Crying's not for me, no.

When I woke up this morning, it was raining. The shuttle was basically deserted - apparently, a lot of people just don't go to class on days that it rains - so the driver had one of the English-language radio stations on, and there were people calling in to report one and two hour delays between Heliopolis and downtown. A lot of the streets were flooding - they let me off the shuttle a block early because the normal drop point was under a few inches of water - and even though the streets were less crowded than usual, people were driving worse than usual.

I think it's like how people from Michigan make fun of everyone else when they get an inch of snow and cancel school and call in to work and drive like idiots; when it rains, everyone goes crazy.

Public Service Announcement

Hi everyone,

Sorry that the posting has been light lately - my classes kept me really busy last week, and I spent the recent Eid al-Fitr holiday in Jordan. The trip was absolutely amazing, so look for a series of posts on that over the next few days. Additionally, I have some highlights from last week that I wasn't able to post about then, so I'll be putting up a few backdated entries this week as well (insha'allah). Look for most of those to be appearing between the October 1 and October 11 entries.

I'll be uploading and organizing photos from Jordan later tonight; you can find the link to those in the left-hand navigation bar.

Love,
Liz

Jordan!: Days 4 and 5

I've always considered myself to be a city girl, in spite of my suburban upbringing. Throughout my childhood (and indeed, until about a month ago) the idea of sleeping outside of a semi-permanent structure, and moreover, not showering on a regular basis, held absolutely no appeal for me. I live in a world with electricity and indoor plumbing, why should I elect to go without those things when it's not absolutely necessary?

Forget that Liz. She is gone; wandered off a cliff or into the swirling red sands in Wadi Rum. Since my return from Jordan, I have wanted nothing more than to go back to the desert, to watch sunsets and sunrises over an endless horizon, to walk through the sand barefoot, to sleep under nothing but a blanket of stars. (Well, stars and a nice, thick sleeping bag. Maybe a couple of sweatshirts. And a scarf, and socks. Socks are a must if you are going to the desert.)

We arrived in Wadi Rum at dusk, threw our bags into the tents, and set out to explore the cliffs around the campsite. I led Caprill up to an overhang near our camp, which would later provide some excellent photo opportunities; unfortunately, within minutes my utter lack of night vision would become a serious problem, as we struggled to find the way back down to camp without walking off the edge of a cliff. Luckily some guys from the tour group who were departing camp that evening showed us the way back down, and we grabbed a few teas and found seats around the central fire ring.

Our fellow campers were part of an Arab tour group (our guide said they were probably from the Levant - Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or Palestine - but not which part specifically), and they were, for lack of a more suitable term, tearing it up. Colored lights were set up, Arabic music was blaring on the stereo (I recognized some Sa'ad al-Sougyer) and the men were out there shaking their hips like there was no tomorrow. Anyone who suggests that bellydancing is just for women, quite frankly, is a moron - it is absolutely hypnotizing to watch these men dance. For a few numbers, specifically "Hetagowaz," a number of the women joined in, but the men dominated the floor throughout the evening. Later, after that group departed for Amman, we switched over to some American club standards and danced for about an hour before setting out for a nighttime desert trek.

We were led maybe a quarter of a mile out into the red sand desert, just far enough to be outside the lights of our camp and the one around the mountain, but close enough that the odds of us getting lost were fairly low. And then, for an hour, we just laid in the sand, looking up at the most amazing stars I've ever seen in my life and watching them shoot across the sky. We returned to the campsite briefly to suit up in additional sweatshirts and socks, grabbed a few blankets, and went back out for another hour or hour and a half, swapping ghost stories and memories from time to time, but mostly just laying in the sand and soaking up the incredible view above.

After only a few short hours of sleep, Mark woke us up (by scratching on the wall of our tent and scaring the living daylights out of all of us) and we all piled into Jeeps for a sunrise tour of the desert. Our first stop was only about two miles from our campsite; we climbed a beautiful dune and with the mountain behind us and a plain below, watched one of the most amazing sunrises I've ever been lucky enough to see. After sunrise, we got back in the cars and drove across the plain to see an ancient map of the mountain chain. Carved into a huge rock that I can best describe as a dolman (you know, where you eat your Dole pineapple) is a scale map of the major mountains in Wadi Rum, encompassing their height and location, both in relation to one another and to a handful of small rivers and streams in the area. Abier told us that when the map was rediscovered by European archaeologists - having been known for years only through oral tradition - they used military helicopters to check the accuracy, and discovered that the ancient stone map was better than the ones they had developed!

Upon our return to camp, we enjoyed a huge breakfast of eggs, bread, foul and vegetables, then packed up our belongings and departed for the Dead Sea, our last stop before heading back to Cairo...

Jordan!: Day 3

On Saturday, we woke up at an ungodly hour in order to eat and depart for Petra, 3 hours outside Amman, by 7 AM. Most people spent the bus ride down sleeping; as on most of the trip, I found myself unable to do so, partially because of the discomfort of sleeping on a bus, but also because I didn't want to miss a minute of the amazing scenery. Jordan is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and the mountains south of Amman are particularly amazing; all red stone, dotted with mountain scrub and small towns every now and again, absolutely breathtaking.

We began our visit to Petra by passing through - what else? - the corridor of vendors who set up shop outside the visitor's center and ticket office. Nearly all were selling scarves, sunglasses, and of course, fedoras; Indiana Jones was referenced in nearly every sign, although one shop was, strangely, calling itself "Titanic Souvenirs" and advertised with a large placard painted with an ocean liner of some sort. After a quick bathroom stop (and hat stop, for some of our group), we started down the Siq, the mountain passage leading to the ruins themselves. Having shelled out for admission, the majority of our group opted for the included horseback ride, covering the sunniest portion of the trail fairly quickly. Yes, that's right - this makes two times that I've voluntarily gotten on a horse since coming to the Middle East, and let me tell you, having a horse that's actually willing to move of its own accord? Fantastic.

Our guide in Petra was awful; even when I kept up with him, I picked up neither interesting nor useful information about the site or its history. Maybe he would have been better at the ruins, instead of on the trail to the ruins? I don't know. In any case, I spent most of the walk (approximately one mile) chatting with my friends and fellow travelers and taking tons of photos of the scenery.

The arrival at the Treasury is an abrupt one; one minute you're walking along with only the layered red rock to distract your eye, and suddenly there it is, peeking through the narrow gorge, and two steps later you're there. It was...awesome. Really, the film doesn't do the structure justice; the most interesting parts are at the top, far from all of the Jones' action. Our guide did point out one aspect of the facade that was worthy of note; if you look along the edges of the carvings near the top, you see a series of spaced square holes. This is the remains of the scaffolding erected by Nabataeans to carve the topmost section of the Treasury. How amazing to think about something like this being done over two thousand years ago!

Caprill and I enjoyed tea and conversation with a Bedouin guide at a snack tent in the Treasury canyon, then moved on to explore the rest of the site. She wasn't feeling too well, so I left her sitting on a crop of rocks with water and our bags while I wandered a bit with my camera, snapping photos and attempting to scale some of the low cliffs with my non-existent upper body strength. After about an hour of exploring as far as the amphitheater, it became apparent that Caprill wasn't getting any better, and that being out in the sun probably wasn't helping. We started back to the bus with about 90 minutes to spare, and ended up in the parking lot smack on time - but of course, as Jordan still runs on Middle Eastern time, we beat our guide and chaperone back by nearly half an hour.

The next stop on our whirlwind tour was Aqaba, a resort town on the Red Sea. Stephanie and I left Caprill in our room to sleep off her nausea, and hit the town with Molly and Jessamyn for dinner, sweets, and mouz bilaban (blended bananas with milk and sugar) at some local establishments. I had stuffed grape leaves - one of my favorite dishes at Woody's Mediterranean Oasis in East Lansing - for the first time since my arrival in the region, and they were delicious, though nothing compared to the sweets and nuts we stocked up on during our walk back to the hotel.

After an amazing night of sleep, we took breakfast at our hotel followed by a glass-bottomed boat ride in the Red Sea. Some of our group members took advantage of this opportunity to swim and snorkel; lacking a bathing suit, I was not one of them, and wasn't sorry when the girls came out in their bikinis and all the Arab men on the boat aimed their cameras and cameraphones at them. (Gross.) After lunch at our choice of American medium-speed food establishments (I had Quizno's, and they gave us free Icees), we boarded the bus for the drive to Wadi Rum, and what would ultimately be my favorite part of the trip...

Jordan!: Days 1 & 2

So as many of you are aware, I traveled to Jordan over the Eid al-Fitr break. Although the entire weekend is colloquially referred to as Eid, or eegazat al-Eid, the term technically refers to the day when a specific phase of the crescent moon is spotted and religious authorities (in Egypt, al-Azhar) declare the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. For most Egyptian Muslims, however, Eid means a few extra days off of school or work, time to spend with family. And also to go shopping - the biggest retail days in Egypt are the days immediately before and after Eid, much like Black Friday in the United States.

Our adventure began on Thursday, October 11, which was coincidentally Stephanie's 22nd and Amanda's 21st birthday. Caprill, Stephanie, Jessamyn and I caught a cab to Zamalek around 6:15 and arrived just after 6:30 in front of the dorms. Outside, many of our fellow travelers and classmates embarking on their own weekend adventures congregated; the Red Sea was another popular destination, as many study abroad students have taken advantage of comparatively inexpensive diving courses in Cairo. Just after 7 PM, the shuttle to the airport arrived, and we discovered that Abierd, who works in the counseling department at AUC and was one of the organizers of the Alexandria trip, was coming with us.

We enjoyed coffee and Cinnabon in one of the airport lounges during the downtime between our arrival at the airport and departure for Jordan, and arrived in Amman just before midnight following a relatively uneventful flight. After receiving our visas and changing our money (ouch - JD1 = USD1.50 = LE8) we headed for the hotel and went to sleep almost immediately upon arrival.

After breakfast the next morning - cheese, eggs, tomatoes, foul, pretty standard fare around here - we boarded the bus for a quick turn around Amman. Jordan, along with the majority of the Muslim world, began Eid al-Fitr on Friday (10/12), but Egypt didn't start until the following day (we were all hoping for an extra day off when we returned, but no such luck!), so the streets and sidewalks of Amman were nearly deserted, and we had to drive for almost an hour before locating an open currency exchange store.

Afterwords, we drove to Ajlun Castle, a fortress built by the nephew of Salah al-Din (better known as Saladin in the English-speaking world) in a strategic and resource-rich location near present-day Amman. Our tour guide for the site left a lot to be desired - I think I learned more reading the Wikipedia entry on Ajlun than I did listening to him - but the castle itself was a blast and a half, with plenty of collapsed walls to climb and few notions about safety to impede our explorations. At one point, Jessamyn jumped about six feet into a pitch-black room; we were all set to follow before realizing that there was no way out except the way in. On a clear day, you can see all the way to the Golan Heights and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; unfortunately that day, as for most of our trip, the weather was moderately overcast.

On the way from Ajlun back to Amman and the ruins of Jerash, our bus broke down. Someone up front suggested that with 26 people, we could probably get out and push it a la Little Miss Sunshine; instead, our guide opted for having us walk the rest of the way to Jerash, maybe three-quarters of a mile, tops. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the ruins, an excellent meal of chicken, rice with lamb and pine nuts, salads, and fruit. Jessamyn met the proprietor, the man who intends to be her husband; I told her that between him and the teenaged boys at Ajlun, she'd probably be better off starting a fan website and having business cards printed up with the URL.

Jerash was fantastic, definitely one of my favorite stops of the weekend. Although most of the ruins are distinctly Roman, the city was first built by the Greeks, and so in some places you find the remains of Greek temples and architecture covered in the (relatively) more recent Roman construction. I think that I took some of my best photos of this entire study abroad at Jerash...too bad it's in Jordan, or I'd be sweeping the study abroad photo contest. Our evening in Amman was fairly low-key, dinner and a brief bus tour of the city, where we got to see the second-largest U.S. Embassy in the world (the largest, of course, is in Baghdad) which was guarded by (among other things) a tank topped by enough guns to take down all the armies of Mordor, for example, with plenty to spare.

The next morning, we got up at a ridiculous hour to drive to the site of all my childhood dreams: Petra. Stay tuned for Part 2...

Study Abroad Dictionary

Misr

1. N. Arabic name for Egypt (officially:Jumhuriyyat Misr al-Arabiyya).

2. N. Egyptian Arabic name for Cairo.

3. N. Something unpleasant that you can step in, usually found on neighborhood roads (e.g. puddles of dirty water, animal droppings). I was walking down the street, and I got misr all over my foot.

4. Exclamatory. Misr! My clean shirts fell off the clothesline into the dirt!

Egypt

1. Country located in northeast Africa.

2. V. To cram large numbers of people into a small space (e.g. an apartment or shuttle). Nobody gets left behind, we're going to Egypt it.

Yalla, yalla, al-Ahly!

I went to my first al-Ahly match last night, with four Americans and seven Egyptians, five of whom were named Mohammed. Al-Ahly is one of Cairo's two club soccer (football, whatever) teams (the other is Zamalek), but is overwhelmingly the more popular of the two. The name "Al-Ahly" means "the family" in Arabic; it shares this moniker with about seven other club teams throughout the Arab world.

We met on campus and milled around for a little while while eating dinner, and then two of the Egyptian guys managed to convince a mini-bus driver to drop us off at the stadium (in Nasr City) and to pick us up after the game ended, for a total of about LE8 round-trip (less than USD1.50). The tickets we got were only LE50, so overall this was an incredibly cheap outing.

When we got to the stadium, I was astonished by the number of armed guards in the area. Now, granted, my time in Cairo has made me very accustomed to heavy police presence - they are literally on every corner in the city, and always heavily armed. This was a new extreme, however; military police in full riot gear had the entrance surrounded in such a way that only one person could pass through at a time. The photo to the left, which I took, shows my friend Erik posing with the police, who were very good natured about the whole situation, but still slightly unnerving en masse.

I've never been to a professional soccer match before, but it was completely unlike any sporting event I've ever attended in the States. We got to the stadium fairly early - about 90 minutes before the game started - but the fans were already out in full force, dressed entirely in red and cheering loudly accompanied by drums, bells and whistles. We selected seats in what turned out to be a fairly calm area of the stadium, but as the seats filled, the enthusiasm built. I found myself up out of my seat for much of the hour leading up to the game, clapping and chanting along to cheers that I only half understood.

One of the Mohammeds who was sitting next to me was translating the cheers for me; most of them refer to individual players and their sporting attributes. Hadary, the al-Ahly goalkeeper, for example, was a big hero after al-Ahly's recent CAF Super Cup victory, and his cheer literally goes "Dance, Hadary, dance!" I was also fascinated by one cheer in which the crowd shouts a bunch of nonsense words, and then "Insha'allah, hanaksiba!" - God willing, we will win. It's one of the biggest contrasts I've noticed between Egypt and the United States; where at home, public prayers or even moments of silence are virtually unheard of in sporting, here it's perfectly normal to invoke the favor of God to get your team to the top.

During the actual match, the fans cheered, but weren't nearly as rowdy as Americans are - and I don't think that was for lack of alcohol, either. Amy explained to me that it's considered rude to put on too much of a cheering show during the actual game, since most of the fans come to actually watch the match. Al-Ahly ended up defeating Libya United 1-0, with the only goal of the game early in the first half. There were a few close calls during the second half (for both teams), which made it that much more exciting. In between the shots, I talked to the Egyptians, and actually was able to make myself understood in Arabic, which was exciting.

Cultural Differences Between Egypt and the United States Which I Fully Appreciate And Celebrate But Nevertheless Will Not Miss When I Leave: Part I

That guy who walks around my neighborhood every night between 1:10 AM and 1:30 AM banging a drum.

(Thus far, I have no explanation for this practice. Nafiza says that's too late for tarawih, and too early for fajir, the pre-dawn prayer. I'll keep working on that.)

---

UPDATE: This is the indication that it's time to wake up and prepare for souhoor, a meal that is eaten around 3 AM during Ramadan. Which means that it will stop after Thursday. Al-hamd'allah!

Egypt, not Virginia!

I spent the weekend soaking up sun and fun on the Mediterranean in Alexandria - not, as Jeff and Catharine first thought, in Alexandria, Virginia.

Our departure from Cairo was scheduled for 7 PM on Thursday evening; for those of you not familiar with the way time works in Egypt, that means the buses showed up at 7:45 PM and we didn't leave town for another half hour. And the two-and-a-half hour ride we were promised? Try a trip lasting nearly five hours, including almost half an hour to get gas (apparently they were filling up with an eyedropper) and a ninety minute break at Lion Village, a rest stop straight out of the Twilight Zone.

Located on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, Lion Village is part petting zoo, part souvenir shop, part restaurant, and 100% weird. The complex is centered around a series of animal pens and cages, containing everything from chickens to camels, most of which, frankly, looked like they didn’t have much time left. There were at least two dozen ostriches spread out over a few fenced in yards; this article from the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt gives some clue as to what they were doing with so many ostriches. The décor didn’t exactly reassure the animal lovers among us, either; the beams supporting the roof were covered in furs and stuffed crocodiles and fish hung from the ceiling, along with massive bunches of garlic cloves (presumably to cover up the smell for guests in the adjacent restaurant). We lost our appetites pretty quickly, and resigned to waiting for the other bus to catch up and keeping watch for stray critters. (Photo courtesy of Ellen Green.)

We finally rolled into Alexandria (or Alex, since we can’t be bothered with those last three syllables) around 1:30 AM, and wisely elected to save exploring the city for the following morning. Driving in on the Corniche, Alex’s 20 km seafront road, was pretty amazing at night; like the rest of the Egyptian population, Alexandrians do not sleep, and the sidewalks and public beaches were still crammed with couples, families and friends even after midnight. Our hotel didn’t disappoint; my room had a gorgeous sea view and a nice breeze off the water, and there was a (very) small private beach across the Corniche for hotel guests.

Friday morning, I had breakfast and took a short walk down the beach with my roommate, Amanda. Alex’s seafront road, which is called the Corniche, runs about 20 km along the Mediterranean coast, and the city only extends about 5 km inland at its widest point. Our first stop of the morning was Kom es-Shoqafa (“Mound of Shards” in Arabic), the remains of a Roman-era catacomb complex. I had been expecting something more akin to my previous catacomb experience (dark, smelly, lots of bones); however, the Kom es-Shoqafa catacombs are entirely devoid of human remains. We spent a lot of time exploring the labyrinthine corridors of burial niches, carved entirely by hand and extending more than 30m underground. We also visited Pompey’s Pillar (which is actually a monument to the Roman emperor Diocletian), and the Roman amphitheater, although the heat sucked some of the fun out of those excursions.

We returned to the hotel early in the afternoon and went to lunch before hitting up the beach for a couple of hours before dinner. Having read that Alexandria is even more conservative than Cairo, I didn’t even bother bringing a bathing suit on the trip, instead choosing to lay out in shorts and my t-shirt. Unfortunately, due to the commercialization of Alex’s seafront, the beaches aren’t nearly as pristine as they look in photos; the sand was littered with pop tabs (Egypt still has the kind that you pull off and discard) and cigarette butts, and there were some plastic snack wrappers and a discarded cigarette box floating near the shore. Still, after a long hot day, it was nice to wade into the water and nap in a beach chair for a few hours in the late afternoon.

After a dinner of kufta and rice, we all piled back on the bus to go to the Green Plaza, an outdoor shopping-dining-entertainment complex on the edge of the city. I spent some time with friends at a café drinking mango juice and chatting, and Amanda’s impromptu dance routine to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” attracted the attention of a group of Egyptian girls having a private party at the restaurant, who immediately ran over and dragged her into their party. Later, we went and bought sweets and snacks for the trip home.

On Saturday we left early after breakfast for Fort Qaitbay, which stands on the site of the former Pharos Lighthouse (of Seven Ancient Wonders fame). After the lighthouse was destroyed in an earthquake in the 1300s AD, the site lay vacant for nearly a century, until Sultan Qa’it Bey began construction on the fort in 1477. The upper floors of the central keep offer amazing views of the sea and the surrounding city, as well as cool sea breezes.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was our next stop, and my favorite of the weekend. (Take from that what you will.) The library is only 5 years old, constructed on the site of the original Library of Alexandria, which was burned accidentally by Julius Caesar in 48 BC (not, as is often rumored, by conquerors from Arabia), and contains nearly 500,000 volumes – with room for over 7.5 million more. My first impression was that it was a fairly ugly structure, a granite-and-glass half cylinder rising out of the ground, but having seen the inside, I would perhaps more judiciously describe it as interesting. Like the original library, its façade is made of Aswan granite, and is carved with letters from hundreds of ancient and modern languages. On the seaward side is the Planetarium, and a beautiful reflecting pool stretching all the way to the Corniche.

After a stop at the Fish Market restaurant for lunch, we piled back on the bus to return to Cairo. I won’t go into detail about the ride home; suffice to say it was long and stuffy and slightly miserable in the back of the bus, and when I got back I was immediately hit in the face by Cairo’s delightful air. Overall, though, the trip was fantastic, and I definitely intend to return for a weekend to see some of the sites I missed, like the museums, churches and the (former) Hotel Cecil, where British Intelligence planned El-Alamien.