Up the Nile: Day 1 (Luxor)

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

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!

Begin Round 2

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!

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.

Ho Ho Ho, Habibi

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

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!