tuesday at the pyramids, take 2

Sarah and I slept in this morning, and then lounged around a little bit, until we were awake. Then we took to the streets of Zamalek so I could do my grocery shopping. And so we could eat brunch. We ate at Munch and Bagel, where I (again!) had the delicious turkey bagel sandwich. Someday, I will try something new, but that day wasn't today. Then we went to Alfa for groceries, and I bought apples and peanut butter and 3x5 cards. (Probable TMI warning: apparently you can't buy tampons in Egypt? What the heck? Not cool.)

After eating and shopping, we headed back to the dorm to relax for a little bit longer before heading off to our adventure for the day, visiting the pyramids for the first time for Sarah, and third time for me. I didn't mind at all though, it's not like they get less awe-inspiring.

I had toyed with the idea of taking a bus to the pyramids from Tahrir Square downtown, but eventually gave up that idea in favor of taking a taxi. The ride itself wasn't bad, but when we finally got near the pyramids, right before the hill leading up to the parking lot, two men jumped out in front of the car, forcing the driver to stop. It turned out they were trying to get us to hire a horse carriage or camels from them. They did this by telling us that walking around the pyramids was impossibly tiring, and we really shouldn't attempt it. I wanted to snap at them that I'd already walked all over the Giza plateau with Salima Ikram, so surely I would be fine. Also they kept calling me sister, which was really annoying. Finally, we convinced them to leave us alone (after ignoring them didn't work), and our driver took us up to the ticket booth (getting stopped once more on the way). We bought our tickets, and were in.

sarah's first pyramid!

I waited outside while Sarah climbed into the depths of the first pyramid. I was cheap, so I didn't want to pay for a ticket, or risk hitting my head again. We had good weather, so I didn't mind waiting in the shade and the wind for her to come back out.

big pyramid, tiny sarah

After the first pyramid, we walked over to the second, but didn't go inside. The policemen were trying to get us to come closer to the pyramid beyond the keep-out ropes, so that they could get money from us, presumably. We didn't go, despite their persistence.
Next, we walked over to the solar boat museum, got our booties, and went in. I love that boat. When we finished the museum, we walked a bit around the great pyramid, to see if the mastaba tombs I visited with Professor Ikram were open to visitors, but they weren't, as far as I could tell.
When we were walking away from the pyramid, toward the Sphinx, we got semi-assaulted by a group of babbling middle-school age Egyptian girls. They surrounded us, and I couldn't tell what they wanted. Eventually, one girl in a bright pink hijab spoke up, and said she wanted to take a picture with me. This was very strange. Why, why, why on earth would anyone want to take a picture with me? Let alone go ahead and ask to take one? She asked my name, and I told her, and then I asked for hers in Arabic, after which we conversed between my very bad and her very fast Arabic. Her name was Maha. One of her friends took the picture, with me and Sarah surrounded by eight or ten Egyptian teenyboppers. It was kind of adorable, if very weird. After the picture was taken, I took out my camera and asked if they would take another one with it. I thought the girl did, but I guess she was just being sneaky, because when I checked, it wasn't there. Sad.
After the picture was taken, the rest of their group, and a man I presume was their teacher, came up. I don't remember exactly what was said, but the teacher did invite us to come on their tour with them, which we politely declined. So they left, and we left, to walk down the road to the Sphinx, where another odd thing happened: someone else asked to take a picture with me. I don't know what was going on. This time it was a teenage boy and his friends, though, so I said no, because it was a bit creepy. He was polite though, and not a jerk, so I talked to him for a bit in Arabic/English. He asked where I was from, and I said California, and that I lived in Cairo. Then he called me beautiful, which was out of the blue and a step further in our relationship than I was willing to take, so I excused myself, and we headed down to the Sphinx.
Talking about it later, Sarah and I were wondering what on earth made these people want to take pictures with me. The only thing we could settle on was maybe my hair, since it is pretty out of the ordinary in Egypt. I was dressed modestly, and honestly didn't expect to attract any attention today. Shows what I know.
The Sphinx was sphinx-like, although we didn't get to spend very much time with him, because the best viewing spot was being shut down for closing time, meaning we had to force our way through giant crowds of people going to the exit of the temple near the Sphinx, because the guards telling us to get out didn't think to stop the flow of people going in first.

hello mr sphinx

Then we crossed the street and had dinner at that famous Egyptian restaurant, Pizza Hut. It was worth it for the view:

sunset behind the pyramids. at pizza hut!

We left the restaurant, and caught a metered taxi home, which ended up being cheaper than the 40 pounds quoted to us by the nice man who spoke to us outside. I would have been okay with going with him if he hadn't been so pushy. I think I've taken the advice 'always choose your taxi, never let your taxi choose you' to heart. Traffic on the way back was terrible, but we made it home, where a miracle happened. We didn't have exact change for the taxi, so I over paid by five pounds, and asked for change, fully expecting the driver to just shrug and drive away. But no! He produced a five pound note and bid us farewell. What a gentleman.
We walked to get gelato before heading back to the dorm, and saw this street sign for our road. Mohamed Sakeb. Everything else I've seen calls it Mohamed Thakeb and that's what the Arabic on the sign reads. So, I don't really know what is going on, but I know what to tell the taxi company next time, at least!

this explains a lot

Tomorrow I have to go to school, and take my Arabic midterm, which kind of sucks. I think I'll do alright though. I also get to drag Sarah along to campus on the hour long bus ride. I'm such a great host.

I will have a vlog to post here tomorrow, but I'm not going to stay awake while it uploads, so you'll just have to wait. Be patient.
[Here's the video! Please enjoy.]

NaNo word count: 3592

the arrival of the sarah

So, today was pretty much an uninteresting day, except for three things.
1) I am very definitely sick in some way, as confirmed by the four different kinds of throat soothers given to me by student health this morning.
2) I started NaNoWriMo, my story is going well, and I'm almost a full day's writing ahead of schedule.
and 3) I picked up Sarah from the airport tonight! Yay for friends from home!
Actually getting to the airport seemed like a big ordeal at the time, but looking back on it, it wasn't really that bad. I called a cab company to have a car meet me at the dorm, only to have the man on the other end inform me that he didn't know of any street by the name I was referring to. So that was really promising. The taxi did show up, though, and he took me to the airport for the very fair price of forty pounds. I lurked outside for a while, fending off the offers of taxi men to get me a car, and then I went inside to wait for Sarah. We'd talked on the phone a bit while I was still in the taxi, so I could give her the address of the dorm to write down on her visa, but other than that, we didn't really know where we'd be meeting up. (Sidenote: I also didn't know what terminal to direct the taxi to, and had to frantically call my friend Emily for help. Turns out it was terminal 3, which is directly adjacent to terminals 1 and 2. So I don't think it really would have mattered.)
Eventually, Sarah came out into the arrival lounge, and we found each other (and I got my hug) and then we went outside to bargain for a taxi. In the end, we paid 60 pounds to get back, although we had to share the taxi with another passenger (he sat in the front, though, so that was okay). Now we're back in the dorms, all settled in for the night. Tomorrow, if everything works out, we'll head to the pyramids, because what's a trip to Egypt without pyramids?
NaNo word count: 2768

*cough cough* almost forgot

Gosh darn it, this forgetting to blog is getting to be a habit, and I don't like it. I was almost asleep before I remembered this time.
It's not even like anything particularly interesting happened today that I just had to tell you about. I went to class, the janitor's are still on strike, I came home, the bus ride took forever.
In new news, I think I'm getting sick. For the first time since I've been in Egypt, I actually feel fairly unwell. I hope whatever it is goes away soon, but I'm not going to get my hopes up, because it probably won't. All I ask is that I don't have bronchitis. Or strep throat. Or the flu. Just a cold, please. That's all I am prepared to handle.
Well, today is Halloween, and what a spectacularly uninteresting Halloween it was, too. I didn't dress up, I didn't get or give any candy, and I haven't heard a single trick-or-treat. I don't know if I like it or not, but it certainly is strange.
And because today is Halloween, it's a very important day for two reasons. One, it's my grandfather's birthday, and I got to talk to him on Skype today for the first time ever, since I haven't seen him since August (duh). The internet connection on my cousin's iPhone wasn't very good, and neither is Grandpa's hearing, but I think he heard my say happy birthday at least one of the times I shouted it at my computer. The other reason today being Halloween is important, is because that means that tomorrow is November. I've been dreading/looking forward to November for a very long time. November means NaNoWriMo, which I am planning to drive myself insane with again this year. And it starts tomorrow. I'll be writing at least 1,667 words a day to meet the goal of a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month. I hope my blogging won't suffer too much, but that seems like a definite possibility. Either blogging or homework might have to get tossed out the window to make room for NaNo. Which to choose, which to choose?
Also, have I mentioned the trip to Jordan that I was planning to make over the Eid break in the middle of November? Yes, no? Well, it doesn't matter now, because not enough people signed up, and the trip has been cancelled. Yay, now I have more time for homework. And blogging. And NaNo.

pomegranate hunt

This morning, I slept in, which was really nice. Well, I say slept in. What I mean is 'got up an hour after my 7:30 alarm went off' which is practically the same thing.
I was actually productive first thing in the morning, and wrote about half of my anthro paper before stopping to go on an adventure.
Geoff had mentioned to me that he'd had really good pomegranate juice from a fruit juice stand downtown, or somewhere, and I decided that that sounded really delicious. So, we set out from the dorms to walk to 26th of July street for some pomegranate juice and lunch. The juice stand we ended up at was pretty nice, although, like all the other juice stands I've visited or walked past, it smelled a little bit like rotting fruit. The man behind the counter served us our juice in small glass tumblers, and we stood by the counter to drink it. I'm pretty sure it had had some (probably a lot) of sugar added to it, because it was way sweeter than any pomegranate I've ever tasted. Definitely delicious, though. I even managed not to spill any on my shirt, so yay for that. After we'd overpaid for our juice (because we're Americans, most likely, we went next door to get lunch from a falafel stand. Geoff had a chips sandwich (potato chips in pita) and kofta, and I just had kofta. The man who made our lunches was really nice, and smiled the whole time. He spoke a little bit of English, which was apparent as soon as we'd walked up. I said "What are you going to get?" and Geoff replied "I dunno," and the falafel man laughed and said something along the lines of "Ana mish arif kemen!" which means "I don't know either!" in Arabic. He was very nice, and while my kofta was cooking, we chatted about where we were from (America/USA), and whether we lived here (yes). His reply to us saying we lived in Cairo was to laugh and say "Enta talib!" ("You're a student!") God knows there's no other reason we'd be living in Cairo. We finally got our food and paid (less than a dollar for lunch, which was about the same price as the pomegranate juice), and he said goodbye to us when we left, "maa salaama!" So that was awesome.
On our way back to the dorm, we stopped and bought whole pomegranates from a fruit store for 5.5 pounds a kilo (so much cheaper than at home!), and although I don't know exactly how I'm going to manage to eat mine yet, it looks delicious.

happy halloween!

The kofta was delicious too when we finally got back and got to eat. I'm pretty sure it was lamb. I think.

The rest of the day wasn't very exciting at all, except for my discovery when doing my Arabic homework that I have managed to memorize Maha's second dialog from Al-Kitaab, along with her first. Good for me. I'm sure my newfound skill at being able to inform people that my father works at the UN and my mother works at a university and I am truly lonely will come in quite handy one day.

Geoff and I met up again for dinner, planning to order onion rings from Cook Door but being stymied by the fact that nothing else on their menu looked remotely good. We ended up getting onion rings and burgers from Hardee's, and while the food was good, I expected the family size onion rings box to be less disappointing. Shame on you, Hardee's, shame.

Tomorrow, I may or may not have a midterm in Egyptian Lit. If I am lucky, the professor will still be sick, but I hope she's not, because she is an old lady, and that's just mean. Still, I hope the midterm is another day.

dollars to pounds

Today was the start of a really good weekend. Or at least, that's how it's looking now. For the first time in forever, I have the whole weekend off, with no plans, no field trips, no crazy intense midterms to study for, nothing. Just catch-up reading, some Arabic homework, and an essay/project for anthro.
Speaking of which, I learned on Thursday that what my professor meant by '6-8 pages' was really 'something under 6 pages, please'. I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem clear from his original statement. Not that I'm going to argue about being asked to write a shorter paper, especially when I don't really have anything to say. 6 pages or under is great with me.
Plus, this weekend is good because it's almost Halloween, which I love, even though I don't really have any plans like I normally do. Except for getting pomegranates, because that's not a tradition I'm willing to sacrifice. At home, my next door neighbors have a pomegranate tree, and every year, instead of giving out candy, they leave a bucket of pomegranates out on the doorstep for anyone to take. I confess, my sister and I usually take more than our fair share. What can I say, pomegranates are delicious, and nobody ever trick-or-treats on our street anyway.
Speaking of Halloween traditions, though, there's a new one this year. (I don't really know if it can be called a tradition if it's new, but just go with it.) Neil Gaiman has proposed All Hallow's Read, which consists simply of giving someone (or someones) a scary book for Halloween. That's it. Nothing else. Give someone a scary book. If you want to learn more, go to the brand new All Hallow's Read site here, and if you end up looking for a list of scary books, I found two good ones here and here.

not my picture, clearly. credit goes to dan guy, at a guess.

So, today was good. I went out to lunch with my friends and had yummy Italian food (and just realized that I seem to have officially switched over to thinking in Egyptian pounds, since I was beating myself up over whether or not to buy the more expensive dish that cost six whole dollars. Wow. I am so dead when I get back to the States.

protestations and protests

It had to happen eventually, I guess. I went to sleep last night without a thought of blogging crossing my mind. Not a single thought. That's odd for two reasons, 1) because I had some really interesting stuff to say and pictures to post about what's going on at the University, and 2) because I even got up after laying down and closing my eyes to go back to my computer and type out a story idea for NaNoWriMo.
So, even though I forgot, here I am, twenty minutes after waking up this morning, blogging. I would say for you, but it's really for me. I don't like failing my commitments, can you tell? So from here on, pretend I wrote this yesterday. Geez.
It seemed like a normal day on campus, albeit one that was a little warmer than it's been recently. The only unusual thing I noticed was the trash. It was everywhere, piled up in corners and blowing across courtyards thanks to the ever-present wind.

pretty much everywhere on campus looked like this

water feature filled with trash

It honestly wasn't until someone mentioned it, that I got the connection between the piles of trash and the janitors' strike. It was a little bit shocking to me, because when I thought about it that way, the pattern of trash dispersal seemed odd. I would expect, that if janitors went on strike, trash cans would fill up and not be emptied, and lots of trash would accumulate around them. Not at AUC. Instead, the littering habits of thousands of students became apparent, as trash and half eaten food piled up on tables, or benches, or anywhere people like to linger. It was just plain gross.

this is where we ate lunch

outside one of the food outlets on campus

Meanwhile, the strike was still going on, and in all of my classes in HUSS that day, I could hear the yelling and chanting and speeches being made my workers and students alike. I wish that I could say I was proud of the solidarity the students had with the workers, but I can't. I'm afraid that most of the students simply saw the strike/sit-in as an opportunity to skip class. Some, I'm sure were sincere in their dedication, but I noticed most of the crowd had left the school by around half past four, when most final classes get out. Here's the crowd standing in the courtyard near HUSS:

gathered people standing around, possibly yelling

a sign that i can't read yet

new vocabulary on the whiteboard in an english classrooom

Post-school, the rest of my day was pretty boring, as possibly evidenced by my complete and total failure to blog. I guess it's still yesterday on the West Coast. Does that count?
[Edit to add: here is a blog post with the demands of the workers on strike. It's hard to believe they have to strike for any of this.]

let's do the time warp again

I woke up late this morning, but made the bus on time. Actually, I made the bus a little bit early. Still, the extra forty minutes of sleep I accidentally got did not improve my mood today. I don't really know what was wrong, I just didn't want to put up with anybody's crap, which can be hard in classes where I have to work in groups.
Talking about The Misanthrope in Dramatic Lit was interesting, though, even if we got a little more technical than my admiration for the play really called for.
My second class of the day, Egyptian Lit, turned out to be cancelled, as I found out after waiting around for the teacher for 10 minutes with another two students until my friend pointed out the very small, not at eye level sign on the door. Woops. So, since we had nothing better to do, we talked about hieroglyphs and played hangman for a while. I drew a picture of an owl wearing a cowboy hat on the board, but I didn't take a picture of him, because I forgot I had my camera.
In Arabic class, we witnessed a march/walk-out/strike by the campus janitors, protesting for higher wages and better food options on campus. As it is, they have to pay the same prices for food that students do, which is ridiculous, since they get paid so little and are completely isolated out in the middle of the desert all day with no other food options.
The protest was still going on when class was over, and I took a few pictures. This is what a protest in Egypt looks like:

lots of people standing around while a few people shout

guys, what's going on? guys? nobody knows.

The bus ride home was long today, but I got a fairly good nap. When I got home, responsible student that I am, I started my homework right away. I had Arabic, an essay for Art and Architecture, and transcription for anthro. Tomorrow I'm presenting to my group in my anthro class about my conversation analysis, so that should go well. I have stuff to talk about, but I don't think it will fill up the time I'm supposed to fill. That's okay, though, because no one else's stuff will take that long either. So, that was my evening, full of homework, with only a few short breaks to dance the time warp while my roommate was gone, but that's it, I swear.

Speaking of the time warp, I finally started to watch the Rocky Horror episode of Glee, which I've kind of been waiting for forever, but the stupid internet won't let me finish it. They're just about to cast Santana as Dr. Frank-n-Furter, and I'm not sure if I want to go on. Glee, I love you, but I'm not so sure about this.