I Saw the Sinai

A map of the main points we hit on the Sinai trip.

Hello, hello, hello everybody. So now that things have sort of settled down a little bit, I can tell you about our last weekend.

We got back from Europe late last Wednesday night, and then Thursday night at 11 PM we met with a bunch of AUC kids to head to the Sinai Peninsula! Peter and I managed to get an in with the event because the girl who was heading everything off, Alison, is in my linguistics class. There were thirteen of us in all, six of whom were from George Washington University, so that was the foundation of the group. Besides Peter and me, every one knew each other and it seemed to be a group that hangs out pretty regularly. It was a little weird just inserting ourselves in, but it worked out really well. Everyone was really nice and fun, and we had a great time, as I'm about to describe to you more fully.

Sunrise from the place we ate breakfast. That's Saudi Arabia in the background.

So at 11 PM, we all met outside the McDonald's near campus and piled into a microbus. I say microbus, but this was defi- nitely the biggest micro- bus I've ever seen, and prob- ably the nicest as well. There were just enough seats for all thirteen of us, plus the driver, and while it wasn't the comfiest ride of my life by any stretch, it was better than a lot of microbuses I've been on since I've been here. Our driver was named Osama, and group opinion toward him varied from being pleased by his friendliness to awed by his ability to make good time to aggravated by his inability to meet up to the standards we had for a paid driver. Alison put a lot of effort into arranging the whole trip and hiring Osama, so she was in charge of directions and communications with him.

I gotta admit, I was a little peeved to find that I couldn't bring my camel to the beach.

As soon as we started to head out, he claimed that, since we now had thirteen people instead of twelve, he wanted to raise the total price from 1900 pounds to 2000 pounds. I thought that seemed rea- sonable e- nough, but apparently when Alison had originally dealt with him, they had set the price based on distance, not on number of people, so she perceived this increase as a breach in the deal. They argued about it for a little while before we finally agreed that an extra one hundred pounds split thirteen ways wouldn't be that bad. I don't really know if Osama was trying to rip us off, but it didn't matter that much to me.

Dahab.

So the bus got on its way. There was some talking and excitement for the trip ahead and getting to know one another, and then slow- ly we all started trying to fall asleep. It was tough, as some of us (like Peter and me) had almost no leg room, but I got a little bit of sleep in. It was crazy to open my eyes every now and then and see nothing but... well, nothing, out the window. Until we crossed the Suez Canal, and for a little while afterwards, it was just flat desert through which we were traveling. And yet the ride was very bumpy. When we'd manage to fall asleep, we'd soon be woken up by a checkpoint. At like three or four points during the trip, we'd all have to get out our passports and hand them over to the authorities so they could make sure that we didn't have malicious intentions for the canal or the peninsula or God knows what. Anyway, as we neared our destination, the desert began to rise into mountains, which looked very ominous against the slowly brightening night. We rolled into Dahab around 5:30 AM, very good

Me trying to examine my sunburns. The camera could never fully capture the extremeness of the pain.

time actually. It's usually a ten or eleven hour drive. Anyway, the sun had just risen and we went to hang out on the roof of a restaurant (hilariously named "The Funny Mum- my") and wait until the chef showed up. It was breathtak- ing. The sun had been up for maybe half an hour or so and it was already unbearably hot and bright. You couldn't even look near it, let alone at it. But it was really beautiful. We could see the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea (actually it was some little offshoot of the Red Sea... I don't remember the name), and the mountains of Egypt were pretty amazing behind us as well. The town itself was very cute, but I got this impression that the whole thing was temporary, that within a day they could just take the whole thing apart and put it on trucks and move it to a new place. We all chilled out, some of us slept, then we ate, then we walked down the boardwalk to a new place to eat and sleep and chill out, and swim a little, and that's pretty much what we did the rest of the day. Oh, and get sunburned. I got really really sunburned. Everyone did, some worse than others. I think I was one of the worst, for sure. I've never been burned so badly in my life! My legs were atrocious, but my face and shoulders and chest were pretty bad as well. I've spent all week moisturizing my face and thinking all was well and then hopping into the bathroom only to discover that skin is peeling all over my face. Pretty gross.

Yeah ATVs!

So anyway, we laid on the beach and swam and had food brought to us, and even though it was all wicked cheap, it still was really crazy to be in that sort of atmosphere. I've never been to a resort before, and I have to admit, it was pretty nice. Who wouldn't like that? After we became so absurdly burned that we knew we had to do something else, four of us decided to rent ATVs. That's right, ATVs! It was so nutty. I've never done that before either, and it was really fun. We drove all around the mountains and over bumps and around corners and then we went to a Bedouin village in the middle of this valley. It was pretty incredible to walk around that place in the middle of the desert where those guys just live and sleep and chill all day. We did that until nightfall and then rejoined the others, covered in sand and dust. It was dinnertime, and we all wanted to relax a little (believe it or not), so we went down the beach to this little fish restaurant where

The gang at dinner in Dahab.

some of the girls had worked out a great deal: a five-course dinner for only thirty-five pounds, or seven dollars. The waiter was one of the most ridiculous, friendly guys I've ever en- countered. The food was pretty good too, and it was a great place to chill out until we got back on the bus at 11:30 PM. It was right on the beach, so there was a cool evening ocean breeze soothing our burns. There was an entire section with just cushions and pillows to lay on. Some of us took naps, but I just sat around and talked, and then picked up some aloe and painkiller for my sunburn. It was really starting to hurt. I was not pleased to think that I'd be climbing Mount Sinai in a few hours when the simple movement of my pants moving against my legs hurt. The painkiller helped though, so all was going to be okay.

Sunrise from the summit.

The ride to Mount Sinai took a couple hours, which wasn't enough for those of us who were ex- hausted. I was so reluctant to get out of the bus and climb a seven thou- sand plus foot mountain, but once I did, I woke up pretty quickly. There was some confusion and discussion about whether or not we should get a guide. We finally decided to, and then had to wait around about half an hour for the guy to get ready. We ran into our friend Hannah though, totally out of the blue. When our guide finally showed up, we started walking, but he soon ran back, saying he had to get something. We didn't wait and just went on from there. The trail was amazing. It was 3 AM, and yet there were probably a thousand people making their way along it to the top. Most had a flashlight, and it was pretty powerful to see that thin line of white light snaking up to the summit. While I'm

Sweet sailor guy taking a picture near the top of Sinai.

hardly a Christian, and even aside from that there's still a lot of doubt as to whether this Mount Sinai, or Gebel Musa as the Egyptians call it (it means Moses' Moun- tain), is the Biblical Mount Sinai, but just the fact that a thousand peo- ple would turn out a few nights every week, would screw up their sleep schedules and spend three our four hours hiking a huge mountain, it was pretty powerful. The atmosphere was really interesting as well. There were a ton of people, but no one was being very loud. Conversations were kind of hushed. Every now and then you'd pass a Bedouin with a camel or two, calling out to try to sell a ride to the top. About five or six times on the way to the top, we passed a little shack that sold, get this, soda and chocolate and candy. It was pretty silly, but somehow they didn't really take away from the experience.

Peter and I at the top.

The hike was long, but it wasn't that tough, and I surprisingly felt very awake all the way to the top. Our timing was perfect as well. We made it to the summit just as the sun started to rise. But it was frigid up there. I'd been told it was going to be cold, but I was thinking, "Oh yeah... Egypt cold. Ha!" It was freezing. The whole way up we were working hard so we didn't feel the wind, plus the mountain blocked a lot of it. But as soon as we hit the top and sat down, I got the coldest I've been since our Dutch bike ride. That probably doesn't sound like much since that was only a week prior, but trust me, I was very cold. We hung out up there and watched the sunrise. The summit was covered with people, and for good reason. The view was amazing. But I could only take the cold for so long and then I had to go down. After everyone had made it and we were satisfied with the view, we headed down a level to the nearest

Heroic, I know.

coffee shack. In we went just to sit around and warm up a little, but the climbers emp- tied off the mountain a lot faster than I expected, and before long we were some of the only ones left. Tired as we were, people just started spreading out on the cush- ions in the coffee shack to have some rest. I felt a little awkward about it, but the Bedouin selling coffee didn't seem to mind. Eventually I gave in and started to get people blankets, but I still felt bad, so I turned to the Bedouin and said, "Mish mushkela?" which means a lot of things, but here it meant "Is this a problem?" "La la la la la," he said, "mashi," which means "no, no, it's okay." He then motioned to some better blankets and just sat around drinking coffee and chatting quietly with the other Bedouins while we napped. It was incredible. I love how nice people are here. I could never see that happening in a cafe in America, let alone one at the top of a mountain. That was the other thing: it was really cool to take a nap on a beautiful morning at the top of Mount Sinai! I wonder how many people can say that?

So after a while we headed down, got a little lost and took a different path this time. It was nothing but steps... thousands and thousands of steps. Apparently some wicked pious monk spent some absurd portion of his life making this path, which takes only about half the time but would probably destroy your legs if you went up it. Even going down was tough, constantly having to stop yourself as you fall to

Sleeping in the Bedouin coffee shack... and proud of it!

the next step, especially with the sunburns. It was worth it though, as the steep descent made for beautiful scenery. Prob- ably three quarters of the descent was just in this huge steep cliff-like valley, and we could see St. Catherine's Monastery most of the way. St. Cath- erine's is one of the oldest mon- asteries in the world, and I believe it's the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world. It was ordered to be built in the sixth century by Justinian, then emperor of the Byzantine Empire. It's Greek Orthodox, and it's really beautiful. When we got down the mountain, we went in and explored it for a little while. It contains the well where Moses allegedly met his wife, as well as a supposed descendent of the original burning bush. Unlikely as that may seem, apparently it is the only bush of it's type in the Sinai Peninsula, and attempts to root sections of the plant elsewhere have failed. Pretty weird, huh?

After St. Catherine's, it was finally time to go home. As bad as my burns hurt, the ride back was pretty painless, mostly since I was so exhausted that I slept the whole way. We got back to Cairo in the mid-afternoon and headed straight back to the apartment to have a very relaxed night. The last week has basically been recovery from our vacations, both physically in terms of sunburns and academically in terms of work we missed and got backed up on. I have a bunch of reading to do, but it's okay... I enjoy it at least. It's just a question of getting myself into the groove, which admittedly can be tough with such fun-loving flatmates.

St. Catherine's seen while coming down the mountain.

The other big happening of the week is the cementing of our Spring Break plans. I don't know if you guys re- member, but earlier we were planning some sort of a trip through the Middle East. We were going to fly to Istanbul and take trains and buses back, hitting Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel along the way, and meet my mom in Israel. But the escalating situation in Beirut made us decide it'd be better to play it safe and avoid Lebanon. That also freed up a couple days, so we started thinking about whether we just wanted to stretch out our stays in other places or try to hit somewhere new. Originally I was only considering stopping at other spots along the way, but then it occurred to me that we could go somewhere from Istanbul in the other direction, or even fly somewhere else and then continue on our way to Istanbul. One of our big goal's while here has been to meet up with Peter's roommate back home, Kasia. Kasia's currently studying in Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. We realized that, for an even cheaper flight than the one to Istanbul, we could fly to Athens, hang out there for a day, take a train to Thessaloniki, which is on the way, and hang out with Kasia for a couple days, and then take a sleeper to Istanbul to continue our vacation as planned, minus Lebanon. The trains between Athens and Istanbul cost about as much as we're saving by flying to Athens instead, so it all works out very nicely, and we get to see more! I've been to Athens once before, but I loved it so I'm very excited to go back, and I never hit the northern part of the country, so that'll be sweet. Then we'll do Istanbul for a couple days, which should be awesome as well. Once again, I've been there once, but it was very brief and I loved it, so I'm pumped.

The burning bush, allegedly.

Peter's never been. After that we'll take a ferry across the Sea of Marmara to get to a train south to Izmir, Turkey's third largest city, and Ephesus, the site of some of the best preserved Ro- man ruins in the world. I've been to Eph- esus once as well, and it was incredibly cool. I've never seen Izmir, though. From Izmir we'll take a sleeper to Ankara, the nation's capital, which I don't believe is supposed to be that incredible, so we'll only stay the day there before heading southeast to Cappadocia. I don't know that much definitively about the region, but I've heard it's phenomenally beautiful, both in terms of landscape and culture. After a night or two there, we'll try for Syria. It can take a while to get a visa at the Syrian border, but the majority of people with ten or twelve hours to spare get in. I think it'll be a bitch, but also a really good story. And we have a sweet backup plan in case we don't make it. There are cheap ferries from the south of Turkey to Cyprus. We can do Cyprus for a few days, and then take a ferry or a plane to Israel to pick up our trip there. Assuming we get in to Syria, though, insha'allah, we'll do Aleppo the first few nights and then head south to Damascus. I'm really excited for Syria. Aleppo and Damascus are two of the oldest, most culturally rich cities in the world, the people are supposed to make Egyptians seem rude, and we'll be back into the amazingly cheap part of the world. Most transportation between the Syrian border and our entrance into Israel will be below

Mount Sinai.

ten dollars, and that's a big area to cover! After Damas- cus, we'll cross the border into Jordan, where we'll head for Amman first. Prunie Brox, an acquaintance of mine from Oberlin, is studying there, and hopefully we're gonna get to meet up with her so she can show us around. Unfortunately, we won't get to see her for long because then we'll have to keep heading south to Petra. Petra is supposed to be amazing. I should probably stop saying that since everything on this trip is supposed to be amazing, but Petra might be even more so. It's an ancient temple built right into a cliff face. I'm very excited. Finally, we'll head to Jerusalem to see my old Obie pal Sari Gardner and her boyfriend Casey, both of whom are studying there right now. We'll stay with them for only a night or two, though, because then my mom flies into Tel Aviv, and we'll stay with her in a hotel. We'll explore Israel and try to see as much as we can until Sunday, May 4, when it'll be time to take the bus back to Cairo. This ridiculous 2200 mile plus trip will happen in the seventeen or so days between April 17 and May 4. It's gonna be breakneck, but also very awesome. Oh, and just recently our flatmate Matt decided to come with us, so now it's gonna be even krazier! That's right, krazier with a k!

Anyway, I'm wicked excited. It's gonna be sweet. And I can't believe how soon it's coming up! We just bought our tickets to Athens last night, and we'll be there in two weeks! WOW! I hope all is well back in Amrika, and drop us a line to let us know what's up.

The route of our Spring Break trip. The red will be our flight; the blue will be overland.

Dank Je Wel. De Rien.

Amsterdam!

So here it is: my long-awaited sprawling entry on our Easter break trip to Holland and France, complete with lots of fun photos and videos. Sorry it's taken so long, but after our late return, I had a bunch of crap to do, not to mention a lot of photos to sort through before coming up with the ones for this entry, and then the day after we got here, we left with some friends from AUC for a fantastic but incredibly exhausting two-day trip to the Sinai, which should get an entry a little later this week as well. So here goes!

Muntsplein.

Of course, the night before our early flight, we decided to stay up until 4 AM, or some such time. We got up at around 6:30, I think. After doing all our last minute preparations, we walked down through Tahrir Square to take a bus to the airport. Even though a bad price to pay for a taxi to the airport here is no more than $10 or $11, that's about thirty times the price you pay for the bus. Plus we wanted to feel like real Cairenes. We got lucky, too, and wound up on a bus that went direct to the airport. We got there with plenty of time and picked up some breakfast in the airport. I was definitely ready to get out of the city that day, as the smog was just about the worst I'd seen it so far, and I was still a little sick from the weekend prior. Our flight was about five hours long. Nothing of note really happened. I got some sleep to make up for the night before. We landed at Schiphol International Airport at around 2:30 PM, local

Uitsmijter... so good.

time. Once again, we did the cool local thing and took the train into the city, although this short ride cost us about ten times what the bus had in Cairo. I can't imagine how much the taxi would've been. It was, of course, raining gently when the train pulled in, which continued intermittently throughout the day. I'd missed Dutch weather (though Ohioan weather isn't too far off). Even stepping into that airport was a little surreal. I'd been back to Holland once since I lived there in 1999 and 2000, but it was only for a few days and even that was about six years ago. This was the first time I'd been there as an adult, and it was definitely the first time I'd been by myself. It felt almost like I was betraying my mom and sister to go without them.

So anyway, we bought some umbrellas, which made the rain stop immediately... freakin' Murphy's Law. We then wandered around the city for a long time, sort of trying to find our hostel, sort of just enjoying the sites. Everywhere I went I recognized streets and buildings and restaurants and shops, and random memories

Snow in Amsterdam.

would pop into my head that I hadn't thought about for years. It was pretty nutty. We finally found our hos- tel after a couple hours of wandering. It was called the Stayokay Hos- tel, which was a pretty good name for it, as our stay there turned out to be okay. Nothing special... just okay. We were in a room with about fourteen other people, which was at first very exciting to us, as we thought we'd get to meet other neat travelers, but we were only in the hostel to sleep, so that didn't really happen. It was in a pretty great location though, right downtown, about a five minute walk from Muntsplein (probably my favorite part of Amsterdam). That night was spent mostly walking around. I was trying to reacquaint myself with the city, which proved to be a lot more confusing than I thought it would. I realized that when I had lived there, I had always been following my mom, and I'd had never had to think about how to get anywhere myself. It was kind of like learning to drive. Places you go all the time prove to be a bit of a difficult task to find, just because you never had to do it yourself. After a couple hours, I got the hang of it though, and all the gaps in my mind's picture of

Zwet 4, my old home.

the city sort of filled in. Part of the confusion was caused by the fact that a couple of my favorite places in the city are no longer there. One big one was the internet cafe we always used to go to. It was a little place right near Centraal Sta- tion, and it had a great atmos- phere and a friendly staff. It's gone though... after wandering back and forth down the street I was sure it was on, I finally recognized the interior, which is now dark and empty. They're building something new there, I think. It was sad. Also, Coco's, an American bar and eatery that we used to frequent whenever we were missing a good burger, is either gone or not where I thought it was. Too bad.

We also spent the first night being a little shocked by the prices. After living for two months in a country where one can get by on thirty or forty bucks a week, it was a little disconcerting to get the bill for our first dinner and see that it was €50. Of course we had to go when the euro was at its strongest to date. It took a dollar and a half to make one euro. It was a little horrifying, but we got better as time went on, and plus, after spending so little for so long in Egypt, we were in a position to spend a little more money. Plus, those steaks were amazing. It was nice to get some good Western-style food again.

Some animals at the little zoo park in the middle of Bergen.

Being there as an adult was totally differ- ent in a lot of ways. Of course, when I was twelve, it's not as if I was totally clueless as to what marijuana and prostitution were, but they were in a very different world from any that were directly adjacent to mine. Walking down the alleys of Amsterdam, I'd smell what I now know to be pot smoke and just think it was tobacco or something. As the Red Light District is right in the center of town, we often had to walk through it when going somewhere. The prostitutes were there in their windows, but I was of no concern to them, nor they to me, except that I was of course a little intrigued. This time, walking through the district, they tapped on the windows at me and motioned for me to come in. It was totally bizarre. Walking

Peter at the North Sea. He may as well have gone swimming.

through the city and smelling that smell which I so associate with the basements of parties at Oberlin, smelling it in the wide open of Amsterdam, it was way weird. This is a little over the top as an analogy, but it was kind of like going to Disney World all grown up and finding out that it's mostly geared toward adults, that there's all this stuff going on that you barely even knew about when you were little. At the same time it was kind of surprising how early the city shut down. Coming from a city as conservative as Cairo, where drinking is a bit of a taboo, I expected Amsterdam to party all night long, but as early as 11 PM, places were starting to shut down for the night. Paris was the same way. Cairo on the other hand pretty much never sleeps, especially if you know the right places to go. At least it made it easy to go to bed at a decent hour to get ready for the next day.

Peter and Franny in front of Notre Dame. Apparently I have a few more France pictures I want to show you guys than I do Holland ones, so they'll be a little staggered from the entry. Deal with it.

So on Thursday we got up early (though not quite as early as we'd hoped, nor should have been able to) to head to Alkmaar. Alkmaar was the bigger city near where I used to live in Holland, sort of the Portland to my Yarmouth, or the Elyria to my Oberlin, which is a much better example, since Amsterdam is more comparable to Cleveland (in terms of size and distance) than to Boston. We got there around 11 AM and went to get some lekker uitsmijter... mmm. Lekker means "good-tasting," and uitsmijter means "the best breakfast known to man." It's basically an open egg sandwich, with amazing cheese and meat on it too. I got roast beef. So good. We also got our first Dutch tomato soup, which believe it or not, is one of the country's finest dishes. It's much more interesting than your Campbell's canned tomato soup. It usually has other vegetables and cream and sometimes even meat in it. Lekker indeed. After breakfast, we rented bikes and headed for Bergen, my old home town. The weather looked great at first, but it wasn't long before the rain started. After the twenty or thirty minute bike ride to Bergen, we were only slightly damp. That's when the nostalgia really started

Peter harassing Franny.

to get crazy though. Riding up to my old apart- ment was such an odd feeling, and after we'd been hanging out in the area for a few hours, I literally felt almost like I lived there again, like after we were done our bike riding that I would head right back over to Zwet 4 and curl up in my old bed. So crazy. We kept going around town, saw my old school, saw where my best friends there Alex and Olli used to live, saw the Ruinekerk, a beautiful old church in the center of town that got hit by an airplane during World War I. We stopped and got some of the town's notorious sausage, the best I've ever had, from my old butcher. We got some oud gouda, which means old gouda... the best cheese in the world, in my humble opinion. And then we set off on the real adventure.

Queen Franny looks pretty cute with her Eiffel Tower crown.

First we decided to go to Bergen Aan Zee, which means "Bergen on the Sea." It's the little touristy part of my hometown on the coast of the North Sea. It's pretty beautiful, too, and in March there aren't too many German tourists there. It's about a thirty minute ride from the center of Bergen, and the wind and rain and hills really picked up on the way. As we neared the sea, the rain felt like pellets of hail as it hit our face, and we had to pedal our asses off just to move. Finally we ditched our bikes and just walked around for a little while. The sea was pretty incredible in that weather. Soon we got cold and decided to get back on. This is when we really started to get wet, I think, but as long as we were biking, we didn't really notice. We got back into Bergen and decided to get a little tea and toastie. A toastie is like a Dutch grilled-cheese sandwich, but without the butter. It's basically what it says it is: toasted. They were a mainstay of my diet while living there. Sitting in that little restaurant in the middle of my old town was when I really realized how much I missed the place, and how much I'd really be okay with living there for a long period of time later in life. I don't know if I'd ever live there for good, but it's an amazing, amazing place to be.

Peter and me on top of the Arc. I don't know why I look so damned creepy.

After a nice little repose, we got back on the bikes. Sitting down in that restau- rant, I came to appreciate just how wet I was, and while I tried wringing out my sweat- shirt and let- ting stuff dry while we ate, it did little good. The wind was painfully cold when we went back outside, but after biking for ten minutes or so, we were okay again. We headed for Schoorl, a really cute little town north of Bergen that is most famous for its enormous sand dunes. I believe the dunes were formed a long time ago, before vegetation really established itself in the area. Now that it has, the dunes are more or less permanent, and they're huge, the highest and wildest in the country. Some are as tall as 150 ft, including the one we climbed in the middle of town, but it was a little while before we got there. First, we got lost in the dunes to the

A la Place des Vosges. Je comprends pas la problème avec mes cheveux.

southwest of the town. It was a nice ride though, and it was an area that I don't think I ever really explored while living there. We got to Schoorl and hiked the dune, which even though it's only 150 ft. or so is kind of a bitch, since the sand gives beneath your feet as you climb it. We used to go there a lot when I lived there, as it was really fun for rolling down, and the town is a lot of fun to hang out in. Since Holland is so flat you can see a lot from the top of the dunes. On one side you can see a lot of the less duney part of the country, complete with churches and little towns emerging out of the fields and forests, and on the other side, you can see to the North Sea past other dunes. The day we were there was, of course, very cloudy and rainy, so we couldn't see much.

When we finished at Schoorl, we made a beeline back to Alkmaar, as it was getting late and we wanted to dry out a little. We decided to check our emails again before heading out to dinner, which was a terrible decision, as we cooled off a lot in that time. When we finally got back on our bikes to try and find the restaurant, it was frigid. I don't think I've ever been that cold in my life. My cheek muscles were

My artsy picture from the trip. Taken in an exhibit at the Musée d'Orsay that is supposed to be a modern rendering of Monet's Water Lilies.

sore from the chattering. To make it worse, I couldn't quite remember how to get to the restaurant I had in mind, but after a few wrong turns and asking a guy for direc- tions, we found it. And we sure got lucky, too, as they sat us right next to a heater. Care- fully and co- vertly, we removed our wettest layers and laid them over the heater to dry, and then we spent a couple hours there eating slowly and drying out a little. Of course, by the time we left, we still weren't dry enough not to be freezing, but it wasn't so bad. And so we got back to the train station, returned our bikes, hopped on a train to Amsterdam, and went to bed. Elapsed time, we had been biking for about seven hours. Seven frigid hours. But it was an amazing day.

Jesus and co. at the Pantheon.

The next day we got to do some touristy stuff in Am- sterdam before our train, but not as much as we might've liked. We went to the Anne Frank museum, which was even more depress- ing than I remembered it. We got some pannenkoeken, which are Dutch pancakes and are just as amazing as I remembered them. To top it off, it started snowing while we were eating! Having said that the weather is kind of similar to that of Ohio, that might seem not all that incredible, but snow is actually quite rare. It snowed maybe twice while I lived there, and I was never in Amsterdam for it. It was very pretty. After lunch we hopped in a canal boat for a ride around the city before our train. Naturally, we overestimated the amount of time we had and wound up having to run to catch out train. When we got to the platform, most of the doors were closed and no one was waiting to get on. A bit of an "oh shit" moment, but we kept running and found one open with a uniformed woman standing by it. She asked us if we had tickets and when we said yes she told us to hurry and that we were holding up the train. Clearly untrue. You can set your watch by the trains in Europe. They wait for no man. It was fun to get yelled at though.

One of our lekker dinners at Franny's apartment. But don't they look hungry!

The train ride flew by. It's only four hours long. We listened to music and ate gouda and Peter worked on a website he's making for STAR, the refugee program for which we teach. Probably the best anecdote from the ride came when we realized we'd forgotten to mail our postcards prior to departure. It wouldn't have been such a big deal if we hadn't already bought stamps for them, but we didn't want to have wasted our money on stamps that wouldn't work in Paris. I remembered that the train usually stopped in a few other places in Holland, so when we arrived at the airport, I ran to the door, leaned out, and asked an American looking guy if he'd mail them for us. He was a little hesitant, but he said he would. Just today Peter heard from his parents that they got his Dutch postcard, so it looks like the guy kept his word. It was ridiculous.

Franny in the crypt of the Pantheon. That room contains the corpses of Zola, Dumas, and Hugo, a morbid dream come true for a French lit enthusiast like me.

When the train pulled into Paris, Franny was right there to meet us. It was about 8:30 PM, and we were a little tired, so we just went back to her apart- ment, ate some cheese (French and Dutch), drank some wine, and went to bed. It was really fun. It was great to see Franny too. What a gal! We had a lot of fun just hanging out in her apartment with her, watching movies and TV shows. We cooked dinner a couple nights, which was really nice. It was great to see an Obie, too, but it made me realize just how much I miss that place, and what a shame it is that I won't see so many of them until the fall. But Franny was incredibly hospitable. Her little apartment was very cute and comfy, and she was a great tour guide too! She's studying art history and hitting a lot of the sites in the city with people who know their shit. Though I'd been to Paris lots of times before, she told me things about some of the sites that I'd never heard, which was really awesome.

Peter, Rebecca, and me.

So anyway, Paris was a lot of fun. I won't talk too much about the city since it was Peter's first time and he'll probably dis- cuss them more fully in his entry, but we hit most of the big spots. We did Mont- martre and Sacré-Cœur and L'Arc de Triomphe and Les Champs-Élysées and La Tour Eiffel and La Musée d'Orsay. The city was beautiful and enchanting as usual. We ate great food. The weather was mostly agreeable. It was nice to get something closer to winter for a few days. Franny was angry it was so cold, but for us it was kind of relaxing. The whole trip had a very odd slant coming from Cairo. Normally traveling to Europe is an experience filled with culture shock, but coming from Egypt, it was almost a

NaPETERleon! HAHAHAHA! Haaaa... It's funny cause it's Peter at Versailles, and Peter's name can be awkwardly crammed into Napoleon's. And Napoleon was French. And so is Versailles. Okay...

decrease in culture shock. It was more like home, albeit an odd, parallel version of home. It was weird to see in what ways we'd adapted to the Cairene life- style. Probably the most start- ling thing, and also the most terrifying ini- tially, was when we saw how used to Egyptian traffic we'd become. When we got off the train from the airport to Amsterdam and came to the first street, we just started crossing it without thinking, 'cause that's how you do it here in Cairo! Of course, we made it about five feet out before we noticed no one was crossing with us and the cars had no intention of stopping. It was crazy to see how Egyptian we'd become. It actually got pretty aggravating toward the end, to have to wait for your turn to cross the street all the time. It made us realize how crazy it's going to be to go back to America in a couple months.

A baby riding a hydra? Only at Versailles!

So yeah, France was fun, comme d'habi- tude. But if Holland made me feel like I was betraying my mom and my sister, France made me feel like I was just be- traying my sister. I didn't realize how much I asso- ciated Paris with Becky, but I really missed her while I was there. This was my fifth time going to Paris (which I really can't believe... I've been there more than I've been to New York City!), and of those five times, four have been with my sister, and only two have been with my mom. Last time I came was last year when I visited my sister while she was studying here, and that was a hugely independent thing for both of us to do. I'd never flown alone internationally before, and she'd never lived on her own before, and we did the whole city by ourselves. I really wish she could come and visit me here in Cairo. We'd have a lot of fun again. But oh well. Summer is coming and we'll have fun then, too.

John and Kendall take heed: your son is incredibly unsafe.

We got to see some fun peo- ple beside just Franny in France as well. She had some friends visiting from her high school who were very fun and nice. Also, we met up with Rebecca Balm- er, another old friend from Oberlin. Rebec- ca and I are partners in Comp Lit, so we wind up in a lot of the same classes. She's awesome and a lot of fun, so it was nice to see her. She also had an Obie friend visiting her named Emily. Emily graduated last year and is now studying in Barcelona for a year before going to med school. She seemed really cool, and it was almost like a little Obie party with her, Rebecca, Franny, and me. Needless to say, Peter felt very left out. I'm gonna leave more of the details of France to him though, since it surely made more of an impact on him. We had a great time, in spite of our little mishap toward the end, and it was fun to see Franny one last time that night. The one big place we visited to which I'd never before been was the Pantheon, where France buries its secular heroes, apparently. The upper part of it is a big open monastery-like building with amazing paintings and sculptures and the like, and beneath is the crypt, where the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau and Dumas and Zola and Braille and the Curies are buried. It was pretty incredible to be in a place where that many hugely influential people rest.

Me patronizing Peter at the airport.

Anyway, this post is now absurdly long, so I'm gonna stop. Peter's going to write about the trip too from his perspective, as it was surely very different from mine. I don't know what this means for his Egyptian music post. Maybe it's coming first, maybe it's coming after, maybe it'll never come. We'll just have to wait and see.

Rock on and keep on trucking.

It's All My Fault

Being stuck in Paris for another night that is. After having a great time at Versailles this morning, Peter and I headed to Charles De Gaulle Airport to fly back to Cairo after a fantastic vacation. We checked the big boards for our flight and saw that there was in fact a plane leaving for Le Caire, as they call it here, at 4:45 PM. All looked well. That is, until we got to where our check-in allegedly was and couldn't even find EgyptAir. We asked a guy at an AirFrance desk if he knew where we could catch our flight, and he informed us that "EgyptAir does not come here until Sunday." He looked at our e-tickets and pointed to where they said March 30th, not March 25th. He told us there were daily EgyptAir flights to Cairo from Orly, Paris' other major airport, but I knew I had booked for CDG. I also wasn't convinced that our flight wasn't that day, as I had checked our itinerary several times. Plus, we had seen that there was a flight leaving for Cairo at the time our tickets stated. The man told us that flight was AirFrance. Hoping AirFrance was partnered with EgyptAir and that we were booked for that flight, we hurried to the terminal from which it was scheduled to leave, only to find we weren't on the flight. We went to a wireless internet access spot, and after double checking my email, I realized with great chagrin that I had made quite the screw-up. We were in fact booked for the weekly flight from CDG this upcoming Sunday, which I blame partially on EgyptAir's poor website, but I can't divert too much of it. It was the biggest screw-up of my life, in fact, since I left my passport on a plane from Montpellier to Paris (CDG, no less) with my junior year of high school trip to France. Fortunately that time we had been held up for a day anyway due to a strike at Boston Logan Airport, so my folly didn't cost the group anything. But this time, it had a slightly greater effect. Peter is now missing a midterm (though the teachers at AUC are pretty lax so it shouldn't be a huge deal), we're both missing a big day of classes, and I'm not going to be there to turn in a paper that's due (though once again that won't be detrimental). Nevertheless, we were a little upset, but we got back on the RER and headed back into Paris to the EgyptAir office. After waiting there for an hour or so, we finally got to talk to a representative, and we were very relieved to discover that it's only a 20 Euro fee to change your ticket, so we're headed out tomorrow from Orly on the 14h45 flight. Woot.

I just think it's funny that both of my big mishaps have taken place at CDG in the junior years of high school and college. But all is well, so you know.

Postscript: We made it out okay the next day. In case the mammoth entry above this one wasn't enough proof, here's a picture of us with our elusive boarding passes in hand!

Wemre in Frqnce1 Qnd I hqte the keyboqrds1

Hey everyone. So we made it to Europe safe and sound. Holland was amazing, full of depressing museums and wet bike rides. It was really fun though. Our train pulled into Paris (land of terribly conceived keyboards... they follow the "azerty" model, where the normal m is a , and you have to push shift to get any numbers or a period) last night and Franny was right there waiting for us. Now we're off to Notre Dame. Not much time at this cafe. Just wanted to let you know we're doing well. More later!

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.

There's now only a six hour difference between Egypt and America!

The East coast, that is. Daylight Saving Time doesn't take effect here until the last Thursday in April (the 24th). As for Western Europe, they're still an hour ahead of us until the last Sunday in March (the 30th), at which point we'll be in the same time zone until our change.

So yeah... just thought you all should know. Here are ten other quick fun facts about Daylight Saving Time.

1. While Benjamin Franklin didn't invent it, he was the first to propose anything similar, albeit sarcastically. In 1784 he anonymously published a pamphlet in France which suggested that shutters be taxed, candles be rationed, and cannons be fired at sunrise in Paris to encourage people to get up earlier and take advantage of the daylight hours.
2. William Willett was the first to develop the idea. He came up with it in 1905 on one of his daily pre-breakfast horseback rides. It made him sad to see how many of his fellow Londoners slept through the best part of an English summer's day. Additionally, he was a little miffed to have his golf game cut short at dusk each evening. He never saw his plan come to fruition during his lifetime, but one year after he died in 1914, the Central Powers became the first nations to implement DST. By 1918, it had taken much of the world by storm, and Willett is aptly remembered by a memorial sundial which is permanently set to DST.
3. Contrary to popular belief, DST actually increases energy use! While it is true that there is a decrease in energy costs used for lights, there is a much greater increase due to the greater amount of cooling required when awake during those hotter parts of the day.
4. DST hurts primetime broadcast ratings.
5. One of the biggest negative impacts of DST involves its effects on the body's circadian rhythms, which can be quite severe and last for weeks. Kazakhstan cited such complications as a primary reason for abolishing DST in 2005.
6. The esteemed Canadian writer Robertson Davies said of DST, "[I detect] the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, to get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves."
7. To combat some of these difficulties, some parts of the world skew their timezones westward, effectively establishing permanent DST. That is, their clocks always read ahead of mean solar time.
8. Most countries near the equator don't observe DST, for the obvious reason that the sun's cycle doesn't vary all that noticeably. Countries like Brazil, however, where the Equator runs through part of the country but a sizeable portion is far enough from it that the sun's cycle changes significantly, the farther parts observe it while the nearer parts do not.
9. I don't like Daylight Saving Time.
10. Perhaps most interestingly, and here I must quote the Wikipedia article to which I am fully indebted for this entire post, since it is described almost too well there, "In the normative form, daylight saving time uses the present participle saving as an adjective, as in labor saving device; the first two words are sometimes hyphenated. Daylight savings time and daylight time are common variants, the former by analogy to savings account. Willett's original proposal used the term daylight saving, but by 1911 the term summer time replaced daylight saving time in British English." Wow.

So yeah... academics are a little more lax here... but I'm keeping busy.

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.