotel via the area where the avenue of sphinxes is being unearthed and restored. I hear the goal is to clear the way from Luxor temple all the way to Karnak, displacing whatever residences in the way...interesting project considering there wasn't much to see of the sphinxes except their plinths in the restoration sections we passed by.

Up the Nile: Day 2 (Luxor)

2010-04-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

The second day of my adventure I rose before dawn again to visit the temple of Karnak. I managed to sneak up to the hotel roof with a new buddy, which was in the process of being renovated, where I got to watch the rise of many hot-air balloons over Luxor temple in the distance near the rise where the Valley of the Kings is across the river. Afterwards, we made it out to Karnak temple, which is 3 km away, at the other end of the avenue of spinxes, the remainders of which still sit in front of Luxor temple. I didn't manage to get as good of pictures as I was with a group and the time of day wasn't ideal, but the pure scale of the temple complex was awe-inspiring. I have left shots in with some people so you can get an idea of the size of everything in height, but it was also a sprawling complex back in the day.

Please note that I'm not going to expound on the history of these sites here. I did get to hear lots about it, so it's not that I don't know and I definitely do care, but I think people need to do their own research and approach the historical information in their own way, as well as investigating various sources. This area I was in has a rich past, and I don't think I can do it justice here in the blog.

Pictures from the hotel (including adorable towel-art the housekeepers kept doing), and Karnak:

Up the Nile: Day 1 (Luxor)

2010-04-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am back from Luxor, Aswan, and Abu Simbel! It was a very good trip, I loved traveling alone but meeting up with my father's friend Farouk and his group who were doing the same route as me. The experience of traveling alone is always rewarding, and I enjoyed having some freedom and independence from my rigid Cairo schedule. There are so many details I'd love to share about the people I met and the situations I was in, but it's hard to go on about everything here without writing a novel, so I will be posting the pictures and perhaps a "highlights of my trip" type post at the end.

I arrived in Luxor at 5am, and was too excited to rest after my overnight experience of not sleeping on the train, so I went for an early morning walk. Spent the day sleeping and hanging out at the cafe in front of the hotel with people from Luxor as well as travelers passing through, who were a really lovely, fun, vibrant crowd. I was told that Luxor Temple, which was literally right in front of my hotel was perfect to visit and photograph at sunset, so I headed out to do just that. I got some great photos, mostly by virtue of being without a group and having plenty of time to scope out nice shots and go at a leisurely pace. Afterwards I met up with Farouk's group for dinner at a lovely place above the suuq, with great tagens. Tagens are stews made in earthenware pots, and I ate a lot of them on my travels as they're easy on the stomach, healthy, and tasty! We ate, chatted, and indulged in some wine before I headed back to the hotel to chat with the staff in Arabic before bed.

Pictures from Luxor Temple at sunset:

Time for a Break

2010-03-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Again, I've been scant on the updates lately, but I have excellent, school-related reasons--I swear!

Somehow my schedule has worked out that I have had one midterm each week for the last month, which is kind of a mixed blessing. On the plus side, they're spaced out enough I can study for them properly and get everything done, but on the down side I've been constantly busy working on midterm stuff.

Arabic is (still) Hilarious and Difficult
This week was the week of my Arabic midterm, in which we were asked to make a video using the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures we learned over six chapters of material. As my schedule with work and everything is so crazy I opted to not work with the group and just grab a couple of Egyptian friends to well...be Egyptian have conversations with me in Arabic in my video. Over dinner we came up with a story line bizarre enough to encompass all of the chapters, the vocabulary (never mind all the grammar) topics of which were:

Around the house
Items for the house
Items from Khan al Khalili
At the Doctor or the Pharmacy
On the street, finding directions
Daily routine

We rejected (sadly) a story line involving plays to get guys from a female version of the "men's playbook" concept, which personally I thought would have been hysterical but the guys thought might not be appropriate for class because of excessive, suggestive, Sarah-Palin-Style winking. The story line we did agree on is as follows: I am some normal girl out shopping for household stuff, pondering over what I should buy. I remember I want to buy a blanket and ram into some guy standing behind me. He starts flirting with me, and follows me out of the store where another guy comes up and tries to defend me, when the first guy punches him in the face and runs away. The second guy wakes up, and we take a taxi to his house, where I make tea and we discuss his flat a bit. I then leave and hold a conversation with myself in my head about how cute the guy is and how I should cook him something while waiting for the elevator before heading to the Pharmacy to get something for his eye. I talk to the Pharmacist and then leave to go to a grocery store to get food. I go to the grocery, buy the food, head back and cook while talking to him about another flat he has in the building he wants to rent. Then I sit down and begin to apply the medicine when the door bangs open and his fiancée shows up!

The funny part is that all the guys, except the main guy who was played by Jimmy, are played by one person. My friend Sherif agreed to being a pharmacist, a taxi driver, some flirty jerk, and a grocer all in one day, and all the women are played by me. Yes, that means I not only talk to myself in my head, but also when the fiance and the main girl are yelling at each other. It's pretty hilarious to watch the final product, especially since Sherif doesn't even change his outfit in between being the guy that beat up Jimmy and the taxi driver.

The exam was not so funny, being over 7 pages of questions and exercises and took over an hour and a half! We all survived somehow and everyone is now heading out tomorrow for Spring Break!

Spring Break

The funny thing is that with all our midterms going on, no one really had time to do good planning for Spring Break besides roughly sketching out where to go. People walked around for weeks going, "yeah I'm going to Syria and Lebanon" or "definitely the Dahab and Sharm!" but we had been putting off doing hotel and flight bookings forever out of laziness and the feeling that Spring Break would never come. At the last minute yesterday my room mate changed her plans and is now heading home to New York for the break, while our other friend was intending to do the Jordan, Syria, Lebanon jaunt and is now heading to Hurghada instead. I don't know how I feel about the student-life style of travel, because it's supposed to be less stressful and less trouble but half the time ends up being twice as much so. Trying to get hotel reservations at the last minute when there's only one decent, cheap place to stay in town is a bit frustrating!

My own plan finally came together just this last week, so tomorrow night I'm off on an overnight train to Luxor! I'll stay there a couple days, head to Aswan for a couple days, and cap it all off with a night in Abu Simbel before heading home to Cairo! I will hopefully be able to update mid-trip as my hotel in Aswan is supposed to have wi-fi, so expect pictures at least when I return to Cairo, if not halfway through my travels.

Cairo Sights
This seems to be turning into my "touristy" part of my stay in Egypt, as I finally did get around to visiting The Egyptian Museum last weekend with a friend of my father's who is in town with a sizable tour group. It was amazing! It's not frilly or anything particularly well-explained or documented, so it's very valuable to go with a good guide. The treasures inside are amazing though, particularly the King Tut exhibits which show the magnitude of prestige Pharaohs had in ancient Egypt, even in death. An amazing amount of items are on display there from his tomb, but I found the two first golden sarcophagi and the solid gold burial mask to be the most striking.

Everything in the museum is special and amazing though, and riveting in different ways. The royal mummies were an eerie sight, so well-preserved they still have eyelashes and hair that was last combed or styled thousands of years ago. They aren't describable in words I feel, you would have to go see them yourself which the extra ticket price (60LE for students, 100LE for adults, something less for kids) is well worth at least once.

The ground floor of the museum is like a huge warehouse of towering ancient statues, thick stone outer sarcophagi, and various other boats, pottery, etc. We didn't have enough time to spend in there, but I think I could have spent ages wandering through staring at every little hieroglyphic on every surface. It's fascinating to see these amazing things produced by such an ancient culture. One interesting thing to definitely take a look at on the ground floor is the copy of the Rosetta Stone gifted to Egypt by Britain which is just inside the main entrance.

Clearly I should be trying to play the tourist a bit more often, although it was pretty cute that the security guards were shocked to see me speak Arabic!

Khan Al Khalili Pictures

2010-03-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry to be MIA again, everyone! It's midterm time and I've been writing on various subjects, as well as my other blog, and Gilded Serpent, so I haven't had much time to update here. To tide you over, here's some pictures from Khan Al Khalili a couple weeks back that I've been meaning to post:

Classroom Dynamics

2010-03-04T05:11:00.000-08:00

I just finished another round of my bi-weekly accounting class, and as usual I'm finding my blood pressure up and my shoulders tense. Why? The dynamics of this classroom infuriate me--it's not the subject material, the professor, or even the workload, it's my fellow students.

Even though it's a Managerial Accounting class I feel that the ratio of younger students (freshmen or sophomores) is much higher in the class, so initially I wasn't surprised by a bit more giggling and carrying on. However, it got worse. Students speak over the doctor, raise their voices instead of their hands, hold side conversations, ask each other questions that the professor is currently answering because someone else just asked it....the list goes on. For a college professor, I imagine this is what they wanted to avoid when they decided to teach at the university level! Yelling over students, tapping pens on tables to be heard and to get the students to settle--is this really what should go on in a college classroom?

In my syllabi in my US college there were usually small sections on "air time" or respecting others when talking, etc. This is perhaps the only class I have been in at college where this section was necessary, because I always sort of tuned out when we went over that part on the first day of whatever course. It's one of those "well DUH" things where we are trained in the US to respect the professor absolutely as well as others when speaking.

Being the lone American in this class is a bit strange, because I feel like I'm out of the dynamics in many ways because of these habits we're taught. This class is all Egyptians, and predominantly they are loud or at least do not properly listen to the professor and then waste class time asking questions that have already been answered. Here's the strange thing: they seem so rude when class is in session but then they are perfectly polite on an individual basis and when approaching the professor after class--a huge difference in behavior.

I think this all goes back to something about the training we give American students versus Egyptians.
Americans have the discipline and are taught to focus on themselves. Instead of holding a side conversation with a friend for clarification on some point, we are taught to analyze within our personal level, decide what we personally do or do not understand, and then speak up to ask a question at the appropriate time. We focus on our individual understanding, tuning out other students unless they ask a question we may need to know the answer to. Here, Egyptian students seem to be taught (until the American-style system untrains them, which looks like it happens around the Junior year here but probably depends on how harsh a professor is) a hierarchical system in which they should rely on their peers for answers rather than the professor. Asking a professor violates this hierarchy of co-dependence, and ends up (I would argue) coming across as individualistic. You think your understanding is important enough to ask the professor directly rather than a peer. I also suspect the idea here is to not disrupt the professor, which actually has the opposite effect: the classroom is overwhelmed by side conversations.

This is a dilemma IR people are pretty familiar with too, as a side note: disaster of the commons. Ignoring the disaster of the commons is something I've seen a lot here in Egypt, interestingly. The good of all in the long run is ignored by the immediate needs/desires of the individual. It's the same thing that makes people think throwing one piece of garbage on the street is not going to contribute at all substantially to environmental degradation. There are millions of individuals in Cairo, and millions of pieces of trash on the street. Let's face it, as much as I love Cairo it is not a "clean" city. I'm not sure if this is just a focus on convenience, an ignorance of long-term ramifications, or blind uncaring, but it's the same dynamic that leads to students thinking "oh if I just whisper this question to my friend it won't disturb the class" when in fact 40 people thinking that does cause a significant problem.

This is all just food for thought and observations of course. I was bored in the 5 minutes during which the professor was forced to explain 3 different times why he combined two line items on an income statement so I had some free time to ponder.

Pictures from the Citadel

2010-02-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from The Citadel last weekend, can you spot the one of me in hijab?

Writing and Being Touristy

2010-02-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

The title should tell you what I've been up to lately, actually. School is keeping me fairly busy, as is my social life and work. Hallah and I have new costume designs we've been casually photographing to get up online and hopefully sell, so I will be posting those pictures up when I get home from AUC this evening or perhaps tomorrow, as well as pictures from the gorgeous Citadel which I finally got around to seeing in the day time! Unfortunantely it was a very hot day as we're having a small hot snap and the tempuratures are getting up to 80+ during the day.

In the mean time I wanted to share some excerpts from an article I'm working on for Gilded Serpent right now. I wanted to share with the belly dance community what life is like just living and hanging out here, experiencing Egypt at the human level rather than at a grand tourist scheme of things, so I decided to talk about what I at night over the course of a week. Here are some excerpts from the unedited piece so far:

I often get asked what life is like in Cairo by everyone from friends to family to strangers who have stumbled across my blog. In a way the blog readers are the luckiest because they can read through various accounts of what I've been up to just on a day to day basis. The beauty of Cairo is often in the every day things, the small things that we wouldn't consider so worthwhile but in fact make up the real substance of what it's like to live here. I don't go to museums or monuments or see famous belly dancers every day, but I am here in Cairo every day and that is special in and of itself.
..............

Arabic class lends itself to group homeworking activities with our Egyptian friends included, so we dove into putting together the Khan al Khalili movie assignment as soon as Jon arrived. Our British friend Dave dropped by after work and we made the executive desicion to hit up an excellent Chinese restaurant around the corner from my house. I love that place to death, because it looks like a tiny, sketchy, hole-in-the-wall place that you would walk right by but in fact has some of the best Chinese food I've ever had. Plus, with the serious lack of truly good Chinese food in Cairo, it has become a hotspot for my group of friends so one of us is usually there every other night. In fact, shortly after we arrived my good friend who is German/Egyptian (she speaks English, Arabic, and German fluently--I am so jealous) showed up with a couple people in tow and we managed to take over the entire four-table restaurant.

I have lots of great memories of fooling around at that place, mostly because a lot of Egyptians have only experienced Chinese food through the lens of Egyptian chefs before. I remember a Chinese-themed buffet got to experience in Hurghada that was just horrible--the spring roll wrappers were basically made from puff-pastry! Finding a good, inexpensive, Chinese restaurant in Cairo around the corner from my house was like finding the Holy Grail. After a lot of dragging their feet I have gotten most of my Egyptian friends to go there, and now they all love it. They agree pretty much unanimously on hating the tea, which I admit is far too weak and subtle by Egyptian standards, but adore the food. To the extent that we are having a very hard time teaching them to learn how to use chopsticks because they give up in the face of hunger and delicious Kung Pao Chicken. I can't blame them though.

........

Wednesday:
I don't get back from the American University in Cairo where I go to school until 9pm on Wednesdays, due to a late seminar and the somewhat sporadic bus schedule. However, I was determined to meet up with my language partner and do some exchange and just hang out, so I grabbed a very fast dinner at home and then ran out the door to grab a taxi to the Metro, Cairo's subway/train system. It's about a 5LE (90 cents) cab ride to the Metro, then you can ride anywhere along the Metro for 1LE (18 cents). The Metro is great as it's fairly clean and runs fast so you never end up stuck in Cairo traffic--the only downside is that it can get pretty crowded at rush hour.

.......
The 'ahwa is such a staple of my life here that it's important to me to talk about what these street cafes are, but unfortunantely it's uncomfortable to get good photos as to label oneself as a tourist or foreigner in an 'ahwa is sort of asking for trouble. Your typical street cafe is compromised of plastic lawn chairs crammed in close together at the edge of the road proper, around parked cars and various other obstacles, with tiny spindly tables rising up in between to prop up games of chess or backgammon and glasses of tea. Shishas are ubiquitous, and clouds of smoke waft up to the palm trees above heads bent in conversation, with laughter punctuating the general dull roar of the crowd. The floor is the street, dirty and trash-strewn with bottle caps that have been flattened by cars and feet into a mosiac of American branding in Arabic, and the walls are of whatever buildings are nearby, painted with various pictures, including ones depicting the kaaba to honor those going on Hajj to Mecca. Wild dogs run around out in the street, fighting only half-seriously over scraps, and street cats of all colors slink underfoot in search of food. The air smells of fruity tobacco and cigarettes, and that special dirty-sandy-polluted-but-pleasant smell of Cairo that feels like home. It's not exotic, it just IS.

We met up with a friend of Mohamed Ali's, a Chinese boy named Josh who is staying with an Egyptian family as part of an International study program. He was there with two Egyptian guys, soft-spoken tall and skinny types one of whom speaks English enthusiastically and is eager to chat with a new foreigner, and the other of whom was a bit more shy and reserved. They were both fluent in English though, yet again reminding me that my Arabic is still embarassingly underdeveloped. Mohamed greeted everyone like old friends, before laughingly admitting that he had just met the 3 guys in this cafe a few days once before. We chatted quite a bit about Egypt as Josh has only been in town for a few weeks, which is as good as being almost brand-new here, so he still has lots to talk about and remark on and that brings out in me some of the same. At some point Mohamed Ali and I headed around the corner to buy some grilled kofta off a small stall restaurant where the man grabbed the skewer straight off the coals, removed the steaming meat into some flatbread, wrapped it in paper and forked the huge sandwich over, dripping and delicious. I indulged in some Ruz Bilaban (rice pudding) too, my possibly my favorite Egyptian dessert.

Sherif, the enthusiastic guy, revealed that he lived in Indonesia for three years, and is fluent in Indonesian, so then we started in on an extensive 3-way comparison of Egypt, the US, and Indonesia just as my friends Alex and Ibrahim arrived. Alex is Malaysian but lives in America so he and Sherif immediately started in on a language comparison and began to chit-chat in various combinations of languages. Mohamed Ali and I gave up at that point and began to drill my Arabic vocabulary for class on Thursday; finally getting down to business around 11pm. He's also learning Spanish from a Mexican family living in Cairo so the group began to have a Tower of Babel moment when the various languages are shooting around--it didn't help that at some point Sherif and Alex switched to German, which Alex can only swear in rather than anything useful.

As the night wore on people stopped complaining about being tired in a joking way and started talking earnest about going home, so we all set down the shisha hoses, grabbed our bags and snagged one of the guys running around with trays of tea to pay and get out. Trudging down the back streets downtown at midnight conversation was no less animated, but showing the strain of the day. Alex and I joke that we're always tired in Cairo because once you get out for the evening you can't stop until the night is done or you can't move--even if you do have class the next day!

Slice of Fashion

2010-02-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

As the news is traveling around the world, some readers may have heard that my favorite designer Alexander McQueen died a few days ago. I was so saddened to hear of this loss to the fashion community and to the global community in general. I loved McQueen’s work because it was outside the box, unusual, challenging, and made the fashion world just that bit more interesting and special. I remember watching his Spring 2010 line on the label website, curious to see more of the weird shoes that were cropping up all over the internet and hear the original debut of Lady Gag’s “Bad Romance” single. I thought it would be interesting or maybe amusing to see more. As the show unfolded I found myself completely sucked in. The dresses, the setting, the creepy music had me from a minute in and I think I became an instant McQueen fan. Those CLOTHES–I couldn’t look away. Go find it on the internet if you can, it used to be streaming from the McQueen site which is now on hold in light of what has happened.

I bring up fashion because of Alexander McQueen, and because it has been on my mind here in Egypt as the seasons are starting to change. Cairo has an uncanny problem of seasons tending to smack right up against each other, for example it was about mid-60s last week, and the last few days have been in the 80s and people are beginning to get worried that it’s going to get hot again. Grab the kids, run for cover, get out of the way, because the distant rumbles of summer are starting to appear!

Clothes are a bit of a constant ex-pat problem here in my mind. When I was packing to come back from the US this second time I found myself kind of at a loss. I need to have clubbing clothes which should be just the right amount of sexy, school clothes which look okay next to the AUC kids’ designer outfits, but aren’t so nice that I feel bad about ruining them running around Cairo, bikinis for the Red Sea, but also thin sweaters to cover my arms, heels for going out dancing, but flats to run around in every day that I am ok with throwing away in a month because they will be trashed. Not only that but washers here have a tendency to eat clothes, or just chew them up and spit them back out bedraggled and faded, so you need tougher clothes that you are ok with fading a bit and sweating copiously in when things get hot (which they will!). Phew, talk about a wardrobe issue. Somehow I’ve managed to compromise by having not enough clothes–instead of too much I seem to have brought too little, which brings us to the next problem: shopping in Cairo.

Everyone thinks shopping in Cairo is going to be awesome, because things are supposed to be cheaper in the 3rd world. I have news for you all, cheaper prices also means cheaper make here. We’re not talking an American lower-quality thing where you can wear it and make it work without that much difficulty–I’m talking about lower quality everything, from the strength and weave of denim to the surface stitching on a blouse. Things that make a garment have a much shorter life, which means running out shopping every few weeks and feeling like your clothes are always falling apart, which means spending more money. To get good-quality clothes here means they are either imported–thus ridiculously expensive–or sold in a more affluent part of town and therefore are also ridiculously expensive.

Add to that the strangeness of Cairene women’s fashion and suddenly I’m not in a very good position if I don’t want to go around nude. I don’t really understand why everything has to be a strange color with trim in a different color that completely grates on the eye while simultaneously fitting in a matronly way and incorporating a gross usage of sewn-on plastic jewelery. Somehow the Egyptian girls pull it off–I cannot. Can a poor American girl just get a long-sleeve cotton shirt? Apparently not.

Clothes may seem like a very superficial thing to be blogging about, but this gives you a snapshot of daily Cairo life. Not everything is grandiose revelations about life, beautiful tombs, and magical moments in Egypt. Sometimes life is just trying to put together an outfit in the morning.

X-Posted to NicoleInCairo.WordPress.com

Dancing Pics

2010-02-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

Here's all of us at the Nile Maxim out salsa dancing since people were asking, enjoy!

Back to School

2010-02-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

Here I am at AUC again, and currently I have a long break between classes so I figured I would hope online and write a blog entry! There's some new stuff up at NicoleInCairo.Wordpress.com but I wanted to write something different here on a more dance/personal note. It's been a crazy few weeks since I returned to Egypt, quite the rollercoaster of emotions, and has made me reassess what I want in my next six months of being here.

AUC
School is going okay, I'm figuring out what I want to do and which class I will drop as I want to hit the minimum credit hours to still be full time. Let's just say my priorities lie outside AUC at this point. People ask me about school all the time, are so curious what is up with being an American student at an Egyptian college. The fact of the matter is though that AUC is the AMERICAN University in Cairo. The curriculum is set up like a liberal arts college, not the usual standard here in Egypt, and the students who go here are not your average Egyptian by any means. Usually in Egypt, your exit test scores for high school determine what faculty or department you will go into, what you will study in college, and thus what your life path will be. The highest scorers go into medicine, engineering, and law, while the other faculties lie in various positions below that, art being one of the lowest priorities of the educaitonal system.

However, here at AUC there is the freedom to choose your major just like at an American college. There's flexibility in the curriculum, a focus on core classes as well as specialization classes, and the departments are set up like any other American institution. The difference? The Egyptian kids that go here are filthy rich. It didn't exactly hit me until I was in a Macroecon course last semester (in which I was one of two foreign students) and the professor mentioned while giving an example that, "all of you here are probably in the top 5% income bracket." I glanced around, feeling weirded out because I am not wealthy person by US standards, and sort of looking to see if anyone else was shaking their heads like, "ha ha, yeah right." No reaction, vague nodding. I am sitting around amongst the richest kids in Egypt apparently, so then evidentially if you can afford to go to AUC, you can afford freedom of choice about your life path and career.

When the campus moved from Tahrir (smack-dab in the middle of downtown) out to Al-Rehab (smack dab in the middle of the desert, a 45 minute drive in non-Cairo traffic from downtown) I remember reading an article back at home while I was going through my study abroad application process. The article discussed not the beautiful new campus, nor the expansion of the school, not even the new technology involved in designing the campus. The article I read focused on the income gap in Egypt, and how by moving the school to such an isolated location the college was isolating itself from the real Egyptian populace. Having just paid about 15 minutes ago over $300 for a bus pass for the semester, I can understand in a very concrete way what they mean. 1740LE is more than many people probably make in Cairo per month, or two months, or possibly even a year. There is a lot of poverty here, and a lot of people living on practically nothing, so this amount simply to GET to school becomes insurmountable simply because of shifting the campus.

The other issue is symbolic. Al-Rehab is a place that my middle-class Egyptian friends think of as "a slice of heaven" and my American friends squirm and feel uncomfortable about. It's a cushy, palatial wonderland of unreality. The villas with their gilded columns, the BMWs in the driveways...it's not the Cairo I know. It's green, because the water is always running, to the point where you will see artificial waterfalls and ponds at the tip of an fake oasis in the desert. Yet, as soon as a patch goes unwatered for a few days, it starts to slowly go brown, a reminder that this place exists merely through the labor of people too poor to ever live there. It somehow looks so fake, such an man-made fantasy concocted of concrete, delusion, and a willingness to ignore the intense poverty a 30-minute drive away.

The facade is not finished yet though, and so we can all still see the dirty sweat and labor holding up those ridiculous fantastical creations. Most of the people coming in and out of Al-Rehab right are workers, toiling all day on homes they will never have the slightest hope of moving into, and who spend their days watering or constructing. Going in and out of AUC via the bus we see them on the side of the road every day, this strange community of hard workers in cheap jeans and jackets, waiting for the microbus or their friend in his beat up old car to drive up so they can cram in to an already overloaded car heading back to civilization. It feels strange because we are not supposed to see these people, we are supposed to look at the final product and go "wow, this is beautiful! I want to buy a house here!" Seeing these people ruins the fantasy, which I find good because I don't understand why these housing projects and developments are even happening. Yes, Cairo needs room to expand--it's more than overcrowded, but what is needed is affordable housing for the middle and lower classes to get out of the city too, not just the rich. At the moment though, it's the rich that get the option to leave Cairo, leave the real Egypt, and live in a fantasyland.

By moving AUC out into this strange new world, is the college deserting the real spirit of Egypt? Is it placing itself firmly into the realm of the elite, to the exclusion of everyone else? That doesn't seem like something an American college would strive for, in my opinion.

Planning Ahead
I have this scholarship now, which gives me the ability to do some traveling, so I think I will definitely see Luxor and Aswan now. I wanted to before, but lacked the finances to say for sure it would happen. That's great, so now I have to figure out whom I'm going to travel with, because it can be beyond exasperating to travel here alone as a foreign female. I'm also hesitant to use a tour company, that may be the way to go. On the other hand I could just go to Sharm and party for spring break, which is tempting. Definitely I will be going to Alexandria soon--probably this month--because I hear it's great in the winter and it's only a quick trip away by bus or microbus. I'm finding myself missing the white, sandy beaches there, and I realize the first time I was too busy just enjoying my time to see much of what makes Alexandria famous and special.

It's definitely easy to think of beaches when the weather is this cold, I thought I would never say it, but I can't wait for the weather to get warmer again. The problem is that most buildings here (except of course AUC) don't have indoor central heat, so you basically spend your time in a concrete icebox. Today is beautiful and sunny, thank god, so it's not so bad. People are out there in jackets lounging on the unfurled grass put down last semester and carefully tended to, and others sun themselves on the plaza while eating the overpriced, fattening food that is offered here.

Well, after this point I actually had a great post drafted up about how Cairo is so beautiful and contradictory, and looks so different to me this time around, but blogspot ate it somehow. Very sad, as that was actually a good piece of writing, but hopefully I will generate something again soon of that ilk. It's rare I'm inspired to write in an artistic sense, so I'm sad the post got eaten by cyberspace before anyone could see it.

Dance Stuff
I need to start belly dancing more again, it's not doing it for me to just dabble right now and be a dilettante in other forms of dance, so I'm striving for a way to get all hard-core on it again. I'm a racehorse when it comes to dance, if I don't get pushed and challenged to keep going and given things to learn I start to lose my mind. I need to find a couple teachers I can really get into and access on a regular basis. I need to get back on it really bad, because I'm doing all new technique work right now while neglecting things I already understand and need to work on like musical interpretation, combinations, over all performance. I'm focusing so hard on isolating muscle groups and learning how to do the same moves in different ways that I'm starting to lose the bigger picture, and I'm freaked out that the next time I end up on stage I will be woefully underprepared. It wouldn't scare me so much except that I was once upon a time quite seasoned and comfortable in front of an audience, so I feel like I've lost something.

I think I also need to diversify my teachers. When I get into a teacher's style or way of teaching I tend to narrow my focus down to them and concentrate on mastering the style they want me to do, and the things they think I should be doing. At this point in my career I should be looking to the bigger picture and fusing different elements from different teachers to create a style and technique that incorporates everything I have learned. Also, in Egypt I need to start taking from everyone--as long as they're good!

Academia?!

2010-01-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

The National Society of Collegiate Scholars is an honors society I was invited to join last year, and I figured I'd take a gamble on it and join to see if I could get a scholarship to support my travels abroad this year. Well, it paid off: I am their choice for their Scholar Abroad Spring 2010 Scholarship!

It's quite an honor, and I didn't exactly feel confident about being chosen when I applied, but figured I should try and the application was free for members so why not? This is great, because it takes some financial strain off my family (especially with my dad's hospitalization earlier this month), and will allow me to have some extra cash after that to travel within Egypt (hellooo Luxor and Aswan!) as well as invest in my dance career while I am in the position to do so. The fact is that here in Egypt there is a wealth of opportunity and I am young and unrestrained enough to tap it, but the problem was that I didn't have a lot of extra cash before. We will have yet to see what this scholarship brings within reach by paying off the rest of my AUC tuition and then some, but I will keep you guys posted.

Part of the requirements to recipients is that we keep a blog over at wordpress. I plan to copy and paste a lot of my entries over there from here, but feel free to also check NicoleInCairo.Wordpress.com too. I will post here if there's extra content or different things over there, but I believe I will continue to keep Nicole In Cairo on Blogspot as my main blog. This will be the more dance-focused version too, and I expect it will be quite a bit more introspective than the other blog which will be public to the NSCS community of scholars.

On that note, it's almost time to return to AUC in just a few short days, and I'm having very mixed feelings about it. There's a lot to get done this semester, and before I leave Egypt in July/August, and I am so sad that my time is going to be hacked into so much by AUC. The fact that it's out in the desert with infrequent bus service just kills when you're dying to feel like you are in Egypt, but are in fact stuck on campus with a bunch of rich Egyptians dying to be American, and a bunch of Americans immersed in academia. Not only that but this week will also involve visiting various offices to get my visa and bus pass sorted out, which one would think should be easy but I'm sure will be an hours-long endeavor. Not really an authentic cultural experience, but I will be spending all day in it instead of out and about in Cairo, the city I love dearly. This semester I am seriously making a commitment to myself to be off-campus and out on the town with my Egyptian and American friends as much as possible, speaking as much Arabic as possible and taking a bare minimum of classes so that my time isn't cut into. Honestly I don't care if I get Bs this semester as long as I come out satisfied with the time I spent here.

The fact of the matter is these last couple weeks that I have been just fooling around sewing dance costumes, hanging out, and dancing all the time have been some of the coolest I've spent here. The other day we had a dozen people at my apartment, all practicing salsa dance, and then we would take a break and be practicing our Arabic and translating songs, finding out things like the Islamic equivalent to "cross your heart" and things like that. That kind of thing is cultural exchange at it's finest, my friends, just hanging out in a group that comprised Egyptians, Americans, Brits, and a Malaysian dancing, chatting, and working on language. I feel like I can't give that up for the world, but AUC is going to draw me back into academia again with the attractiveness of learning new things and increasing my knowledge. This is certainly pleasant as well, but nothing beats just hanging out with my group of friends here and the feeling I get from seeing people come together.

Also I wanted to say sorry everyone for lack of pictures: I'm just one of those people who is horrible at documenting the moment until it is done, prefers to live things as they happen, and doesn't feel comfortable branding myself as more of a foreigner than I already am. I must get over it, because stuff keeps happening that I know for sure I'll want pictures of later!

Out Dancing

2010-01-24T06:33:00.000-08:00

I'm definitely enjoying my pre-AUC vacation to the fullest here in Cairo, even if it means a crushing lack of sleep and sore legs. Allow me to explain: I'm now working on (casually) 5 different types of dances now. Between re-learning how to do belly dance moves in a new way, going out salsa dancing every other night, working on bachata, meringue, and hip-hop I think I could hit up nearly any club around and have some moves to throw out there! We not only go out, but a couple of us tend to hang out and practice a few times a week in addition, just to get that real wobbly sensation in the legs.

Belly dance is going well, it's difficult work learning to remake my dance image and styling, but hey I did it two years ago and I can do it again, plus I am now getting to the part when we begin to do all the fun stuff. You have to learn the new techniques before you can speed them up and make them do tricks. The stuff I'm learning is strenuous, tough, and I'm sure you would love to hear all the details, but frankly my teacher explains these things far better than I can. Stay tuned for when I have more time/patience to explain further. Suffice to say though it's going to be pretty damn fantastic when these things start working well and become effortless!

I'm also beginning a translation project with a couple friends to improve my Arabic and to start to compile a resource for dancers. We just worked through a really adorable Shadia song last night which hopefully I will be using in shows later on. If anyone reading this has a song request to get translated, leave it in the comments or email me!

Salsa, meringue, and bachata are fantastic, and providing that social dance thing I do tend to miss in my life when it isn't present. Who knew there was a thriving salsa scene in Cairo? There's several cool places to go, that I recommend you check out if you're a salsa person (or just like social dancing) visiting/living in Cairo. These are the ones I've been to:

-Bian Cafe near the Atlas hotel in Mohandisiin. A 50LE minimum charge, no alcoholic drinks, and they play do play bachata and meringue too. I liked it for the atmosphere, which is sort of warm and casual, plus the 50LE is a minimum charge not a cover, so you can get a lot of fairly decent food. There's a group lesson before the open dancing which was well-attended so it seems there are regulars who enjoy coming often.

-Stiletto across from the Sheraton on the Nile. 50LE minimum charge too, full bar, and maybe one bacchata song all night in between the salsa music. Cute, classy place, and on the water so there's a lovely view across to Zamalek, but we got bored with mostly just salsa music and it was less well-attended (or perhaps just seemed like it due to being a big space). Also there is a full bar, but the drinks tend to be on the weak side. There are beginner and intermediate lessons beforehand too. Fun fact: had my first kiss in Cairo here last year!

-Nile Maxim in Zamalek across from the Marriot. All us belly dancer girls know it, because of the dinner shows, but there's also a salsa club too in case you didn't know! It's 50LE cover which includes like 2 non-alcoholic drinks, but there is a full bar of imported liquor for which you get your money's worth. My rum & coke was half Bacardi at least! The good news is they play a variety of Latin dance music with a few Arabic songs kicked in for good measure--belly dancer-cum-salsa-dancer's dream! The problem is that the place is dark, in a classy way, and freezing with a small-ish dance floor. Also, mind the men at the bar and don't hesitate to ask a waiter if he knows the guy that just bought your drink is a creep. Never give out your number, ladies--take theirs!

People seem surprised when I tell them there is a salsa scene in Cairo, but it seems to be thriving in spite of being small. It seems like with such a big, highly populated city, there have to be enough people around to go out dancing, even if we're a small group percentage-wise. I suppose everyone is also wondering what we all wear when going out, which is almost whatever you want. Personally, I don't dress exactly like I would to go out back home, but closer to it. On top you can pretty much get away with whatever (except maybe something that is the size of a bra: revealing on the top of the shirt or revealing on the bottom, both is not so much) and for the bottom most people opt for pants or knee-length+ skirts, but I can't tell if that's modesty or just the fact that you get spun around a lot in salsa and don't want people seeing what color your "wednesday" drawers are. Heels are appreciated, especially if you're 5' like me! I am so, so beyond overjoyed to have a reason to wear my stilettos out somewhere here again and grow my shoe collection to rival the boxes upon boxes I left back home. It's not just vanity either, when I was practicing with a friend I decided to toss the flats and throw on some heels for fun and he ended up going "hey, you're dancing better like this," so there ya go. I need some aggressiveness in my step to have the right dance attitude apparently.

I also hit up the Cairo Jazz Club in Mohandisiin the other night for my friend's birthday which was great fun. The music kind of sucked, but the venue was totally cute, clean, well-staffed, but the right amount of dark and smoky for a jazz club. My friend is German/Egyptian so we were sounded by chatter in all manner of languages, but somehow I ended up seated next to the other American here from New York and we had a fun time chatting and discussing the normal boring things one chats about on life abroad. If the band had been better and there had been a little more room for dancing it would have been a home run especially due to the imported champagne! I haven't set my eyes on a decent champagne in months.

In other news, this fab girl Liz has arrived from the US and has been staying with me for a couple days till she gets her sea legs and moves into a room in Dokki. We are having entirely too much fun, but it seems like whenever the terrain here abroad shifts I have a knee-jerk reaction to go paranoid and kick some ass. One of my friends was right when she said, "it's like the wild west here, you can do whatever you want, but it may take some creativity and some covering up." I guess I'm getting a gunslinger mentality happening here, but what do you expect to happen when strong women get together? More on the new developments as they come...

Begin Round 2

2010-01-08T05:22:00.000-08:00

Hi dear readers—if you’re out there—I have made it safely back to Cairo once again! Ilhamdulillah here I am once more in the land of the pyramids. Rather eventful first week of 2010 I have to say, most everyone knows that my parents were supposed to be traveling back to Cairo with me, but actually here I am without them.

My father got very sick after New Years, and not the fun, post-partying kinda sick. Turns out he had appendicitis, but it didn’t cause his appendix to explode, just perforate and leak infectious crap into his body. So he was pretty messed up, and had an overnight stay in the hospital the night before we were supposed to fly out. Looks like he will not need to have surgery, they are going to keep him on antibiotics for a couple weeks and then reassess, but there’s a 95% chance things will resolve with the antibiotics alone. Hooray for that, but obviously neither of my parents were able to make it out this time, and I am so bummed. Here I am with the time I was going to enjoy with my family snatched away and replaced with a good 3 solid weeks of “uhhh…I’m bored.”

“But Nicole!” you may say to me, “You’re in EGYPT, the land of amazingness and pharaohs and historic crap! Surely, there must be something to do?” To which I would say check out the receipts from my shopping in Seattle the last two weeks. Broooke. Seriously though, I will probably go check out some historical sites that I was finally going to see with my parents.

I’m actually writing this first bit at the airport in Germany before my laptop spectacularly dies. I am temporarily deaf at the moment due to the fact that I have tiiiiny Eustachian tubes (the thingies in your ears that are supposed to pop when you go up or down in altitude) and thus flying causes me to suffer and go deaf and all kinds of fun stuff when mine don’t do what they are supposed to do. When I flew into Seattle last I had some major jaw pain and got a headache because my damn ears wouldn’t pop…time to see a specialist when I get back to the states I think because I’m flying a lot more often these days and I can’t have my ears ruining things! Here’s hoping I make it into Cairo without my inside bits exploding!

Very, very strange traveling today. At the airport watched a couple ravenously making out, slightly nauseated and slightly amused that I would not be seeing such a sight in a good long time. Then on the plane I was sandwiched between a constantly-arguing Italian couple and an old Indian man singing along quietly to bhangra music on his iPod. I always end up sitting next to old Indian guys, no idea why but they’re generally polite and quiet and unobtrusive. Italian couple was definitely not, and it raised the question to me of when we as innocent bystanders should step in and say something. She was crying a bunch and at one point he seemed to be making fake-strangling motions at her, but they were speaking Italian so I was nervous to step in and tell them to cut it out in case I was completely missing something. I think I’ve also been back in Seattle for a couple weeks so my “polite innocent bystander who does not insert themself” sense is back in full. How very un-Cairo of me where people will not hesitate to get all up in your business even if you are speaking a different language and they have no idea what exactly is going on.

So anyway, about two hours out of Frankfurt apparently someone started having “medical difficulties” of some kind. I’m not sure what happened, but flight attendants were all converging on one seat a bit in front of me, and shortly thereafter made an announcement to see if there were any doctors on the plane. Well you coulda guessed it—make out boy was some kind of med student or something because he showed up a few minutes later to consult with the flight attendants. At the time we were somewhere near Amsterdam so I was majorly sweating it we’d have to make an emergency landing, I’d get stranded, yadda yadda. Didn’t happen, apparently the person was okay and we made it to Frankfurt in time for me to…be sitting around in the airport writing this entry while exhausted and deaf. Well my computer’s going to die, so the second half will be written from Cairo (providing I make it—actually, if you’re reading this I did make it!)

Here I am again!

Ok, I’ve arrived, seen the boyfriend, eaten pizza, passed out, woken up at dawn (yay internal clock isn’t working at all!), unpacked, put the place back in order, and am now ready to blog once again. Flight from Frankfurt to Cairo was blissfully uneventful, except for running from the airport to the bus and the bus to the aircraft through the snow. The snow was beautiful though, coming down outside in huge flakes that those of us going to and from warmer climates paused to photograph and admire. It was magical for me as I haven’t seen snow in a full year, and don’t often get the opportunity anyway.

There was extra security for people transferring to flights leaving from a certain terminal. I’m pretty sure this certain terminal is where they are putting the flights to the Middle East because I didn’t fly out that way the last time I came through Frankfurt to Cairo. Monitors hung overhead displaying news and more fear mongering about further terrorist attacks, people slumped around or dozed underneath, and out of boredom I found myself scoping out the others flying to Cairo. Western families hung out together, looking forward to tourist season in Egypt, while a group of kids a bit younger than me sprawled across benches and chit-chatted to each other, looking like a red-shirted group of young missionaries for some faith or another. A plainly somewhat rich Cairo family rolled up, carting two daughters and two huge garment bags from a bridal shop which they immediately commandeered an entire row of seats to lay out flat. The twentysomething year old daughters were rich enough to have all the proper procedures and waxing and shaping to be considered “hot” by most of my guys friends, but underneath the polish and expensive clothes were rather plain looking. I guess internal and natural beauty aren’t everything if you can roll out some cash. I settled into a corner next to an Indian woman heading home to Canada and talked about school, living abroad, and other light topics I frequently address when home in America instead of talking about the identity-shaking journey I’m in the middle of.

Well, the transition is almost complete back to Cairo life. Strange how quickly it happens where something inside me hits “reset” and I go back to just being where I am instead of focusing on where I just left and all the great stuff there. I’m getting better at it, but it has been very hard to go back and forth so much between California, which I love dearly, Seattle, where my parents are whom I love dearly, and Cairo which I love on certain days and detest on others. Today I am appreciating the sunniness and the warmth and the fact that the people I subletted the place to in my absence didn’t destroy the place and in fact fixed a couple things. How sweet!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T12:55:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas Day worldwide, and I am here celebrating with the family in Seattle! Merry Christmas, everyone and I hope you are enjoying your holidays!

I celebrated my 20th last week with my boyfriend, who took me out to an amazing Italian dinner in Maadi including an adorable custom-made cake, red roses, and very Egyptian jewelery. It was perfect in a couple-y, quiet, romantic way, but I kinda missed partying with my girls as a single lady last year because we had such a blast. Ah, nostalgia. I feel like I'm becoming too adult in my ways for my own good. Later a bunch of us went out for a felucca ride and shisha downtown as a sort of last-hurrah before several of our number headed back to the states. I made up for the adult-ness by making us Jello shots like a college student champ. Aren't we adorable?

Coming back to the US for Christmas has been a bit strange, not only because of catching a cold just before leaving for the airport in Cairo or the jetlag. Christmas is celebrated and has a presence in Cairo, but not like here, where I stepped off the plane in New York to be immediately assaulted with Christmas carol music, lights, and various gift stuff. It was a bit of a culture shock, as was being surrounded by Caucasians speaking English. I felt odd looking around me as I slid back into US culture in the spot of being a middle-class white person, with all the privilege that goes with it. In Egypt the advantages are more tangible, because foreigners become the minority so we stand out, but having that framework and arriving back in the US to see Americans walking around unaware of it was a bit jarring. The foreigners in Egypt, whether they flout their privilege and wealth or try to get away from it, are very aware of how they appear and are perceived. You have to be sensitive to it, because the Egyptians sure are--you look like a walking dollar sign.

It's hard to let our reality shift, adapt to that shift, and learn from it. It's scary when those tectonic plates of our psyche start making major shifts. I'm really struggling with mixed emotions about being here in Seattle and going back to Egypt. It would be easy to just be here, be completely present and disregard the aspects of myself that changed from living abroad. I could just ignore that it all happened and move on. It's been so easy to pull on short skirts with tights, throw on my high heels and white wool coat that I left in the States and pretend nothing happened. But things have changed, I don't mind wearing flats now as opposed to my constant heel-wearing self of last June, and I can't help comparing everything to Cairo in my head. Seattle looks small, and squat with it's 5-story-or-less buildings in my neighborhood, the individual houses surrounded by small yards...it looks like a suburb of a suburb of Cairo. I love it of course, but it feels like the small town I left behind for the big city.

I'm a little nervous about returning for round two in the big, bad urban jungle that is Cairo, and at the same time I can't wait. We call cities in the states "urban jungles," but the fact is that you don't know a real jungle until you head to Africa. Christmas carols sing that no matter how far away you roam, you can only have real happiness at home, but I'm finding myself very confused and a bit flustered even with the comfort and ease of being home with my parents. There are gifts I have received that I can't take to Cairo with me because they're too fragile for the foreign environment and I find myself trying to talk about my relationship outside the context of the environment it started in which makes no sense. How can I talk about my boyfriend without the context of his culture and environment? People who haven't lived in Egypt just can't quite understand when I try to explain our relationship in an American context.

Well, here I am stuck between two worlds, and it would be easy to lay Cairo aside and go back to my regular US life if I wasn't going back in a week and a half, but I am. Who knows? I may go back later for years and years, but either way I know I will be back. I'm just going to enjoy Seattle while I can and get the most out of it, but I never want to forget Egypt for one second because it feels like if I blink I'll forget everything that happened the last 6 months. My memories of Egypt are far too precious to be lost like that.

My Cairo Top 5

2009-12-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

Well, my room mate posted her Cairo Top 3 list, so here's mine. Not that anyone asked but here is my Top 5 Cairo (not Egypt as a whole) list thus far, keeping in mind I haven't seen many of the major sites because I'm waiting for my parents to come, and keeping in mind that there are many more things, of varying sizes that I love and appreciate about Cairo:

1. Sitting in an 'ahwa downtown or by the Nile or next to centuries-old buildings, smoking shisha, sipping oversweetened Lipton Yellow-Label Tea, with my boyfriend. This is the time when I feel like there is no where else in the world I want to be.

2. It's cliche, yes, but the people. Cairo people are multifaceted and individual of course, but tend towards the happy, helpful, and mischievous with an earthy sense of humor. They are incredibly hospitable and sociable and determined to refute the bad image the West has of Middle Easterners. They will also feed you until you burst.

3. Hearing the music I love, every day, every where. I love Egyptian music, 'nuff said. It moves me, it speaks to me, and no one in the US gets that really, but everyone gets it here.

4. Ok, this is a bittersweet one, but the belly dance performances. These are the huge names of the dance world and it is riveting to see them perform, and unique, and sad. I'll have to write more about it later clearly and disentangle the conflicting emotions.

5. Hanging out in multi-national groups of people getting to know each other. Cairo is a major hub of education for the Middle East, so we get people coming through from all over the world. We salsa-danced the night away with Egyptians, Canadians, Americans, Germans, and Brits over Thanksgiving and it was a blast!

Probably I'll have to make a Top 10 List before I go home.

Ho Ho Ho, Habibi

2009-12-12T05:23:00.001-08:00

Hello, hello. I am still alive, yes! Winter in Cairo is fabulous, it’s slightly cold and has rained a couple times—yeah it DOES do that—but you pretty much just need a light jacket, scarf, and closed-toed shoes and you’re good to go! The only problem is that no where really has central heating, so buildings, while not reaching a hypothermia-inducing level of coldness tend to be chilly. I mean, 65 degrees feels cold to me now after a summer of twice that. I am now jealous of every hijabii girl out there. So sue me.

Not much news, just the semester wrapping up at AUC slowly and agonizingly and preparing to go home for a couple weeks which means lots of Christmas shopping at the various touristy suuq-shops and strategic packing-planning. Roomies are taking off on the 17th, and I’m out as of the 21st, so it’s coming down to it, but I will return to Cairo January 7th, never fear! Also I turn 20 TOMORROW! I can’t believe it, I dreamed about celebrating my 20th in Cairo for a long time, but it looks like on the day I won’t be doing much. Still, I’ll probably post something on it so stay tuned.

My article on Weddings in Cairo has now dropped on Gilded Serpent, pop over and have a read! Makes an excellent finals distraction when accompanied by hot chocolate!

Tips for Finals
Which I am not following really, but would probably be useful to the non-masochistic out there. To be honest, these goals are pretty much unattainable for most of us during finals, but everyone tells them to us, so think of them as something to aspire to. These tips are probably self-evident, and I know you’ve heard them before, but it helps to remind ourselves:

-Get enough rest: Your brain functions like crap when you deprive it of sleep over and over again during finals, instead try to get a decent amount of sleep, because it will function more efficiently, and memorize things more easily, rewarding you by saving you time.
How I am not following this one: Well I’m doing better lately, having slept 12 hrs last night, but that was to make up for the average 4 hrs per night week I just had of writing papers. Papers are evil, because you CAN stay up late writing them with the only side effect of being really stupid in class the next day. We all know that in the time-management calculus that goes into finals, being stupid during one class period is not equal to getting a bad grade on your final paper worth 30%. You know which one you’re going to go with and that you’ll be up till 4am.

-Eat well: Again, your brain does not function well if it’s not getting the necessary nutrients it needs. You should take snack breaks while studying to keep your energy level up, and eat healthy to utilize those calories in a smart way. Load up on proteins, stay away from bad carbs and junk food. This is all particularly important in light of the fact that many of us do not have time to exercise during finals.
How I am not following this one: Probably my biggest failure this round of finals, actually. I don’t eat all day because I’m holed up in my room, under my warm covers, using my large bed as a large desk, and totally focused on studying. Then suddenly I realize I’m starving and go straight for foods that are easy to prepare quickly or that someone else makes. In other words, I end up with pasta or junk food, neither of which are particularly healthy or fulfill the high-protein/low-carb criteria my body needs for some intense studying. Time for a break and a trip to the store!

-Get exercise: Studies have actually shown that people in better physical shape are able to better sit through long tests and have the mental endurance for them. Weird, eh? Your body and brain are integrated though, so it makes sense. Take study breaks to go for walks/jogs or do some push ups and sit ups to keep maintain your exercise level during finals.
How I am not following this one: I sort of am…about once I day I’ve been going for a long walk, but for someone who’s body is used to professional-dancer level of exercise this is an epic failure. I worry about swiftly becoming flabby in my food and non-exercise binge. Time to hit the gym when finals are over!

-Make a study plan and study with other people: You only have so much time to study during finals, so make plans to use your time efficiently and see if you really can squeeze in that get-together for a last pre-Christmas-break hurrah. Budget out your time realistically so you can do well on all your finals and not just a few of them that you would prefer to spend all your time working on. Study groups are helpful so that you can fill in each other’s gaps in knowledge or missing lecture notes from absences. Not only that but it gives you a chance to feel like you’re being social and see your friends while still getting stuff done!
How I am not following this one: I am, actually. I have a paper taped to my mirror with my schedule for this week, but things have gotten moved around a bit in the game plan a bit. I am studying with friends a bit, but we have ended up gabbing more than studying to be honest.

-Don’t freak out: Breathe, meditate, take walks, drink tea, keep your stress level down. High stress causes your brain to shut down and not absorb the info you need to remember, so try to stay calm and not waste your precious study time by freaking out. “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell talks about what happens when your heartbeat goes above certain levels of BPM. Basically the more you freak out; the more your body cuts off unnecessary functions and goes into an automatic response mode that does not involve critical thinking. You can’t absorb and process information when you get into high-adrenaline-freak-out-mode.
How I am not following this one: My tendency to go hysterical when overstressed drives my BPM right up and drives me right out of study mode and into crying-on-my-bed mode. Not good for studying.

Optional Read: Finals Ranting
I never seem to handle finals all that well, but professors back home have never given me ones that seem like they’re going to be impossible. A lot of work, sure, difficult is to be expected of course, but a couple of my AUC professors are flirting with the impossible.

First there is the guy that moved our second-to-last lecture to a room that I found the building for, I found on the map of the building, but never did find a way to get to even after walking around the building for 20 minutes. Chalk another one up to the “what was this architect ON?” phenomenon. I probably shouldn’t blame the professor for that one, but then again he shouldn’t blame me either.

However, then this guy went and gave us an assignment due smack-dab in the middle of my finals. The damn thing is based on lectures he never gave us in person, he sent us taped lectures because of our extended vacation time, so we haven’t exactly been taught the material either. Also, perhaps he has forgotten that we are all studying frantically right now? Perhaps he doesn’t understand that quite a few professors like to be nice and let us escape earlier by using their last class period for the final? PS—the Arabic teachers are actually supposed to do that, so don’t tell me my finals week “hasn’t started” so I totally have time to do your stupid assignment.

Let me tell you why I don’t: I have a final on Thursday that I must literally review ALL the material of the class for as we will be given essay questions covering the entirely of the reading material. Oh, but she is being generous enough to let us use the 5-page-per-reading-10-pages-per-week summaries that we wrote before…but wait, we aren’t getting them back until the day of the exam. What?? So I basically am re-skimming an entire semester’s worth of readings, awesome.

These are the unreasonable ones though; I fully expected to be doing things like giving a 10-minute presentation in Arabic, or reviewing all my notes over and over on Comparative Politics of the Middle East. That I expect, and is reasonable. These are normal finals: review your notes to make sure you got everything, show off your language skills and prove you learned stuff, ok got it. Move your class somewhere where I can’t for the life of me find it even though I am really trying to attend the lecture so I can stand some chance of passing your final? Very not cool. Give my brain a hernia trying to figure out your stupid assignment based on already hernia-inducing taped lectures where I can’t ask questions or get clarification? Not good. Due in the middle of finals? Just sadistic!

Christmasy Cairo?
Yeah, sure. The flower shops near us a few roads down now have a bunch of cute (if small) Christmas trees out front draped with tinsel and lights to entice people to take them home. Lights wink from balconies in our foreigner neighborhood, and you can see glints of decorated trees in people’s living rooms just like in the US. I feel a bit left out honestly since the other settled-in foreigners have their adorable trees and I opted not to get one as I will be in the states for the holidays.

I would usually at least try to make a wreath or something, but contented myself with using my elementary school skills to make a paper chain decoration stretching 10 feet across the living room from chandelier to chandelier. It's got those awesome paper-cut-out snowflakes we all used to make when we were kids! Don't let anyone tell you elementary school doesn't teach valuable life skills, yo.

Also, Lady Gaga has released a Christmas single with Space Cowboy that I find hilarious if mediocre musically. If you missed getting it for free on Amazon, you can still pick it up for 99 cents, and if you do be sure to listen to the lyrics!

Thanksgiving and Eid

2009-11-28T04:50:00.000-08:00

Holiday season is beginning to hit now, and while I may be on the other side of the world from America, the study abroad students are putting on a good show of creating a wonderful holiday season nevertheless. The fun part here is that it's not, "oh is the turkey going to be moist enough?" but rather, "do you think we'll have enough gas to finish cooking the turkey?" or "how the hell do you say nutmeg in Arabic?"

Strangely enough, Eid al Adha (the big feast 2 months after the end of Ramadan) happened to be the day after Thanksgiving this year. Again, let's remember everyone: Muslim calendar coincides with lunar calender, ergo holidays move around. So AUC decided to be oh-so-kind and give us about a week and a half off so that we could somehow manage to finish all our work that has piled up because of the not-so-brilliant Swine Flu vacation earlier mentioned. See my entries around September to see how I enjoyed that vacation, and compare to now when I should be slaving away on term papers every day because my work has gotten beyond backed up. Anyway, we ended up with one big vacation to celebrate both holidays.

Turkey Day
I kicked off the vacation in good form, being invited to two Thanksgiving parties that I really wanted to both attend but were literally across town from eachother! I opted for the student one on the promise of pumpkin pie and dance partying, and it turned out to be a great dinner. I showed up early to assist with basting, cleaning, and last minute hand-wringing as we tried to get everyone in the apartment before the food got cold and our hunger got too intense. In downtown Cairo the thing is that one has to literally go down to the street or even a nearby landmark every time a friend is coming because otherwise it's almost impossible to find the building or apartment, so there was a lot of ferrying people up and down 11 stories in the ancient elevator. All told we ended up with a couple German guys, a few Americans, some Egyptian guys, two British guys (one decided to dress up a bit for his first Thanksgiving by wearing a tie), a Canadian (who deemed it "odd" because they celebrate Thanksgiving a month earlier in Canada) and the lovely hostesses Drift and Jenny. The food was SUPERB! Drift's first solo effort at an entire turkey was a complete success with Spanish seasonings to make it even more special.

I've been asked, what does one eat at Thanksgiving in Egypt? Well, pretty much what you eat at home if you can pay the price for the huge turkey (not cheap!) and any special imported things that you just must have. We had a whole Turkey (with gravy that I made in the last 5 minutes before we ate!), mashed potatoes, Spanish rice, stuffing, salad, green beans, plus Egyptian sweets (kindly brought by our lovely Egyptian friends) and pumpkin pie for dessert. We also learned that attempting to whip ones own whipped cream is impossible without a mixer, so the pie was left to shine on it's own. Everything was delicious and I think a good representation of the holiday for those at the table who had never had Thanksgiving food before.

We were also asked about the "why" of Thanksgiving and after us Americans tossing around the usual sarcastic "celebrating betraying the Indians and white people being jerks" sort of comments, the consensus was food and being with people you love. But mostly food.

After lying around for awhile, we commenced the dancing! Drift, Jenny, and I taught some different Spanish dances as well as American "club" dancing because no one outside America seems to really get it as we discovered. In the end it boiled down to us three American girls, the two British guys, and our lone brave Egyptian friend Said who went along with whatever we tried to teach him with good effort, enthusiasm, and embarrassment. When nicely sweaty and exhausted, we all attempted to take pictures for awhile while jumping...you know the kind, where the people are jumping around so they look all cool and suspended in midair. Yeah, those are really hard to do with six people in one small living room and one digital camera with a timer. We ended up with many pictures of some people jumping, or everyone looking really ready to jump,or having just landed. We did manage to get a great picture of me, Richard, and Said sitting on a couch looking extremely bored, oblivious to a pillow (unexpectedly thrown by Dave) about to hit us. It's on Drift's camera, but I hope I can share it with you soon!

Me and the guys staggered out around 3am and split up to get cabs back to our respective parts of town. I collapsed into bed, fully prepared to sleep at least 10 hours and awake to visit a friend the next day, which I strategically kind of forgot was Eid when I agreed to come visit her.

Eid
The first thing to think of when it comes to Eid al Adha is the killing of animals. I realize this seems a bit morbid and bloody, but the sacrifice of sheep and goats is what immediately comes to mind about this holiday. The idea is that these animals are sacrificed to provide meat for the poor and needy, who otherwise may not be able to afford such a luxury. Also families tend to indulge in eating meat if this is the one time in the year that they can afford it, or in honor of the feast if they would be able to afford it anyway. It doesn't bother me at all, being a meat eater myself, for people to want to eat meat, but I have admit that being a bit of a sensitive type, I was nervous about the amount of blood and gore that was going to be happening publicly. For weeks there have been pens set up around town on the street side with sheep or goats just milling around, being well fed, even decorated, and I couldn't help thinking of them that morning when I got up at the crack of 2pm.

Apparently I needn't have worried--much. My area in Maadi was quiet, unbloody, and totally normal as usual, but what do you expect from an expensive, foreigner quarter? No, I expected the real bloodiness when I headed to Mariuteya to visit my friend that evening...but again, on the way to her place there was nothing to be worried about on the main road next her house. I spent some time at her place having second Thanksgiving dinner and socializing, before snagging a ride with someone to the metro in Dokki.

Now, I have to say that while I was nervous about witnessing anything gory, I was really curious. I have only seen an entire sheep butchered once, and that one happened to be already dead and skinned at the time. I was daring myself to go out and check out scene just to see what the deal was, was it really so bloody, how were people celebrating or reacting to the holiday, and all that crap. I suppose it's human nature to be curious and fascinated by that sort of spectacle, even if it is intellectually uncomfortable. So I was secretly glad when my friend offered to drive me to Dokki through the poorer area of Haram, because I would get to witness something unique I would probably never see in the US.

As we set off the streets seemed really wet, which isn't so unusual for Maadi where rich people's cars get hosed down everyday by their bawwabs to keep the dust off, but I was curious to see the same effect in Mariuteya. When we hit a puddle easily half a foot deep I realized that the streets had been drenched with water to dilute and wash away the blood. The puddles were slightly reddish (hard to see in the dark until we passed under streetlamps), and prevalent in big areas where there had obviously been butchering stations set up earlier. Well, at least I had gone late enough to not witness anything disturbing to me, or not--we passed three stations still set up and I stole quick glances, catching sight of a man with a huge knife hacking into a large skull on a sturdy table, and a cascade of hooves on the tarp a few meters away. Big chopping blocks were set up under florescent lights on the street with people gathered around to get their share of meat as we trundled by. It seemed rather surreal, and the scene faded into the night quickly before I found myself stumbling over a puddles and onto the sidewalk before hopping onto the metro and heading home.

Two holidays back-to-back and apparently I can't get enough of partying because I'm putting on my own thing tonight! Stay tuned for pics and recap, because I have several whole chickens in the oven right now and am thus rather busy!

Game Time

2009-11-18T14:30:00.000-08:00

Everyone has probably heard about the Egypt/Algeria stuff going down lately, especially the Western media view, so I wanted to talk about my own experiences and thoughts a bit. A few days ago, Lynette over at Gilded Serpent posted the photo at right from me with the following text (my writing):

"The first picture is of the riots that happened in Cairo on November 14th, when Egypt won a world-up qualifier match against Algeria. Looks scary, but it was actually a lot of fun roaming the streets in between all the stopped cars with people dancing everywhere brandishing flags! It was quite a controversial match, as the Algerians claim to have been attacked on the way from the airport to their hotel, the Egyptian officials and police refuse to back up their story, and the word on the street is that the reason the Algerian players' bus was attacked was that they burnt the Egyptian flag before heading off to play the match! No one is sure what exactly happened, but Egypt's 2-0 victory means that they will play [in] Sudan tonight to pass this round of qualifications."

I received the following reply on GS which is what made me think about the issue more and want to blog about it:

"In response to the photo and description in Kaleidoscope of the aftermath of the Algerian/Egyptian soccer match that states that the Algerians burned an Egyptian flag on the way from the airport and that caused the problems, please watch the 50 or more YouTube videos that show that a mob of Egyptians threw rocks at the team bus that was supposedly protected by Egyptian security forces.

One Algerian player had four stitches and three others were wounded. The French team doctor on the bus gives a first hand report that is in on USA Today. World newspapers are all reporting that FIFA was not abiding by its own rules and the match should have been postponed and played in a neutral country. Of course, now the emotions are so high that there has been widespread violence and destruction of Egyptian businesses in Algiers. Well, this is why I refer to dance than to compete!!"

Yeah, no kidding! I'd rather dance too, but this is the world we live in I suppose and I've been provoked to think about the situation again, and why not?

Well here's the problem I have, with my perspective from living here. We heard about the attacking of the Algerian bus of course, and I myself watched the footage on AlJazeera which looked extremely incriminating indeed. For my flatmates and their friends it was a well-of-course-those-stupid-Egyptians-attacked-the-bus-they're-nuts situation, but it didn't quite ring true to me completely. Not completely made up, but I felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzle. Yes, Egyptians are very nationalistic, and very passionate about soccer, but there is a difference between passionate nationalism and what people were saying went down, which was fanatical nationalism. I mean think about it, why would it benefit Egyptians to attack the Algerians over an impending match? After would be more than plausible, but right before? Why? I think most people that follow soccer are aware, FIFA moves games to other locations if the security proves to be unsuitable, so that means the match should/would have been rescheduled.

The next day a couple people flat-out told me that the police were right, the attack was completely staged, and that the Algerians had injured themselves to make Egypt look bad internationally. I also heard that the hotel the Algerians were heading to was less than a half-mile from the airport, so we have the new angle of what kind of security forces were present. Frankly, I have no idea, but this is a state with military personnel to spare--if they wanted to they could protect those players. It still seemed weird, because I could see people hanging around threateningly and maybe getting riled up, but breaking the windows of the bus? Really? Then again, we haven't gotten news of a complete police investigation so who knows what happened.

Then, the day after the match I heard another interesting piece of news which was that the Algerian team supposedly burnt an Egyptian flag before heading off to Cairo. A good American friend of mine deemed that, "downright provocative" and I have to agree. Egyptians are nationalistic enough (and let's face it, us Americans are too) that if someone burnt a flag, they'd be riled up about it and potentially violent. It's then a political insult, not to mention nothing to do with sports!

Of course none of this justifies anyone getting hurt, but there are a lot of angles going on to the story. I think what most likely happened is that the bus did get attacked, but the Algerian players perhaps were also guilty of provocation, and hamming it up or creating more injuries to encourage FIFA to move the match off Egyptian home turf--if you were an opposing team in this important of a game, would you want to play here?? In any case, those are some pieces of info I have that are bouncing around to ponder, and from an on-the-ground perspective I think that's the most likely explanation. I am not simply content to take the "Egyptians are crazy, nationalistic, and violent" route, because it is impossible for me with the people that I know here personally who would never engage in that behavior, support it, or encourage it.

What I think is even more important is the way the international community is looking at this, and the way Egyptian and Algerian leadership is using the matches to distract. One of my professors flat out remarked that he was frustrated about the World Cup because Egyptian authorities are encouraging the drama as they want to have a smokescreen for domestic issues, albeit temporarily. Seems like a bad strategy to me, because they'll have to face their issues sooner or later anyway! I guess they'd rather stall like anyone with a piece of work we don't want to tackle--but that doesn't make it any better. I'm sure the Western powers wouldn't mind a little political infighting in the Arab League to exploit either, but hey that's just because I'm studying the political history of the region right now! I'm actually glad I can't read a US newspaper to see how they're spinning this, because we all know how America likes to paint an "Us and them" portrait that I find irritating and a root of racial bigotry.

In any case, hopefully it's all over now as Egypt lost today's match against Algeria 1-0. What a NASTY match too, my god! Huge number of fouls, 5 yellow cards to Algeria, and one to Egypt, cleats in sensitive areas, arms nearly broken, at least 3 or 4 players had to be peeled off the grass and driven away in the medical carts--it was pretty dirty, people. Not to mention very close.

Ok, khalas that's my big speech of the day, just my 2 cents!

Update Time

2009-11-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

As time goes by, it seems I just get lazier and lazier about updating! I feel bad to the folks back in Seattle who keep up with my blog, and those dancers who stay tuned for any little scrap of dance-related info I may occasionally throw out there, because school is literally trying to eat my life right now. I sincerely apologize for it's rudeness.

A Partial Theory on Various Sources of Stress
Oho, they all said that the Swine Flu Vacation (see my previous post) was going to be so great and so much fun. And then they got surprised at me when I was angry and upset about it...why? Well, everyone understands why now. Class 6 days a week was bad enough, but now finals and term papers are beginning to descend upon us and suddenly the scene is looking quite nasty indeed with everything crammed into an already short semester. My brain's response to stress these days has been, "no no, you can't make me!" and then a prompt shutdown, which can't be good because usually I respond to stress quite well.

Then today my toilet exploded.

I was innocently flushing it just before walking out the door to go see a costumer when I literally heard it making a rumbling noise. As in thunder, or a large train passing nearby. Not so good. I poked my head back into the bathroom, then cautiously approached as I noticed the tank was steaming...uh oh. Really, really not good. At this point something went POP and my bathroom started being flooded with steaming water. I'm not going to lie, I screamed and literally wrung my hands! After rather brief hysterics I realized I needed to do SOMETHING as my bathroom was half an inch deep in water that was luckily not sewage-y looking.

I ran to the balcony as fast as my little legs would allow, and scanned the street below for my bawwabs. The policemen looked at me curiously as I looked probably a bit shell shocked. Spotting Sallah, my favorite bawwab, I screamed in Arabic something that pretty much translates to, "Come, please! Come quickly! Big water! QUICKLY, PLEASE!" and waving my arms which caused the policemen to move from curiosity to outright amusement. Good to know my Arabic hardly holds up in a crisis. Sallah hustled his butt up to my place, hiking his galabeya up and wading in, only to shake his head, smile at me and twiddle the knob that controls water flow to the toilet, causing the flood to halt. He then pointed out a plastic hose on the back of the toilet running to the bidet that had burst from pressure...thus explaining why the water was clean and hot, and not totally disgusting. I nodded with as much dignity as I could while still being in my shell shocked state and managed to inquire if he could bring me the required part today. He said sure, and went off to procure it while I opened the floor drain and began scraping the water towards it with a dustpan. A few hours and $10 later all was right with the world, but I'm still paranoid to flush the toilet!

Winter has arrived!
Fun and games in Cairo all the time, clearly. It IS starting to get cold these days though, although by cold I mean it's in the low 80s during the day and mid 60s at night. I assure you though, it feels cold after a summer of 100+ degree weather every day! We're wearing sweaters to school now, and the bawwabs have started wrapping little white turbans on their heads to keep warm, while the AUC crowd is surely looking forward to donning little Gucci jackets and that crap.

Eid is coming up--the second one, the big one! This will be the feast where animals are slaughtered for their meat and often meat is given to the poor who normally cannot afford to eat it. If you go into the poorer areas right now you can find pens of lambs and goats right next to the street, waiting to be slaughtered. In Mariuteya the other day I drove by a tent/pen with huge fluffy lambs eagerly feeding from a huge troth, their fur dyed in swaths of pink and yellow to look more festive (I suppose). Hallah tells me that she stays in on the day with windows, curtains, and ears firmly shut--apparently it is quite the bloodbath. I can't really see that happening in Maadi though, as the foreigners are doing there thing quite a bit more here, but I suppose we'll see as I am staying in Cairo over the break.

Dance Things
There seems to come a point--or many points--in a dancer's life when we are cut off from teachers, from resources, and community and must turn to only ourselves to keep practicing the art. It is difficult, requires a lot of discipline, and love to go on dancing like this. My whole college experience has pretty much always turned dance into an individual, internal practice for me from the first night I arrived, dancing in my dorm common room on a table while one other girl kept me company playing piano, to now. In between there has been a lot of practicing in tiny dorm rooms, that are no where near a proper "dance studio." My last room I was practicing/living in was literally 10 feet by 15 feet and contained a twin bed, a desk, my dress form, assorted bags of sewing work, sewing machine, nightstand, and a book case (everything else got shoved in the closet) but I danced anyway because I had to keep practicing. I don't know why exactly, but I felt driven, I was not directly attached to the community but I was a member of it, and a professional dancer within it so I had to practice to stay on the ball, to become better.

But I didn't...the truth is that it is so easy to fall off the horse, practicing all alone, in a tiny room, without a mirror but with your schoolwork laid out next to you on the bed. It is so easy to instead go, "oh crap, I haven't gone over those Genetics notes" or "I need to review for that midterm on Thursday!" or worst of all, "I'm just so tired, I really need some down time." The only way I kept myself motivated this last school year to dance like this was to keep improving for my coach, to keep my weight down, and so that I could be good enough to stand in front of teachers in Egypt without being embarrassed. I told myself I only had months to go before Aida Nour or Liza Laziza or (heaven forbid!) Dina was breathing down my neck saying the last girl had been SO MUCH BETTER. I danced like a maniac when I could, would stay up an extra hour after my school work was done because I was afraid I just wouldn't be good enough. Dancing was just more important than sleep to me at that time, I had to do it!

Then I got to Egypt, and the bottom fell out from under me, dance-wise. The teachers here are tough to have a relationship with, and I really want not simply a teacher of moves but also a mentor, plus my problem is that they are expensive and I don't want to waste my money on the wrong person. Coming to another country was expensive enough, getting myself set up in a proper apartment was also tough, AUC wants my soul, and after that I just don't have much time and money left to take lessons or find the people I really was sure I wanted to take lessons from.

I wasn't expecting the emotional jolting and draining I would experience from the second my flight landed. Egypt is tiring. It makes me tired and lazy to live here, I was expecting to get my sea legs within a month and be back to dancing every day like I used to. It didn't happen, I have only danced at weddings in the last two weeks, I have barely even danced in the comfort of my own apartment and it is making me incredibly depressed. Cairo was the goal, getting here and being good enough to be here as a dancer was the goal, but once the goal was attained, I lost my direction completely.

Yes, I am taking lessons from someone right now (it's a secret so don't even ask), and she's fabulous, but she doesn't have much time for me so I go a long time in between private lessons which I used to have once a week back in California. I feel disconnected from something that I'm surrounded by. There is great dancing happening in Cairo, there are fabulous people, but I can't quite get at them because I'm broke and no one knows me. So I'm having a pity party for myself here on the blog...moving on:

What am I reading and writing?
In complete change of subject, I am reading "The Liberation of Women" by Qusim Amin right now, who is excellent. He is an Egyptian philosopher, a disciple of Muhammad 'Abduh, who basically expands 'Abduh's thoughts on educational reform and brings those reforms into conversation with women's status in Egypt. Basically Amin is all about education of women, inclusion of women in the public sphere, including in politics, bringing women out of seclusion and out of veiling practices. Personally I have mixed feelings on veiling and I think I am actually going to write a piece for Gilded Serpent on it, so stayed tuned for that--it'll probably have a taste of Amin's theories in there. More on him later when I'm past the first 10 pages! I want to see what points he makes on Quranic interpretation and hermeneutics--always fun stuff!

Right now though, I'm writing a piece on parties and weddings in Egypt for Gilded Serpent which is nearly finished and I'm thinking of writing a piece on popular music and concerts in Egypt since I seem to keep ending up at them!

Dance and Stress

2009-10-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been too much to report lately, besides the usual travel money woes ("Where did it all go?!") and school, school, and more school. We're paying for our two week vacation by a combination of using our previously school-free Tuesdays, and some Saturdays depending on how sadistic the professor is. I finally have wrangled a schedule with sleeping in a bit on Tuesdays, not going every other Tuesday, and with the occasional Saturday lecture, which seems much more doable then the schedule my professors originally wanted to inflict on us. Being in Egypt, we have all become masters of negotiation apparently.

By the by, I have several items for sale up on Bhuz right now, so go check it out! Up for sale are a lovely Khaleegy thobe (being modeled by my lovely room mate on the left here) and several beautiful skirts!

Ramadan Review
My Ramadan Article is now out in Gilded Serpent for everybody to check out. I had a lovely time here during Ramadan and I hope you all take the time to check out the article, as it shows a very special slice of Cairo life.

Dance News
Last night I got to go see Randa Kamel on the very famous Nile Maxim! This boat is so ridiculously known for famous people dancing there that I recognized the decor instantly from all the pictures of Cairo big-deal dancers placing them on that stage.

I was sitting at Liza Laziza's table with a couple her friends and Hallah Moustafa, so of course we got a lovely warm welcome from all the staff that know her, the waves and smiles from the band, and just the extra air of being VIPs. I must admit, I did enjoy basking in the reflected pretended "important person" feeling a lot, after having been a nobody since moving here.

The show included the requisite lounge-singer kind of act with two girls singing and dancing around casually a little, a tannoura dancer (who was actually quite excellent), and then Randa herself! She charged out in a boob-hoisting costume with a silver-holographic bra and belt and a yellow satin skirt, slit generously to show the stark line of nude shorts beneath. Hallah and Liza exchanged comments about the costume, which personally I wasn't liking that much. The skirt was riding up slightly above her belt, the line of the shorts was just obnoxious, and the bra was just way to push-up-togethery--BUT, as Hallah said, "Who cares? She could wear the [darn] table cloth and we'd still all love it!"

Randa is clearly a very talented dancer, with a great stage personality. Like all good Egyptian dancers, she has an easy happiness and fun to her dancing that is so accessible and joyful. Her moves are great, and executed so skillfully that I couldn't take my eyes off to take a bite of food! That being said, she is in her "Dina phase," right now which is a bit frustrating as I wanted to see her on her terms. Her moves were very strong and with lots of clean hip locking that I know may be more of a Dina thing. However, Dina has a lovely fluid sensuousness to her that I found slightly lacking in Randa who was hitting everything very solid and cleanly. It was perfect for the folkloric part though, which came across quite well.

She did two costume changes and I much preferred her folkloric ensemble and the bedlah for her last set compared to the first one. The last costume was quite nice in a lovely turquoise color with a sheer skirt over shorts, and much more tasteful than the first.

Oh yes and the band was excellent of course, I was so happy to change from the lounge-singer keyboard and conga drums band to the real Egyptian band! I remember why I came to Cairo now, right...

All in all it was a great show! I love seeing the wonderful dancers here, because it is just so inspiring and uplifting, like a breath of fresh air after sitting through hafla after hafla of mediocre dancers dotted with semi-talented ones that you're too worn out by then to appreciate or enjoy.

The Rest
Well, I found out my rent is due because of some mix up as to whether the last month of my three months that I gave the landlady was a deposit or a month of rent. Turns out it was supposed to be a deposit, no matter what was translated to me or discussed two months ago. So I owe rent now, and the flat owner is pressuring me to get it in cash as soon as possible which means I am again going through the frantically withdrawing cash as fast and furious as I can and running around to different ATMs, starting again today. I have to front 3 months of my own rent, and Dec-Jan for the other two rooms since I haven't gotten room mates or deposits for those rooms for next semester yet. Hooray. Wish me luck.

Swine Flu Vacation

2009-09-29T02:21:00.000-07:00

Vacation?!
Just as I was getting settled into a regular schedule of classes, private lessons with Hallah Moustafa, and homework the Egyptian government decided to clamp down on the foreign colleges that were open. Apparently all the colleges were supposed to be delayed several weeks in opening because of swine flu, but AUC ignored them at first and now we have had a two-week vacation. This has resulted in general insanity, traveling, and chaos meaning that I haven't exactly felt like sitting down and blogging much.

I suppose it's a good idea in theory to keep people from congregating in a university to reduce the chances of swine flu...but seriously? Every. Single. AUC Student. Is. Going. To. Travel. Did the government and AUC not consider this at all? Not only does that mean they will not be reducing their risks of bringing back the flu to AUC, but that if they have it and don't know yet (or don't care) they'll be spreading it around the country or the world depending how far afield they go. Add that fact to two weeks without Arabic lessons and the disruption of my gear-change back to college mode from lazy-ass-sitting-around-Cairo-all-summer mode and I was PISSED.

Therefore the day they told us, I decided to host an iftar at my house.

Dinner Party
Remember in my last entry the not-so-hot state of my cooking skills? Well, for some reason that I think may be related to being incredibly angry over the vacation, I decided to invite some people over for Iftar or breakfast despite not really having cooked for other people in my life. During Ramadan you have Iftar right at sunset when you break your fast for the day, and things had worked out that I had attended only one here during Ramadan so I figured I would have my own.

Another AUC study abroad student invited me to her place and I was unable to attend, so I invited her and her room mates over, so that was three people. Tim was of course invited, along with Autumn and Carolyn's friend Andrew. I ran into a friend from Economics class at AUC that day who was just as distressed about the vacation as me, and wasn't sure what to do with himself so I invited him and his friend over too. I texted Ramy on the way home, who inquired in disbelief if I was cooking or ordering food before he said he would come straight from work to help me cook. Add me and my roomies and suddenly I was hosting an 11-person dinner. Whoops! Oh well!

I did a massive grocery shopping trip on the way home, which is a major feat here as we live a couple blocks from the grocery store and thus insist on just carrying everything home instead of having it delivered. It can get to be very heavy, sweaty work in 90 degree heat. I forgot a few items, including dates and milk for the traditional style of breaking the fast, so I was leaving to go out again when I ran into Ramy on the steps of my building carrying a bag. What was in the bag? Oh, dates and milk of course! That boy seriously does read my mind on occasion.

All things considered it went great, but I couldn't have done it without Autumn, Carolyn, and Ramy traipsing in and out of the kitchen to lend many helping hands. Dinner was served slightly late, the ma7shy wasn't quite great, but everything else seemed like it was tasty and we rounded off the evening eating chocolate chip cookies while everyone figured out where they were going for break.

Having just ordered a $900 costume from Hallah Moustafa I resolved to remain in Cairo and save my cash, so I politely listened to these vacation plans until it got too frustrating and went to clean up the plates and the kitchen. The rest day I woke up to a deserted apartment as my roomies had headed out to Jordan.

Sharm El Sheikh
Well, okay I meant not to go on vacation and spend money...buuut...after being bored in Cairo for a week I was worn down enough to be convinced to go along with my roomies to Sharm for the weekend and stay in the five-star comfort of the Sheraton resort there for Carolyn's birthday. Hats off to my mother for this one for helping me out financially a bit so that I was persuaded to go! I am so, so glad I did go because it was beautiful, relaxing, and considerably better than tromping around the apartment for a few days and bitching at my boyfriend on the phone about how I was bored!

The place had like 8 swimming pools, several of which have their own swim-up bars. I never knew I particularly liked swim-up bars until this trip, but then I went nuts on them! There's something about sipping a mojito not just beside the pool but IN the pool that tickles my fancy I guess!

Staying in Sharm was well...like being at a resort. We swam in the ocean, then laid on the beach in chaise lounges, then migrated to the main pool, then the lower main pool, then the pool bar, then the poolside restaurant, then one of the other pools with a cave and a waterfall (and a bar!) then one of the five-star restaurants...rise, repeat pretty much. The Sheraton was gorgeous, and really an unusual design for a hotel. The thing is sort of situated on a shallow cliff above the sea, so the hotel lobby sits on the cliff, and is wrapped around a man-made grotto in the center rimmed with a network of wooden walkways and pavillions--it really is totally cool! What confused us is that because the lobby sits on the cliff (along with the resort areas and villas which make the complex soooo huge), you go downstairs to go to your rooms, which line the facing of the cliff down to the beach level. It's a neat and unusual design that I found very refreshing, because in Cairo the hotels simply go UP, because they have nowhere else to go!

I was shocked at how much everything looked like Hawaii there, and am pretty sure everyone got sick of my remarks to that point. It seriously weirded me out though, because even the plants looked straight out of Hawaii, not to mention the beautiful tropical fish we observed in the sea! Here we are, on the Red Sea on the other side of the world from Hawaii and I was so surprised to see fish that looked exactly like the rainbow, iridescent, fuscia-faced fish I had seen as a child in Honolulu! There were a few different varieties hanging out in the shallows at the beach, forming a swirling treasure trove of color that got close but not quite close enough for Ramy to grab one like he wanted.

Ramy and I grudgingly returned to Cairo from our lovely weekend outing a couple days ago so that he and I could go back to work, and yesterday my roomies arrived back after visiting Mt. Sinai which apparently was great.

I probably have more to say and update since my last post, but I have to write a couple things for Gilded Serpent so it's over and out for now--stay tuned!

3 Months In

2009-09-12T12:10:00.001-07:00

My, my school has been keeping me busy! I know I can be a slacker about updating, but this takes the cake, doesn't it? My camera is on the fritz, so stay tuned for photos in the next couple days.

AUC Stuff
This last week was the first week of classes, but also the week when I got to do lots of fun activities like running around trying to get my email activated, my ID card to scan properly, my pin # for the online portal reset, a class dropped, and so on. Let me just say that AUC has a lot to learn about organization. Here are two examples:

Exhibit A: I ended up not thinking my Literature and Gender class was right for me, so I wanted to drop it and replace it with a seminar on Palestinian/Israeli issues. Easy, right? Wrong! I first had to find the office to make an appointment to do so. Luckily I ran into another international student who had to do something similar, and HER friend luckily knew where we needed to go to make an appointment to go to another location to make the actual schedule change. So we trooped off to the office, made our appointments for a few days later, and I showed up at the appointed time at the computer lab to see my adviser and get my schedule switched.

The room was chaos. Literally 20 students running around the lab, looking at schedules on computers, sitting and waiting in a clearly backed up and disorganized non-line for their appointment, or just sitting reading something. I finally got to my adviser, who told me that the class I wanted to switch into was full and there was no waiting list, so I should look at the course catalog and come back tomorrow to make the schedule change as they were closing in 15 minutes. I said okay, and came back the next day.

I came in and the guy manning the door asked me if I had an appointment..."uh, well I had one for yesterday, and she said to come back today as it's the last day to add/drop." I was told to wait in the hall with a few other people, so sure, whatever. I waited an hour before I finally got to my adviser again, to tell her that I couldn't find a replacement course and I just wanted to do the drop and take 12 credits instead. What did she say? "Oh, sure no problem, I already dropped you."

Exhibit B: I couldn't log onto the student portal, which you are supposed to do using your ID # and your birthday. Mine should have therefore been 1213** but it wouldn't work at all, so I headed to the registrar's office to get it reset. The first time I went a harassed-looking lady said, "Okay you need to go see your adviser, in the CORE building." Umm...what? I sort of nodded and wandered off, figuring I would try again the next day when there was someone else working.

Sure enough there was, and she said, "Come on back, you want [so-and-so]'s office just over there." Great! I then noticed there were about ten people hanging out in the waiting area outside so-and-so's office...and one person waiting inside the office where the lady we wanted wasn't even present. Not good, but I had time before my next class to wait, so I just took a seat.

After one hour again of waiting I was informed that, "Yeah it's just your birthday, which is 1212**, right?"

More on AUC classes and student culture to come! By the by, looks like I'm joining the Dabke team and/or the Egyptian Folkloric group!

Cooking
If you start dating an Egyptian boy and tell him you don't really cook, he may begin to cry--or at least look like he's about to. Therefore out of love, curiosity, hunger, and embarrassment over my lack of ability to feed myself, I attended a cooking class a few days ago that ended up being a blast! I found about it through Cairo Scholars, where a girl was advertising the class for special Egyptian food, taught by an Egyptian lady, and we'd have Iftar after at her home. For 150LE that sounded great!

We learned to cook a few different dishes, including: Shorbet Lisan ‘Asfour (Orzo soup in homemade chicken broth), Khoshaf bel Laban (Milk with dried fruit & nuts), Ma7shi Felfel we Kosa (Stuffed Peppers & Zucchini), Reyash Dani (Egyptian style lamb chops), Makarona Bechamel bel La7ma el Mafrooma (Oven-baked pasta with Bechamel and Ground Beef), 2amar el Din (Apricot drink), Karkaday (Hibisucus drink).

Everything was delicious, but what I found really fascinating was the style of Egyptian cooking and how people acquire their ingredients here/prepare them for cooking. This is still a country where you CAN get things fresh from the animals or fresh from the farm so to speak, and so it seems like many cooks that live here prefer not to shop the grocery stores like we foreign girls have been doing, but hit up the suuq for your veggies and milk and the butcher directly for the freshest stuff. Tipping the guy who sells you bags of fresh milk or the one who cuts your beef for you ensures that you get the best products too, especially once you develop a regular-customer sort of relationship.

Also of note is that there can be extra steps that us Westerners aren't used to dealing with when you prepare ingredients. For example, when you buy milk here (not at the grocery store) it literally is from the cow, so you have to boil it and remove the heavy cream yourself. This means that you get high quality milk, but in addition once you scrape off the cream and refrigerate it you get the most delicious heavy cream ever to use in your Makarona Bechamel! By the way, that is a baked pasta dish to die for--actually literally because we all stared in awe at how much cream and fats went into it. It was out of this world tasty though!

As a result of this class I theoretically could make these dishes, but at the moment I'm content with just keeping a bottle of 3mr El Din in the fridge because it's delicious and easy! During Ramadan you'll see in stores these packages with pictures of apricots on them wrapped in orange plastic wrap. When you open them up there's something like a big apricot fruit leather inside that you rip into little pieces and soak in water overnight before blending (if you have a blender--we don't have a working one!) and adding sugar to taste. Egyptians and Westerners do tend to disagree on how much sugar to add though, so you can also just have people add their own!

Shopping
In Maadi the road the metro runs parallel to, and has stops on, is called "Road 9." Long story--basically the streets in Maadi DO have numbers...but they make no logical sense. Recently the girls have decided that Shari3 Tissa is pretty much the place to go hang out and shop around, and I have to agree. It's got all these cute little Khan Al Khalili-esque stores hiding beneath upscale cafes, that probably are a little more expensive than the Khan itself, but without the crazy hawking, crowds, and general insanity! I picked up some gorgeous scarves (15LE each) and a swath of the kind of tent fabric that I am craaazy about!

I also picked up a tray of awesome Egyptian desserts from a store next to an equally awesome silver store, with windows packed with boards of trinkets and pendants. So, we basically have been eating little mini-backlava style things of different varieties for the last day. Some come with pistachios, some in squares, or rolls and all are ridiculously decadent!

Ramadan
Ok, since people have been asking it IS indeed Ramadan! I would love to write loads about it, but I am doing an article for The Gilded Serpent on Ramadan in Cairo and don't want to repeat myself, so stay tuned! I'm getting some nice photos, and trust me it is a very festive, fun time of year unless you're hungry or need something between 5:30 and 8pm!

Insomnia

2009-09-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

It's 4am again in Cairo, and I am awake again because this is just before my Cairo bed time. Things have a way of getting a little weird so that all of us find ourselves insomnia-ed out and sleeping at completely random times. I maintain that my tendencies to stay up (more than) half the night serve a couple purposes: I sleep through the hottest parts of the day, and when it's super late here it's a good time to chat or skype with my friends back on the West Coast.

Arrivals

The last week has been a little nuts, especially after a solid week of quiet, exploring Maadi, and living alone time. My room mate Autumn arrived, but then got invited to France so the next day we went to the airport en masse to stick her on a plane to Paris and grab Carolyn, my other room mate which turned into a complete fiasco because the airport is totally unorganized. She's keeping a blog by the way (more detailed than mine, because my memory is somewhat awful), named in the style of this one, so be sure to check out "Carolyn in Cairo." Carolyn and I mucked around for a few days and I subjected her to various learning experiences about Cairo and the neighborhood, which she took in her usual good humored, enthusiastic way. She's enthusiastic about everything! I have to say it's the right attitude to have when traveling, and goes a long way towards making sure you have a good trip.

Not long after a couple days of eating Koshary and wandering around downtown with Carolyn, my buddy Tim of Tokyo City Blues arrived to crash on our couch for a couple days while he looked for a place. By this point, my bawwabs were getting more and more confused, but I assured them that Ibn 3mii (son of my uncle) was not staying permanently in my hilariously broken Arabic. Carolyn and I enthusiastically dragged Tim out to a cafe immediately and I lectured her on some 3ameyya differences she'll have to deal with from studying fusha. The good thing was that it made me realize how much colloquial Arabic I've picked up this summer, and I felt sort of proud and motivated to continue. The bad thing is that Tim claims to not remember anything about this night, which I'm not entirely surprised by considering he spent half of it staring into space over his mango juice.

Soon enough Carolyn's boyfriend Cory arrived and the house really got crowded! It's been fun having him around though, as now Ramy and I have another couple to drag out on double dates and be generally adorable with. The first double date was to Harrawi, one of Ramy and my favorite cafes near Al Azhar mosque--what could be better than smoking shisha next to hundreds-of-years-old buildings? Pics of Harrawi forthcoming as I keep forgetting my camera when I go places. I did remember the next night when Ramy surprised by taking us out to the Citadel--which is amazing during Ramadan, by the way--for a Wust El Balad concert! I had been wanting to catch one of their shows since they're a favorite of Ramy's, but I was so surprised and thrilled that we got to see them for free at The Citadel! It was an awesome show, preceded by a short folkloric one that I also enjoyed a lot. The venue was awesome, and I'm glad we missed the bus and ended up walking up to the Citadel itself because you turn these corners and get the most breath-taking views as you go. What shocked me was the wind-chill factor. I was actually feeling cold for the first time in months, which I think totally confused my body. We all had a great time though, and I really, really want Wust El Balad's CD now...plus we're going again next month insha'allah!

Adjusting

Now Autumn has returned from her foray in France, we've all spent one day at AUC running around to get everything done, and Tim has moved out. We miss him lots, but he drops by lots to hang out and use our internet so it's all good! The day at AUC was pretty rough as I suffered MAJOR insomnia the night before, spending a solid hour crying and writing and listening to music on the balcony until So7or (about 3:30am) when Ramy called and tried to calm me down. It sort of worked, but then Carolyn and Cory woke up and we decided to make sandwiches and chat on the balcony. I got half an hour of sleep before the epic jaunt to AUC. It's beautiful (see the pic @ left) but I couldn't appreciate it because of the heat and lack of sleep. Here's an excerpt from the writing that night:

"I’m finding myself going through a new layer of adjustment being in a new country, which I think I will name the “Home?! Oh right—crap!” phase. It crept up on me suddenly and I was swamped with a feeling of love for this place…followed by a sudden wonder of how in the hell I was ever going to be able to go home and act normal. No, I am not concerned about picking up Egyptian habits like walking in the street or smoking shisha all the time or whatever, I am concerned that I will have spent a year in Egypt and it will have (and already has) engraved that time on my heart without any outside indication.

It’s good and bad really, because when I return this year will become my own personal internal experience, but I also want people to know and catch some understanding of what an impact it made. I know that no one will ever be able to understand this stuff quite as clearly or exactly as I do—because it is my personal experience after all—but I want them to see something of what I’m seeing here. I want them to know how I felt listening to the call to prayer in the pre-dawn light when I first arrived versus now a couple months in, and I want people to get why I love Shaabi music, and things like this that no one will ever really get. I know this, and I know that probably when I wake up in two hours (to go to AUC for orientation—it’s currently 4am) I will have accepted it, but right now I’m so sad to think I will go home and have my Egypt visit be remembered like this.

I love Cairo, but man does it make me feel emotionally unstable! The levels and phases of adjusting to life in a new country can be pretty rough, and I’ve gone through a few already, but this one I think surprised me more than others. Of course I’ve had the “I wanna go home!” moments, but I wasn’t expecting to be hit by a fear of going home, or at least not this early in my trip."

Basically I've been playing Cairo mom lately to a lot of people, which is fun and nice, but my cynical non-smiley self is starting to come out. I'm not sure why, I think it may be the lack of sleep or the need to not feel responsible or something, but I'm fighting really hard to not let a bad attitude come out that could alienate my new roomies. They're sweet people, so I'm really determined to make sure things stay on good terms!

PS--It's Ramadan now in Cairo, and its an experience! Next post...

The Grand Apartment Saga (part 2)

2009-08-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Where did we leave off? Oh yes, I was in despair and binging on cake while flailing about trying to find room mates, right. Well while flailing about and sending facebook messages after emails and being thrown potential roomies (who were just simply everyone and anyone, regardless of if we had similar interests or could possibly get along) by Mina I was being propped up by a steady stream of encouragement by the boyfriend and a rather large amount of processed sugar.

Then it happened—some room mates finally came along! AUC students? Yeah. Female? Yeah. Studying International Relations?! Yes! However, they were thinking of living in or near Zamalek because they have a friend in the dorms…and I had to be honest with them about how long it took to Zamalek (10-15 min walking, 20 min metro ride, 5 min cab ride), and I did tell them what I liked about Maadi, but ended up recommending they should probably live in Mohandiseen or Dokki as both are closer to Zamalek than Maadi is and a bit cheaper.

However, they were undeterred and asked me to look in to if the apartment was still up for rent. I had Mina make the calls, and then we began to commence negotiations. If this sounds like the beginning of a major undertaking, it’s completely true! We headed back to Street 200, Mina over-dressed and me rather underdressed to start arguing with the landlady (over the phone) about the price of the apartment, if utilities were included, and all that wonderful stuff. We arrived at the flat, and Sallah, the awesome bawwab, took us up so we could sit in the air-conditioned palace that I was hoping could be my new Cairo home. Then, they argued. Mina spoke rapidly and loudly in Arabic on the phone for an extensive period of time, chopping the monthly price back from the $1500 requested to $1300. We were determined to get $1200 though and Sallah knew it, so he motioned for us to shut up, grabbed the phone and started walking out on to the balcony, saying something along the lines of, “look, lady, these assholes are going to walk so you better talk business here.” He returned triumphant, and I continued just smiling and looking charming on the sofa while we haggled over the remaining bits and pieces such as when I would move in (which would prove a major point of contention later, stay tuned), if utilities were included (big fat NO there), and so on. I sat and sat and bugged Mina to keep me updated in English about the status of the arguing and pontificating.

Finally we reached a conclusion, but she wanted a substantial amount of money in check or cash form and she wanted it today, which just wasn’t possible as I didn’t have the money in my bank account at the time. Sallah offered to lend me what money he had, which was so shocking, but is really indicative of what kind of society I’ve been living in here. Sometimes the generosity of people in Egypt makes me feel like I can never leave, but I digress!

This is the snapshot of the negotiations that went on for…oh I don’t know, say like two weeks? We’d get one thing nailed down and then something else would crop up. I was supposed to “come sign the contract tomorrow,” for easily fifteen days if not more. One of the major points of annoyance was that the landlady really wanted me to move in on August 1st, but I point-blank refused to let her make me pay for that full month, which would be especially unfair to my room mates arriving later. How did we avoid the problem? Well, we stalled until it was after the 1st of course!

One thing after another prevented me from going and signing the contract on my dream apartment, and I was worrying because I wanted to assure my potential future room mates that we had a place nailed down. First I left for Alexandria, then when I returned Mina’s sister had a baby so he wasn’t available, then I got sick yet again, and then the worst of worst happened…she wanted three months in advance. In cash.

That’s right, $3600 in cold, hard cash.

I immediately recalled what “The Cairo Practical Guide” had said about banks being able to bypass your daily limit and make withdrawals, so every day for about three days I woke up at a reasonable hour, put on my tourist sandals, and trudged from major international bank to major international bank in the mid-summer Cairo heat hoping that one of them could make the necessary transaction. HSBC? No, mish mumkin. CIB? Sorry, not here. On and on and if I happened to be too late the bank would be closed and I’d grumble and make a note to try that one again tomorrow and trudge on the to the next. Nothing, nada, ziltch. By this point I was withdrawing up to my daily limit every day at the ATMs, in between being on conference calls with my (again, extremely patient) boyfriend Ramy, and Mina trying to figure out something, but crunching along restricted by my daily limit just wasn’t gonna cut it, and I wanted the apartment bad.

Finally I called my parents. I whined and complained and had them call my bank, who gave them the international number for customer service. I called my bank, and after some “oh so you’re in Egypt right NOW?” conversations I got my daily limit raised to $1000, which was an improvement but I really wanted to go sign like, yesterday. I scurried from ATM to ATM that day, but then when I went to go the next day I realized that—oh crap—they’d only put the new limit on for one day. Cue me whipping out my cell in front of yet another ATM and calling the US, because that number was supposed to accept the charges for international calls, right? Not so much…as I found out when I was disconnected once and my balance popped up revealing that this phone call had cost me upwards of 30LE, which made me grind my teeth, call back, and speak asfastaspossible to make sure the new limit was permanent.

Finally, I had amassed a huge, ridiculous amount of cash in the lining of one of my suitcases. I glared at it and counted it repeatedly as Mina for the millionth over the phone said, “okay, so we will go sign tomorrow, wait for my call.”

Phones!

2009-08-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

The school year is starting to wind up...I'm starting to figure out my schedule, looking into getting books, and my room mates arrive in T-minus 3 days and counting. Maadi is quiet and pleasant and I've just been hanging out exploring the neighborhood and practicing dance and Arabic. So what's there to write about? Well everyone is curious what life is like in Cairo, and everyone could use some practical advice on living here, so I think I'm going to be doing a series of articles to cover some stuff like that. I also will be posting a revision of my banking post since I've now been here for over two months and noticed some changes that need to be noted.

First up, a lot of people have been asking me, "What do I do about my cell phone in Egypt?!" or the more calm version, "So what's the deal with mobiles there?"

Well, here's the deal:

-There are 3 main companies for phone service here: Mobinil, Vodaphone, and Etisalat. All seem to have decent coverage and service, but I'm on Etisalat myself (although my internet is through Vodaphone, but that's a whole different story) and have been pretty happy with my coverage. The only dead spot in Cairo that I've found? Certain areas of my bedroom...figures.

-Get an unlocked handset. While you are back home check to see if your phone has the service carrier lock disabled so you can use it abroad and that it is compatible with frequencies in Egypt. GSM 900 is the standard here, so make sure your phone supports it otherwise you'll have to shell out for another handset here! While you're dealing with the handset, copy your contacts from your sim to your phone and add the prefix 001 to any US numbers you may call from Egypt.

-Get a local sim card. The sim card is the chip that goes into the handset and communicates with the service provider about your minutes, phone number, etc. Getting one here from one of the above-mentioned providers is cheap and the norm for students traveling here. You can go to any cell phone shop, or any Vodaphone, Mobinil, or Etisalat branch. Just pop your sim in and voila, you will have your local number and can start making/receiving calls!

-Most people go prepaid while here. There are little stalls on almost every street corner that have drinks in refridgerated cases, snacks, cigarettes, and phone cards in various denominations (usually 10, 20, 40, and 100 LE). Find the one closest to where you live and check to see if they have cards from your provider, then just pop in when you need to buy more credit. On my sim card there's a way for me to just key in the code on the card, but there's a way to call and do it too--if you have any trouble practically anyone can show you how to do this, including the guy who just sold you your refill card and that ten-year-old kid next to you on the metro.

I actually find dealing with my cell in Egypt, despite the simplicity, more annoying than back home. At home I don't think about it, because I'm on a shared contract with about a million minutes I don't know what to do with, plus free nights and weekends, so I just call anyone whenever and never think about the money. Same deal with texting or internet usage as I have an unlimited plan. Not so in Egypt, but the system is at least much simpler than going through the process of getting a contract and figuring out a service plan. Plus if you're leery about yet another huge corporate entity having your personal information, there's no need to worry with the prepaid system.

The Grand Apartment Saga (part 1)

2009-08-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

Two entries within one week?! What? Well this is a special occasion as finally, finally I can report that the lease on the dream apartment I mentioned before is signed, sealed, and paid up! Cool room mates have been located, and have generously sent along the required deposits to seal the deal. I will get the keys tomorrow when they are done fixing up one of the air conditioners. I can now breathe a sigh of relief, pack my stuff, and recount to you the ridiculous saga that was getting to this point. It's horribly long, so I'll break it up with other posts to avoid annoying everyone and so you can skip the posts if it bothers you. Yes I do have to tell my story, darnit!

Part 1:

I once had a beautiful dream of living in Maadi. It is the quiet, tree-lined, foreigner-riddled, expensive part of Cairo that managed to squash my white, affluent guilt and my embarrassment over "not living in real Cairo, like a real hardcore traveler or student," with it's great charm and promise of giving me somewhere comfortable to return back to at the end of the day. With rents there being significantly less of what I would pay back home in Oakland, I decided to stow the guilt over the price tag and found that I was okay with getting somewhere nice and paying more than the Cairo standard. Not to mention living in that area would cut my commute to AUC in half, which is a feat worth moving for. So I made it known to my Cairo friends that I was looking for a new place in Maadi and kept an eye on the Cairo Scholars (CS) listserv to see if anyone was posting any ads.

As soon as I started to look on CS of course, all the postings I had seen with titles like, "room mate wanted in Maadi," or "2 Bedroom flat available in Maadi from Aug. 17" completely dried up. I poked around a little bit, not looking that hard because my rent wasn't up in Zamalek for a bit, when my good friend Mina said his friend had an apartment in Maadi for me to go look at. About the same time as this, I was getting in touch with a kind Italian guy from CS regarding a room he had for rent near El Maadi station that sounded appealing too.

Unfortunately this was the week of hell during which I was rather sick, but the day we went to go check out the place I was on an upswing and thought I was good to go. That morning I did a bunch of wrangling at the Mugamma to get my visa extended, which makes for an interesting adventure, but I was still game enough for what would become the first of many trips out to Sakanat El Maadi. As it turns out, Mina's friend was a Bawwab on street 200 and knew of a nice empty flat in the building, but he wasn't there that day, so after doing the 20 minute metro ride and 10 minute walk in the blazing sun we had nothing else to do but turn around and go home.

I'm having a hard time remembering everything, but I do believe this was also the day Mina refused to let me pay the expensive cab fare home from Maadi and insisted we take the Metro downtown. Normally this would not be a problem, but I was dehydrated, hungry, sick, and frankly probably on the verge of heatstroke. I persevered through the Metro ride, but then I started to tell the boys I needed to be somewhere where I had air conditioning and something to drink. I am not usually one to get too bitchy too quick, so most of my older friends know that when I start saying I "need" something I don't mean in 15 minutes or that I will walk ten more blocks, I mean NOW. Somehow I made it to Talat Harb Mall with Mina holding my hand the entire way because my vision was literally coming out in white spots like I was going to faint and I was completely lightheaded. Falafel, lukewarm air conditioning, and an orange Fanta could have definitely arrived more than a second sooner!

Oh, but round 2 came quickly enough, this time while I was deep into my 5-day course of medication that meant I couldn't eat anything except soup. Blood sugar low, faint with lack of proper nutrition (I have insisted my whole life that "Soup is NOT food"), and bitchy with the fact that I had scheduled my walk through of Mina's place and the Italian guy's place on the same day but 5 hours apart, I rolled into Maadi to meet up with Mina. Then came the apartment hunting part--you see, I had been duped into thinking they were just going to show me the one place.

Let me enlighten you into how apartment hunting actually works here and how you should do it: Deal with the bawwabs, and bring an Arabic and English speaking friend. Once you figure out an area or a street you're interested in start asking around with the bawwabs because they know which apartments are open, what the landlady/lord is like, how much the place will cost, and will help you negotiate because it means a better commission for them from you. This is more than a fair trade off as you will see, but in return be prepared to be run around to view every open flat in every building on the street until you say "Khalas!" It can be pretty fun, chatting with various bawwabs (including the guy who had adopted us named Hassan), while window shopping around for just the right place, but after awhile in the afternoon heat I started to falter. Plus, no where seemed quite as good as the very first place I viewed. It was a gorgeous three bedroom with nice furniture, lots of amenities you rarely see (a dryer, a microwave, gasp!), and I was more or less in love with it at first sight--it would be mine! We went back, I took pictures, and they promised to hold it for us as long as I got back to them by the end of the week.

I visited the Italian guy's place that night, and it was indeed very nice, but I just had to have that place on road 200. I started posting on CS. I had Mina post to facebook groups. I begged my friends to fly over from the US...I was excited but optimistic, and so were the myriad people who responded. Their quick replies to my posts made me think I would have no trouble finding two room mates, but then one by one everyone dropped off because of the price.

Now I can half understand of course, we are all living on a budget and everything, and I get the whole wanting to not break the bank as well as the next person. What I couldn't understand was why everyone around me was turning down a rent amount that would buy me approximately half a shoebox in California. It didn't seem so astronomical to me, just expensive by Cairo standards, so I wasn't expecting all my leads to drop one by one.

Which is about the time when I last posted saying that everything had pretty much fallen through. I had just received a call that my strongest possibility so far had canceled partially because of the large security deposit but also because of gendered living space issues. I think it was partially that, but I got the distinct vibe it was because of my age. One thing I can't help is my age, and trust I do try not to live up to those digits, but when it comes out how old I actually am people get a little weird and a little shifty. People don't want their lease being handled by some girl that age. I told Mina I had pretty much given up, but we soldiered on and I continued to field the requests that came my way, now throwing those dollar signs at them no longer apologetically, but aggressively like a dare.

To be continued...

Shoes, Studying, Schedules, Stuff...

2009-08-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

Shopping!
Today I went on the first major shopping trip I have had in Cairo. For over two months I have been shaking and been unable to sleep due to a distinct lack of abusing my debit cards, and now I feel strangely content and peaceful. Perhaps it's due to the lovely turquoise color I seem to be on a kick with lately?

Yes, today I bought two pairs of turquoise shoes and a bag to match! I never thought I'd see the day, but when in Cairo it's all about appreciating bright colors. For whatever reason, it seems like unusual color combinations and saturated shades of colors are more popular here than back home, which I am totally digging. I am a complete shoe addict by nature, and flew out of Seattle leaving boxes of shoes behind that probably totalled about 30 pairs of high heels in all sorts of weird colors and unique styles. That is AFTER cutting things down to the ones I absolutely had to keep! The thing is that I love my high heels, but they need to be a little quirky or interesting to catch my attention and make me plop down the $ to make them mine.

That's why I'm pleased to report that in Cairo, it is all too easy to find an excuse to plop down 75-100LE ($13.50-$18) at this store we went to called "Club Aldo" in Maadi for a decent pair of shoes. Before I knew it the floor around me and Kara was littered with many pairs of "maybe, yeah definitely, I want it in a size 37..." I was good, and only bought three pairs, plus the purse. Cairo is a shoe destroyer, between the dust, sand, pollution, extensive amounts of walking, quality of the sidewalks, so on and so forth, so I don't actually feel too bad about buying a bunch of shoes because most of mine from the US are now on the way out or have already ended up biting the dust (heh).

After paying, we both raised pleading eyes to the face of my semi-horror-struck boyfriend to take us to go clothes shopping "just for a little bit." So it was off to the Grand Mall in Maadi to buy a couple more things, including two skirts for me. Lately I've been seeing a lot of girls around town in these full-length denim skirts and I just thought it looked damn cool enough to acquire a couple of my own. Skirts are great in Cairo in the summer because they get less hot and less crotch-stickagey. Luckily the store also included free hemming! Hooray for being 5' nothing.

The mall was cool and had a little bit of everything without being tooo huge. Okay, maybe the several-story fountain was a bit much, but who am I to judge? I haven't been to a lot of malls around town, but I would recommend this one to any foreigners as it has a variety of shops and a lot of different things to offer, including a couple tempting-looking shoe stores of course. Here's a random smattering of some of the shoes I brought to Cairo: (from the top going left) new flats from Club Aldo, holographic zebra-print flip flops for the beach, tourist sandals (a must-have in Cairo, GET SOME NOW if you are coming), basic black pumps, new turquoise heels, new turquoise flats (gotta have all the bases covered), Guess heels. Not that anyone cares!

Studying
Okay, I admit I have been so, so lazy about so many things since I've arrived. Egypt makes it very easy to say, "weeell I'll be here for a year and it's just sooo hooot...and well I'll do that later when I get up at 2pm tomorrow." It's still not a great excuse, but yeah I've been slacking on my Arabic pretty bad. However, I met this cool American guy at the previously featured Goal Cafe a couple weeks back who basically has been giving me pep-talks/lectures on getting serious about my Arabic. It's what I need, and he was also kind enough to lend me this book, "Kallimni 'Arabi" which is the second in a series on colloqial Arabic. I got the entire thing photocopied and bound for 27LE, which is a deal considering how much it would be normally!

I like this series so far because of a couple different factors:
-It's all written in Arabic. Seriously. No English except for the short glossary at the back and the introduction, which makes it sometimes difficult, but it makes you try so much harder and your reading improves much quicker. However, this makes it next to impossible for someone to use who doesn't know the basics of reading and writing.
-There's a variety of lessons. Not only do you get vocabulary drills from the beginning, but also drills on pronunciation, writing, reading, and conjugation. It's a very smart system, but you have to really commit and take things a bite at a time.
-The audio CD is fabulous. It's clear, precise, and features lessons on stresses within words and normal conversation structures which is excellent. Something I find people neglect a lot is the pronunciation of certain letters, and the stress patterns that make you sound more "authentic."

In addition, I'm telling people that every time we hang out they need to teach me 1 or 2 words that I'll use a lot! None of these really transliterate at all well, or even translate well, but from yesterday I have "gazma" or shoe, "mahal" or store, and "ya salam" which can mean a lot of different things depending on your inflection and head movements. I was the laughingstock of probably half a cafe last night working on the different ways of saying that one!

Schedule
After much emailing back and forth with AUC I finally have my class schedule! I will be taking:

INTRO TO COLLOQUIAL ARABIC (the one for people with 1 year of fusha but no 'ameyya like me)
LITERATURE & GENDER
INTERMEDIATE MACROECONOMIC THEORY
COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST
POLITICAL & SOCIAL THOUGHT IN THE MODERN ARAB WORLD

That last one sounds waaay to sexy for a junkie for inter-Arab politics like me. It's a full load, as per usual, but I'm hoping the fact that I'm try to incorporate Arabic into my daily life anyway will help make that feel less like a class and just more of my normal routine that I'll be happy to grapple with.

Anyway, I will leave you all this random image from sitting in rush-hour Cairo traffic this evening on our way to shopping:

Coming soon: I move to Maadi! Actual BELLY DANCE news!!

Costumes and Alexandria

2009-08-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

Alexandria:
I ran away to the beach again this week, which I'm sure is hardly a big surprise by now. I don't think I've managed to stay in Cairo for more than about 2 weeks solid here, but this time was great! I spent the days on the beaches, the nights in cafes, and lots of time just hanging out with my friend who dragged me along. It was a lovely little vacation!

The beaches were a little crowded and it was definitely boiling out during the day, but the sea was perfect and at night it was great to just walk along the shore when things were more quiet. Apparently this time of year is popular with Egyptians looking to go on vacation somewhere nice. It IS nice too, the beaches have lovely white sand and the water is perfect if a bit choppy. If you like seafood, I also hear the best thing is to kick back on the beach with some Alexandrian fish...but for me I was sticking to chicken as I'm "just not a fish person," as I had to explain over and over to different people.

The train back was a good idea too, I definitely recommend it! Air conditioned, kinda quiet, and I was actually able to nap even. This is a major point to note as normally anything that moves over like 10 miles an hour renders me sleepless! When we were at the station it looked like there were trains going back to cairo every hour give or take, so even if you miss one you can hit up a cafe across the street for a little bit while you wait.

Of course when I got back to Cairo I was definitely getting antsy to get some stuff done!

Mamdouh:
Finally I have been not too sick and not too lazy to go visit one of my favorite designers: Mamdouh Salama!

I made friends with one of the designers that works with Mamdouh at Nile Group, which was forever ago, and had been kicking around the idea of trying to go find their workshop for awhile. I had the address (12 Ahmed El-Melehy St. in Dokki) and Hathem's phone # but had just somehow gotten too tied up with traveling and getting into a new relationship to get off my lazy butt and go visit them. Out of the blue Hathem texted me to see if I was still interested in coming by, which was enough to make me jump up the next day and head over to Dokki!

Just to forewarn everyone, the place is freaking hard for taxis to find. I jumped in a cab and got Hathem to give directions, but the poor cabbie still got lost along the way and then I got a bit lost trying to find the building. Definitely call ahead to get directions (Hathem speaks some English and is super helpful) before you go!

The shop is really nice, and definitely has more of a showroom feel than places like Eman Zaki's that feel like more like a factory. Hathem got us drinks and we hung out in the living room (most costumers take over an entire flat, so you end up with all the ammenities of a house) and chatted about their new collection and getting me a dance contract. Yes, I am starting to search now, but that's for a post all of itself I think! I viewed their current line that they were showing at Nile Group and AWS, but I had told Hathem before that I really don't like wearing costumes that other people own copies of. I have to be in love with a costume to buy it and I want it to feel unique and special. It's part of my very limited funds that I can't just throw around money buying costumes that don't feel completely right. So I showed him some of my own designs and he said I should just design something myeslf and they would make it happen! Since then I've been pawing through their collection online and the designs up on Belly Dance Store trying to figure out exactly what I want and get an idea of how I can get the most out of their style.

In an interesting coincidence, when I got home I saw that Ozma of Japan had posted on her blog saying she had traded a costume to Amber (a dancer I'm pretty sure I've met before in Seattle, but that's another story) in exchange for a Mamdouh. I don't think the post is public, but she is saying that while she likes some things about the Mamdouh she has now, the workmanship leaves something to be desired, and that Mamdouh produces the type of costumes that are fun to wear a few times but don't hold up over time. I can't say myself per say since I haven't owned a Mamdouh before, but it raised an interesting dialogue in my head about costuming in general.

I am so, so sick and tired of classically beautiful "princessy" costumes right now. Maybe it's just the phase I'm at in life and in dancing but I want something really kind of sassy and ghetto at the moment--maybe I'm missing oakland! I've always been a little more flash over function I guess, but Ozma's comment made me think about what I'm looking for in costumes lately. Which is great as I'm probably going to buy more costumes in my time in Egypt than I have since I started dancing, so I want to know what I want. Yes, I am a working dancer, but I don't find myself caring too much how long a costume is going to last as much as how larger-than-life I feel in it when I'm doing a performance. For crying out loud I made a costume out of stark WHITE lyra with gold and white FEATHERS sticking out of it...clearly it's not durability and longevity I'm looking for in my costumes! Why am I willing to sacrifice durability for looks? Because costumes are obviously an essential part of making ourselves into a dancer, but also because if you want to be a larger-than-life dancer you have to look the part and chances are you don't want people to see you in that same over-the-top costume more than a couple times anyway. Plus, sometimes durability and longevity ARE mutually exclusive if you really want something unique--not always, and it's great when they coincide, but still. Not only that, but I know that I personally use costumes to support myself in creating a performance...without a unique, crazy costume I don't quite feel the part. It's a crutch for me still in my dance life, because I'll admit that sometimes I still feel like someone pretending to be a pro dancer even though I've been doing this for several years now. Again, what's going on in my head about dance could probably take up an entire extra post, so I'll stop there.

In Egypt I have seen the most ghetto-fabulous-off-the-hook-out-there costumes ever! These girls are NOT wearing bellas, let me tell you! That's something I love about the dancers here, their costumes are unusual, just check out the ones I saw at Nile Goup. fresh, unique, and almost a little too crazy is just how I like my costumes! Get a load of the 3 foot fringe on that black costume of Asmahan's...I mean come on!

Hustle

2009-07-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

When I made this blog I figured I'd update every few days, so I feel like I'm letting myself down in terms of recording things with a week in between like this. Still, stuff happens and I keep getting busy, so here's a short update!

Housing

I'm now hustling like hell to find a nice place before the middle of August when my rent is up in Zamalek. This SUCKS. Finding an apartment in Cairo by yourself without at least one committed room mate sucks majorly because of a distinct lack of one bedroom places in the area I want. I think it's probably best to team up with someone and try to find a place together, providing your budgets and desired area are the same. For me, I'm going at it alone, as usual, which has so far had the following results:

-Looked at many mediocre flats in THE perfect neighborhood
-Found the flat of my dreams, begged the bawwabs to hold it for me for a week to get the funds and roomies together, pranced around happily
-Attempted to get roomies
-Everyone balked at the price, or turned me down, and the hold was up yesterday so bye, bye to the perfect place
-I ate a lot of chocolate cake and grumbled about the lack of one-bedroom places in said perfect neighborhood

So now what? I don't know, I'm going to keep looking in the Maadi area, because I have my heart set on living there, but it's really tough without having a person committed to rooming with me. My Egyptian friends say I should just rent a place anyway and deal with the roomies later, but I can't leave my parents out however many hundreds of dollars if things don't come together. I'm just going to keep hustling and see what happens. Keep an eye on the blog because once I find a place I will be more in the mood to write about finding a place in Cairo, because it is an interesting process and I have some pointers to offer at this point. I just am a little too on edge about the topic now to elaborate at length in my blog!

Getting Really, Actually Sick in Egypt

A week and a half ago now I got sick, as in "not-gonna-get-over-this-one-at-home-and-it's-been-a-week" kinda sick. I don't particularly want to go into details, but it was just getting to the point where I was exasperated enough to put on my big, brave girl panties and let my friend take me to a real live Egyptian hospital to see a doctor...which turned out to be fine. So there.

Everyone is afraid of the medical system in Egypt it seems like, but my experience was nothing but pleasant, fairly quick, and cheap. It cost me $20 total to get examined, and get some meds to fix the problem. I can't even get my over-the-counter allergy meds in the US for so cheap! The trick is, and listen up here: go to a private hospital. There, that's all, just go to a private hospital that has a stellar reputation. Yes, there are some around, they're easy to find, and the one I went to in Heliopolis gave me great medical treatment. Hell, it was more quiet and calm than any medical institution I've set foot in back home. The staff were friendly and helpful, especially since I had an Egyptian friend with me to translate (and looked like a clueless, sick, foreign dork) and the doctor spoke English fairly well. Now I'm fine, but still weaning myself back on to a normal diet as mine had to be restricted for 5 days during my course of meds--not fun.

Another note before anyone runs off to any conclusions: it is NOT common to get as sick as I did in Egypt, don't worry. The biggest medical problem travelers have is that many people get some digestive issues here, but you get over them in a matter of days or hours, and it's seriously not that bad. I was not so lucky this time around!

Oh and PS, everyone--it wasn't Egyptian food that made me ill, I can thank McDonald's for that particular honor.

Party in Hurghada!

2009-07-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

I'm back from another trip yet again! This time Kara and I headed to the Red Sea again, but on the opposite coast of last time (check out the super-gorgeous-non-ghetto map).

Hurghada was a lot of fun, and definitely a refreshing change in some ways from Cairo. Still on my first night I was going, "what a tourist trap, I miss Cairo!" However, I chilled out and had fun in a resort town that seems like something more out of Hawaii or California than Egypt--except with ridiculous amounts of rather rude Russian tourists.

Hurghada is (theoretically) 5-6 hrs by bus from Cairo, but if you add in Egyptian time and the bus breaking down, it's more like 8. Yeah, you have to factor in the bus breaking down, but just pray that it's only in a minor, fixable way. On the way we got relatively lucky--the bus broke down twice, but we got back on our way fairly quickly. We said "maalesh" and started taking pictures in front of the broken down bus. Back on our way Mina and I cranked up the Lady Gaga on his mp3 player as we sped through the desert night. On the way back we got totally screwed as our bus broke down completely an hour and a half from Cairo and we had to hitch a ride (with all the luggage!) on the next bus from the company to come along!

The days were mostly spent at the beach or the pool, doing beach or pool kind of stuff. I got thrown off a dock too at some point because I refused to take the plunge! At night we got the Egyptian boys in trouble playing a drinking game when it was revealed us American and Aussie girls can hold our liquor like champs in comparison.

We went out clubbing at a place called "Buddha Ramooza" on the second night which completely reminded me of Hawaii or California, down to the thatched grass ceilings, jets of fire for show above the open air dance floor, latest American pop hits, and cabanas straight on the beach. Yes, the American hits included, "Poker Face!" It was great to be able to chill on the beach with a drink and then go straight onto the dance floor! Kara finally got into smoking shisha too, which led to some hilarious pictures which I will only include a few of for both of our dignities sakes.

The next day we woke up at the crack of 7:30am after an ungodly late bed time to catch a breakfast buffet in horrible shape before heading off to an all-day snorkling trip! I groaned to Kara, "I'm so tiiiiired...the last thing I want to do is get on a booooat," but we had paid up 200LE the previous day so I was committed. I staggered along onto first a bus, then the diving center, then the boat, and we warned the boys to leave us be as we were in an incredibly impatient, grumpy mood after the early wake-up call. Kara and I staked out a bench inside out of the sun and she promptly slept while I dozed behind my sunglasses.

We got into it though after a couple hours as the boat headed out to "Paradise" island off the coast of Hurghada. It was a bit crowded, but the staff (whom we called "the pirates of Hurghada") were all friendly and helped us to get into the swing of things. "Paradise" is a pretty island, but all the day cruises go there so it was a slog getting on and off the island via small feluccas chock full of people. The food on the cruise was quite tasty too, which I was nervous about after several days of so-so hotel buffets.

Snorkling was great, and I realized that I haven't snorkled since before I can remember...if I have it was in Hawaii during one of our multiple childhood trips that I only half recall. This was fun though, the boat was in a perfect spot for us to remain close by and near the surface but still observe some beautiful fish and coral. That was good, as I didn't feel exactly adventurous! We swam around near the boat for awhile too, which was when our intrepid captain decided to come dunk me!

Afterwards Kara and I dozed on the front of the boat with a couple from Holland, just enjoying the sun. Let's just say we weren't enjoying things so much when we arrived home exhausted and suburnt! Both of us promptly showered and collapsed into bed for a couple hours before most of us trooped out to the club again to discuss the mating fest or to the cinema. I have to say that after being in Cairo for almost a month, the dance floor scene at Hurghada made me almost nauseous for how sex-drenched everything seemed and how slutty the behavior was--and this is coming from a California girl not exactly famed for prudishness! Cairo has changed me already more than I first thought it seems.

Cultural Homogenization (the boring part of this post)
I have a couple things to say on this topic as it's something my courses at my home college have beat me over the head about. This has been a topic that has very much rung true to me in my studies. I'm feeling frustrated at what I want to call exchanging cultural generalizations. Cairo is a very international town, with plenty of foreigners coming through, so there has so be some sort of language to exchange ideas from different cultures and different lifestyles of living. However, if there is something my Women's Studies education has warned me of it's dealing in generalizations and homogenizing groups of people.

When we assume a group of people all share the same exact thinking and will behave in the same manner we remove them from the freedom of having individual personalities in our minds. Personally, this seems dangerous to me as it becomes an easy way to presuppose things about individuals, and prevent ourselves from getting to know other people/cultures on their own terms. This can even lead to otherizing groups of people and dehumanizing them, which is how prejudices and harassment become condoned. One of things I am trying to do in Cairo is not tell people back home about Egyptian "culture" so much as people I know, or personal things I have seen or experienced. Lila Abu-Lughod, an author I quite enjoy, has written about this topic in the introduction to her book "Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories" where she warns of "the danger of cultures." I highly recommend the book to anyone visiting a foreign country, especially Egypt. It's also simply a fascinating read!

To put it on the most straightforward, street-level terms: I'm tired of speaking for all of America or all of the Western world even. I feel like I have to preface everything with "Well, my experience is..." and end everything with, "but it really depends on the person."

Escape to the Beach

2009-07-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

The last week has just been a whirlwind of activity so I apologize for the lack of updates! Meeting new people, going new places, seeing new sights has me completely exhausted by the time I sit down to write at night. So much has been going on! Tannoura shows, Nile cruises, countless cafes, impromptu walking tours...I'll just post a few highlights for now and we'll fill in the gaps later. More photos will be coming too!

Ahlan w Sahlan
I have to apologize again to the dancers that are reading my blog on two counts: I haven't posted to Gilded Serpent about Nile Group yet, and I only went to Ahlan w Sahlan for one show. Bad belly dancer!

However, I got beyond lucky with the show I went to, because no less a person showed up wanting to perform than DINA!!! My favorite non-retired dancer! I couldn't believe my luck when I heard she had arrived with her (more than 20 piece) band because I had expected to come watch the teachers and see some good dancing, but not Dina!

Of course there was no videotaping or cameras allowed, so sadly I got no documentation of the show, but trust me, Dina knocked my socks off completely. I've seen youtube videos of her, sure, and pictures, but this was completely amazing. She was just so glowing and beautiful! Her smile illuminated the room and her attitude was completely spot on, not superior or haughty or even too porny (yes, even though it was Dina!) but just welcoming and gracious. Dina also got on the mic to say welcome to everyone and how happy she was to be here even though she had just returned from traveling because she, "loves belly dance!!"

Not only that, but when the band started up with the beginning of the mawwal to "Taht Isshebak" I was screaming because I couldn't believe my luck! This is one song Dina has made famous and happens to be on of my own favorite Shaabi songs to dance to, which I did at my going-away party in San Francisco! That particular section completely brought down the house, but I also enjoyed her performance later in the show to one of Amina Goodyear's favorites "Woah Woah Woah" as we call it that's about fruit--in a rather suggestive way!

I returned to Zamalek completely star struck and feeling I could die happy...seeing Dina live is one major life goal accomplished!

Ras Sudr
After now being here in Cairo three weeks Kara and I were ready for a bit of a break from the pollution and noise of the city. Don't get me wrong--now that I've adjusted mentally I'm loving it here--but we needed some peace and quiet. So our friends invited us to join them for the weekend at Ras Sudr (literally "Head Breast") on the Red Sea!

We spent our time eating, dancing around in the flat like idiots, cracking jokes, playing cards, swimming, and just lying on the beach. It was so beautiful there, and quiet! The silence and lack of people was shocking after Cairo, and the beach was just perfect. The sand is pale and powdery once you get into the water, and there are copious amounts of umbrellas to shade you from the hot Egyptian sun. The heat is perfectly offset by the slightly cool water, which by the way is completely clear and stays under 4 ft easily half a mile from shore. You can wade and swim forever before you get anywhere remotely deep, which we found quite nice for just messing around and playing volleyball in the water!

We nearly got into a daily routine of waking up around 1pm, eating breakfast (a mishmash of American style junk food and Egyptian foods like Foul), having a bit of a dance party, then spending all afternoon at the beach before coming home to eat BBQ seafood fresh off the boat. We literally bought our dinner one night while swimming next to the fishing boat! Floating suuq!

Egypt vs. Rwanda
Last night, Kara and I went with my friends to see the Egypt vs. Rwanda soccer match in Cairo. My parents seemed surprised when I said, "no no, we're actually going TO the stadium," as usually I've been catching the matches at a local cafe. It's like being at the stadium anyway because everyone cheers and jumps around practically as much!

We managed to cram a record 7 people in my friend's tiny car to do the hour drive (not including the waiting around for various things) to the stadium. I was perched firmly on Kara's lap in the back seat the whole time, which was a bit awkward, but everyone was in high spirits!

Egypt won 3-0 over Rwanda so of course we had to drive through the streets waving our Egyptian flags out the car windows and celebrating! People seemed a bit surprised to see two white chicks cheering and screaming, "Masr!" so we managed to cause one guy to run into the car in front of him for staring. It was just a light tap and everyone just continuted honking and carrying on. We had a great time with our huge group of friends and then went out to a rooftop cafe after for drinks and ice cream!

Tonight Kara and I are departing for the other side of the Red Sea, and a very different style resort town: Hurgada! More to come later!

Wedding Bells

2009-06-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

This post is brought to you courtesy of "GOAL!" cafe down the street from me. Thank god for their free wireless, because this marks day 3 or 4 that we have had no internet at home. We have started the process of hassling the bawwabs at home, which my friend Mina says may work out in the end providing we continue to get on their case for a few more days. Insha'allah.

My Nile Group review I have decided will just be the official one I give to Gilded Serpent! No need to write two different versions of the same thing it seems like, so I will post a link when it's up...I'm still writing it of course.

What have I been up to since the last update...

The "regular" exploits
Hanging out in the cafe is a norm for us these days. Usually I can be seen at this cafe about once (or twice!) a day or every other day by now, sipping my Lipton tea with a ton of sugar and enjoying the air conditioning. It's a nice little place, with shisha pipes and cute waiters all around who now greet us with smiles and handslaps. It's about half-and-half English and Arabic spoken here as we are near to the Zamalek AUC dorms and many foreign students come here to hang out. Directly behind me right now there are two Egyptian guys speaking heavily accented English with a girl who sounds Australian for example, and there's some platinum blond hair glinting off to the left. Arabic music videos, much to my enjoyment, are played constantly on the big TV when there isn't a soccer game on! I was amused to just hear a pop version of one of my favorite Fayrouz songs, "Zourouni."

When we're joined by my various Egyptian friends (mostly students and their buddies) we usually engage in some backgammon, which results in hilarious bets as they love to up the risk factor a bit, especially since I'm new to the game! My friend Islam just lost the other night to my flatmate Kara, so he has to take us on a dinner cruise tonight with a GOOD belly dancer. We're quite excited--when he lost the whole cafe was staring at us for screaming and carrying on!

On the fly a couple nights ago at the cafe we decided to hop in the car and speed over to the Corniche--the street that fronts The Nile on the downtown side--to catch a felucca and sail the river at 1am! Pictures are forthcoming, but let me tell you that it involved some clambering over cobblestones and then outright rocks by the waters edge in 4" heels on my part! I could only have done with with the gracious help of Islam's friend accompanying us who ensured my impractical footwear didn't lead to my doom. That's what you get when you do things on a whim!

AUC
Completely failed regarding going there this week because my friend called me at 8:30 AM (beyond early for Egyptians) and asked if I still wanted to come as he was going to leave 6 October shortly. Needless to say I barely answered the phone with a modicum of grace, having been out until 3am (typical for Egyptians) the night before, and therefore attempted to politely decline as opposed to demanding if he was completely insane.

Will retry an AUC visit on Monday, stay tuned.

Wedding!
Abdu, our gracious friend who picked Kara and I up from the airport two weeks ago (!) now had extended an invite to us for a friend's wedding last week, but I had no idea what a grand affair it would be! We drove out to Heliopolis (near the airport) last night in absolutely crushing rush hour traffic, which was not so fun, as was waiting around for a couple hours because Abdu sometimes forgets that 8:30 in Egyptian time is bound to be more like 10:30, but once things got going it was a total blast!

The zeffa is a traditional part of the wedding party, where drummers and dancers usually put on a special show for guests and to escort the couple into the reception hall. You can see some pictures of zeffa performers here, courtesy of Amina Goodyear and the Aswan dancers. This zeffa was lovely and incorportaed a tannoura, as well as drummers, and saiidi dancers. Once we were IN the hall, a popular singer ("from TV!" as Abdu said) Amina took the stage with a horde of about 20 male backup/go-go dancers to lead us all in some loud, crazy music, dancing, and general revelry. As foreigners we were the center of attention, and Amina pulled Kara up in front of everyone, having her give a mini-interview over the mic! Then we both were pushed into the center of the group to make fools of ourselves with saiidi stick dancing...pictures and videos of which I'm sure will be circulating around soon enough! "Silly foreign girls being idiots with sticks," or something like that. We had a complete blast, dancing and carrying on until the huge buffet!

What we were most struck and touched by was how hospitable and welcoming everyone at the wedding was, even in the face of our obvious stand-outishness. On the contrary, because we stood out as foreigners (and because we hadn't brought any fancy clothes to wear) we were even more welcomed and encouraged to participate. The bride was so friendly to us, even having us stand in the big group photos, that how could we not enjoy ourselves? We had a fun evening, and returned home in a great appreciation both for Abdu inviting us and for being treated so well.

Well, if you're still following so far, it is time for me to return to my flat and prepare for the dinner cruise! I'm sure I will have something to say about it, but it will probably have to wait a few days if my internet at the flat still isn't up.

Internet Outtage!

2009-06-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

I am still alive in fact, the internet at my flat is just down! I will be online via the local cafe off and on, so stay tuned for updates, I promise there will be a big one soon!

Non-Nile Group Update

2009-06-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

I can't update everyone on Nile Group just yet, because I feel it warrants it's own post, and I've been up to too much stuff! However, Nile Group is finishing up tonight, so I plan to get a review and breakdown up in the next few days. I've now been in Cairo over a week, and probably haven't done/seen as much as possible, but I'm here for a year and trying not to strain myself!

There have been some fun times over the last couple days, and many moments of exasperation either in workshops or because of the HEAT. Cairo has been hovering in the upper 90 degrees (farenheight) which is enough to keep everyone (well ok, maybe just me) perpetually sweaty and smelly. I'm trying to keep the amount of showering down, but we still have been jumping in and out at least twice a day as we just get dirty and nasty, especially dancing three hours plus a day.

One amazing place I have visited, and do intend to go back to is the infamous shop of Mahmoud Ghaffar, Al-Wikalah in the Khan Al Khalili. Here's a few teaser shots, but I think it deserves a post all to itself, as does the Khan, so stay tuned in the future as I will absolutely go back and attempt to give directions to Mahmoud's and some impressions of The Khan. Khan Al Khalili, for those who are completely lost with this post, is the most gigantic, crazy, famous suuq or market/bazaar in Cairo. Anyone who has been can give you a hint of the definite impression it leaves...but I will be writing more on that topic later!

The real treat I got to experience was due to my good friend Leyla Lanty taking me out to a local cafe in the Khan the other night. I will not disclose where this place is, because it is very near and dear to her heart, and now mine, and it would be a very different place if foreigners showed up in droves. If you ask me, I can probably take you, but I don't want the information online.

On that note, let me tell you about the evening! I met up with Leyla and several of her friends at the Pyramisa where Nile Group is taking place and we all piled into her friend Ahmed's car as well as a taxi and headed off with much joking and fanfare. We arrived at the Khan maybe 10pm give or take, and headed to the "Egyptian Pancake" shop to grab a bite and some juice before the cafe. We ate something like a combination between flatbread and a quesidilla, sort of like naan with cheese, green peppers, and tomatos baked in the center. It was tasty, but greasy and we ended up feeding the leftovers to the cats running around everywhere underfoot in the Khan. A certain group of ginger triplets were lurking around our table in particular, throwing pathetic looks.

After that it was on to the cafe, where the band was just starting up. Tonight we had a keyboardist, three or four percussionists (switching off between deff, doumbek, sagat, and smoking), and a violinist playing with a cigarette firmly grasped between the fingers of his bowing hand. We took our seats amid the regulars who have their own particular special spots, and spotted the very fabulous and famous Aida Nour sitting in front next to the band in a bright red headscarf. Star dancer sighting! It was like a sauna in the place even with multiple fans battling the heat and flies, so I had to step out into the street a couple times, but once she started to sing with the band I was glued to my chair. I didn't even know she sang, but it was lovely and she did quite well!

Aida Nour finished singing, and then it was time to start pulling up foreigners from our little group to dance! I think just between Leyla's friends we managed to represent Spain, Italy, and a couple part of the US. Actually, since Egypt had just won over Italy in soccer the day before they got the Italian lady up first, even before Aida Nour sang! She had a fun time dancing and did a good job, very sociable but restrained enough for the setting. Once Aida Nour had finished and another singer took the floor, it was then apparently MY turn to dance! I went a bit pale I think when the owner and Ahmed both motioned for me to get up, get up! Me? Dance in a cafe in front of Egyptians AND Aida Nour? Well...okay. The first time I danced shyly and sweetly since I wasn't sure what the rule was for doing the more risque moves we all often use, and since of course I'm American and don't want to create a worse impression. I think they really liked it actually, as I got pulled up to dance by the owner no less than three times over the course of the evening...and Aida Nour smiled at me which definitely nearly made me faint! By the third time I was dancing there was some sort of Shaabi style song happening and the singer was incorporating the words, "Amreeka, Amreeka," which I was expecting (the little-white-chick effect) but then in the middle of the song, what did I hear? "Obama, Obama!" Apparently they're big on him here after his speech at AUC awhile back!

Over the course of the evening several others got up to dance a bit, including one of Aida Nours proteges who showed up who was quite good. Other than that there were a couple of really Shaabi city girls who were not professional dancers, but just having fun. They were totally out there and a little vulger, but lots of fun to watch! One lady next to us was a bit more demure, but was using her large silver purse as a prop--a new "folkloric" style in the making for us in the US? Near the end Leyla Lanty danced a bit to great fanfare and enthusiasm, since they know her at this cafe and she is quite popular!

Tipping for this show went on throughout the evening, with the tip collector interrupting the singer in the middle of or between songs to announce who had given a gift and encourage more tipping. Our friend Ahmed handled the tipping, doling out small amounts throughout the evening and then gesturing to the tip collecter (who was also a singer) to recognize all of us nice white ladies sitting in the back as we sipped our tea and sweated, which he either did by name or country, "Italia, Leyla, Amreeka..." it went on and on all night during the music. By the time we decided to head home it was about 3am, and I was totally out of it, but happy that my first dance experience in Cairo was well-recieved! Indeed as we walked to the car, another car drove by us with cafe patrons who waved at me and went, "Amreeka, Amreeka!" You can bet I will be visiting that cafe again in the future! Leyla tells me that when Morocco of New York visited she said, "this place is REAL," which I couldn't agree more with.

Still, Cairo is up and down, and Saturday night was not nearly as fun as Friday. However, that is to be spoken of in the coming post which will be a review of Nile Group!

Doorbells and Dancers

2009-06-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a handful of days now since I hit town, and a big dance festival, Nile Group is starting up, so I'm about due for a blog update!

Here are more views from our flat, just to give an idea of what it's like being here. Egyptians are masters of parallel parking! The major news in the last hour is that my flatmate Kara figured out that the sound (among all the other sounds) that I thought was a loudish bird is actually the doorbell. In this case it was also a rather miffed electrician guy with a bill so I had to use my very limited Arabic to sort out with the bawwabs that the lady we're subletting for had left money for the bill with a friend who was supposed to give it to one of the bawwabs. In the end, it all got sorted. Luckily I know the words for "friend", "money", and "has," but still had to repeat myself several times to get the point across!

Nile Group is a big dance festival that happens here in Cairo a few times a year (I think it's recently increased to four) at the Pyramisa hotel in Dokki. A piece of advice--if going by taxi and the driver doesn't know the Pyramisa, just keep saying Do'ii and then when you get to Midan al Gal'a, which is a giant roundabout look for the biiig Pyramisa sign atop the hotel and then point frantically! I'm not sure of a better way, but that's what we did today. Yesterday when I dropped by to register the taxi driver knew the hotel but dropped me off at the back entrance, so it's all hit and miss really.

The dance festival is fun in that there are people from literally all corners of the world. Chinese dancers are here, as well as girls from Scotland to Brazil. It's an amazingly multi-cultural event, but makes for a bit of a hassle when it comes to registering because the staff speak Arabic with varying levels of English mixed in. Everyone was in pretty good spirits though, since we're here to partake in workshops from the masters of belly dance who are all but legendary no matter where you're from.

Speaking of which, my first workshop was today with Mahmoud Reda, who is extremely venerated and respected in the dance community as one of the fathers of oriental dance and as someone who has presented Egyptian folkloric dances to the international community for the better part of a century. His Reda Troupe is beyond famous and many prominent dancers here are originally Reda-trained. This includes a lovely male dance Kazafy (picture at right)who was kind enough to be demonstrating in the workshop today (along with no less than three other female dancers) for Reda as the man is over 70! Never the less, Reda was definitely still up and about demonstrating the marking for the choreography we learned to the very generically-named song, "Warda" by god knows who. Didn't sound like the singer Warda herself to me! Kazafy and the other dancers were a definite pleasure to watch though, as a ballroom full of over probably 100 foreigners struggled to keep up with the intense series of moves and not bash into eachother. After a 3 hour Reda workshop, let me just say my legs want to go quietly die somewhere dark and cold and I had several other people's sweat on me. It was a lot of fun though, and very enjoyable to get a taste of the Reda style, even though it was oriental and not so folkloric.

Afterwards I stumbled out of the Pyramisa, and walked the requisite block away before catching a taxi to avoid being ripped off. Definitely best to stay away from those drivers waiting right out front of 5-star hotels, as they will charge you AT LEAST twice as much as you should be paying! Do NOT tell the doorman you need a taxi, just walk a block or two away and hail one yourself. Hailing a cab in Cairo is as easy as just standing at the edge of the street and looking interested (or lost)!

Yesterday I also went back out to 6 of October to watch the Egyptian soccer team play Brazil. Everyone was joking that Egypt had no chance and would lose like 3-0, but they actually BARELY lost 4-3. In the last two minutes of the game there was a penalty kick for Brazil, otherwise it probably would have been a tie! What a fun match, and I had a blast watching it in the cafe with all these guys around screaming and yelling and jumping around. Apparently in the city you could hear people cheering for the goals from the street. I think I was one of like two women in the place though, and certainly the only westerner so that was interesting. It was lots of fun though, even though twice the power went out and everyone freaked out because we were missing the game. Here's more pics of 6 October just to give you an idea:

1st Day in Cairo

2009-06-13T00:53:00.001-07:00

Actually today I begin my 2nd full day in Cairo, but my last day and a half in Cairo was an adventure!

Luckily, all my flights worked out just fine and I made my connections in Portland and then Frankfurt smoothly. I have to say the airport at Frankfurt was not fun--confusing, hot, sweaty, and cramped. Still, I made my flight to Cairo on time and connected with my driver Abdu at the airport who was waiting for me just as planned.

Then I got to experience Cairo driving and traffic for the first time. I arrived as chance would have it at about 4pm, just in time to run into rush hour! I've heard about Cairo driving, but hearing and experiencing are two different things! There is no such thing as "cutting someone off," it's just what you do, and cars whiz around missing each other by scant inches! It's exciting and terrifying at the same time--I'm just glad I wasn't the one doing the driving! It's not a quiet activity either as everyone honks all the time for any number of reasons. It's communicative unlike in the US, meaning a lot of things from, "I'm here, don't merge into my lane!" and "Hey lady on the curb, need a taxi?" In addition, people walk in the street a lot because the sidewalks are challenging in terms of curb height and levelness. So in addition, you have cars sweeping around people by scant inches, and being a pedestrian is an adventure all unto itself. I still haven't managed to cross a major road by myself, but it's only my second morning here!

Of course when I got to the flat and tried to get my phone working it didn't. This is what I'm starting to call the "welcome to Egypt," experience where things don't exactly work like they're supposed to and you just have to figure it out. Abdu lent me an extra sim card and now I have my cell working once again! We ran around to get some groceries and food and then I collapsed at the end of my first few hours in Cairo.

Yesterday, a friend from AUC called me and we decided to have lunch out in 6th October where he lives because some cafes in Zamalek where I'm living were shut down because of the swine flu scare in the AUC dorms here. I hear there were a few cases, but the dorm was succesfully quarantined and everyone is pretty much recovered now. The extra screening in the airport when I got here was a bit disconcerting though! Especially since I got motion sick on the plane as we were flying in over the delta and the city since I was so excited. I was afraid I would throw up and get quarantined for having a suspected flu case!

In any case, yesterday I got to go for an early morning walk in the neighborhood before getting ready to go out to 6th October, which was lovely. Cairo is refreshing in the early morning before things get too hot and sweaty and everyone is still asleep or waking up. My flat is right across from the Nile, so it was very pleasant to stroll along the tree-lined streets. Zamalek is very green as you can see from this photo off my flat balcony!

6 October was really interesting to visit, as it's to the west of Cairo about 25 min in good traffic. The drive out was gorgous, and I was suprised to look out the taxi window and see the pyramids through the haze in the distance over the green agricultural fields just outside the city proper. I must get out to Giza soon, that gorgeous view was just enough to tease! I couldn't get a picture from the taxi, but it was beautiful.

The suburb city (yes, it is it's own city now) of 6 October rises up when you drive in like a crop of huge villas rising out of the desert. A new development, it is clean and modern looking, but a bit sterile, lacking the character of the city. My friend and I ate in an Italian cafe that actually served very Italian food that was delicious--I can see why it's one of his favorite places! We smoked some shisha, drank tea, and discussed the ins-and-outs of AUC including the new campus which we'll be visiting on Monday. The new campus is in another new development (New Cairo/Rehab) out in the desert to the East so it should be interesting to check out.

After the drive back, looking at the pyramids from the right-hand window this time, I caught my mother on Skype for a couple hours. Skype is truly an awesome program...even with my iffy internet here at the flat with it's low connectivity I was able to see and hear her pretty well for our 2 hour chat. I also caught my friend in New York this morning on Skype too. I would definitely get it! It's free, easy, and works better than other ways of communicating!

Other random notes:
-There are many cats around, and they have been trying to sneak into my flat via the balcony, but are too shy to actually do it!
-You can smoke shisha anywhere and everywhere.
-In the Zamalek area I'd say about 75% of women have their hair covered, but in general people seem to dress less modestly than I expected.
-It's fiercly dusty here...more on all this stuff later

Gone!

2009-06-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

I arrived, all in one piece! Just a quick message to say hi and I'm here before I sleep! I promise an update on my first day in Cairo when I get up tomorrow.

Going, Going...

2009-06-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

Even though this picture is from my apartment in Oakland, it's my last night in Seattle, and the US! I've dragged myself home from college, packed/repacked my bags, made all the appropriately excited and sort of sad phone calls, done the obligatory partying plus some, and am now going to be underway. My favorite call was when I had to pick up the phone all excited in the middle of a grocery store and catch my breath because I was super excited about the caller as well as the leaving thing! I've been telling myself to breathe all day, but keep wanting to shriek and generally freak out.

This has been my dream for years, and I've spent so long talking about it in the future tense, "I'm going to be in Cairo next year," or "I'll be studying in Cairo one day!" It makes me so thrilled and chilled and bothered to be able to say, "I will be there on Thursday." A little shiver runs up my spine when I think about being able to say, "I'm in Cairo." That is a sentence I am beyond looking forward to saying!

When I'm about to leave on a major, life-changing period of travel, time seems to billow and stretch out before me and behind me. All the stuff that went into the creation of this trip, like learning to belly dance, ending up at my college, learning Arabic, I'm very aware of, as well as what's coming ahead. I know it's not all going to be good, or bad, but that's ok, because that's real life and I'm not leaving expecting some sort of perfect "vacation." I'm going to study, and get my hands dirty, and learn some Arabic, among other things. I can also feel in my core that this is not going to be some sort of "light" experience, or easy to just traipse through. This is going to end up being a major chapter in my life, and I'm going to come back different. Maybe in subtle ways I'm not aware of, or in big ways that are so loud everyone notices right away. I don't know yet, but it will be fun to find out!

Tomorrow, I embark on a small journey within my large journey. It will begin with me grimacing at my alarm clock in bed in Seattle, involve countless hours of flying, lines, tickets, bags, reading, and hopefully end with me settling into bed in my flat in Cairo on Thursday smiling.