You know you are actually living in a third world country when

This post concerns a variety of domestic and life situations involving: dirt floors, water, electricity, inside cats that should be outside, busrides, phones, lukewarm milk, donkeys, garbage collection, and random broken bones...
My floors needed to be fixed in my apartment and they spent 5 days repairing them. This means I spent 2 days with a sandbox in my living room, because they insulate with sand here, and then three days of being kicked out of my apartment until anywhere from 6pm-10pm. Because we left our windows open to let in fresh air after they treated the floors, a cat jumped into our apartment. Not just a cat, the cat; the cat of nightmares; it was a magical cat, all gray and black and huge and ugly and hiding in impossible spaces and creeping behind shadows and jumping out when I attempted to walk to the bathroom at 5:30am before a field trip. Another cat just had babies in front of the apartment next to ours. When I say "just had babies", I mean they are a few inches long... creepy kitties.
Our electricity sometimes flickers, and yesterday, our water went out and proceeded to stay out for about 19 hours--8 girls, 2 invalids, 5th floor, no water, no problem. We survived, but have decided to invest in a hand of Fatima and an eye of Horus (double dipping can't hurt, right?)to ward off the evil jinn in our apartment.
Sometimes our phone stops working, our garbage is collected from the fire escape by people who haul it away in a donkey cart, and milk (with an initial sketchy pasturization process) is not refrigerated here.
When I was on a fieldtrip, the clutch on the bus randomly broke and the busdriver jimmied it back into working order before we were able to go back three hours Cairo.
In summary? First, Egypt really is a third world country. Second of all, I love this place so much!!! Where else do I get to go camping inside my own apartment and chase cats outside the house and down the fire escape by using a squeegie mop??? It's utterly fantastic and I am enjoying life in my ghetto-fabulous apartment, with my one broken-footed roommate (she fell into a pothole) and my other broken-shouldered roommate (she fell off of a horse).

Why am I at school again?

Sorry for the lack of blogs for a couple weeks (bad Lindsey!). This school thing is kind of a drag--I am, in the future, going to create a study abroad program in Egypt where you don't actually have to go to school. Instead, you get to go on fieldtrips to temples and learn about hieroglyphics and take a Nile cruise and learn about ecology and then they give you an apartment in the middle of Cairo and present a series of annoying, but overcoming obstacles to your contentedness in the apartment and your ability to survive in the city. It'll be called Survival Egypt: How to survive in both the ancient and modern worlds.
Ptolemaic temples is a little boring and there are plenty of what Constance and Kathy would refer to as "dumb bitches" in my classes, but they are otherwise survivable. However, to all of you who go to school with me, please hold me to this solemn vow in the future: I will never ever ever complain about discomfort in class again, having now been forced to sit on hard slabs of pine that cut into my back at about the 15th vertebrae, leaving my spine and my butt bruised and squished.
But at least I'm not in DC in 5 degree weather, right (hee hee)!!!

Since I actually do have to attend class, my tourist activities have been somewhat hindered of late. However, I have been able to visit a really neat mosque, wander around Islamic Cairo, experience the ultimate Nile Delta Trek, see the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and in the highlight of my visit to date, I have officially received both my first and second marriage proposals. Oh, and someone tried to buy me for 700LE (about 120USD). I informed him that my hair was worth more than that in Saudi Arabia and that my daddy wouldn't accept anything less than 20,000USD. Might as well make up the wedding costs, right???
Suffice it to say that on the marriage front, I am further from marriage than when I left the US (yes Scott, this is possible) and this is unlikely to change. At a Mardi Gras party last night we, in fact, named the official "songs of the semester": No Scrubs by TLC and RESPECT by Aretha Franklin. Now we just need to find someone to translate them into Arabic and see if it has any effect on the male population of Egypt.
The mosque I visited is in Islamic Cairo, south of Khan el Kalili and west of the Muqattam Hillwas and is called the El Moayed King mosque. The coolest part is that the minarets are actually built above the gates of Bab Zuweila, which led into El Fostat, the city during the Fatimid period before Cairo was officially built. Anyhow, I climbed and climbed and climbed to the very very tip-top of the mosque on a shaky iron staircase and suddenly, there I was, hundreds of feet above the city, separated from the edge by a one-foot ledge and a one meter "guardrail". First, if you ever need a job to stay in shape, convince a mosque to ditch the speakers, hike up five times a day, and do the call to prayer--it's a great weight loss strategy. My second thought was that there is no way this would ever be allowed in the US; Washington State went to the extreme of closing down the capitol dome because there was only one flight of stairs (pre-earthquake damage). If you were allowed to go up at all, you would stop at a small platfrom halfway up the minaret and gaze out from behind the beauty of plexiglass. And while I appreciate safety features, it was an unforgettable experience: here they trust you not to be stupid and fall; if you are stupid and fall, then maybe you are a candidate for the Darwin Awards, right? Sample entry: Fell from minaret while leaning over the edge to get a better shot of the facade. Should have bought a longer lense or studied physics more intensely.
The Cairo Museum is a disgrace to Egypt, archaeology, museum curation, and the artifacts in the museum. There are no signs except in the King Tut jewellry room and on a couple of Akhenaten's statues. In fact, the only decently displayed room in the museum was recently redone by Dr. Salima Ikram, an AUC professor. Instead, gold faience, glass, wood, pottery, stones, and mummies language unidentified and poorly lit, in cramped quarters. The new museum, when opened, will be a vast improvement over the current nightmare, which would be shut down in the US for failure to actually be a musuem--if the Smithsonian tried this, the US government would (and should) fire every director, trustee, and curator in the institution. But King Tut's exhibit? Not at all overrated: It's more amazing than I could have imagined it being and it gave me little thrills thinking about Howard Carter answering "yes, wonderful things" to Lord Carnarvon when asked what he'd found. The gilded shrines along would be worth any effort put forth to find them!!! So pretty!!!
On a less depressing note, yesterday I went on the West Delta trek of all West Delta treks. So I am taking a Cultural Geography course and we went on a field trip yesterday to Alexandria, the Fort of Qaytbay, the mouth of the Rosetta Nile, Burg al-Arba, Lake Idku, and Buto. Did I mention this took 14 hours, of which 12 were spent on a bus? It was insane, tiring, and incredibly beautiful, getting to see all the varied architecture of northern Egypt.

More later on "You know you are actually living in a third world country when..."

It's a small world...

No, I refuse to apologize for titling my blog with this horrible phrase. Why? Because the taxi drivers in Cairo have not yet apologized for using this cursed-annoying song as their horn yet. They are, I am convinced, too busy trying to hit me, give me a ride while walking 5 blocks to school, or refusing to take me wherever it is I want to go when I finally decide to get into a taxi, to bother apologizing. It is, for an inexplicable reason (but probably because it's catchy and they are lucky enough not to know the words), a very popular song with the crowd of taxi drivers who wheel around at night with black and red and blue lights, have lit incense precariously perched somewhere on the dashboard, and change gears with a grinding sound so metallic that I frequently look behind the vehicle, expecting to find the gearbox and half the engine lying decrepit and oily on the road behind me.
This song has taken on an even creepier note than usual since coming to Cairo. Previously to my arrival, I imagined those waxy little figures skipping about in little Dutch clogs as on the ride. However, the childrens' clothing stores here have an excessively frightening tenancy to use toddler-size dolls as display mannequins in their windows. Not just dolls, but those dolls with teeth and freckles that closely resemble Chucky. Everytime I am unfortunate enough to walk past one, I immediately imagine them stepping through the glass, little teeth chomping, chasing after me while "It's a small world" whines in the background. Overactive imagination? Yes. Ridiculous? Probably not--my roommates agree that they wouldn't be altogether surprised if the little devil-dolls have motors or could come to life.

The real reason (I swear I have one) is that it really is a small world. First, half my school (or 24 or them) decided to come to Cairo this semester, apparently an enigma-girl that I am supposed to have met from Tigard, Oregon, and a collection of people from Washington State that I randomly run into. But this was all expected. What I didn't expect was the random reminders of Seattle and home while in Cairo.
1. It rained on the Giza plateau while I was at the pyramids. Rained! In the frieking desert! I was nearlly blinded by blowing sand, had my ass beaten to death by a galloping camel, and then got rained on. Perhaps I should note at this point that the pyramids were the best experience of my life, to date. They are grandiose and huge and, despite the buses of Chinese tourists, the litter, and my near death experience inside Khafre's pyramid (feel free to read the AU Eagle newspaper next week for a full account of pushy french tourists), the age and the mystery and the open dunes of the Sahara were everything I had hoped for. I seriously almost cried when I turned a corner in my taxi and the Sphynx patiently waited, eternally regally watching those who would approach the burial place of his king. Pictures cannot begin to show how miniscule you feel compared to their mammoth size. No, unlike the new agers inside Khufu's Great Pyramid, I am not going to place my face on the floor to soak up mysical pyramid powers and energies, but it was highly impressive as a monument to death and life and fertility along the Nile. The main reason (aside from pyramid power being a stupid concept) is that the pyramid grounds are filled with camels: so it's not just 2000 year-old dust on the floor of the burial chamber, there is more recent dirty footprints all over the place and I am not sticking my face anywhere near a camel-infected floor. Ick!!!
2. Bureacracy. The American University in Cairo has more bureaucracy and less efficiency than American University in Washington DC. Try combining the two together. I am genuinely surprised and pleased that between the two institutions, I actually have classes and a place to ive. However, I will be getting a residency visa in a few days. I still expect them to screw this up and am not holding my breathe--I will probably be on an obscure watch list and either be deported or unable to leave the country for a month while they realize they typed in my passport number wrong on the computer.
3. Becoming one of "those people". I smile at pretty much everyone I pass at home and say "hi" to most of them. People don't say anything in DC and scuttle past, avoiding eye contact. I thought they were jerks. I am officially one of those people now... as eye contact is considered a sign of sexual interest, I have developed a new "power walk". Eyes straight forward, quick and delliberate movement, and a killer death glare designed to make the recipient wet his pants or crash his car upon deliberate application of the look. I will try this out at home sometime, perhaps on someone with diplomatic plates to get back at them for triple-parking on Connecticut Avenue during the peak of rush hour near Cleveland Park.
3. Apples. I was walking down the street, peering at the little shops and avoiding eye contact, as usual. Suddenly, a pretty little fruit stand appeared, with the amazing oranges and tiny bananas hung and stacked deliberately. Next to the oranges were a selection of green and red globual fruits: "Apples!" I thought cheerfully. But wait, these aren't just apples--upon closer inspection, they bear the distinctive mark of red and white and blue. Halfway across the world, at a roadside stand were Washington apples!!! As such, it officially means that the apples from Washington State have seen more of the world than 99% of the population. I didn't buy any of the apples, but this shows that globalization can't be totally a bad thing. In a country entirely unsuited for apple production due to lack of height and water, here was appley deliciousness, just waiting for a passing Cairoan to pick up and munch on!

And then there are the things people should have told me about Egypt, but didn't:
1. Paper is not 8.5x11". It's bigger, and my entire wouldview has been officially thrown out a window as I had to go purchase a new set of folders to hold this odd, big paper. I am still having problems adjusting and may need counseling upon return.
2. Studying is a very Western thing. Egyptian students don't do it.
3. Egyptians are world-class relaxers. They are really good at relaxing and sitting and conversing and drinking tea or coffee and not actually doing anything that can be defined as productive. They do, however, at least at my school, look very fashionable while not doing anything
4. The majority of people in Cairo think that AUC students go to class naked. This is not a joke: we are all godless and lustful and are apparently going to class in our skivvies. Now I am taking mostly Egyptology classes, so this is a frightening concept. With the exception of my two roommates, my classes are filled with a set of quite unattractive people that I have no desire to gaze upon in clothing, let alone without clothing. High scarring potential...

I am sure I will share more scarring incidents or potential episodes later, but until then, masalaam, god bless, and vous me manquez, I miss you all!

Recap/Yes I really have been going to class... see!!!

So Alexandria was fun--we stayed on the grounds of the former castle of a prince who had way too much money and very worldy architectural tastes. And when I say worldy, I mean he was probably just indecisive and didn't know whether he wanted Moorish, Turkish, Islamic, Japanese, or Gothic styles and decided to add a little of the above: Moorish geometry on the ramparts, a few friendly-looking gargoyles, a Japanese pagoda, and a Bavarian color scheme, just to throw us off a little bit.
The other international students are, for the most part, very nice and I continue to love my roommates more and more as we go on adventures together. Impressively enough (though unsurprising), there are actually more people here than at who are under the impression that they are the most unique, season travellers in the world. And, as such, they naturally know more about everything Egyptian than the other non-world travellers and find it beneath their sensibilities to actually converse with you. Most are more than tolerable and genuinely nice people, excited to be in Egypt and go on adventures. I have yet to find the perfect cohort to travel with, seeing as how my style of travel tends to be relatively physically demanding, bordering on damaging, but between the kid from Australia and the West Point boys, I should find someone to go on "Lindsey's Bhutan Death March of Upper Egypt parts I-II" (for details on the history of this title, please direct questions to my parents).
But I swam in a cold, pretty, polluted ocean, that proves that the '76 Barcelona Convention to protect the Med from pollution is not entirely working. Ironically, most of the pollution found is not from Egypt itself, which has only one Med port (Alexandria) and is runoff from countries to the north. Ironically, most of Egypt's coastine is marshy, shallow, and incapable of supporting a deep water port; thus, since Alexandria is an articially created port and has a harbor, the harbor acts like a sponge soaking in all the free-flowing debris and other pollution. At this port I, for the first time, realized why precisely sea turtles swallow so many plastic bags. When I previously considered the issue, I visualized a whole shopping bag and considered how little it actually resembled a plastic bag. Oops... by the time they have been tossed about the land and sea, the bags are in shreds... small shreds that shockingly resemble the whitish-clear tentacles of jellyfish.
Off of the environmental beat, it was just nice to be in a quiet place for awhile. While I am obsessed with the frantic pace of life in Cairo with its honking and constant movement and construction and donkey/man dodging (only the donkeys don't harass me, so they are on the whole a nicer addition to the streets), it was nice to feel quiet. I found palm groves and some neat pine trees with small, irregularly-shaped cones that my mom would have loved to make a Christmas wreath from, a few Egyptian couples having a bit of fun inside the palm groves, a turn of the century lighthouse, and some of the best ice cream I have ever tasted. Strawberry and mango hand-swirled inside a crispy cone--Candice would never have left and I was left seriously tempted to buy a block of dry ice and bring a few gallons home with me. Note to Kate: no, there is no competition with Graeters as this was gelato-like, and therefore serves and entirely different purpose on the ice cream chart.

I have started school now and decided to drop Colloquial Egyptian in favor of a symposium on International Development. I'll get a colloquial tutor so that I can bargain better at the markets and bring everyone back fabulously cheap jewelry and other fun things, but I wasn't a fan of getting graded on a subjet that I am taking for purely practical, non-academic purposes.
Oh, and for those of you who want gifts from Egypt (you know who you are), Egypt is well-known for the following items: scarves, knock-off designer handbags, camels, jewelry, especially gold and with some lovely alabaster and turquoise, tacky shynx and pyramid statues, good-luck amulets, turkish coffee, really yummy oranges, and a great collection of books on Egyptology, Coptic art and illuminated texts, and papyri, both real and fake. Interesting fact of the day: papyri is actually extinct, for all intents and purposes. It was semi-domesticated, but when its cultivation was abandoned upon the discovery and widespread availability of paper, the semi-domestic strain was too weak too fight against other invasive and domestic plants. In 1968, one small patch was found in the Nile Delta, but otherwise the only remaining papyrus is grown in a field to be sold to tourists. Warning: if it crinkles, it's not papyrus, it's beaten banana leaf.
So, the moral of this story... all is good in "the Land of the Pharoahs", more later, and I am busy avoiding fake papyrus, fake designer handbags, and close encounters with fake world experts!!!

How I Found Religiosity

Please note, this title does not say that I have found religion. True, "inshallah" (God willing) has entered my vocabulary as a regular catch phrase for anything from "we will leave on time today inshallah" to "inshallah I will not be hit by a car as I cross the street. Unlike some place-specific phrases (i.e. Pura Vida in Costa Rica), this one has real relevance. Life is kind of a death defying experience and the evil eye is a constant threat--between these two dangers, people tend to leave a lot to God's hands and his choices.
But since I have not found religion, how did I find religiosity?
Well, consider it a by-product of being mistaken for an Eastern Orthodox, a heathen, and a Catholic in one day.
Last Satuday, I decided to take a wander around Cairo. First, I took the subway to Coptic Cairo. The subway is an interesting and very efficient mode of transportation--it runs almost constantly, has 2 women-only cars in the front, and costs 1LE to go anywhere you want (1LE= 1 Egyptian pound~ .18 USD). Cleaner than the New York Subway (ick!) with a little more creaking and groaning than the Boston T, but altogether satisfactory.
Having arrived in Coptic Cairo, I first went to the Hanging Church of St. George, a Greek Orthodox church known as a hanging church due to its placement ontop on a round Roman Tower, thus hanging over the rest of the walled Coptic area. It's a round church on a round tower, and filled with both orthodox and coptic Christians on Sunday. So, I gave them 10LE, lit a few candles, and intently studied the elusive St. George. Apparently, this was enough for me to be accepted as a believer and due to the blonde hair and blue eyes, I am clearly not Greek and must therefore be Slavic. Okay with me! Jacqeline introduced herself in halting English, I reponded in a few of my 10 arabic words, and hugs and kisses ensued. The little girls here almost make up for the creepy little boys hissing at me.
Next, it was more St. George. St. George is a Palastinian saint who slew a dragon and was tortured. Today, the chains that bound him are said to cure mental illness and bless all who are wrapped in the chains. The nuns at the convent of St. George oversee the wrapping of people in chains, but on this Sunday, it was a crush of humanity draping the chains over their head and the heads of their children, kissing photos, and looking at the light-up, moving picture of St. Peter slaying the dragon (whose tail swings back and forth). It was a Christianity entirely unlike that found in the United States. It was bright and in your face and superstitious and so close to humanity and innately part of their lives as to be more relevant to the living of this life and its blessings than the metaphysical distance and one-on-one relationship often found in protestantism.
Entering the nearby church, I was set upon by a swarm of little girls, all wanting to hug the crazy American girl.

Meandering out the gates of Coptic Cairo, I went to the East, determined to find something in the blank spot on my map. And yes,the southest really is a blank spot on most maps of Cairo. As with most white areas on maps (except maybe the Sahara), there is an entire life ignored by the elite or absent cartographers. Cairo is internationally known as a dirty city and yet, from my experience, it actually is quite clean and the city hires people daily to clean up garbage. But I've never seen a garbage truck... where is it going? Oh yes, to the southeast by donkey cart, where people find all reusable trash items, thus forming an unofficial but strangely efficient recycling system. Not just garbage, shantytowns exist here, fronted by miles of clayware stores. You can buy anything from a small flowerpot to a thirty foot ionic column for your backyard. Mind you, that's if you have a backyard, which 95% of Cairoans lack altogether.

After several more miles of hoping that I am going in the correct direction (maps= not so helpful when there are no street signs), I found a huge Roman-style acqueduct, which led me to a mysterious red wall. Inside the red door was a Catholic cemetary, where the elderly caretaker showed me the monuments to all the French and Italian soldiers who have died in wars from the Napoleonic excursion to WWII. He spoke a little Italian and I speak some French, so we managed to stutter through a tour. And then, we went into different mausoleums, where he gave me an ancient, antique crucifix, with the Marys standing on either side of him. Covered with cobwebs, he asked me to take it and told me the lady of the tomb would have wanted me to have it. Having never actually dissillusioned him to me being French, he apparently assumed I was catholic in need of a crucifix. My roommate is creeped out, everyone else thinks my new Jesus picture and my crucifix are a little odd (the Catholic kids are really jealous!!!), and I found religiousity in Cairo. Today, our maid came and I found the crucifix right next to my bed. Apparently even our Muslim maids are trying to tell me something, but I'm not quite sure what it is. Anyway you take it, my religious relic was promptly moved back to its home on my desk, where I can see it now, but it's not staring at me while I sleep. Any chance it can send a few muses to me this semester?

I then went to Alexandria, but more later on that...