Tuesday, September 16, 2008

A Somali Discovery and Dinner at Om al-Dahab

As you may recall from an early entry, I sad that each of my professor's was of a different nationality. I was correct, but that's only part of it. Mulki al-Sharmani, who I'd thought was Egyptian, is actually Somali. Coincidentally, she did work in Minneapolis, or so Natalie tells me. What a small world!
I slept in again today; I'm really going to have to find some effective remedy against that rooster who keeps me up at night. My first real outing of the day was dinner, though I'd been productive and done some of my reading for this evening's class beforehand. I met up with a girl who has a paid internship with the International Organization Migration and her friends: one each from Egypt, Italy, and Syria. We were initially going to sit down to one of the iftar tables where free dinner is offered as a charitable act for Ramadan, but, in the end, took nothing more than dates to break the fast (though most of us weren't fasting) at sundown and then headed to a restaurant at the end of an alley. Though it didn't have a single letter of the Roman alphabet, it did have some pretty tasty food. The price was right too-only about 15 LE a person. How daring of me to be led off the beaten path.
Class afterwards was pretty uneventful, but I made plans with some classmates to get dinner tomorrow night before heading tout ensemble to a Center for Migration and Refugee studies seminar at the Greek Campus. It should be interesting!
Oh, and I forgot to mention that, after class this evening, I undertook the manly task of lugging home a 12 1.5-liter bottle box of water. The very act made me want to give up drinking water so that I don't have to do it again. Ha!

News of Egypt:
Concerns about Ramadan becoming too commercial mirror Christmas trends elsewhere
A former AUC professors and now political exile lectures in Indiana
Media battle over where to place blame in wake of rock slide disaster

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