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

halloo? my friendiss? halloo?

It has been an incredibly long day. It started early with a trip to Islamic Cairo, turned into homework time, then a two hour dinner which stretched to four and a half hours, then even more homework, until finally, it's blogging time!
Honestly, no matter how late I have to stay up to blog, it's one of my favorite parts of the day. I like getting all my thoughts down on 'paper' and sorting through everything in my head so it makes sense.
Anyway, I spent most of the Islamic Cairo trip with a splitting headache because I let myself get dehydrated in the heat, but even that couldn't make me ignore the beautiful buildings all around me. We started at al-Azhar mosque (which is home to one of the oldest universities in the world), and continued through town, stopping on almost every street corner to see a new mosque or medieval Egyptian building. In order to make up for not paying much attention to the tour, I took lots of pictures, and I've put some of them below.

the green minaret

mosque

fancy carvings like this were all over the place

500 year old minarets are just part of the skyline

a corinthian column stolen (for real) from the romans

mausoleum entrance, with copper and iron doors

bathhouse ceiling

the traffic waiting for us outside of al-Azhar

Our tour guide on this trip was, again, our old friend. We were a bit surprised to see him, since he'd told us on the last trip that he didn't know anything about a trip to Old Cairo. I guess he was confused or joking, though, because there he was. I don't know what it is, but every time we meet him again, he just gets more annoying. He says "halloo?" to get our attention every time someone tries to take a picture while he is talking. I tried to get a video of him saying it so I could share it with you, but failed. Instead here is a clip of him talking in the living room of an ancient mansion we visited:

As it turns out, the bazaar we visited a few days ago, Khan el-Khalili, backs right onto Islamic Cairo, so we can visit both again at once. I really want to go back, since there were some very interesting little shops and stalls lining the road, including one selling musical instruments, which I'm sure are pretty cheap, but might still be worth a look.

tiny guitars for sale

When we got back to the dorms, I tried to do homework and pretty much failed except for my excursion to the AUC bookstore, conveniently attached to our dorm, where I purchased one of my textbooks for Ancient Egyptian Literature on the cheap.

Then it was time to meet the other UC study abroad students and our advisors for dinner at a restaurant on the Nile about halfway down Zamalek. The taxi ride was a short adventure, and we arrived at the restaurant just in time to wait for sunset and our food. Dinner was completely delicious, and I'd love to visit that restaurant again, except I'm sure it was very expensive, and it wasn't on my dime this time. Well, at least not directly. UC budget crisis, what?

my dinner - a plate of meat and french fries. mmm.

hibiscus juice or something. delicious.

dessert, which was a baked milk/sugar thing. yummy.

turkish coffee, which tasted like flowers and mud.

After dinner, we were promised a boat trip on the Nile, which we were assured would only take half an hour. The boat was delayed, though, so we were supposed to wait twenty minutes for it to get back. Those twenty minutes turned out to be equal to two and a half hours in Egyptian time. It was tiring, for sure, but actually okay, since I got to meet and hang out with lots of other AUC/UC students.

Finally the boat got back, and after some drama involving double reservations and whatnot, we got on the boat.

pretty fairy lights, with a cairo backdrop

The boat trip also involved dancing, mostly of the embarrassing kind, of which I did not partake. I did record it for posterity, though:

(the guy in the striped shirt dancing near the end of the video is our advisor, by the way. he's awesome.)

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.