The flight in...

So, I've made it to Egypt.

The trip wasn't too eventful. Just long, boring, and full of sleep-deprivation.

I flew out of Minneapolis-St. Paul at 7:00 am on Friday morning. If that early departure time wasn't bad enough, I got absolutely no sleep the night before. From MSP, I headed to Charlotte, NC, arriving there at about 10:30, with plenty of time to catch my 11:30 to JFK. I got about 1 combined hour of sleep during this period.

Now, with a 4+ hour wait in New York, you'd think I would take the opportunity to catch up on my sleep. For whatever reason, that ended up not happening. So at 6:30 pm, I boarded  EgyptAir's Boeing 777 and took off.
 
Since I was awake for nearly every minute of the twelve hour flight, I'd be glad to share the details with you. We took a pretty standard path across the Atlantic, looping north and coming toward the European continent just south of England. We followed the French coast on the Bay of Biscay for a bit, then cut straight across, over the Alps. Once over the Mediterranean, we followed the coastline of Italy, jumped across to the Aegean, passed over Crete, and then basically took a straight line to Cairo. Exhilarating.

After landing and getting through customs, we met up with some other AUC kids and took a bus to our dormitory in Zamalek, driving through the heart of Cairo along the way. My first impression, which has been confirmed a few times since, is that Cairo is a lot like Mexico...on crack. I lived in Torreon for 3 months and have vacationed in other parts of Mexico a few times, and couldn't help but noticing some similarities. But more about that later.

Anyway, I got to the dorm, went through some procedural stuff, checked out the room, bought a phone, and then spent a couple of worthless hours with a big group in Khan al Khalili, a giant, insane bazaar (again, think Mexico on crack). I ended up going to bed at 11:00 pm, making it 34 hours and nearly 7000 miles I went without a decent sleep.