I blogged a little about my first impressions of Cairo, but here's a bit more of the highlights! We had our first section of class today - right now we're studying Cairo: Histories of a City and focusing on Cairo's different eras/rulers/architectures. It's fun having a class with only ten students, since it's very discussion-oriented and we have a lot of opportunities to ask questions (ranging from the split between the Copts and the Catholics to speculations about Shagarat al-Durr's time as Cairo's only female ruler). We had a brief "survival Arabic" course afterwards, where even Rusty and I (the two students who had finished second year Arabic) were able to learn a few Egyptian greetings and phrases.
After class we briefly walked to the Nile and explored the neighborhood. A few observations:
*There are stray cats everywhere, although they're all so skinny and I just want to adopt them all to feed them!
*Also, no one uses the sidewalks that much (probably because of how uneven they are - also they have occasional puddles and garbage piles) and people generally walk in the street...
*This is problematic because drivers in Cairo are the scariest things ever. No one, and I mean NO ONE, follows any traffic laws. Driving in Cairo is one giant game of chicken with the other cars, bikers, and pedestrians.
We had a walking tour of Zamalek next, although I couldn't figure out where we were going so the "tour" aspect wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. Still, there are cafes everywhere along with shops, pharmacies, flower stands, soda stands, etc. I'm starting to learn my way around based on landmarks (flower shop on the corner, coffee shop where we had breakfast on another street, etc.). We walked down to the 26th of July Street, which has the craziest drivers of all, and headed onto the bridge to watch the sun set over the Nile. Absolutely beautiful! Afterwards we headed to an exchange place to get some Egyptian pounds (1 dollar = 7 pounds currently).
Next was dinner at Abu El Sid. Picture everything you've ever seen in books and movies about the Middle East. Picture the movie Casablanca. Do you have a stereotypically oriental image in your mind? Excellent. That was Abu El Sid - more of a caricature of Egypt rather than an actual Egyptian restaurant, but the décor was still fantastic and the food was great. We ordered a bunch of Egyptian appetizers (hummus, fuul - fava beans, various dips and veggies) and then some main dishes for the table. As the token vegetarian of the study abroad students, I ordered kushari, which is a noodle/bean/rice dish that's a staple in an Egyptian's diet. It was really good! Other class members tried rabbit, quail, pigeon, and lots of soup/rice dishes. We were absolutely stuffed at the end! We stopped in a bookstore after dinner to digest - it had a huge English book section so if I ever find time to read for pleasure here (unlikely) I have a place to go if I run out of books!
When we finally made it back to the residence area, we were tired... yet somehow some of us had the energy to go out to a little café. Several people tried watermelon-flavored shisha and I had a rather expensive brownie a la mode. It seems like a lot of the Egyptian youths head out for a smoke after a long day of work or play, and shisha is definitely very popular here. Either way, I was quite satisfied with my brownie! We sat and relaxed for a while, enjoying the surprisingly American music (a few Avril Lavigne songs and a bunch of covers of American songs) before heading home and going to bed (and in my case, blogging).
After class we briefly walked to the Nile and explored the neighborhood. A few observations:
*There are stray cats everywhere, although they're all so skinny and I just want to adopt them all to feed them!
*Also, no one uses the sidewalks that much (probably because of how uneven they are - also they have occasional puddles and garbage piles) and people generally walk in the street...
*This is problematic because drivers in Cairo are the scariest things ever. No one, and I mean NO ONE, follows any traffic laws. Driving in Cairo is one giant game of chicken with the other cars, bikers, and pedestrians.
We had a walking tour of Zamalek next, although I couldn't figure out where we were going so the "tour" aspect wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. Still, there are cafes everywhere along with shops, pharmacies, flower stands, soda stands, etc. I'm starting to learn my way around based on landmarks (flower shop on the corner, coffee shop where we had breakfast on another street, etc.). We walked down to the 26th of July Street, which has the craziest drivers of all, and headed onto the bridge to watch the sun set over the Nile. Absolutely beautiful! Afterwards we headed to an exchange place to get some Egyptian pounds (1 dollar = 7 pounds currently).
Next was dinner at Abu El Sid. Picture everything you've ever seen in books and movies about the Middle East. Picture the movie Casablanca. Do you have a stereotypically oriental image in your mind? Excellent. That was Abu El Sid - more of a caricature of Egypt rather than an actual Egyptian restaurant, but the décor was still fantastic and the food was great. We ordered a bunch of Egyptian appetizers (hummus, fuul - fava beans, various dips and veggies) and then some main dishes for the table. As the token vegetarian of the study abroad students, I ordered kushari, which is a noodle/bean/rice dish that's a staple in an Egyptian's diet. It was really good! Other class members tried rabbit, quail, pigeon, and lots of soup/rice dishes. We were absolutely stuffed at the end! We stopped in a bookstore after dinner to digest - it had a huge English book section so if I ever find time to read for pleasure here (unlikely) I have a place to go if I run out of books!
When we finally made it back to the residence area, we were tired... yet somehow some of us had the energy to go out to a little café. Several people tried watermelon-flavored shisha and I had a rather expensive brownie a la mode. It seems like a lot of the Egyptian youths head out for a smoke after a long day of work or play, and shisha is definitely very popular here. Either way, I was quite satisfied with my brownie! We sat and relaxed for a while, enjoying the surprisingly American music (a few Avril Lavigne songs and a bunch of covers of American songs) before heading home and going to bed (and in my case, blogging).
No comments:
Post a Comment