Ahlan wa Sahlan! Ana fee Misr! (Hello! I am in Egypt!)

Cairo

         After a wonderful flight (9 1/2 hours) where I got to watch three movies and I was mothered by a lovely older Egyptian woman named Afifa, we all arrived in Cairo International Airport! Everything went smooth; I got my visa, exchanged money (which meant that my $100 US dollars became roughly $600 Egyptian Pounds) and made it through each checkpoint. Then, things got a bit rough. I waited and waited for my bag at baggage claim. Then, after roughly 20 minutes, there it came around the bend. Then it stopped. I ran around to try to grab it, and upon getting there I realized that the fabric of my bag had been caught in the gap between the two separate conveyor belts. It took 15 minutes of some tugging and yelling and pulling from some very helpful airport employees, but finally it came free, although one of my side straps had been snapped.

         From there everything else went along very nicely. We met our guide Aashraf and got on a small bus to our hotel, pleasantly called "Hotel Happy City". Cairo is like no city I have ever seen. It is layered on top of itself. 11th century buildings sit next to 19th century buildings and it sprawls for as far as I could see, which wasn't far because of the thick brown layer of air pollution and dust that permeates the entire place. The poverty was clear. Buildings were crumbling, as were the sidewalks. Many people slept on the street or in their car. But this fact kept no one down! The only way to properly describe the lifestyle in Cairo is to say that anything goes. If you wanna walk in the street towards oncoming traffic, you do it (which we did). If you want to put your business in the middle of the sidewalk, you do it. If you want to fit three cars in a two-lane street, you do it.  Walking the streets was like walking through an obstacle course. Random holes, rocks, or large objects would appear in front of you, and once when I turned to look at one of the many cats that roam the streets, I almost ran into a tree. The whole city is very dirty and dusty, but it definitely has its charm. Men smoking hookahs line the streets, and whole crates of bread wizz by on bikes, balancing on the drivers' heads.

      Our first day in Cairo we settled into our rooms and walked around the city, looking for an internet cafe. One hour on a 10 year old computer cost 2 pounds, roughly 40 cents. From there we returned to the hotel and went to dinner at a restaurant called Felfela. I had foul (a type of bean) with Egyptian dried beef, which was delicious. Returning to the hotel, we all passed out.

Me with my huge wad of Egyptian pounds

      The next morning began our first full day in Cairo. Meeting around 7am we had breakfast, mine consisting of eggs mixed with dried beef, many different kinds of cheeses (which here come from water buffalo), and tea. From there Aashraf took us all to the imposing "mothership of bureaucracy" building to get our 30 day visas extended. This wasn't as painful as I had expected and we were out of there in an hour. Then we purchased cell phones, which with a SIM card cost 170 pounds, ie. a whopping $34. We broke off into smaller groups to explore Cairo from there. I went with Julianne and Sofia to a bank to get our large bills turned into smaller ones, and successfully used arabic to do the job.

Koshry YUM

         Then we went to the American University in Cairo Bookstore, where we found a great children's book entitled 1 Humpy Grumpy Camel, and where I bought a notepad of papyrus. The whole day was great! We had lunch, which consisted of a delicious local dish call koshry, which is just every kind of carb known to man with fried onions and a tomato sauce thrown onto it, and then the rest of the day consisted of teaching some arabic to my fellow students, play a lot of a card game called Egyptian Rat Screw, figuring out the rules to the most complicated cell phone game known to man on our new egyptian phones, and then sampling an Egyptian beer on the roof of our hotel called Stella (not affiliated with the brand Stella Artois).

Starting to become the Black Desert a little

        Day 3 was a rough, although interesting one. We woke up at 6 and scarfed some breakfast, packed our bags and jumped onto a bus to the oasis. This was a 12 hour bus ride passing through 2 different oases until we reached our own. As we were leaving Cairo we drove next to the Nile, which was very beautifully covered in mist. We passed through many different communities on our way out and we were all surprised by the amount of construction that was happened, or seemed to be happening. Many houses were half built or seemed totally abandoned. Then the amount of buildings and people trickled gradually to nothing and we were in the desert. We started to pass through what is called the Black Desert where there were large iron mines, and the sand really looked black. Once arriving in this section of desert, however we stopped to take a bathroom break in the Bahariya Oasis. The bathrooms of these far flung parts of the country were very different from what we were used to. These were squat toilets. This meant that you pull down your pants and squat over a hole in the ground, holding onto a plumbing pipe for support so you don't fall into the questionable liquid the floor is covered with. Once you were done there was no toilet paper or soap, making the experience all the more...rustic. For lunch we stopped off in a small side village, and sat on some pillows on the floor of a thatched roof structure and had some delicious cheese, bread, chips, and tea.

Town along the way

        Along the way we saw a lot of the agricultural life of the oases, as well as some of the most remote feeling places I could imagine. The Black Desert gave way to the White Desert, which really looked like it had been made with crushed chalk. We saw many donkeys that people were riding, and a lot of goats and cows that were being herded. When we would see the agricultural fields, the green was so green, especially when contrasted to the stark sand that it was next to. Finally after 12 hours on the bus we arrived at our dig house at around 7pm. The house is everything that I had wanted but didn't expect. The house is made out of adobe, and most of it is unroofed and open to the sky, other than our rooms, some rug covered sitting areas, and the dining hall. The bathrooms have actual running toilets (hooray) and our beds have very warm blankets. We all had a great dinner together, which consisted of delicious chicken, bread (called sun bread because its baked in the sun), cheese, and potatoes. I ran around excitedly upon getting there and quickly found a roof terrace, where I looked at the stars for a bit before turning in.

     This morning, Julianne and I realized that our handle for the inside of our room was not very functional and so we couldn't get out of our room. So, we ended up climbing out of our bedroom window, circling the building in our pajamas, and walking in the front of the door. Just another adventure! The internet is a bit slow here but I've essentially gotten it to work. I walked around the building today and explored a nearby grove with some of my friends and went for a jog and found the nearby hot spring which I intend to frequent.
    
      All in all, these three days have been absolutely spectacular! I cannot wait to truly begin my two classes (one on Egypt/Dakhla history and the other on arabic) and to explore some more! MaSalama!!!