Dance and Stress

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

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

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

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)

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!

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)

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...