successful felucca ride

Today was a fail, and then an epic success. The first part of the day totally sucked, so I don't want to talk about it.
When I got home from class, after a very good NaNo session on the bus ride, I talked to my dad and sister on Skype, then met with Stefana and friends for dinner and adventures.
We had real reservations at Abu el-Sid, and walked over there, buying dessert on the way. For dinner, we split three entrees, and they were all delicious, although we couldn't finish them all. Stefana was very brave and tried all the unfamiliar food willingly, even the slimy green molokheya, which is one of my favorite foods here.
Then we caught a cab to the river, and found a felucca captain who promised to take us out for an hour for 50 pounds for his boss and "baksheesh for the driver" (tips for him). He played us music and even sang a little, and we ate our dessert and had a good time taking silly pictures. Then it was time to dance, apparently. I'm sure there are some terrifyingly awful pictures of me (and all of us) dancing with the boat captain that will eventually appear on facebook or somewhere. I can't quite decide if I'm looking forward to that or not. It was a wonderful boat ride, and we tipped him very generously.
We caught a cab home to Zamalek, and I can honestly say that it was the worst cab ride I've ever taken. He took us a very roundabout way (around the island twice) to drive up the meter (which was going super fast anyway), and didn't listen when I tried to tell him the right way to go, then got mad when I didn't know where we were. It ended up costing over thirty pounds for what should have been at most a ten pound cab ride. At most. If he had known what the heck he was doing, and hadn't tried to cheat us. But I've put it behind me. Deep breaths.
When we got back, I walked my friends back to their hotel and we hugged goodbye. They were very good huggers. It was really nice to hear them say that this was one of the best trips they've taken while studying abroad. I hope that's true, but even if it isn't, I had a wonderful time showing them around, and just hanging out with friends, and it was sad to see them go.
Tomorrow I have a quiz in Art and Architecture that I haven't studied as much for as I need to, so that's what I'll be doing all tomorrow morning. Hopefully I won't do as badly and I'm afraid I will. Wish me luck.
NaNo word count: 36753

Luxor and Aswan 2 (9/11/10)

I woke up on a cruise ship. It was pretty sweet. We hadn't sailed at all during the night, which was surprising. Breakfast was delicious and after it was over, maggie and I sat up on the top deck (the 'solarium') and read and talked for a while until it got too hot. We were really surprised when we got back to the room and found a surprise waiting for us (and not a very good surprise). It pretty much scared us to death. Well-intentioned maybe, well-thought out, no.

surprise! right in our doorway.

my bananagram letters

After our surprise, I learned how to play 'bananagrams' with small pieces of paper with letters written on them. It's basically scrabble, but faster and much more interesting. I didn't win, but I still had fun. While we were playing, the boat started moving for the first time. I didn't expect it to go so fast!
In only a few hours (just in time to put us in the hottest part of the day) we landed at Kom Ombu, an ancient temple on the bank of the Nile. After exploring the temple, we visited a traditional Egyptian house nearby and saw some animals and stuff.

my little buddy gryphon-thing

the original paint - it's lasted about 2000 years!

four different pillars at kom ombu

moo cow

the boat's wake (side wake?)

Then we returned to the ship and it started sailing again for a few hours, until it was dark, and we spent the whole time 'doing homework' (ie: talking about subjects ranging from BBC shows to Catholic school to books about time travel). Then we went to dinner, which was delicious as usual. [Edit to add: I keep gushing about the food in these blogs and never describing it. Basically, it was every kind of carbohydrate every night, always in some new sauce or cheese or something. Dessert was either fancy Western cakes (okay) or traditional Egyptian desserts (absolutely fabulous). I would have gotten pictures, but I was too busy stuffing my face to pick up my camera.]

okay, one lunch picture. see what i mean about carbs?

After dinner, there was a galabeya (traditional Egyptian dress) party, for which Maggie and I had purchased two (moderately expensive) galabeya earlier. We didn't end up going to the party because it looked a little bit lame. When we got back to our room, though, we found another surprise waiting for us. This one was much better: surprising but not incredibly freaky.

our friends the towel swans.
mine (r) is named clyde, and maggie's (l) is named gibson.

Anyway, tomorrow we have to get up and be off the boat to go to Edfu by 6:00 am, so it's time to get some sleep. 'Tomorrow' will stretch all the way to Monday night without stopping, so we need to take our sleep where we can get it.

iftar cruise

Nothing exciting to note today, except for the end. AUC has been putting on some amazing trips for the new international students, including a trip to Old Cairo (which I missed), the felucca Nile ride I mentioned earlier, a horseback riding tour of the pyramids (tomorrow!!), and tonight, a Nile cruise with dinner.












After driving for an hour and a half from the campus to the boat dock (making about 8 u-turns that wouldn't have been necessary had our driver not missed the dock's parking lot by 3 feet), we were really glad to walk around for a bit, even if it was only to get onto a boat.


The decor was very tasteful, and not at all over the top. (photographic evidence!)

me and my tiny egyptian friend

We were herded onto the top deck where we all admired the setting sun, and then realized to our horror that we weren't going to be served any food until it had set completely. This was an iftar (breaking the fast) cruise, after all.

we have to wait till what sets?!?

almost dinnertime!

so close and yet so far

Eventually, we were seated in the dining room and served dinner, which turned out to be the best (and probably most nutritionally complete) meal I've had so far in Egypt...

the rice was cinnamon flavored. i didn't know that was even possible...

There was even some live entertainment, which the Egyptians mostly ignored, but which the other international students and I were fascinated by.

(sorry the video is sideways, I haven't figured out how to switch that yet...)

I didn't know that whirling dervishes performed, or that they did it to disco music with bass quite that loud...

At some point during dinner, I realized that the boat was moving, and had been for a while. However, when we reached the dock at the end of the cruise, I hadn't noticed up turning around or changing directions. I could only conclude that the Nile is a circle, or possibly a mobius strip.

Either way, it was beautiful.

jet lag and feluccas

Today started out late. Really late. I don't know exactly what time I woke up, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't before noon Cairo time. I showered, which was its own little adventure, because I had to carry everything with me that I needed, and technically we're not allowed to walk around dressed indecently in a towel. The shower itself was fine, except for the hardware. The shower head decided that it was a good idea to spray water up and sideways as well as down, and managed to get everything, including the bathroom floor outside the shower completely wet. That was alright though, since it didn't get my clothes, just my makeup bag, which I managed to dry later on the A/C.
After my shower, I spent a few hours in my room, generally being lazy since I knew nothing interesting was scheduled. I started to get really hungry and feel sick, though, so I eventually went out into the Cairo heat and humidity to find some food. Originally, I was planning to brave the streets and find a supermarket, but I was feeling so sick by then that I settled for an orange juice from the cafeteria, which was delicious. I met a nice girl who had just arrived and we talked while we ate/drank.
I think my favorite part of being here so far in general is how many new people I get to meet. I may not remember their names, but being able to have 10 new conversations a day with 10 different people is very fun and exciting. Even meeting back up with people I've met before is fun, because then we get to guess each other's names, once we've both admitted we don't remember them.
After my breakfast/lunch of orange juice, I returned to my room and took a nap before my next step of the day, which was dinner, and hopefully real food. Well, technically I took two naps, because I meant to get up at 4:30pm, but reset my alarm for 5:30 as soon as it went off the first time since I could barely keep my eyes open.
Dinner was good, although it also came from the cafeteria. I met even more new people, some of whom I went on an adventure with later.
Two girls from my dinner table wanted to buy cell phones, and since I was pretty sure I remembered where the cell phone store was, I offered to go with them, just to get outside the dorm for the first time that day. Eventually two other girls joined us and we headed out. At first we were stuck in a large group of people, who, it turned out, were not heading to the cell phone store at all, but to dinner. Oh well. We made our way back to the dorm to try again, and unfortunately, I managed to get us lost. Not badly lost, but definitely lost enough to not know the exact way back home. We wandered for about half an hour before running into a couple of other AUC students who pointed us back to the dorm, which was just down the road in the one direction I had been sure it wasn't. So much for my sense of direction!

cairo traffic - don't try to cross the street!

The RAs had arranged a trip for us at night, a felucca ride on the Nile, which thankfully I had signed up for yesterday, because it was full by the afternoon today. The meeting time was 8:30, but we didn't leave the lobby to get on a bus until 9:15, and we didn't make it to the boats until about 10. Traffic was insane, even from a huge tour bus. Everyone was done breaking their Ramadan fast and we headed home. The bridges between Zamalek and the mainland were the worst, but it wasn't great anywhere.

The boat ride was amazing. The captains unfurled the giant red sails and pushed us off from the dock and into the Nile. We cruised for over an hour, talking and taking pictures, and enjoying the desserts that our RA, Ayesha had brought for us. I didn't catch the name of the dessert, but it was delicious, and we all ate plenty.

looking north down the nile

The Cairo skyline from the Nile was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Filled with river boats, tall hotels and skyscrapers, lit from below by headlights and above by searchlights, it was an amazing sight. Too soon, the tour was over, and our boat took us back to the dock and the waiting bus. Traffic back to the dorms was, if anything, worse than it had been on the way there. People crossed the streets every which way, some only glancing quickly at the oncoming traffic before they made their move.
Finally, we made it back, and my new friend Emily and I tried to glean whatever information we could about our student orientation on the new campus, scheduled for tomorrow. None of the RAs had anything to help us, though, so we headed off to bed, with plans to meet up and catch the earliest bus to AUC that we could get. 7:40 has never looked so early before, and if I have any plans to shower tomorrow, it's time for bed.