Last night, I attended a back-to-school "social event" in Maadi, a newer, uber-Western area about 20 minutes south of downtown Cairo. The festivities were hosted by a group of 5 West Point cadets who are at AUC for the year, and are living in a comfortable Maadi apartment, with Uncle Sam footing the bill, of course.
While the relative conservatism of Egyptian social life may cramp some American students' style, for the guys from the service academies (there's another guy from Annapolis), Cairo is the closest thing to heaven on earth. With comparatively no rules and no supervision, these guys go off. In fact, the guys last night did such an impressive job, that it was almost impossible to distinguish the events of the night from a typical American party. Everything that would be there back in the States was there in Maadi: beats provided by Miley Cyrus, Flo-Rida, and the like, a beer-pong table, and a fridge full of American beverages (which, upon reflection, are infinitely better than the "European" variety produced locally in Egypt). And best of all, drinks were free. For that, I offer a hearty HOOAH to the West Point kids.
I left with the group I'd come with at about three, and after circumnavigating the angry neighbor the floor below who said he'd called the police, as well as the occasional splash of blood throuhout the stairwell (don't ask, 'cause I have no idea), we were in a cab on the way back to Zamalek. During the ride, I couldn't help but reflect on how surreal it was that I had just attended a 100% legitimately American party in the heart of the Arab world. While I definitely came to Egypt intent on gaining an authentic Arab experience, these little tastes of home, in moderation, are certainly permissable. Just don't expect me to start eating McDonald's.
February 06, 2010
February 03, 2010
Cairo at night...
Until I figure out how to embed the video, click here to watch it.
Lost and looking for Luna...
Well, tonight was a bit of an adventure. Correction: misadventure.
Per the request of my mother, I was on a mission to locate a particular hotel in downtown Cairo, a Hotel Luna, as it were. Instead of going back to Zamalek after school, I figured I'd save myself taxi money and just catch a bus from campus straight into downtown.
Apparently, downtown meant something different than what I thought it was. We ended up heading into a part of town I was completely unfamiliar with. When we pulled up to a metro station, I quickly jumped off, hoping I could salvage my bus blunder.
It was my first Metro experience. First off, let me say something good about Cairo's Metro: It is dirt cheap. You pay one pound ($ .20) and you can go anywhere along the line. Now for a criticism: the stop I got on at, Al Zahraa, didn't have any maps...none at all. Instead, I had to really on my natural intuition. I knew I was a lot further south than I wanted to be, so I took the train that I presumed to be heading north.
Success for Jonathan! After moving along the line for awhile, the train pulled into Sadaat Station, which I knew was in Tahrir Square. I got off, and sure, enough, VINDICATION! Tahrir Square! Basically my backyard! The street I was looking for, Talaat Harb, was right there. In fact, I'd eaten pigeon there a few days ago. Eazy-squeazy, lemon-peazy.
I headed up the street, scouring both sides for any sign of this Hotel Luna.I kept on moving, block after block, only interrupted by an Egyptian man who tried to lure me into a perfume store and then buy my shoes. But after walking nearly ten blocks, without locating Luna, I decided to call it a night and head back to the dorm.
I had a pretty good idea where I was, generally speaking. I knew Zamalek was to my west and I wanted to head that way. So I set off. However, when I got to an intersection, I inexplicably turned left, walking more south than west for a good mile or so. After realizing my mistake, I backtracked, gave up (kind of like I'm doing with this post), and hailed a taxi.
Anyway...visuals always work better and I'm dang tired.
View The night of February the 3rd, 2010 in a larger map
Per the request of my mother, I was on a mission to locate a particular hotel in downtown Cairo, a Hotel Luna, as it were. Instead of going back to Zamalek after school, I figured I'd save myself taxi money and just catch a bus from campus straight into downtown.
Apparently, downtown meant something different than what I thought it was. We ended up heading into a part of town I was completely unfamiliar with. When we pulled up to a metro station, I quickly jumped off, hoping I could salvage my bus blunder.
It was my first Metro experience. First off, let me say something good about Cairo's Metro: It is dirt cheap. You pay one pound ($ .20) and you can go anywhere along the line. Now for a criticism: the stop I got on at, Al Zahraa, didn't have any maps...none at all. Instead, I had to really on my natural intuition. I knew I was a lot further south than I wanted to be, so I took the train that I presumed to be heading north.
Success for Jonathan! After moving along the line for awhile, the train pulled into Sadaat Station, which I knew was in Tahrir Square. I got off, and sure, enough, VINDICATION! Tahrir Square! Basically my backyard! The street I was looking for, Talaat Harb, was right there. In fact, I'd eaten pigeon there a few days ago. Eazy-squeazy, lemon-peazy.
I headed up the street, scouring both sides for any sign of this Hotel Luna.I kept on moving, block after block, only interrupted by an Egyptian man who tried to lure me into a perfume store and then buy my shoes. But after walking nearly ten blocks, without locating Luna, I decided to call it a night and head back to the dorm.
I had a pretty good idea where I was, generally speaking. I knew Zamalek was to my west and I wanted to head that way. So I set off. However, when I got to an intersection, I inexplicably turned left, walking more south than west for a good mile or so. After realizing my mistake, I backtracked, gave up (kind of like I'm doing with this post), and hailed a taxi.
Anyway...visuals always work better and I'm dang tired.
View The night of February the 3rd, 2010 in a larger map
February 02, 2010
Lazy Tuesday afternoon...
As you may know, the work week in Cairo, and probably the Middle East at large, is a little different than the way we do it in the West. This is, of course, due to the fact that Friday is Islam's holy day, as opposed to Sunday. As a result, the Muslim weekend is composed of Friday and Saturday, with the work week beginning on Sunday and going until Thursday. It's taken a little getting used to. I've literally had to think, OK, Monday now equals Tuesday, and Thursday now equals Friday.
Anywho, the folks at AUC apparently feel like more than 2 days of class in a row is just too much, and, as a result, we have every Tuesday off. I used mine to get some laundry done, and then I did what I do best: wander about the city aimlessly.
When you're 6'3, 200, and in decent shape, you're afforded certain privileges: you can see over crowds, reach tucked away things, and get all the girls (so I've been told). Additionally, you can stroll around a foreign city at ease, despite the fact that you look as out of place as Pat Buchanan in a gay bar. Personally, meandering around all by my lonesome is one of my favorite things to do, for a few reasons: I don't get slowed down by others, I can go where I want to go, and I get a chance to interact with my surroundings and use my Arabic.
Today, I headed west, off Zamalek, across the Nile, and into Mohandessin. I really didn't have any objective in mind. If I saw something interesting, I headed towards it. I saw some cool mosques, walked through some residential areas, and navigated my way through a street crowded with produce vendors. I took a few pictures so you could get an idea of what the neighborhood was like, as well as the traffic. Click here for those. Additionally, I doubled the size of my stray cat album. I also saw some amusing sights, including a guy riding a bicycle while balancing a ten foot-long board laden with bread on his head. Crazy Egyptians.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable aspects of the excursion was crossing the street multiple times. Sounds a little weird, but bear with me. If you paid attention to what I said yesterday, you'd know that Cairo traffic is chaotic. There are no stop signs, stop lights, or crosswalks. If you want to cross a busy street, here's the philosophy you have to adopt: Just Do It. You're going to have to step in front of some fast moving cars. You're going to have to weave through traffic, occasionally standing in the middle of the road while cars zoom by you on either side. It's a bit of an adrenaline rush, and I have to say that I'm quite good at it, perhaps even a natural. In addition to my pending "Driving in Cairo" video, I'll be sure to make a "Crossing the Street in Cairo" documentary.
After a few hours of wandering, I ate lunch at a koshari place and bought a think slab of flat Egyptian bread for 25 piasters (5 cents). I then started making my way back to Zamalek. Along the way, I had some interesting conversations, including one with a guy who has a sister in Arizona, as well as a man outside of the Pakistani embassy who spoke Spanish fluently. I spoke with him for a while, and it was interesting to see how my Spanish and Arabic mixed.
Anyway, I got back, did some homework, and that's how my Tuesday went. Classes for the next two days, and then the weekend. I could get used to this day-off-in-the-middle-of-the-week thing.
Anywho, the folks at AUC apparently feel like more than 2 days of class in a row is just too much, and, as a result, we have every Tuesday off. I used mine to get some laundry done, and then I did what I do best: wander about the city aimlessly.
When you're 6'3, 200, and in decent shape, you're afforded certain privileges: you can see over crowds, reach tucked away things, and get all the girls (so I've been told). Additionally, you can stroll around a foreign city at ease, despite the fact that you look as out of place as Pat Buchanan in a gay bar. Personally, meandering around all by my lonesome is one of my favorite things to do, for a few reasons: I don't get slowed down by others, I can go where I want to go, and I get a chance to interact with my surroundings and use my Arabic.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable aspects of the excursion was crossing the street multiple times. Sounds a little weird, but bear with me. If you paid attention to what I said yesterday, you'd know that Cairo traffic is chaotic. There are no stop signs, stop lights, or crosswalks. If you want to cross a busy street, here's the philosophy you have to adopt: Just Do It. You're going to have to step in front of some fast moving cars. You're going to have to weave through traffic, occasionally standing in the middle of the road while cars zoom by you on either side. It's a bit of an adrenaline rush, and I have to say that I'm quite good at it, perhaps even a natural. In addition to my pending "Driving in Cairo" video, I'll be sure to make a "Crossing the Street in Cairo" documentary.
After a few hours of wandering, I ate lunch at a koshari place and bought a think slab of flat Egyptian bread for 25 piasters (5 cents). I then started making my way back to Zamalek. Along the way, I had some interesting conversations, including one with a guy who has a sister in Arizona, as well as a man outside of the Pakistani embassy who spoke Spanish fluently. I spoke with him for a while, and it was interesting to see how my Spanish and Arabic mixed.
Anyway, I got back, did some homework, and that's how my Tuesday went. Classes for the next two days, and then the weekend. I could get used to this day-off-in-the-middle-of-the-week thing.
Mo' money, mo' موزة...
In Arabic, pronunciation is essential. Even the slightest alteration of a word can mean something entirely different.
For example let's take the word موز. موز means "banana." It is pronounced mOz...kind of rhyming with way Snoop Dogg would say "hoes."
Coincidentally, if you add an "a" sound to the end of موز, making it موزة, instead of banana, you now have a "sexy lady."
Snoop would be proud.
For example let's take the word موز. موز means "banana." It is pronounced mOz...kind of rhyming with way Snoop Dogg would say "hoes."
Coincidentally, if you add an "a" sound to the end of موز, making it موزة, instead of banana, you now have a "sexy lady."
Snoop would be proud.
It's a bird, it's a plane...
Yes, that's right. For tonight's dinner, I had pigeon. But this isn't your NYC "flying-rat" version...this is the high-quality, grain-fed Egyptian delicacy variety (or at least I hope it was for the 55 pound price tag it carried). The meat itself was delicious...very flavorful, not too tough, but not so soft that you felt like you weren't eating anything. The problem was there wasn't a whole lot of meat on the little guy.
My first encounter with edible pigeon came about after a brutal first two days of classes (I lie). I went out with a group of fellow students to a place called Felfela just off of Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. The place was classy and the service was great. I split a pigeon off the menu with my friend Ben, and got the portion shown above. Add in a glass of red wine (26 pounds), half a banana split for dessert (another 9 pounds), and throw in the 10% sales tax, 12% service fee, AND the tip, and I ended up paying about 90 pounds (roughly 18 bucks). That may sound dirt cheap by American standards, but in Egypt, that's a lot to blow on one meal. In fact, I could've gotten 18 meals of koshari for the same amount of money spent on the single meal. Making my wallet even more depressed was the fact that some of our friends had gone to a different restaurant, ate pigeon, salad, and soup, and paid 30 pounds a piece. Of course, this was the place I had originally suggested, but let's just let bygones be bygones.
Either way, yah I blew a bit of money, but it was a good experience. Afterwords, we went to Cafe Harea, which in all reality nothing at all like a cafe. I believe, in the States, we have a great name for a place like Harea: dive bar. A seedy, hole-in-the-wall, dive bar. It's a filthy, noisy, smoky place, but the Stella's are cheap and it's always hopping with young Americans. I only stayed for a bit and then caught a cab back to the dorms.
Speaking of cabs, and Cairo driving in general, let me just say this: it is a thing of beauty...truly an art form. The best way I can describe it is this: people should be dying every other minute or so...but they don't. I mean this seriously. There are no speed limits, no stop lights (that are acknowledged, anyway), and apparently no significance in the white lines that I thought were supposed to indicate different lanes. People drive down streets the wrong way, they cut-off other cars like it's their job, and come within inches of getting into accidents on the minute, every minute. But what looks like chaos and disarray to you and me is actually a near flawless system. That never ending barrage of horns? It's actually a beautiful medley that can communicate everything from "Hey I'm going to be driving through this intersection without stopping...please let me by!" to "Hey stupid pedestrian! Get out of the way our I'll run you down." And you know what? It works.
The first couple times you ride a cab, maybe you'll be a little freaked out by the fact that you're hurtling down a busy city street at 40 mph's, without a functioning seatbelt, and in a car that's probably as old you. But after a while, you don't even notice the insanity... it just becomes normal. I've considered shooting a video during a cab ride, just to give you all a feel for what it's like, but I figure the one time I do will be the one time the cab hits a parked car and I go flying through the windshield and die. Don't worry, I probably still will, and the camera will probably still be intact after the accident.
January 31, 2010
Funny/weird/amusing things seen around...
Obviously, I've see a lot that I figure is worth sharing with ya'll. Unfortunately, I've only had the sense to capture a few of them on camera. My bad. Here's what I've got, though.
Gotta love good, old Western fast food joints in downtown Cairo. It's all over the place. Aside from Hardee's and "Dajaaj" Kentucky. I've seen a bunch of McDonald's, Subways... avoiding them like the plague, though.
This was the logo for some smoothie place at AUC. For some reason, I don't think this would go over too well in the States.
Lols. After a bit of research, I guess FAG is some European maker of car parts. Still funny.
Clean shaven...
First day of school...
So, I'm halfway through my first day of official classes at the American University in Cairo.
The classes themselves have been pretty typical for a first day. 15 minutes of introduction and course outline, and then we were free to leave. I've had my Arabic language class and my comparative politics of the Middle East so far, and both seem like they'll be fairly interesting and engaging courses. I've got colloquial Egyptian Arabic in 15 minutes, and I'll follow that up with an hour or two at the gym (which is amazing, by the way).
Enough about the classes. On to the student body. The kids that go to this school are filthy rich. The fashions and styles they wear here make kids at Notre Dame look like hillbillies. Kids from ND who went last year told us campus was like Beverly Hills, but I wasn't exactly expecting this. If I felt like a scrub at Notre Dame, imagine how out of place I look here amongst all the Lacoste and Gucci.
And yes, it is very weird going to a school were I am most assuredly a member of the minority ethnic group. I wasn't sure how the breakdown between Egyptians and internationals would play out, but I'd say that it's probably something like 95% Egyptian. I've been told that most of them are stuck up d-bags, but we'll see how the semester plays out.
Well, best be getting to class. After my workout, I'll probably catch the 5 o'clock bus back to Zamalek, and then go to 6 o'clock Mass at a Catholic church a few blocks from the dorm. I'll miss the first half of the Africa Cup of Nations championship between Egypt and Ghana, but oh well, I think it's safe to say I'm more of a Catholic than a soccer fan.
The classes themselves have been pretty typical for a first day. 15 minutes of introduction and course outline, and then we were free to leave. I've had my Arabic language class and my comparative politics of the Middle East so far, and both seem like they'll be fairly interesting and engaging courses. I've got colloquial Egyptian Arabic in 15 minutes, and I'll follow that up with an hour or two at the gym (which is amazing, by the way).
Enough about the classes. On to the student body. The kids that go to this school are filthy rich. The fashions and styles they wear here make kids at Notre Dame look like hillbillies. Kids from ND who went last year told us campus was like Beverly Hills, but I wasn't exactly expecting this. If I felt like a scrub at Notre Dame, imagine how out of place I look here amongst all the Lacoste and Gucci.
And yes, it is very weird going to a school were I am most assuredly a member of the minority ethnic group. I wasn't sure how the breakdown between Egyptians and internationals would play out, but I'd say that it's probably something like 95% Egyptian. I've been told that most of them are stuck up d-bags, but we'll see how the semester plays out.
Well, best be getting to class. After my workout, I'll probably catch the 5 o'clock bus back to Zamalek, and then go to 6 o'clock Mass at a Catholic church a few blocks from the dorm. I'll miss the first half of the Africa Cup of Nations championship between Egypt and Ghana, but oh well, I think it's safe to say I'm more of a Catholic than a soccer fan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
