Cairo 5

One thing I've learned never to do in Cairo is laugh while drinking water at a koshary restaurant. The result: spitting water all over the place and having a room full of Egyptians stare at you, jaws dropped in shock/horror while the only thing you can do is giggle (laugh hysterically may be a better way to describe it). Other things I wouldn't suggest doing while in Egypt include doing laundry and getting stuck in an elevator. Like most things in our apartment, our washing machine is broken. As long as the door is completely shut, it works fine. The problem is that the door doesn't always stay completely shut so I had to sit holding it shut with my foot for an hour and a half. It wasn't a complete waste of time...I was able to do some Arabic homework and read a bit. In our attempts to buy groceries the following day, we made the mistake of taking the elevator in the store. Considering our luck, it broke and we got stuck. We had to get 7 men to pry the door open. In the States, the normal response would be to give us a discount or coupon or something for free. In Egypt, they get us out and call it a day. To us, that is weird. To them, it would be strange the way they would be treated in the US. In the same way, we get a kick out of the fact that juice stands serve juice out of a glass that someone else just drank from or koshary restaurants don’t wash the glasses before the next customer uses them. They see this as a waste of time. If people aren’t dropping dead from germs, why waste the time and energy?

Classes started on Monday. My schedule works so that I have a three-day weekend (weekends here are Friday and Saturday; I also have Sunday off), and am done with class at 10AM on Thursdays. I have 10 hours of Arabic class per week (and two additional meetings with a tutor), a history class and an Egyptology class. My professor for Egyptology is phenomenal and somehow makes everything (including weather patterns over the Nile) interesting.

There is so much to see and do in Cairo that my tourist activity here is far from over. Last Sunday was spent at the Egyptian Museum. The museum was once described to me as being similar to a sock drawer but with a lot of really old, really expensive and really fancy socks. Despite being a pretty bad analogy, I would have to agree with it. The museum was in no way organized; it wasn’t like the items were poorly labeled --- most were not labeled at all --- and the museum did not seem to be set up by rooms. Rather, you walked through hallway after hallway of really old, really awesome stuff. (A good representation of Egypt if you ask me.) Surprisingly, I loved the museum. It is incredible to me not only that most of the items in the museum were so old, but that they were so old, so massive and in such good condition. In my Egyptology class, I learned that one of the main differences between ancient Egyptian civilization and almost any other ancient civilization was their outlook on the afterlife. The Greeks and Romans for example thought of the afterlife as a horrible, empty, bottomless pit. The Egyptians saw the potential for good. They were buried with gold and jewelry and paintings and sculptures of such massive scale and (especially compared to me), talent.

Wednesday night, we did the obvious thing to do in Cairo: Salsa Dancing. A bunch of people gathered in someone’s apartment with a teacher and we learned how to dance. Nothing too fancy, but a few a spins were thrown in here and there. Some people went to a club afterwards and I skipped out on that but have every intention of going next time. Thursday was another obvious Cairo activity: bowling. I learned that to actually knock pins down and not get the ball in the gutter every time, your wrist has to be straight. I did well a few times, but in general, I am a very bad bowler…this is nothing new.

Naamah and I decided we wanted to do Shabbat dinner at our apartment Friday night. We went out on Friday morning, bought some groceries and made a delicious dinner of stir-fry, homemade hummus, wine, guava juice and chickpea and cucumber salad. We had four friends over for dinner and had a great time. We felt a bit like the Marranos but instead of being in Spain, we were in Egypt and instead of lighting candles in the closet, we lit them on the table. I can’t speak for everyone there, but I had a lot of fun. Between grocery shopping and dinner, we went to a concert of a whole bunch of local Egyptian bands. Apparently this concert happens about four times a year but with different bands. The music wasn’t great but I’m really glad I went. We went with some Egyptian kids, which was a lot of fun. It’s good to be able to meet Egyptians and hang out where locals hang out. It was at a place called the Chinese Gardens, which I suppose is a bit out of place in Cairo but, it was pretty nonetheless.