Full of Korean food and trying to muster up the will to finish my reaction papers for methods and for law, I thought I'd take a break and catch my blog up. Last evening, after Phil, Ross, and I hit the juice place (I got peach for a change-not bad), we headed to the Abd el-Hadi pastry shop where we received a warm welcome and were plied with samples of the treats that are being prepared for the week of Mohammad's birthday (which falls on Monday this year). Hadi, as he introduced himself, seemed to be on top of all the goings-on in his shop. He used to be an equestrian champion of some sort and at one point even produced an aged photo of himself atop a steed leaping through the air. Phil left with a kilo of baklawa (which he has apparently since consumed in its entirety), while Ross and I settled for some of the holiday goods–peanut bars surrounded with coconut and coconut bars with pistachios in the center, surrounded by apricot. Urging us to return often to help him with his English, Hadi bade us farewell. We headed back to the apartment and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Ablavi from next door and a French coworker of hers.
Today I spent reading and writing and avoiding the increasing heat and sand outside. You can't call it hot yet, but I had to throw off my comforter last night because of how warm it got in my room. Later on, I joined Marise and Phil for Korean which was followed by juice with Ross. Further inquiring as to the mysterious pile of rubble and the hole inside of the building across the street where the butcher used to be, we were told cryptically that "they" didn't want the store anymore and that that's how the system works. God knows what that means. Seems like a drastic way to shut down a butcher shop.
I also found out that I'll be able to work on my thesis research this summer which probably be done at least in some part back in the States, maybe also in Europe. It'd be nice to find a job concurrently with the research for a month or two, but with this economy, that's probably impossible.

News:
Egypt sees its first female mayor
Resignation of Palestian PMs signal progress toward reconciliation
British parliamentarian joins aid convoy bound for Gaza
Pullitzer-prize winning author to travel to Gaza on International Women's Day (tomorrow)

100th Post

This is my 100th post which means I've been in Egypt a handful of days more than that. Crazy! So much has gone on and now that I'm going to be home for a little while in less than a week, I'm becoming more prone again to reflecting on the first half of my year spent as a Rotary scholar here. My conclusions about my decision to select Egypt as a study country are wholly positive. The challenges and difficult times are worth it for the lessons I've learned, the flexibility I've gained, and for helping me to appreciate the outstanding moments.
Yesterday, there were a great many of these. Brian, Ross, and I had breakfast and headed over to meet Marise, Jenn, and Phil at the juice place (the centerpiece of Brian's visit in Egypt). Because there were six people and only five places in the car, Phil ended up in the trunk during the first leg of our trip. This is probably wildly illegal in the States, but more or less permissible in Egypt (as is hanging out the car window, as we later found out as well). I think Phil, Brian, and Ross, who took turns in the trunk throughout the day probably had as much fun doing that as seeing the sites. Normally, I'd be horrified that we were doing such a thing but hey, when in Egypt.
The five of us Americans purchased our student tickets to get into the area while Marise, our resident Egyptian-Canadian-American , got a much cheaper ticket. I cannot begin to understand the rationale behind the dramatic price differences--we don't charge foreigners outrageously higher ticket prices in Washington D.C. to visit museums and monuments as far as I know. This upcharge applies to hotels here and a great many other things. Ma3lesh. The Great Pyramid didn't open until one, so we visit some smaller pyramids and the Sphinx in the meantime. Brian and Jenn rode camels and Marise followed them on a horse while Phil, Ross, and I took goofy tourist pictures with the Sphinx and the pyramids. We met up later to get tickets for the last standing wonder of the Ancient World and ended up arguing with a power-tripping (bribe-soliciting?) Egyptian man who conveniently put up a sign saying "no cameras" after we'd arrived at the entrance. He later got chewed out by his superior, but either way, Ross managed to smuggle in his camera. Of course, nearly everyone else (especially Egyptian visitors) made it in with cameras too, past the oh-so watchful eye of the "guard", but there's not a whole lot to see on the inside anyway because the artifacts are all in museums around the world. Our next stop was meant to be Saqqara, some kilometers to the south. There one finds the step pyramid of Djoser, the oldest standing step pyramid in the world. A bit peckish, we stopped at a koshary place along the way and were the only Westerners in sight, much to the amusement of the locals. We had a throng of children "befriend" us and follow the car as we left. We passed so many donkey carts, oxen, and even a camel or two as we got further from Cairo. Palm trees and agricultural fields lay between us and the sun beginning to set over the pyramids at Saqqara. It was gorgeous. Unfortunately, this also meant that we'd reached the time of day when the complex closed for the evening and we didn't managed to get in to tour the step pyramid. Our humorous conversations, Phil's story-telling, and the beauty all around us was more than enough to make up for it, though. With Brian in the trunk, we headed back to Cairo to Ramses Square where Marise and Jenn bought tickets flanked by Ross and Phil while Brian and I napped in the car. On top of the normal wear and tear of climbing the pyramids and getting up early, I began to realize I was falling ill, which is a bummer. By the end of the evening, I had a terrible headache that kept me up last night. This morning I popped some Excedrin and am hoping for the best. We headed to Café Arabica in Zamalek next and got fiteer, which was delicious. Ross, Marise, and Jenn were having us all draw pictures to be analyzed as we waited for the food to arrive. The conclusions were as funny as the drawings. The Khan al-Khalili was next. We haggled our hearts out for Christmas gifts and souvenirs. It was quite a lot of fun and a lot lower pressure than when I'd gone there a few years ago with Alia.
This morning, Ross and Brian went to visit the Citadel. Since I'd already seen it, need to get papers done (and fast!) and am not feeling too well, I'm hanging here until lunch. We're going to grab koshary and then take Brian to a cab so he can go to the airport whence he'll continue onto Jordan, his next leg in a brief Middle Eastern journey. It's a bummer that final papers and departures are bringing our few days of fun to an end, but we'll all inevitably have fond memories of the experiences.

Tourist Tuesday

As is suggested by my corny, alliterative title, we did a lot of touristy things today (or even typically Egyptian things). I've mentioned before that I am nothing of an early riser here in Egypt and thus it was that I slept until 11:30 or so (which is a bit early for me, really). Graciously, Ross took over my role as host and took Brian to get juice and food and visit Cairo Tower for a view of the city. The juice has become something of an addiction. I think Ross and Brian made it to Mohammad Ali (the juice shop) some three or four times today and made a stop at another juice shop closer to Midan Tahrir. They came back to the apartment by which point I'd gotten ready, had my habitual breakfast of muesli and yogurt, and even managed to work on one of my paper's a bit. Soon we were out and about, passing a detached hoof left over from the Eid on our way down Tahrir Street. That didn't diminshed our appetites though and we headed straight to lunch--koshary at Koshary Tahrir. Brian was a big fan and I have to admit that the quality of the food is better at Koshary Tahrir than at our neighboring koshary joint, though it's vice versa for the service. Our next stop was Coptic Cairo where we visited the Hanging Church and made friends with a few of the girls our age who serve as guides there. In addition to Arabic, one of the guides spoke French and Portuguese, another English and Spanish, and yet another English and German. Brian and I spoke in French, but respectively, we also threw out some Portguese and some German and Arabic. We also stopped by the Ben Ezra Synagogue (Egypt's oldest, dating from the 9th Century) where an Egyptian tourguide was giving a rundown on the place in fluent Mandarin Chinese.
Phil joined us part of the way into our wandering the area and came back downtown with us to our place where we hung out for a while before trekking up some of the most congested streets in this part of Cairo. The amount of people was overwhelming in stark contrast to the calm we experienced yesterday. The weather today, though, was just as perfect. Absolutely gorgeous. We had dinner at a place that Ross and I had gone to months ago. It was even better this time: clean, the "special beans" were delicious. It was basically unmashed ful with peppers. We all enjoyed pretty standard (and cheap) Egyptian fare. Next, we made our way to El Abd, a celebrated pastry shop in the heart of Wust al-Balad (downtown), and decided Ross would be the one to navigate the absolute madness inside to secure us a half-kilo of baklawa, konafa, and more. All that hard work ended in one of the many juice breaks which in turn was followed by our heading to the ahwa (café) where I've played my games of towla. Ross and Phil shared shisha, and we exchanged all sorts of stories. It's a blast having Brian here and that we've managed to drag Ross away from his papers. Marise and Jenn joined us and then the whole lot of us (sans Ross, who we again lost to wise studiousness) headed to Garden City where we caught a felucca. We shared our pastries with Jenn and with Marise (whose birthday it was), but also the boatman who snuck a couple more than we'd offered when we were taking goofy photos at the bow. The boatride around the nile, though, was fantastic. The views were great and I couldn't have been in better company.
Tomorrow, the six of us are reconvening to visit not just the pyramids at Giza, but also the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, and those at Memphis. It should be a lot of fun and hopefully followed by a bit of shopping in the Khan. It's too bad Brian's leaving so soon and the reality of my papers is lurking in the background--I could really get into this tourist stuff!

News:
Chinese language becoming more popular in Egypt
Egypt and Syria spar diplomatically over Palestinians
Housing market impacts young Egyptians' marriage plans