To Helwan and Back

Peter, Matt, and me in front of the Pyramid of Djoser. Our camels are named (from left to right) Ramses, Whiskey, and Banana.

Hello again. So here we are, on the cusp of another ridiculous trip. Tonight at 11:30, we head out to catch a bus to the airport for our 2:45 AM flight to Athens. It's pretty crazy. We're of course incredibly excited. We'll get into Athens around 6 AM and spend the whole day there. Athens is way too diverse and

Green water pouring out of a canal pump "on the way" to the camel market.

interesting a city to be seen in a day, but we're gonna try our best. At mid- night that night, we'll catch a train to make the five-hour journey to Thessalo- niki, Greece's second largest city, where we'll see Peter's roommate Ka- sia for a few days. On Saturday night, we'll hop on a sleeper to Istanbul, which should get us in around 8 AM the next morning. I've never taken a sleeper before, and we'll be taking three during this trip. Awesome! We'll do Istanbul until Tuesday morning, at which point we'll board a ferry to cross the Sea of Marmara. When we hit land, we'll grab another train that will take us to Izmir, Turkey's third largest city. Allegedly it's pretty boring, so we won't stay there long before taking a bus to Kusadasi, a little town on the Aegean Sea that is really cute, if a little touristy. The next morning, it's off to Ephesus to see some sweet Roman ruins, and then that night we go back to Izmir to catch our second sleeper, this one to Ankara, Turkey's capital. We'll do Ankara for the day and then that night head for Goreme, our new destination in the Cappadocia region (in lieu of Kaysari), where we'll stay in a cave for two nights! Then, on Saturday morning, it's off to the Syrian border, which should take up the greater part of that day. Hopefully we'll make Aleppo by midnight or so, find a hostel, and get a little rest before trying to see that city in one day. At

Birqesh Camel Market.

midnight, our third sleeper train leaves for Damascus, getting us there at 6:30 AM. We'll stay in Damascus until 7 AM the next day, which once again isn't enough time to do the city justice, but oh well. After that, we'll head to Amman, where we'll try to meet up with Prunie Brox from Oberlin. The next morning we take an early bus to Petra, another place we won't spend enough time in, apparently. That same night, we'll try to make it into Israel at the southern border. We probably won't be able to get to Jerusalem that day, so we'll get a hostel in Eilat, an Israeli resort town. There's a bus to Jerusalem at 7 AM the next morning (we're now at Tuesday, May 1), which should take about four hours. Then it's just hanging in Israel for three days with Sari Gardner from Oberlin, her boyfriend Casey, and my mom, who will be flying in the day after we get there. On Sunday we'll take a bus to the Israeli border, cross it on foot, and grab another bus to Cairo. Et voila... our krazy trip will be at an end. I really can't even begin to believe such a thing is about to happen.

Ross and Sam and the others look angry while Stoo argues with cab drivers.

Nor can I believe that, once we get back, we've got less than a month left in Cairo! Our time here has flown by. I've tried to pack the last few weekends with places around Cairo I haven't seen yet, since there's so much of the rest of Egypt I still need to check out, and I'm going to be using every weekend in May to do so. The strangest thing about it is how detached I feel from the me that came to Cairo in late January. I don't think I've actually changed that much, but I just feel like something big happened between now and then, something that took a long time and that makes the beginning of my time here feel different. It's hard to explain.

But anyway, two weekends ago, we didn't do quite as much as I would have liked. In truth, we did almost nothing. We tried to do something, but had very little luck. Early Friday morning, we got up and headed for the Birqesh Camel Market. This is where the majority of the camels in the Cairo area are purchased after being led up through the desert all the way from the Sudan. Apparently it's supposed to be

Peter, Martha, and Matt in front of the Pyramid of Djoser.

crazy and fascinating, in a fairly grotesque way. The camels are herded around and beaten for incentive, peo- ple are yelling, and there's so much activity that there's barely room to move. Unfortu- nately, our cab drivers had no idea where it was and got lost for an hour or so. Once we finally showed up, we'd all but missed it, and they still wanted to overcharge us to get in. We decided it wasn't even worth it anymore, and so we demanded to pay less than what the cabbies wanted to charge us (which was way too much anyway). A long argument ensued between Stoo and the drivers, impressively all in Arabic, and he managed to get us rides back for half the price. On the bright side, we did get to see some camels, and the taxi drivers' crackpot route home took us by the Pyramids of Giza, which is always fun.

Martha rides off into the desert.

This last week- end I felt pretty good about how much we got done, even if it was slightly less than I'd planned. On Friday, Peter, Matt, Martha, and I got up early to go see the Saqqara Pyramids. A lot of people don't realize that there are many more pyramids in Egypt than just the famous trio at Giza. Right near Cairo, there are two entire other complexes: Saqqara and Dahshur (which we'd also hoped to see, but we ran out of time). Saqqara is famous for its step pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser. This was the first major pyramid completed and was also the first major stone construction ever built in the world. When it was created almost five thousand years ago, it was the world's tallest building, a title it didn't hold for long, as its creation ushered in the greatest wave of pyramid building in Egyptian history. The complex is located about ten miles south by southwest of the city center. We had hoped to take the metro as far south as we could to Helwan, picking up Martha along the way in Maadi. At Helwan, we planned to grab a taxi, which would

More cameling.

take us across the river to Saqqara. However, it seemed that the con- ception of the Pyramids at Giza as the only Pyramids does- n't just exist in the West, as that is pre- cisely where our driver took us, backtrack- ing all the way to Cairo and then going over to Giza, all in spite of the fact that I repeatedly told him in Arabic that I wanted the Pyramids in Saqqara, not the ones in Giza. It was a terrible parallel to our camel market experience from the week prior, especially when we finally got to Saqqara an hour later than we should have and I proceeded to argue with the driver in Arabic, at which I am much worse than Stoo. He was demanding twice the acceptable price, so finally I just threw the money on the passenger seat and walked away, a very effective method for dealing with someone who is trying to rip you off.

St. George's Monastery in Coptic Cairo.

After that unpleasantness, Saqqara was very fun and wicked cool. We checked out the Im- hotep Museum, which is filled with neat artifacts and even a mum- my! Imhotep was the architect of the Pyramid of Djoser, as well as a bunch of other stuff, I think. After the museum, we continued along to the pyramids. The step pyramid was the only really impressive one. The others looked more like heaps of stone and sand than like pyramids, but they were neat in a run-down, prototypical kinda way. After walking around for a little while, we decided to ride camels, except for Martha, who opted for a horse. It was really fun, though our guides were a little too in our face about asking for more money and trying to provide us with prostitutes and hashish on the side. But they were still very friendly. We never

Ross and Sam are captivated by the Coptic God.

went faster than a slow trot, which was okay by me. Those things are freakin' tall! Our friend Adam fell off one at Giza, and even though you're falling on to sand, I wouldn't want that to happen to me. After the camels, we wandered around the ruins, which are poorly guarded. This was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing in that it allowed us total freedom to explore and touch hieroglyphics and look in little temples and caves and whatnot, a curse in that it also meant that there was copious graffiti, which was also something of a blessing and a curse in and of itself. These temples have been poorly guarded since their creation, which means that while, yes, there is stupid American graffiti, there is also Greek and Roman and Arabic graffiti. Pretty neat, actually. All in all, it was a very fun trip. The pyramids weren't quite as cool as those at Giza, but they are definitely a must-see.

The ruins of Fustat, the third city to be established near modern Cairo and the first that was Islamic.

The next day we decided to stay a little closer to home, and so we went to Coptic Cairo. For those of you not fa- miliar with them, the Coptic Chris- tians have been in Egypt longer than the Mus- lims, dating back to the first few centuries after Christ's death, which also makes them some of the oldest Christians. They are neither Orthodox, Protestant, nor Catholic, though they are probably closest to the last one. They have their own pope, who was only recently recognized by the Catholic Church, which means that they've finally stopped badgering the Copts after a couple millenia. The root of the word "Copt" is the same as that of the word "Egypt," which shows how closely intertwined their histories are. Also, I read that since Copts are far more strict than Muslims about not marrying outside of their religion, consequently they are more closely related to the ancient Egyptians, which is kind of neat, if somewhat pointless. Anyway, Copts make up almost all the Christians in Egypt, who comprise about five percent of the total population. Most of them live in Cairo or Alexandria, where their pope is. Coptic Cairo is one of the oldest parts of the city. It is at the site of Babylon-in-Egypt, which was founded by the Romans and was the second city

The Mosque of Amr, technically the oldest mosque in Africa, though as you can see it's been extensively renovated.

created in the basic area where Cairo is (after Mem- phis). Alleged- ly, this is where the Holy Family lived while in Egypt. It was a pretty cute area, and consequently it didn't feel much like Cai- ro. We wander- ed around through churches and monasteries and cemeter- ies, and then we headed away from Coptic Cairo to see some other nearby sites, including Fustat, the next city after Babylon-in-Egypt and the first Muslim city. It was inhabited from the seventh century until the twelfth. By that time, it was mostly abandoned anyway, and as the crusades neared the new city which had sprung up to its north, Al-Qahirah (Cairo), they decided to burn Fustat to keep it from being used as a base from which the crusaders might attack. It burned for more than fifty days, which means that unfortunately the ruins nowadays are pretty much nonexistent. It's just a bunch of bricks and rubble in the middle of a large open field. But it was still pretty neat to see what something that huge can turn into.

From Fustat, we went on to the Mosque of Amr, which was built around the same time as Fustat and is thus the oldest mosque in Africa. However, it has been rebuilt and revamped extensively since then, which is why Ibn Tulun often gets that distinction. I was much more impressed by Ibn Tulun overall anyway, though Amr was very peaceful. On our way back to the metro, we hit the Ben Ezra Synagogue, which is the only truly functioning synagogue in Egypt, though there are others. There are apparently only around two hundred native Jews left in Egypt. There were more here a hundred years ago, but in the period leading up to and immediately following the creation of Israel, most left. Anyway, the ones still around are stingy about pictures, apparently. I tried to snap one (without a flash) inside the synagogue and got kicked out as a result. Whatever.

Other than that, we've been doing a lot of work mostly, catching up from our Eurotrip. Peter has been especially hard hit recently. As much as I get on his case about not writing blog entries, he has some pretty good excuses. First of all, unlike just about everyone else studying abroad, his grades transfer, which means he

Ross, Stoo, and me... dayumn...

has a slightly less "relaxed" time here than the rest of us. Second of all, the engineering department happens to be one of the only departments at AUC that is comparably difficult to a university in America, so he has a signi- ficant amount of work to do in general. Lastly, he has charitably volunteered his time to build a website for STAR, the organization with which we are teaching refugees English. They have fundraising issues, and they've decided putting a cyberface on the group could help them get some support. Peter's never actually made a website before, though he is familiar with HTML coding. Still, he had to do a lot of research and spend a lot of time trying things out and working out the kinks before he got it right. Additionally, STAR is absurdly disorganized, which means he keeps getting told to do one thing which then gets negated and so he's told to redo the website in this way and that way. Fortunately, after about a month of fairly regular work on the site, it looks like he's just about done. So yeah, I guess that stuff is a little more important than the blog... I guess. He does plan on writing, though, I think. Hopefully before we leave in June.

The last big presence in my life during the last few weeks has been Naguib Mahfouz. You probably don't know him, since he's criminally underrated, but he's the only Arab ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died a few years ago, but for most of his incredibly long life, he wrote prolifically and excellently. In the last few weeks, I've read two of his books and am working on a third. Miramar was the first, and so far definitely my favorite. It's about a bunch of people living in a pension in Alexandria in the 1960s, just after a major revolution in Egyptian politics and life. They all appear okay on the surface, but underneath, each are unhappy, and thus they serve as an allegory for the nation itself. It's really great. The next was Mirrors, which is a very strange concept. It's a series of about thirty-five short (two to four pages each) descriptions of all the important people in the narrator's life. Through each one, you learn more about the other characters as well as about the narrator himself. There wasn't much of a plot, and at times it got a little boring, but it was a very interesting style and parts of it were really well done. Now I'm reading Midaq Alley, which is one of his most popular. It takes place on a real alley in Khan El-Khalili (see a previous entry) and, like Miramar, discusses a group of people who serve as a microcosm of all of Egypt, or even all the world in this case. It's good, though not as good as Miramar, which I highly suggest to everyone, regardless of their interest or lack thereof in Arab culture. It's a great book. One of the best things about Mahfouz is the degree to which he has informed me about recent Egyptian history, which is really fascinating, especially considering how close I am to the spots where so much of it happened. Just down the street at Midan Tahrir, Egyptians protested the British presence in the 50s, and they were answered by British tanks which rolled in from across the Nile and shot into the crowds. I read about that in a novel describing it happening while sitting in the middle of Midan Tahrir. Very crazy.

Anyway, I have to get all ready to head out in a few hours. I'll try to update here and there along the journey, but since we'll be very busy traveling and afterwards entertaining my mom, it might be a little while until another significant entry. Have a good April!

One last picture of the Step Pyramid. I suppose the world's oldest major stone construction deserves it.

Wahlkomm... to za MUHSSHEEEN!!

Cairo's hottest new band.

Yo yo yo everybody. Here's a quick update, but don't expect too much, cause the last week has been kinda slow. Here are the highlights (and some other stuff I added just for fun!):

The minaret at Ibn Tulun.

Last weekend, my room- mates Stoo and Ross, our friends Matt and Sam, and I all went to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. It's the oldest mosque (9th century, I think) in Cairo and the biggest as well. It's definitely one of the most impressive things I've seen so far here. The architecture is very simple, and the central open area (there's probably some proper term, but I don't know it) feels like a desert with the sun (and the smog?) beating down from above. The spiral minaret is another highpoint (no pun intended!). Allegedly, Ibn Tulun, the man for whom the mosque was made, was idly spinning a piece of paper around his finger when someone caught him. To disguise his time wasting, when asked what he was doing, he replied, "designing my minaret!" It worked out pretty well, cause it's a sweet minaret, and it has great views of the city. But it would've been nice if Ibn Tulun had designed some guard rails as well. Being at the top is a little terrifying. Meh.. who needs 'em!?

Me putting the "Tul" back in Ibn Tulun.

Later that day we decided to check out the City of the Dead. A good portion of east- ern Cairo is covered by graveyards and tombs. In a city with a housing prob- lem like Cairo's, it's no surprise that those graveyards serve a dual purpose. About half a million homeless Cairenes sleep in the City of the Dead each night. In the day they leave and wander the city, but they return every night. It's a pretty creepy thought, to live and sleep by your

A tomb in the City of the Dead.

ancestors. It's nothing like I imagined it. Of course, hearing that people lived in cemeteries, I imagined the traditional expansive and green American cemetary. The Egyptian style is totally different. It's a maze of mausoleums and above-ground tombs, mostly. The cemeteries stretch for miles, with a mosque thrown in here, a mound of garbage there. Wandering around the area was pretty surreal. We went in the day, so none of the homeless were there yet, but nevertheless, it felt a lot like voyeurism. Not just of the living, but of the dead too. Many of the mausoleums, while they're dark inside, have large windows through which you can look. You can't see much without additional light, but I took a few pictures with my flash on, and I half expected to see a ghost or something in the exposure, silly as it may sound.

A "satellite city" of a different color! HA!

That was prob- ably the big- gest event of the last week or so. Other than that, we've been hanging around mostly. Matt's friend Dave and his girlfriend Jen just left after spending a little over a week here. They were both very nice and it was fun to have some visitors, even if they weren't mine. A lot of the roommates are getting visitors soon, so the apartment is going to be a little crazier than normal. This weekend Stoo has a good friend coming. Ross' parents are coming in around the same time. I think next weekend Jay's parents are coming. I don't even know after that. My mom bought her ticket though, so she's coming for sure! She's going to meet us in Israel in May and hang out there for a

Ibn Tulun.

few days, then take the bus with us to Cairo. The last weekend she's here we're gonna hit up Alexandria. I'm really excited to see her. I miss people, especially my parents, a lot more here for some reason. It probably has something to do with dist- ance and security and whatnot. Whatever. Oh, and speaking of Israel and visitors, the only other people who I thought were gonna visit me bailed out a little while ago. Losers. Sari from Oberlin and her boyfriend Casey are studying in Jerusalem, and they were going to come sometime in April, but because they don't want to take the bus and they couldn't find a satisfactory flight, they've decided not to. Personally, I don't think they looked hard enough for the flights, especially since my friend Hannah just got visited by a friend of hers studying in Israel who flew direct for the price Sari and Casey wanted. Oh well. Their loss. And Peter and I will still see them when we're in Israel, so there's that.

OH! Last Wednesday we went to see... get this, an Egyptian Pink Floyd cover band! It was hilarious! But only a little. It was actually quite good. They had the arrangements perfect, and one of the guys did the most amazing David Gilmour. The other guy had a wicked thick accent, which I thought added to the experience. "Hay! Taichur! Leave zose kidz aloaan!" Peter plans to include something about them in his forthcoming entry, which has gone from being a quick discussion of the symphony to encompassing everything there is about music in Africa's biggest city, judging from the amount of time it's been kicking around in his head anyway. "Hey Peter. When are you gonna write your next entry?" "Oh, I wanted to wait until we'd gone to [insert concert here] so I could include it." Oh, and then I throttle him, usually.

More Ibn Tulun.

This past weekend was pretty low-key. Thursday night, Jay, Peter, and I decided we wanted to eat something other than Egyptian cuisine and American fast food, so we went on a long sojourn to track down a Chinese place. We didn't find one, but we did happen upon a very good Korean restaurant. I'd missed the taste of MSG. The next day was laid back as well. Peter had a big test to study for, so he was out of commission. I discovered that Phil enjoys cribbage, and we had maybe the closest, most intense game I've ever played. He won by one peg. ONE PEG! After bumming around the apartment for a while, Stoo, Sharif, Phil, and I all went out with Hannah and her aforementioned friend (Michelle) from Israel. We went to Sequoia, an upscale restaurant in Zamalek. My god... it was one of the nicest places I've ever been in my life. It's right on the Nile, and the atmosphere is perfect. Even the music isn't too loud. The food is excellent as well, not to mention the shisha. Really, it's like the Cheesecake Factory of shisha. They bring out a giant tray with probably forty different flavors. I went for cola, which wasn't the best. Sharif's rose was quite nice.

Our Felucca coming in to port.

After that, we went back to Hannah's apartment and got into one of the biggest, most intense debates I've wit- nessed in a while. I say witnessed because I wasn't as much a part of it as the others. It was over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I just don't know as much about it as my friends here do, nor am I quite as invested in it, I don't think. Sharif and Stoo are both Arabs, and Hannah and her friend Michelle are both Jewish, so their interest needs no explanation. Phil just knows his shit, but it was mostly an argument between those first four. Finally, at 4AM, we left and came home... and stayed up until 6 doing absolutely nothing. On Saturday, after Peter finished his exam, we hung out for a little while before going on a felucca ride with Matt, Dave, Jen, Martha, Hannah, and Michelle. It was a really beautiful night, and even though we didn't get on the boat until just after sunset, it was still a great time. The next day was once again pretty lackadaisical. We'd been craving some good old fashioned steak and taters, so Martha and Sarah, one of Martha's friends from Maadi, came over and we had ourselves a nice little dinner. Unfortunately, I started feeling really sick afterwards, and I wound up going to bed around 9:30. I didn't fall asleep for several hours, however. I was freezing at first, but after pumping the heat for a while, I started to get really hot and sweaty. At some point I entered a half-dream,

Peter and Martha relax on the felucca.

half-awake state in which I believed that I had discovered an alternate method of sleeping which somehow involved flying all around the world at absurd speeds. I was legitimately convinced of this until I had been awake for about an hour or so the next day. When I woke up, I felt good enough to go to class, but after sitting there for twenty minutes or so, I started feeling pretty sick again. I went home early, bought some Advil, and took a long nap. After I woke up, I felt a little better, but I was still a little off, which was too bad. My St. Patty's Day was, consequently, not too exciting. The good news is I felt right as rain this morning when I woke up. I'm still a little funky... stuffy nose and whatnot, but other than that, I feel great. I think it might have been food poisoning or something. Or AIDS, if I wanna believe WebMD. Hypochondriac's nightmare.

In other news, I got a house for next year back at Oberlin! I'm living with Liz Segroves, Eric Gibbs, and Big Rachel. We got a place on Pleasant St, which is over by the Art Museum. Not the best location necessarily, but with a bike it won't be a big deal. Plus it's sweet just to have a house! All of us have terrible, and I mean terrible lottery numbers, so we were praying for an okay apartment on Union St at best. It was nevertheless a pleasant surprise to get our own house. You can see a picture of it here.

So we're off to Europe tomorrow morning, bright and early. We are of course wicked excited, though we didn't anticipate quite the level of SNAFU that skipping a few days of class might elicit. I have a paper due the day I get back; Peter has a final. Also, two days after we get back, we leave Cairo again to go to the Sinai for a weekend with some friends. Crazy! Hopefully we'll get a chance to post something about our trip to Europe before then. Hope all is well.

The call to prayer at Ibn Tulun. We hear this all over the city, from our apartment (less so) and from classes (oh yeah), five times a day, every day.

We're Going to Europe! and Other Causes for Excitement

Gaam'at Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world.

Hello everybody! So our long, tiresome search for a good Easter Break destination is at an end. It actually wasn't all that tiresome, or long... we were basically deciding between the Sudan, Paris, and Amsterdam. Unfortunately our little poll down below didn't do much to help us. There were only five votes at the time of writing: one for Paris, one for Amsterdam, one for Helsinki, and two for Khartoum. Oh well. There's still one day left to vote, so do it up. Anyway, I think

Phil and Stoo chucklin' up a storm.

the Sudan was winning until, after copious internet booking problems, we found a round-trip flight that goes into Amsterdam and flies out of Paris for compar- atively cheap. On Wed- nesday, March 18th, we head to Cairo International to fly EgyptAir to Am- sterdam where we'll stay for two nights. That Friday, we'll catch the high speed train to Paris. It's about a four hour ride, but it's a wicked nice train, so we're excited about that. In Paris, we'll meet up with my good friend Franny Brock from Oberlin for some French fun. We'll be there until Tuesday afternoon, when we head back to Al Qahirah. Peter and I are both wicked excited. As most of you probably know, I lived in Holland for ten months when I was twelve and thirteen years old. I've been back once since, but that was freshman year of high school, which believe it or not was already six years ago! Gee ain't it funny how time just slips away. Anyway, I can't wait to go back and experience the city and nation as an adult. We're staying in Amsterdam, but one

Kellie and Ross. This and the last picture are both in Ross' room, which is pretty much hangout central.

day we're going to take the train up to Alkmaar and rent bikes to go to Ber- gen, the little town by the North Sea where I lived. I've contacted a bunch of my friends from my time there, and hopefully I'll get to see a few of them, though many have dispersed around the world. Friggin' cosmopolitans. As for Paris, although I was just there a year ago (almost to the day!) visiting my sister, I'm still wicked excited. It's a great city, and it'll be awesome to see Franny and hopefully Rebecca Balmer as well, though I haven't gotten in contact with her yet. I'm also very excited to see how Peter likes these places. It's going to be really fun.

Some other interesting happenings over the past week or so:

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!!!!

Last weekend, despite an overall aura of extreme lazi- ness, we did manage to get out and ex- plore the city a little. We went to Khan El- Khalili, which is Cairo's big- gest and most notorious ba- zaar. It dates back to 1382, and it's bas- ically miles upon miles of winding alleys, small stores, and people... lots and lots of people. The sights are quite impressive. Peter and I spent a mere hour or so in the actual market, and in that time, we saw two different men each carrying about ten live chickens by their feet, presumably to their death. People were arguing loudly over prices and whatnot, touts were tracking Americans and

Al-Azhar Mosque.

trying to overcharge them, rabbits were sitting in cages ready to be slaughtered. All in all, it's quite an im- pressive and stimulating place to visit. While in the area, we also visited the Al-Azhar Mosque, one of the prettiest and most famous mosques in the city. It's right next to Al-Azhar University, one of the oldest universities in the world. This was the first mosque we'd actually been inside since our arrival, and it was an incredibly serene and relaxing experience. In some parts people were on their hands and knees praying, in other places they just lounged around, talking softly or reading books, and in the central area, children played. The atmosphere is so different from a church. Kwayyis awi (which means "very good").

Inside the mosque.

One of the biggest new things in our lives is STAR, or Student Act- ion for Refu- gees. STAR is a group commit- ted to provid- ing affordable instruction in the English language for refugees living in Cairo. Peter and I had heard great things about the program, both before coming and since being here, and I was definitely interested in taking part. After going to the orientation meeting, Peter jumped on board for sure as well. We teach in Nasr City, a poor suburb constructed within the last century in the desert northeast of downtown Cairo. It's about an hour away in a microbus. We've had two classes so far. Students are split up into groups according to their proficiency, with zero as the least experienced and five as the most. Peter is doing Level 5, but I, for God knows what reason, decided that I wanted a challenge and chose a Level 1 class. On top of that, it's a Level 1 class with lots of Somalis, who don't even speak Arabic particularly well either. Fortunately some of the students speak French, and my partner Abd El Aziz is a native speaker of Egyptian Arabic, so together we can get the points across... most of the time. It's definitely tough, but I can't tell you how much I've been enjoying myself so far, which bodes well

My students.

for my prospective teaching ca- reer, I sup- pose. The students are really inter- ested in learn- ing the lang- uage, and they're also quite funny. My favorite moment came last class when we were dis- cussing capital letters and the appropriate use thereof. We got proper nouns down, and then we were doing beginnings of sentences. I wrote the sentence "My name is John" to show that both "My" and "John" are capitalized, though for different reasons. I then wrote the sentence "Did you know that my name is John?" to show that "my" does not always have to be capitalized. After most things that I say, Abd El Aziz has to translate it into Arabic. He reread the sentences with his name inserted, and when he got to "Did you know that my name is Abd El Aziz," one guy in the back piped up and said "Yes." It was pretty funny.

I should probably stop trying to tell humorous anecdotes on this blog. They probably don't come across as all that funny. Oh well.

So three or four weeks ago, I got a very unexpected email from Martha Hoffman. Martha is my ex-girlfriend Zoe's good friend and cousin. While Zoe and I were dating, Martha and I used to talk to each other online here and there, and though we only met once, we liked each other a lot. I hadn't heard from her much recently, however. That is until I got this email, which informed me that she was coming to Cairo for three months to teach kindergarten. I was very excited to see her and to have another friend in this faraway place. She flew in two weeks ago, and since then we've seen each other two to three times a week. She lives in Maadi, which is a nice suburb about a twenty-

At Hardee's, Peter and I each enjoyed a traditional Egyptian فلي تشيزستاك بورجر, or "Philly Cheesesteak Burger." Allegedly, the Pharaohs were buried with several in their casket so that they would not get hungry on the journey to the afterlife.

five minute metro ride south of downtown, where I live. It's really great to see her and to have an- other person here besides Peter whom I know from back home, however cas- ually. Appar- ently, she's been called in as a replace- ment kinder- garten teacher for a woman who couldn't take the pres- sure and left before the end of the year. Martha says she's not the biggest fan of teaching kindergarten, and her first week was pretty rough, but she seems to be enjoying herself a little more now, which is good. On Sunday, she and I took a long walk around town to visit the musical instrument district. We're both interested in the oud, and since they're so cheap here, we've thought about picking one up and bringing it back to the US. They're pretty cool instruments, but despite their resemblance to the guitar, they're tuned more like a violin. They're also fretless, so I assume the learning curve might be pretty high. But still, you can get a very nice oud for sixty to eighty American dollars. So, as they'd say in Egypt, mumkin ("it is possible" or "maybe").

Who's a happy Peter!

In other news, it's looking more and more likely that my parents will come and visit! My mom is pretty much definite (she's hopefully going to book her flight today!). She's thinking of flying into Tel Aviv at the end of our Spring Break trip and meeting us there for a few days, then taking the bus to Cairo with us, hanging out around town for a little while, and then, before she heads back the next weekend, going to Alexandria for a night or two. I'm really excited to see her and have her here. I think she's going to like it a lot. Plus, she'll be around for my birthday! As for my dad, his is less certain, but he's definitely interested in coming out here. I really hope he does, too. He hasn't left America that much, and I think he would really enjoy the alternate perspectives that one encounters here. Plus he loves old stuff, and Egypt is pretty much the best place in the world for that. He'd be more likely to come a little closer to the end. Perhaps he'll fly in right around the time finals finish up, and then we can hang out for the few days between the end of school and our return home. We'll see though.

Fans of Peter, fear not: a post is forthcoming, ostensibly on the Opera House. Like most of Peter's posts, it's been kicking around in his head for at least three weeks, so I'm sure it'll be chock full of goodies. Hope all is well with you guys, wherever you are.