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.