In case you haven't heard...

In case you don't read World news, there was a bomb attack in Cairo yesterday at the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar, which is always packed with tourists. A French teenager was killed and 20 others, mostly French and German tourists, were wounded. Reports of what actually happened are somewhat conflicting, but the bomb was either thrown from a hotel balcony or planted under a bench right outside of the famous al-Hussein Mosque. Since Khan el-Khalili is so crowded all of the time and has very narrow streets, the bomb, which was reportedly small and homemade, was able to do a lot of damage. A second bomb that did not go off was successfully defused as well. No news reports I've read know who could possibly be behind the attack, but when I asked my Egyptian roommate, he said it was probably "just some fool." Organized and defined terrorist groups don't really stake a claim in Egypt, and terrorist attacks happen less than once a year. However, news sources do report that this attack might have been motivated by Egypt's neutrality in the recent Gaza conflict, as many Egyptians are angry at their Government for not opening the Gaza border and helping the Palestinians. Hopefully this attack was it for the year, as it is already one too many.


Al-Hussein Mosque in Khan el-Khalili. The bottom left corner of this picture is where the attack occurred

........Well now that I have that update done with I'm wondering if I should say that Thursday night I visited Khan el-Khalili with some friends and ate Egyptian pancakes. I've visited the area twice before, and was hoping to visit again, but might not be returning for some time now.

On Friday my Friends and I visited Coptic Cairo, which is located in "Old Cairo," a former 3rd Century Roman Fortress named Babylon. The Copts are a Christian sect that accounts for 10% of Egypt's population, and they practice a form of Christianity more similar to Greek and Eastern Orthodox Chrisitanity than Catholicism or Protestantism. Coptic Cairo is incredibly easy to get to, as it is located right across the street from a metro stop, making the whole journey to get there only cost 2 LE($.36).

The first place we went to was the Coptic Museum, which cost 25LE($5.45) and unfortunately did not allow any pictures. It was full of 6th and 7th century Coptic Christian artwork, which reminded me a lot of Early Medieval European artwork (heavy contour lines and not really shaded). The Coptic Language looks vaguely like Greek, and it was interesting to see the transformation from Coptic to Arabic as the more popular language after the Arab conquests in the 10th Century. For whatever reason, I think it's really cool to see Christian artwork adorned with Arabic calligraphy and Bibles with illuminated manuscripts of Arabic letters.


No pictures :(

The next site we visited was the Hanging Church, which was built in the 11th Century. It's apparently called the "Hanging" Church because it was built on top of a water gate (literally, not Nixon-style) in the old Roman fortress. The church is a major tourist site, as told by the high presence of what were presumably Europeans wearing shorts, and had a large souvenir store where one could buy Bibles and Christian books written in Arabic. Inside, I was once again deeply interested by the juxtaposition (that's the word!) of Christian icons with Arabic calligraphy instead of Latin or Greek.


The Hanging Church

Me inside of the Hanging Church

The next part of Old Cairo/Coptic Cairo we visited was the Church of St. George, which is actually a Greek Orthodox Church built in the early 20th Century. Although not Coptic and not as old as the other churches of the area, it still had a very impressive dome ceiling and interesting Greek Orthodox icons in the limited section tourists are permitted to visit.

We then visited the Church of St. Barbara, which is one of the oldest Churches in Cairo, and was originally built during the 5th or 6th Century. However, since all of the sites in Coptic Cairo closed at 4PM, we only had a view minutes to view the interior before it closed. We also were unable to see some other sites in Coptic Cairo, such as the Church of St. Sergius (which is said to be built on the site where the Holy Family stayed after fleeing from King Herod) and the Ben Ezra Synagogue (where the baby Moses was said to be found- I don't think it's used anymore since there's less than 200 Jews in all of Egypt). Hopefully, I'll get to see these places before I leave.

We wrapped up the trip with a visit to the Mosque of Amr ibn al-'Aas, which was built in 642 AD and is the oldest Mosque in Egypt. While men don't have to dress specially for a mosque and women usually just have to don a headscarf, my two female friends had to wear a somewhat ridiculous-looking shining green cloak with a hood that the Mosque provided, which made them pretty uncomfortable. I'm not entirely sure why this Mosque required such strict attire, as my friends were dressed conservatively and the Egyptian women were only wearing headscarves, but luckily I don't think any other Mosque has this requirement for entry. On the plus side, the Mosque was very beautiful on the inside.

Apparently there's somehing called "pyramids" here

Ahh, classic Egypt. The Great Pyramid and the Sphinx

So my second week of classes was generally uneventful, as I've started to fall into a regular weekday routine of bus, class, library, bus, dinner, study, sleep. Waking up at 7 or 8 AM and getting back after 6 PM every weekday leaves little time for exploring these nights, so only expect exciting new developments after the weekend.

On Friday, my friends and I decided to see the most famous of Egypt's historical/tourist sites: The Pyramids at Giza. After getting up bright and early Friday morning, we walked to the nearest Metro stop and took the train to the Giza station. Once we exited the station, we were confronted by many a cab driver that offered to take us to the Pyramids. However, we declined all of these offers, and one man that walked up to us offered to show us how to take the bus to the Pyramids. This man, Abdul, escorted us to the bus stop and then explained that we could either take the tourist entrance to the Pyramid complex, where we would have to pay several fees to see everything, or the entrance used by Egyptians that included a camel ride for a one-time fee. We opted to take the road less traveled, and Abdul came with us on the bus to show us where we could pay this fee and pick up camels to ride around the Pyramids.

When we got off the bus, it was very surprising to see the Pyramids rising up from behind the buildings of Giza that go right up to the walls of the complex. Abdul brought us to a small tour business, and we paid 120 LE ($22) for a 2-hour camel ride around the Pyramids.

When the camels were brought to us and I mounted mine, I immediately regretted wearing my tighter pair of jeans that day. Camels are slightly wider and much taller than horses, so riding them is not very uncomfortable and requires a pretty wide stance. However, camels also don't travel nearly as fast as horses, so I found myself not really holding on to anything most of the ride since my camel always opted to walk.


This was another camel in our group named Tiger. My camel was named Moses.

After we got on our camels, a man came up to us and offered us soda, even opening the bottle cap and placing them in our hands so it would be really difficult to refuse. While this soda seemed free for about a minute, it actually cost 10 LE, which made me recall that the Pyramids were a prime location for swindlers in Egypt. We continued, being lead by two guides that knew how to make sounds that would make the camels move faster or kneel down so we could dismount.

During the Pyramid tour, we stopped multiple times to take pictures, and at one point got right up the the Pyramid of Khafre/Chephren (The Pyramid with the capstone that's actually the second largest but looks the largest because it's on a hill). I have to say that the Pyramids are a lot larger than I expected them to be, and it's amazing to think that something of their size was built around 5000 years ago using 1.5 ton limestone blocks. The Pyramids are also incredibly precise, with the largest size disparity on any side being 2 inches (this means it's pretty much a perfect square). I took several pictures, which I'll have to post the link to in the future, and really enjoyed being able to ride a camel around potentially the world's most famous historical site while the calls to prayer resounded from the nearby mosques.


My friends and I standing on the base of the Pyramid of Khafre


This is more to scale. Click on it to see full-size

While I didn't get to see everything I wanted on the camel ride, such as getting close to the Sphinx or going inside any of the Pyramids, I can't say that I wasn't satisfied in the end. I figure I'll probably come back at a future date to see everything I missed, but will probably opt to travel on a horse when I do.

When we got back to the place where we picked up our camels, we found Abdul, who invited us to lunch and tea at his house. Since behavior like this is very rare in the U.S. and we felt we would be intruding, we declined at first, but we eventually accepted as he sincerely insisted we join him. I'll admit that due to the fact that he knew all about the camel tour business and the presence of people like the soda vendor, I thought that Abdul just wanted to bring the camel tour business new customers at first. However, it turns out that Abdul was a genuinely nice person that wasn't really interested in selling us anything and just wanted to share his home and food with outsiders.

When we went to Abdul's village (it turned out to be a Bedouin village) a short ride away from the Pyramids, he showed us his home where he lived with his wife, his siblings, and their families. His apartment, though small, was very nicely furnished and decorated, and he introduced us to his wife (the two of them were both very young, I'd say around 25). He served us a delicious lunch consisting of pita bread, falafel (the best I've had, it kind of reminded me of chicken nuggets), mashed potatoes, fuul (beans), a cheesy-salad thing (people know I abstain from these), and fruits and vegetables (I also avoid these). He also served us some very good tea, and we discussed the Arabic language, family culture, and his own background (he worked in a jeans factory downtown and his father taught English, which is why he spoke it so well). We'll probably see him in the future to return the favor.

While Adbul was leading us out of his village, we stopped at a small cafe where he offered my friends and I free shisha. I abstained, since my allergies were still recovering, but the ability to sit outside on the cafe's deck gave us the opportunity to witness a wedding procession where dozens of cars, laden with people and gifts passed through the narrow street in front of us. Then, several of the village's women came in a procession, carrying wedding gifts on their head. It was kind of surreal, since I had never seen anything like it before. After this procession, a flock of the village's children came to our table and treated us the way the kids treated the ice cream man at the summer camp where I worked a few summers ago. They came up to us and talked to us with what English they knew, and we talked to them with what Arabic we could. Since the village really didn't appear to receive many tourists or foreigners, I have a feeling they rarely see outsiders just sitting on the street, and they were very excited to talk to us and kept asking us to take their picture. When we tried leaving, they followed us to the minibus, where we spent a few minutes saying goodbye to all of them.


The wedding procession

Nothing too eventful happened when we got back or the next day, aside from me eating some delicious chocolate and banana feteer (like crepes), and this week looks to be a normal class week. Hopefully I'll have more adventures to come.

Shopping Malls and Islamic Architecture

After a long first week of classes, some friends and I decided we wanted to go to a nice restaurant in downtown Cairo. We made this plan around 8 PM, and when we arrived at the restaurant around 9 PM, we discovered that it was closed. An Egyptian man (surprisingly named Mohammed)referred us to a nice-looking restaurant, yet when we got there and saw the prices, we made a not-so-subtle exit. We're guessing that this man was friends with the restaurant's owners. Another Egyptian man then volunteered to lead us to a cafe that we thought might have food, but actually turned out to be just a bar. We ended up eating shawarma (a Middle Eastern sandwich that's kind of like a gyro)at a take-away place, and then returned to the previously mentioned bar and sampled Stella, the most popular Egyptian beer.


Pictured: My new Egyptian friend Stella

Friday (remember, the Saturday of the Middle East) was spent on a voyage to Citystars mall, which wassn't too cultural but was something I was bound to visit sometime. We took the Cairo Metro there, which is surprisingly clean and easy to use. One Egyptian Pound (less than 20 US cents) gets you to any metro station in Cairo, making it much cheaper than a taxi. Unfortunately, the metro only consists of two lines and does not go near too many sites of interest. A third line that includes a station relatively close to my dorm is under construction now, but probably wont be finished for a year. The Cairo metro also has two cars that only women are allowed to travel in, which allowed my female friends to get on a train where all of the mixed-gender cars were full. When my male friends and I got on the next train, we found out that the mixed-gender cars are more or less all male riders when it's crowded. It also turned out that the metro didn't bring us as close to Citystars Mall as we thought, so we had to take a relatively long cab ride there.


Not pictured: The Cinnabon that was right behind me when I took this

Citystars turned out to be the largest mall I have ever seen in my lifetime by far. My Egyptian roommate was surprised when he found out that none of the malls I had been to in the US were as large. The mall has 6 floors of shops, a massive food court, a movie theater, a hypermarket, and an indoor theme park. Nearly every Western food/clothing chain can be found in the mall, and all of the prices are apparently conveniently multiplied by 5.5 so you're not saving money with the exchange rate. We stopped and got drinks at one of the many Starbucks in the mall, which was located next to a Johnny Rocket's that had Egyptian waiters dressed in stereotypical American 50's uniforms. At Starbucks, I guess I made the mistake of attempting to order an iced mocha in Arabic, and wound up with a Frappuccino instead. Although very westernized, the mall was definitely an interesting combination of Western and Middle Eastern ideals in some aspects. For example, every floor contained a prayer room for Muslim men and women, and stores selling conservative Muslim women's clothing would be next to a designer handbag store.

After going into random stores in the mall and seeing that I would not be able to buy imported CD's for good prices at their Virgin Megastore, we decided to get dinner at one of the only Mexican Restaurants in Cairo in the mall. Although my dinner of rice and tacos cost almost as much as it would have in the US, it was definitely worth it as Mexican food is something I will grow to miss dearly here.

The next day we decided to go on a quick excursion into some Cairo markets, which turned into a second visit to the area by the Khan al-Khalili Bazaar. While we took a cab to al-Azhar Mosque, I was not expecting us to visit so many sites in Islamic Cairo that day. We wondered around the area surrounding al-Azhar, which is the most respected and revered authority and institution in Sunni Islam. After walking through one of the main drags of Khan al-Khalili and into a back alley, we eventually lost the tourist crowd and stumbled upon what I recognized as one of the original gates of Cairo from its conquest in the 10th Century.



It turned out that this gate was connected to part of Cairo's original North Wall (pictured above), which we followed until we came upon a second original gate called Bab al-Futuh (Gate of Conquests). Going through this gate brought us into the main part of Fatimid Cairo, which is a part of Islamic Cairo known for its 11th and 12th century Mosques. Immediately inside the gate, we saw some tourists entering a mosque that was built in 1012 AD, so we decided to follow suit. Entering a mosque consists of removing your shoes and giving them to a caretaker, and if you're a woman, covering your hair with a headscarf.



The interior of the mosque, which turned out to be called the al-Hakim Mosque, was absolutely beautiful and contained some amazing Islamic architecture. It also had a large polished marble floor and unique stone minarets, which are the Mosque's only original remaining feature. We spent a good amount of time admiring the Mosque and taking dozens of pictures before leaving to explore the main road of Fatimid Cairo.

While we did not enter any other Mosques in Islamic Cairo that day, we did walk past several mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools in this case) that have been around since the 11th and 12th centuries. They all had beautiful Islamic architecture, and I was not disappointed by the designs of the minarets, domes, and arches in these historic structures. I think a return trip to Islamic Cairo might be in order in the future, especially since I found out my guidebook has information on almost every mosque and historic site in this area.

Wait, classes?

Yesterday marked the completion of my first week of classes at AUC. This post is mostly about the "study" part of my study abroad experience, so there's not too much about exotic places here (save for the Cinnabon on campus).

So five days a week I have classes at the AUC new campus, which I arrive at between 9 AM and 10 AM every day and depart from around 5 PM daily. Due to the fact that the new campus is so isolated, every day begins with a 30-45 minute bus ride and ends with an hour-hour and a half bus ride back. This bus ride is mostly spent talking to friends, listening to music, sleeping, and doing homework (in that order). Getting up at 7 or 8 AM and not getting back to the dorm until around 6:15 PM almost feels like a full-time job. However, since my schedule goes between classes and hours of free time spent in the library, I guess it's not really that intense.

While the new AUC campus is gorgeous with its sophisticated design, it is a dramatic departure from any other part of Egypt I've witnessed so far. Take the food for example. The new campus contains several Western-style eateries and one Egyptian Food vendor, which is by far the cheapest meal option and the one I eat most often. Familiar names such as Cinnabon and McDonald's are on campus, yet their prices are close to the same as what you would pay in the US (A cinnabon is about 15LE, which is about $3 US, and a McDonald's meal is about 25 LE, or about $5 US). Additionally, after ordering some Egyptian McDonald's, I found out that it unfortunately tastes the exact same as in the US (which reminded me of a book I read freshman year about McDonalds), even if the Egyptian McDonalds has food like the "McArabia" available (basically replace the bun with a pita). For these reasons, I end up eating falafel most of the week.

While the campus is clean and has an unnecessarily high number of fountains (for the middle of the desert), the greatest contrast between AUC and downtown Cairo I've noticed is the people. I should start by mentioning that AUC is 80-90% Egyptian students. While downtown Cairo is full of women dressed conservatively and wearing headscarves and men wearing relatively normal-looking western clothes, the AUC campus is like a fashion show for both genders and the percentage of women wearing hijab (Muslim conservative dress, generally headscarves) is much lower. Most of the American students, myself included, came to Cairo with moderately-priced clothing for travel purposes. The Egyptian students on the other hand, tend to wear expensive-looking designer clothing that looks more expensive than all of my band t-shirts and cowboy shirts combined.

As far as my classes go, I'd have to say that despite not getting everything I wanted, it could be worse. I'm enrolled in two Arabic classes, two history classes (both of which are Middle East history), and one political science course. The two Arabic courses are four days a week each, meaning I have Arabic in some form at least once a day. Since my friends know that I really like learning Arabic, I actually really appreciate this and hope I learn a lot by the end of the semester.

My first Arabic class is my Modern Standard Arabic course, which represents my fourth semester in this particular part of the language. For those that don't know, Modern Standard Arabic is very formal, and is used more or less only in official announcements, writing, and the news. Attempts to use this on the streets of Cairo when asking for some kushari will be met with odd looks, laughter, and occasionally a complete lack of understanding. However, despite its seeming uselessness, it is used everywhere in the Middle East, unlike the local dialects (an Egyptian would not be able to understand an Iraqi or Moroccan if colloquial Arabic was used). My Modern Standard Arabic course's professor doesn't know English too well, so the overwhelming majority of dialogue in the class is in Arabic. This is a significant shift from my professors at AU, who would break down the language and explain it in English most of the time. I can't say that I didn't learn a ton about Arabic at AU, but this new approach seems like it will be really effective at getting me to increase my speaking and listening comprehension abilities.

In contrast to Modern Stanard Arabic is my Egyptian Colloquial class, which nearly every American student I know is taking for its usefulness. I have very little experience with Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, with the exception of a few short lessons at AU and a phrasebook, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to say what I need to in Arabic by the end of the semester. The dialogue in this class is also mostly in Arabic, and our professor does a lot of teaching by correcting us whenever we don't know a word or use a modern standard word. I have also never had homework like I have in the class, as all of our assignments consist of recording ourselves speaking and then e-mailing the professor the recording.

My Modern Middle East History Class seems very interesting, since I really know very little about Middle Eastern History and everything I learn is new information. The professor, despite her claims to impartiality the first day, has also made some very biased comments, which actually make the class more interesting. For example, when explaining the significance of Al-Azhar University as the most important Sunni Islamic school, she repeatedly added that Sunni Islam is the only "true path" of Islam. She also went on an interesting side note about how the Taleban are not representative of Islam at all, and how militants, terrorists, and conflicts between Muslims have really marred the religion's reputation worldwide.

My second history class, Survey of Arab History, is my only class that is overwhelmingly Egyptian students. At orientation, they warned the international students not to take 200-level classes, as they would be too easy for Americans, and on the first day of this 200-level class I found out what they meant. Most of the Egyptian students in the class are math and science majors, and about half the class raised their hands when the professor asked who was taking it because they had to as a core requirement. However, despite how easy the classwork looks, I found that I knew almost nothing about Arab History from pre-Islamic times to the 20th Century, so I'm stil learning a lot of new information. From an alternative perspective, it would be like an Arab student coming to the US and learning about the Revolutionary War and Civil War in a general course for non-majors.

My political science course, Government and Politics of Egypt, is taught by a German professor that some friends from AU who were here last semester warned against. While I tried to switch out of this class, dropping and adding classes here is very difficult as it is not done online and there is no waitlist system like there is at AU. I'm deciding to stick with the class and hoping for the best, since the topic itself seems really interesting. I also get to write a research assignment on my first choice of available topics, Political Islam in Egypt.

Okay, so sorry if this post wasn't all that interesting and lacked pictures, but not much exciting happens during the school week. I go to campus, come back and eat dinner with friends, and then do homework and go to sleep a lot earlier than I do at AU. My next update will probably come after I do some fun things this weekend.