Day 2

Another morning; another regimen of pills. I’ve been feeling super healthy so far, which is impressive considering I thought I would be struck with plague the second I so much as licked some foreign piece of food. Hypochondriac much? Haha, maybe, but considering all the people who agreed that I’d probably get deathly ill, I can only assume it’s the vitamins that are saving me so far. And the local yogurt, which apparently gets a big thumbs up from other travelers.

And it’s delicious!

I can’t believe how quickly I’m taking to my new lifestyle. I’m trying to adjust my sleep schedule to Cairo time, meaning you stay up in cafés smoking sheesha and drinking coffee til 1:30 am, get home around 2 or 2:30, and finally, around 3 or 4, decide it’s about time to start thinking about bed. I’ve never been much of a night owl but this is suiting me surprisingly well – undoubtedly because of the 6-hour time difference. The only potential problem is that I love the morning, so I’m still determined to be up by 9 or 10 am! This is the first time I’m trying it, and you know what, I feel surprisingly good.

Alhumdilallah!

There are a few things here that could use some explaining. First of all, I’d like to explain the coffee mentioned in regards to the cafés. Arab coffee is nothing like American coffee, and thank goodness for that! I’ve never been much of a coffee drinker back home, but I can’t get enough of it here. Well…this is a turn of phrase. You most certainly can get enough of it. You see, Arabic coffee, called aHwa (aspirated “h”) in Cairo, and qaHwa in the rest of the Arab world (where they actually PRONOUNCE the letter “qaf,” unlike the Egyptians who skip it entirely) is this thick, somewhat chalky, flavorful kick in the face. But it’s delicious! It’s a little like espresso, in that it is served in very small cups about the size of a shot glass, and you take tiny little sips. I’m hoping to get an Arabic coffee pot to take home with me, and some coffee grounds too, as they’re going to be cheaper and better here than anywhere back home.

The only thing about the coffee here is, I’m used to the Arabic coffee that my professor from back home, Khalil, used to make when students come to visit him. He always puts a few drops of orange water in it, and you would be surprised how delicious it is and how much of a difference it makes! So potentially I’ll just have to buy some orange extract and carry it around to cafés with me. Khalil has spoiled me ;)

Now the other thing to explain is: Alhumdilallah! Alhumdilallah is a phrase you will hear over and over in the Arab world. It technically means “Praise be to God,” but is not necessarily used in a religious context. You can say Alhumdilallah for almost anything:

Sentence: “I passed my exam!”
Response: “Alhumdilallah!”
S: “How are you doing today?”
R: “Alhumdilallah!”
S: “Do you want any more koshari?”
R: “ALHUMDILALLAH!” (that means, no thanks, I’m full)

So as you can imagine, it gets used fairly often.

We have a new guest staying with us for a couple days, which means (alhumdilallah!), I am no longer the Cairo newbie. His name is Tim and he’s coming to AUC for grad school, studying International Human Rights Law. Good choice, and there is hardly any better place than the Middle East to learn about IHRL; plus AUC has one of the best programs you can find. They’re real big on political science and international relations – which is why I am here too!

Tim found Nicole’s blog online before he came, contacted her and said he was coming to Egypt, and subsequently realized (as I had the day before) that it was the best decision of his life. With 3 months in Cairo under her belt and a posse of Egyptians at her back, Nicole is just the person you want to take care of you. She took him under his wing right away, just like she did for me. And let me tell you, when you’ve been traveling for more than 24 hours and have just arrived in a country you know nothing about, having someone to take you home and cook you some food (haha, or reheat it, as is the case with Nicole and I, who do not cook) is a godsend.

So Tim is just staying for a few days, living in Autumn’s room. Did I mention that Autumn arrived at the airport to meet me, only to jet set off to Paris for four days? I swear that girl never stops…haha, but good for her, and alhumdilillah it’s ONLY four days, so I’ll finally get to spend some time with my good old friend when she gets back on Sunday.

SO! I want to tell you about yesterday, my second day in Cairo. I woke up at 7 am, as you know from my last blog. And it caught up with me later. Big time.

In the morning i.e. around 11 am we went to the CSA, or Community Services Association, for something called “Cook’s Day Off” (I think I mentioned this yesterday). The CSA is an organization that caters to expats in Egypt, offering classes and groups to assuage loneliness and fill up your schedules, a free library, and a DVD library, among other things. I need to learn more about it, but my first impression is that it’s a little too touristy for my tastes; we got a free map from them, which was great, but all of the tourist attractions are blown up to an unmanageable size, which means little inlays of mosques and shopping centers block roads that anyone ACTUALLY living here would really enjoy being able to see. The attitude is also sort of “us and them;” certainly not “us VS. them,” but they go at living in Cairo with a passive attitude, not an assimilative attitude, and have the distinct voice of a somewhat detached outside observer. Touristy. Again, I don’t know much about it and could be entirely wrong, but this was just my first impression. I obviously have to spend more time there.

Cook’s Day off was great though! They had this little room with about 10 different tables in it, each one hosting pre-cooked meals (home-cooked, not TV-dinner) from all different cultures: Egyptian, French, Thai, Mexican, Italian, etc. They were cheap, too. I got a plate of pad thai (which wasn’t very good, sadly) for 15 pounds, which is about $2.50, and a plate of spring rolls (which were VERY good!) for about the same. And Nicole, little Egyptian that she is, got some Egyptian chicken and potatoes (badtadtas), also super delicious and super reasonable.

We dropped the food off at home, drank some water – it was HOT! – went back out and got me a new battery for my phone (which means it will now turn on, though it is still being obnoxiously picky about who it will call and whose calls it will accept in return), and then grabbed the subway to Zamalek, Nicole’s old neighborhood, to visit her acupressurist.

I think acupressure is a word…oh ok, spellcheck doesn’t object to acupressure, just to the –ist. Haha, basically it’s a sort of massage therapy that focuses on pressure points. It doesn’t feel so pleasant while it’s going on but afterwards it’s supposed to have amazing results. Nicole’s family is pretty big on holistic medicine, and though I don’t know much about it I figured, hey, I’m in Cairo, everything is cheap, maybe I’ll try it too.

Oh but I almost forgot! We made two new friends on the train. We’ve been taking the train as often as possible, [1] because it’s super cheap, one pound for a ticket which is about 15 cents USC, and [2] because tourists generally don’t take the train, which proves we are not tourists, and [3] because it is such a great place to start conversations! People will just come up and talk to you, like yesterday, when these two giggling hijabi girls sat down next to us and, as Nicole described it, “adopted” us. They were probably about 14 or 15, and spoke VERY little English, and since we speak VERY little Arabic, it was hilarious. We mostly communicated in laughs and smiles and pantomimes, but we did manage to exchange phone numbers, and they called Nicole and I about 10 times within the course of the day! Just to say hi I guess. Eventually we had to stop answering because we ran out of 3miya words and didn’t have anything to say! We’re going to try and call them sometime soon and ask one of our Egyptian friends to come translate for us. It was fun, though.

So back to the massage. For about $20 USC I got an acupressure consultation and a first visit. I’m not completely won over – I think he may have messed up my TMJ a little, to be honest – but the man who did it was so nice! He’s a young Indian man, probably about 35 or so, and thus speaks perfect English (alhumdilallah!) He came to Cairo on contract with the Egyptian army to teach the soldiers yoga. Surprisingly progressive, wouldn’t you agree? The contract having run out, he decided to stay for another 3 months or so and freelance before he heads home. I don’t particularly want another visit, but I’m thinking about going with Nicole when she returns next week just to say hi. In Egypt you’re allowed to go somewhere with the sole purpose of saying hello, so it doesn’t sound as weird as it would be in the US.

By this point in the day, I was wilting. I actually fell asleep during Nicole’s consultation, and then almost again during mine! So although we were planning on running some errands post-visit, we decided to head home instead, meeting Tim at the station on the way.

In order to celebrate Tim’s first day in Cairo, we [1] took a much-needed nap in the evening, and [2] had a nice, relaxing night out at one of Nicole’s favorite Maadi (i.e. in our neighborhood) cafés. It was just the kind of night I like best; we sat around a little square table, drank freshly ground mango juice and aHwa (coffee!), smoked apple sheesha, and just talked.

NOTE: For those who are horrified at the idea of smoking, the point of sheesha is that you don’t inhale (I know I sound like Bill Clinton but it’s true). Sheesha is flavored tobacco cut with water, so it’s much weaker than cigarettes, smells AWESOME, and is smoked in social settings like cafés, generally with a few people sharing one hookah. It is technically against the Muslim religion to smoke, so if they do it you know it can’t be TOO bad ;)

Nicole and I worked on our Egyptian 3miya (colloquial), and are in the process of compiling a list of useful phrases that we really should memorize, such as: I want, Excuse me, the check, keys, finished, don’t worry, and other things like that. It’s so much more fun learning a new language when you have a buddy to help you practice. And our friend Rami came and met with us later, so we got to drill him on some of the phrases we were confused about. According to Rami, I have two weeks to stop using fas-Ha before he has the right to mock me mercilessly.

With this deadline in mind I’m going to be doing a lot of studying.

Around 1:30 Tim and I were about to collapse, so we took a cab home, proceeded to stay up until 3 in spite of being exhausted (Egypt does something to you, man! It’s impossible to go to bed at a decent hour!), and finally went to sleep.

Alhumdilallah :)

Now then, our plans for today include: Getting a new phone and sim card for Tim; hopefully meeting up with my friend Andrew Byrd, who is also from UD and also in Cairo and who I haven’t seen yet (not ok!); and picking up Cory from the airport - which gets an unbelievably huge ALHUMDILALLAH. He’ll be staying in Cairo with us for 8 days, and considering I haven’t seen him in almost three months, I’m just about bursting. And because he’s coming from Syria, i.e. from the same time zone, it means he won’t be jet lagged! And the flight is only an hour or two. So we’re thinking we’ll head to Khan al-Khalili, the big souk (open bizarre or market) in Al Azhar, to look around and visit a café that is supposed to be really nice. I love souks (the proper pluralization is actually eh-soo-ek in Arabic), so I’m really pumped about that.

So I suppose my conclusion for today is this: I know I’ve only been here three days, but I absolutely love Egypt. The people are friendly and hospitable, the lifestyle is somewhat lackadaisical but very sensible when you think about it (sleep through the hottest part of the day and stay up all night – how can you beat that?), and I’ve already made so many new friends that in spite of really, really missing everyone back home I never have to worry about feeling lonely. And possibly the most thrilling part of all is, you’re always learning something new here. A new word, a new activity, a new neighborhood, a new person – everything is new and interesting and exciting. It’s a constant brain challenge, but one that every person you meet will be willing to help you with.

Hmm, well that reminds me of one of my favorite songs:

Everybody will help you
Some people are very kind…

If you haven’t heard it, look it up. It’s called, “I’ll Keep it with Mine,” by Nico, written by none other than the famous Bob Dylan. Check it out, it’s great!

So, have I convinced any of you to come visit yet? I’m coming clean about the purpose of this blog: I am slowly seducing all of my Americans until you agree to come to this glorious country with me!

I love you all. Let me know if it’s working.