Holy Mountains Batman!

Sunrise from the top of Mt. Sinai


So I returned from quite the weekend trip.

Wanting to take advantage of the remaining time before classes start, the Cairo posse I hang out with decided that a journey to Mt. Sinai was in order. While I had been planning on doing this at some point in my Egyptian adventures, I wasn't expecting it the first weekend. Luckily, it turned out to be as good a time as any to go.

The trip commenced at 1 AM with a 7-8 hour bus ride to Sharm el-Sheikh (a tourist hotspot on the Red Sea), which we only used as a layover to get to Dahab. While I tried to use this overnight bus ride to sleep, a very loud Egyptian action/drama movie and a bad American sci-fi movie showing on the bus made this difficult.

When we got to Dahab, cab drivers descended on us like lawyers on workplace injuries, but a few "no thank you's" got us out. This experience, along with the walk through a hot, desert-like setting from the bus station to downtown did not give me the best first impression of Dahab, but the second I saw the Red Sea that changed completely. We rented a room at a small pension with a great view of the Red Sea from the balcony and a nice seaside dining area where we found ourselves spending many an hour.


The view from the balcony

Although everyone was exhausted from the lack of sleep on the bus, we decided to go into the small downtown area of Dahab before anything else. In one souvenir shop, it's two shopkeepers invited us to smoke Shisha and talk for a while in the store. While I was a little skeptical at first and thought "what's the catch?," the two shopekeepers, Hima and Ali, turned out to be incredibly friendly and hospitable. They also had very good senses of humor, and I enjoyed speaking to them about politics, culture, and Arabic (Note: bringing up the recent Israeli-Gaza conflict really really depresses Egyptians, and Egyptians seem cautiously optimistic about Obama). We ended up visiting them the next day just to drink tea and talk.

While I could have gotten some rest before climbing Mt. Sinai, I opted to go wading in the Red Sea instead, where you could see Saudi Arabia off in the distance. My phone even got a "Welcome to Saudi Arabia! Here are your roaming rates..." text message in Dahab. After this relaxation, we left to climb Mt. Sinai at midnight so we could watch sunrise from the peak. (Note: for those of you that don't know, Mt. Sinai is where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God in the Bible)

When we began our trek up the mountain at 2 AM, I immediately regretted only wearing a polo shirt and a track jacket. Our Bedouin guide, who appeared to be no older than 15, lead the way up the easier trail up the mountain without so much as panting or ever slowing down for himself. While I consider myself vaguely in shape at times, I really had to push myself to keep up with him and could hear my heart racing whenever we stopped. However, the scenery of a sky full of more stars than I probably have ever seen and the cool desert air didn't make this seem all too unpleasant. I also figured that 70-80 year old monks make the trek up the mountain fairly regularly, so I should be able to without complaining.

While I was right that the exercise of the climbing made me warmer at first, nothing prepared me for the peak. Around 6 AM we climbed the final steps to the summit, and rented blankets and a mattress to shelter ourselves from the freezing wind. My nose ran horribly from the cold, and anytime I exposed my fingers to take pictures I they fell numb. However, the sight of the sun rising from one of the peak made this temporary discomfort worth it. Truly an amazing sight.

As the sun rose, we could see how high up we were and how far we at climbed at night. Wanting to see what we missed out on, we opted to take the more difficult trail, the steps of repentance, down. I have no idea how we would have done this at night, since finding the trail in the daytime and trying not slip on any rocks was challenging enough in broad daylight. Once we made it down, we waited for about 2 hours to enter the monastery of St. Catherine, located at the foot of Mt. Sinai as it was only opened from 11 AM - 12 PM that day.



The Monastery of St. Catherine was built in 527 AD by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I as a site to mark where Moses supposedly talked to the burning bush (Sorry for anything historical, but people that know me know my of fascination with buildings and landmarks that are centuries old). The Monastery contains a chapel, a well where Moses is said to have met his wife, a huge collection of century-old icons, and according to legend, the descendant of the burning bush itself. Seeing all of this was amazing, even though most of the Monastery is closed to the public (it's staffed by about 20 Greek Orthodox monks). Photography also wasn't permitted in the main chapel, so you'll just have to believe me that it's numerous very Eastern Orthodox looking icons and mosaics were amazing.

Upon arriving back to Dahab, I actually swam in the Red Sea, which was like the Atlantic in the summertime. After more relaxing, visiting Hima and Ali, and dinner, we all finally crashed and got some sleep. Today was marked by a 10 hour long bus ride from Dahab to Cairo, and tomorrow will be marked by my first day of classes at AUC. While being the Arabic nerd I am, I can't say I mind taking 2 different Arabic classes 4 times a week each, but I would still prefer more of this weekend at the moment.

The Past Few Days

(A view of part of the new AUC Campus)

So a lot has happened since Saturday when I wrote my last blog post. Saturday night my friends and I decided to go to a nearby cafe where many Egyptians hang out and drink coffee, smoke shisha, and watch Arab Pop music videos. I ordered some Arabic coffee, which is delicious albeit super strong and served in very small cups, and might have partook in smoking shisha (NOTE TO ALL CONCERNED PARTIES: Shisa is simply fruit flavored tobacco smoked out of a hookah, not an illegal drug, and is a very prominent part of Egyptian culture. While I can't see myself making a habit out of smoking it, some older Egyptians appear to sit in cafes and smoke shisa and drink tea for hours every day.) While this night was fun, the cafe has since fallen out of our favor after my friends and I returned and got terrible service. I BID YOU ADIEU, CAFE DE PARIS.

The next day (Sunday, 1/25), my friends and I were feeling ambitious and decided to walk to downtown Cairo. While the area of Cario my dorm building is located, Zamalek, is very noticeably different from any city in the US, downtown Cairo is significantly different from Zamalek. Zamalek consists of several narrow streets, trees providing plenty of shade, many embassies, and is probably the most western part of Cairo (western meaning like the US and Europe in this case). Downtown Cairo on the other hand consists of multi-lane busy streets, brown buildings packed very close together, street vendors everywhere, and a more conservative and Middle Eastern feel. Getting downtown on foot was very challenging, as we frequently had to cross four lanes of traffic and assume that cars would stop (fact: crosswalks and signals are rare, and jaywalking is almost always necessary to some extent). Downtown we met up with my friend Kelly, who studied in Cairo last semester, and visited the old AUC campus where we ate lunch in a courtyard. For lunch we had the very Egyptian dish of Kushari, which consists of rice, macaroni, pasta, lentils, onions, and spicy tomato sauce and costs about .50 US. The old AUC campus contains some beautiful Islamic architecture and is located relatively close to my dorm, but crossing highways in heavy traffic and taking a taxi that has to dodge people sprinting out into the road and avoiding other cars ignoring traffic rules seem equally dangerous.




A Main Building on the Old AUC Campus


That night many AUC students went to a school-sponsored event consisting of Bedouin dancing, food, and horseback riding. While the dancing seemed geared towards tourists, it was still a cultural experience regardless and was pretty entertaining. I also noticed that Egpytians seem to love techno music no matter how traditional they seem, which my brother would appreciate. Food that night consisted of lamb and pita bread, which I'll be seeing a lot of this semester. The end of this night, the horseback riding, took place in the desert near the pyramids, and made every Egyptian pound I paid for the trip worth it. Because of an injury someone got earlier that night, the horses weren't allowed to gallop and we trotted up a large sand dune that had an excellent view of the pyramids. Due to the dust in the air (it was very windy and cool in the desert), the fact that is was nighttime, and also the fact that I was on a horse, I didn't get any good pictures of the pyramids, but I definitely will get some good shots when I visit during the day.

The next day (Monday 1/26), I visited the New AUC Campus for the first time to begin orientation. While the Old AUC Campus was in a polluted, overcrowded, and dangerous to get to area, the New AUC Campus is more or less in the middle of the desert. See below.




Yes, that is a vast expanse of desert surrounding the campus. To get to this campus, students living in the Zamalek dorm have to take a 40 minute - over an hour and a half long bus ride through Cairo traffic every morning to get to classes. While I was dreading this commute at first, it's actually not as bad as I expected and will go quicker when I use it to read for classes or take a nap. Despite this commute, I'm very glad I chose to live in Zamalek, as the surrounding area of the New Campus consists of miles of desert, half-built mansions, and expensive looking villas with no apparent downtown area withing walking distance. While the Old Campus had impressive Islamic architecture, the architecture of the New Campus is amazing and excellently designed. The campus is relatively large compared to AU, and is adorned with palm trees, Arabesque arches, domes, and windows, and of course Western food chains like McDonalds and Cinnabon. While construction teams remain on campus to complete the massive sports complex and outer walls, last semester most of the campus remained under construction despite students taking classes there.

Orientation was nothing out of the ordinary, and hopefully the classes I take this semester won't be too easy to the point that I won't learn anything, but also won't be too demanding so I can't enjoy Cairo. Orientation continued today where I received my AUC ID card and began applying for my student visa, which is a multi-step process. In between these two orientation sessions I was assigned to a new room in my dorm, since I was told I was going to be in a double and was in a triple for a couple of days. My new roommate, Mahmoud, is from Alexandria, Egypt, and I'm hoping to be able to practice speaking Arabic with him and learning about sites of interest in Egypt from a local perspective.

Tonight I went to the famous Khan el-Khalili Bazaar in Cairo, which is a giant market overflowing with clothing, spices, fruit, religious texts, jewelry, Egypt souvenirs, and almost anything else one would expect to find in a traditional Egyptian market. While this bazaar is a site that everyone more or less has to visit in Egypt, it is overwhelmingly marketed to tourists that have to haggle for everything they buy in order to avoid being significantly overcharged. The bazaar consists of narrow alleyways packed with people where shopkeepers try their absolute hardest to get people into their stores, usually walking right up to you to make their offers. None of the shopkeepers spoke to us in Arabic, and would call out in English (Hey Americans! I have what you need!) and surprisingly, Spanish at times (Hola Senor!). I didn't buy anything during this visit as I didn't really get to see that much of the entire market, and the parts we did see were the main drags where foreigners are most likely to be overcharged.

While I attempt to use Arabic as much as I can (a few key phrases here and there), I almost never get a response in English, which is slightly frustrating and slightly comforting at the same time. For example, while I'll say "I'd like a large chicken shawarma" in Arabic (shwarma is a meaty sandwich), the waiter will say "we're out of chicken" in English. I guess it's good that they understand me and what I'm saying, but I'd still probably be able to understand a response in Arabic fairly well.

Since classes start this Sunday (the weekends here are Friday and Saturday), my friends and I are planning a weekend trip out of Cairo, potentially to Mt. Sinai. I'll be sure to update when I return.

The Trek and First Impressions

(The Nile River from Zamalek)

I left for Cairo from JFK on Thursday, January 22 around 11PM. Since the flight was to London, I enjoyed waiting for it as more and more British people showed up and I got to listen to some amazing accents. On the flight to London I was determined to use as much as the 6 hour flight time to sleep, but then I saw they had the David Bowie episode of Flight of the Conchords available to watch, so I delayed that plan for a while. When I did try to sleep, they brought out a full dinner with mediocre beef and mashed potatoes, so sleep was once again delayed. I couldn't really fall asleep when I tried afterwards, but it didn't really matter because I was pretty awake when the plane landed in London.

At Heathrow Airport in London I met up with some AU people I knew, and then we waited for about 5 hours to leave for Cairo. As much as I would've loved to leave the airport and see some London tourist sites, I didn't want to bring my carryon bags with me and didn't want to go through security again. Once they told us where the gate was, we soon realized that the flight from London to Cairo was almost half AUC students from all over the US. I think AU has more students going then any other school though.

I still couldn't really sleep on the flight from London to Cairo, and unfortunately since it was dark, I couldn't see any landscapes below. However, soon enough we ended up descending into what looked like the surface of Mars if it had incredibly thick smog. After landing at Cairo Airport our passports were just checked for a visa and we collected our baggage. There were about 40 AUC students needing pickup, but luckily we had enough vans to fit everyone and their baggage. We actually didn't even go through customs, since all of the AUC students went through as a large group where we were told to make sure that strangers didn't mix in with us.

The drive to dorm seemed pretty surreal with the completely different architecture and smog making all of the lights brighter, and I noticed that drivers in Cairo more or less ignore lane markings on highways. After everyone got to the dorm after 1AM, we were assigned rooms seemingly at random. I was assigned to a quadruple with 3 other people that were on my flight, even though I was told twice that I was going to be in a double. One roommate was just reassigned to a double, so maybe I can also or hope that the room remains a triple.

THE INTERESTING PART

So today my AU friends and I did lot of walking around Cairo on a quest to buy mobile phones, toiletries, and food. I also had to buy a power converter for my laptop since I nearly melted a 50W one last night. Here are some things I noticed about Cairo, conveniently listed in bullet form.

-As I expected, it's pretty warm here and I am terrified of when it will get uncomfortably hot. I walked around today with a long sleeve button-up shirt with no jacket and was never cold.
-There's Egyptian security forces everywhere, practically on every street corner. They wear black uniforms, including a beret that looks like a pancake on their head if it doesn't fit well.
-Google in Cairo automatically directs you to "Google Misr" (Misr means Egypt in Arabic), meaning while my search results are in English, the details and toolbars on the page are in Arabic. I wonder if this is because of government censorship.
-There's stray cats everywhere in Egypt.
-The area of Egypt I'm in, Zamalek, is relatively westernized compared to other sections. This can be seen by the Pizza Hut, Cinnabon, Hardee's, and Radio Shack that I saw today. I also saw ads for McDonalds and KFC.
-There are very few stoplights or traffic signs at all in the area I'm in, with the exception of "one way." I have yet to see a stop sign at an intersection in the area.
-Taxi drivers slow down and honk their horn to get your attention when they pass you if they don't have any passengers. If you look at the driver, he'll offer you a ride, so it's best to ignore unless necessary.
-People go out of their way for you to get tips, even if it's unnecessary. Two friends and I bought a case of bottled water each (everyone says not to drink the tap water here), and a guy put them on a hand truck and took them to our dorm building without asking. Not wanting to be rude, we let him, and we all tipped him afterwards. However, I'll probably end up drawing the line on this in the future.
-At certain points in the day, you hear the Muslim call to prayer from several mosques, usually around the same time. I'm still not exactly sure what this means, since we heard it one time and no one really stopped what they were doing.
-Some Egyptians speak English to you very well and without you speaking it to them first, while others speak almost none. I feel like I haven't used Arabic as much as I could have today out of fear of embarrassing myself, but hopefully I'll do it more in the future. Whether I'll have any idea what they say back to me is another question.

Well that's all for the bullets. Everyone accomplished their goal of buying a mobile phone today, and everyone bought the cheapest phone available. While it doesn't slide or flip open, it does have snake. I think the fact that 5 people buying the same phone needing around the same credit frustrated the salesman (it takes a while to activate them all and get them ready), he at least had a sense of humor about it. Then we all had out first meal in Cairo, strangely enough at an Italian restaurant where I got pasta with meat sauce. The food wasn't bad, but I was more excited for the Coca-Cola here which is made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. After lunch we found a giant store that's kind of like a small Target or Wal-Mart, where I'll probably end up visiting a lot.

I don't really know what's planned for orientation week, but hopefully I'll get to see some interesting sites sooner rather than later.

The Pre-Departure

So I figured I’d start a travel blog for my upcoming semester at the American University in Cairo, which starts this Friday and ends in late May. I intend to fill it with cultural observations, random commentary, anecdotes, and pictures or links to them. I’ll also try not to dwell too much on historical information, my day-to-day routine, and things regarding the Arabic language, since most of my friends do not find these things as engrossing as I do.

Today I’m mostly getting stuff together for my upcoming trip, and have to fit four months worth of clothes, electronics, and necessary American comforts such as quality toiletries into 2 suitcases and a carryon bag. I’ll be flying out tomorrow night out of JFK by British Airways at 10:30 PM, and will arrive for a layover in London’s Heathrow Airport at 10:30 AM. From there, I’ll meet up with some friends from American University and probably a bunch of other kids studying at the American University in Cairo, and will leave at 4:55PM in order to arrive in Cairo at 11:35 PM on Friday, January 23. There will hopefully be someone from AUC to pick me and all of the other students up at the airport and to take me to my dorm in an area of Cairo called Zamalek, which is located on an island in the Nile River.

Hopefully everything will go according to plan and my next blog posting will be me recounting my voyage from the US to Egypt, along with first impressions of the country.

In the meantime, here are some facts about Egypt that should give you an impression of the country I’ll be staying in for the semester.

-Egypt is overwhelmingly desert, which causes 99% of the population to live in the Nile River Valley, Nile Delta, and the Red and Mediterranean Sea coasts. Because of the whole desert thing, it almost never rains in Egypt.

-The country is 90% Muslim, with the remaining 10% being a sect of Christianity called Coptic Christianity.

-The exchange rate with Egypt is about $1 US = 5.5 Egyptian Pounds (Abbreviated LE).

-I just looked at the temperature for Cairo for Friday and it’s between 46-71 degrees. Apparently it’s warm during the day year-round, but the temperature plummets at night, which is another effect of the desert. Also, the weather starts to get uncomfortably hot in April, which you’ll probably hear me complaining about in the future.

-The official language of Egypt is Arabic, specifically Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. This dialect is very different from the Modern Standard Arabic I’ve been learning at AU for the past year and a half, but hopefully I’ll learn it quickly.