I’ve been in Egypt for a little over three weeks now (buhh?) and I think I might have gotten my footing well enough to present you with this: A List of Things to Like About Egypt

me drinking my first cup of mango at al capone's in dahab

1. Freshly squeezed juice. It’s on every menu here (to be fair, with the exception of establishments like Pizza Hut and Hardee’s, every restaurant really has the same menu) and it’s the best thing next to tree-houses. Drinking the juice is like biting into a liquified fruit. Mango is my favorite, but you can usually choose from strawberry, lemon, and guava as well. 

2. Egyptians. Now it would be fair to guess that Egypt’s economic dependence on tourism might spur some of the cries of “Welcome! Welcome!” that bustle around visitors walking through Cairo, but so far I’ve come to be very fond of the Egyptians that I meet. People are exceedingly helpful and accommodating, if also exceedingly curious. It’s easy to strike up conversations, and it’s easy to ask for directions (although you can’t trust that you’ll get correct ones). People here shout to strangers with questions, ask cab drivers for change from moving cars, and kiss one another on both cheeks in greeting. Sometimes I get overwhelmed, but most of the time I appreciate that giving a real laugh or smile will help ease me past any cultural quandary. 

catnapping is a professional skill

3. President Mubarak.  Well.. almost. Two weeks ago I was in Alexandria with AUC when I found myself with a kitten in my bag. This little guy was sleeping in a park, practically begging for a home. I said to myself, “the time is right!” and swept off with him. He was very quiet on the bus and I fed him bits of fish that I’d lifted from dinner the night before. I almost got in big trouble at the Library of Alexandria (they searched our bags) and later when the SOL’s found out. Luckily, we were halfway home and at that point there was nothing to be done. Phew. Now he’s thriving in Cairo, and has taken up to sleeping in my bed. My flatmate plans to take him home at the end of her year here. His name started out as a politically insensitive joke, but it seems to have stuck. 

4. The exchange rate. Right now it’s 5.3 LE to $1. The pluses of this are myriad, the minuses lie in that it is very easy to become ms. moneybags and live on the upper crust with all the other visiting Americans. Only imagine if I were European! Men in the army and lower government positions get paid less than 200LE a year. It explains a lot, least of which is the near-constant scamming. But hey, it’s not like I can’t afford it.

5. Ancient Egypt. I’ve only ridden horses by the pyramids and that was enough for me to marvel. They aren’t like Mt. Rushmore or Dustin Hoffman – instead of being disappointingly small, they seem too big to be allowed. I played a game of frizbee on a field in Maadi on Sunday and it was hard to focus on the game because the disc kept whizzing across an epic view of the pyramids.

Also, I’m taking an Egyptology class with a seriously bad-ass professor. She has a mummified rabbit in her office that she herself mummified while disproving one of Heroditus’ critics. As if that weren’t enough, she is a curator at the Egyptian Museum and our final project is to label an artifact from the museum. If they’re good enough, they’ll take a permanent place in the exhibit.

this is where i sleep, it's cozy and (now) very clean.

 6. My apartment. I’m really very fond of it right now. This weekend we had some trouble with biting ants in our beds and I swept into a cleaning spree.. before I knew it I’d bleached the whole place. We’re on the fifteenth floor of an apartment building on the island of Zamalek, in the middle of the Nile. Our view is mediocre, but I befriended the boys who live across the hall and they have a spectacular view of the two branches of the nile coming together, framing the city. I spend a lot of evenings on their balcony. 

P.S. I put some new photos up on picasa. It took almost as long to put them on the internet as it took to find King Tut.