AUC campus

I've been too occupied with student orientation (a.k.a. hell week) at the American University in Cairo to blog. Saturday was with filled to the brim with long lines for I.D. pictures, bus passes, and food. Although I was only able to wait in lines on Saturday, I started to get things done today, which was a major improvement.
The campus is gorgeous (!!!), but lacks any kind of substance. Built about two years ago and sitting in the middle of the desert, it needs more time for the student body to wear into it and give it character (mirroring my sentiments about the Lawrence University campus center). For now the AUC campus is just a hollow shell of buildings surrounded by the vast Sahara. Yet, as someone who craves aesthetics, I find it hard to hate it because it is extremely beautiful.

See my facebook link for more pictures http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=200711&id=639111198&saved#!/album.php?aid=200711&id=639111198
or take a virtual tour of campus at : http://datacenter.aucegypt.edu/smc/virtual_tour/

Other news: Emily (my roommate) and I have a potential Egyptian stalker . . . more news on that as it develops. Too bad I can't speak Arabic, otherwise I would tell him to shove it. People have told me that Egyptian men are pretty harmless (though they do say obscene things), and will not hurt us. Nevertheless, I will be cautious.

The food situation is getting better. I've figured out that it's super cheap to eat at restaurants. Until we can find frying pans, we're stuck with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, nutella, yogurt drinks, pomegranates, and McDonalds (sounds healthy, right?) at our apartment. The food on campus is terrible, ruling that out as an option.

The cats (some of you know the story) that hang out in front of my doorstep are M.I.A. Here are pictures of them . . . I hope they pop their little heads around sometime soon, otherwise I will worry.


My sleep schedule was off-kilter for the first week I was here, but now I'm not having any trouble with the time difference. This morning, though, I woke up to get water at around 3:45a.m. and around 4:00 a.m. was the first call to prayer! I couldn't believe it, because I had never heard it before ten in the morning. Unbelievable.

That's it for now, folks. School starts on Sunday (the Egyptian version of Monday). Until then, I'm going to sit back, relax, read, and watch movies. I bought Cormac McCarthy's The Road at the AUC bookstore today. The novel unravels as a poignant story about a father and son whose love for each other buoys them through their travels in the nuclear landscape of a dystopian future. I'm surprised how much I like it . . . perhaps I identify with the feeling of being in a wasteland, or trying to survive in unfamiliar surroundings. My other solace is Dexter: Season 3, which I will be finished with by the time you read this. I'm not sure why I like that show so much. Perhaps we can all identify with having a darker part of ourselves that controls us? Or maybe it's just fun to watch Dexter serving justice . . .
Anyhoo, that's it. Enjoy the pictures of AUC and the cats.
<3 to all of my friends and family,
Ari

What they don't tell you about the pyramids...

The unavoidable picture of me on a camel. Now I will go and die of embarrassment.

It's difficult to complain when you've seen the most amazing structures in the world, but it's me, and I always find something to complain about . . . What they don't tell you about the pyramids is that there are very pushy vendors trying to sell everything from postcards to cat statues, camel rides, and water. They are maddeningly persistent to the point where you don't feel like being there anymore. The worst part is that they speak every language. So when I said "no hablo ingles", they started asking me about the weather in Madrid this time of year. Dammit!
Yet, despite these drawbacks, I had an amazing experience. The best part is that it's only twenty minutes away from where I live. Wow.

Ancient Egypt binge

Last night was an amazing spectacle to behold. Mom and I intended to go to the pyramids to see them lit up at night and ended up on a restaurant terrace eating dinner across from the pyramids during a nightly light show. Some say cheesy, I say amazing!
Weirdly, the pyramids are situated just a half a mile from stores and other houses. I imagined them in the middle of the desert, so that really blew that theory out of the water.
After dinner we took a cab back to our hotel, and got stuck in a two-hour Ramadan traffic jam. The streets were teeming with life, and people crossed the road mindlessly in front of cars. There are no street lights, no crosswalks, and no rhyme or reason to the flow of traffic.
Earlier in the day yesterday we went to the Cairo Museum in downtown. The museum is different from "normal" museums in that there is really no fuss in displaying things well. Ancient artifacts were shoved into glass cases with no cards explaining what they were. Big monuments were displayed out in the open where anyone could reach out and touch. No alarms, no sensors, and few guards. I could have stolen something. We saw such artifacts as the Narmer Palette, the Rosetta Stone, the mask and other treasures of Tutankhamen, and a host of royal mummies (Seti I, the Tuthmosis quartet, Ramses, Hatshepsut). It was really quite remarkable.
One of the shocking things about the museum were the westerners. Having researched the proper way to dress in Cairo (modestly), I looked in horror at women with their buttcheek-exposing short shorts, and cleavage. Some of these people were dressed as if they were going to the beach, and not as if they were in the middle of a conservative Muslim country. I shudder to think what would happen to them if they stepped outside of their tourbuses for a moment in Downtown Cairo.
In other news, this morning I was met with disappointment when I found out that an apartment that I was ready to rent was actually way more expensive than I previously thought. I still have nowhere to live (sad day). Tomorrow my traveling companion, Emily, and I should be finalizing a deal with a landlord on apartments that we have yet to look at. Hopefully we will find one for a decent price that is clean and relatively pretty. Egyptian aesthetic, as I have found out, is very different from American standards of beauty. Most of the apartments I looked at were garish with clunky ornate furniture, clashing colors (imagine an entire room in navy and goldenrod yellow), and some were even dirty. The search will continue tomorrow, and I hope we can close on something by Friday. Until then, I will be an unhappy camper.

Apartment hunting

Today we ventured into Maadi, a quiet American ex-pat community, to look for housing. On the way we were able to see the hustle and bustle of downtown Cairo, beautiful views of the Nile, and we glimpsed the winding streets of hidden medieval marketplaces. In Maadi we stumbled upon a very cool American man who owns a burger restaurant (and another popular American restaurant) in the city. He kindly gave us the name of a realtor who treated us superbly, and we were able to continue our apartment search.
Later in the evening, we finally ate our first meal in the last three days at the very chic Marriot Hotel in Zamalek. The decor was imperial Islamic with heavy copper lanterns (about sixteen feet long) hanging from the ceiling.

The food was delicious! Sadly, I've had to temporarily abandon my vegetarianism (very very very reluctantly). I really have no choice because vegetables and salads are toxic (the microbes could either make me very sick or worst case, kill me). The fact that I have not really eaten anything but yogurt drinks, bananas, and cheese sandwiches has made me weak with malnutrition. So, I ate fish. judge me.

Road Rage: Cairo edition

I thought I would expand on my assertion that the commute to AUC is near-deadly. Our cab driver ran over a speed bump going 100km/hr and we almost died. He also almost crashed into another car and started swearing in Arabic (and we almost died). The drive did give us a sense of the real Cairo, one that most westerners do not get to (or want to) see. Skeletal, gutted buildings lined the highways, and all of the buildings were covered in a layer of pollution. I could see people living on the rooftops in these unfinished construction projects, and thought how dismal a life that could be.
We passed people sitting and walking on the highway (or even crossing it!). Other strange sights included an entire family (including a mother holding a baby) squished onto a motorcycle, and a table of about 100 people breaking the Ramadan fast, sitting right next to the highway.
At iftar (sunset/breaking of fast) there were men standing at the side of the road to offer glasses of some sort of brown juice to passing cars. Our driver, who was famished after a day of no water in 100 degree heat stopped to retrieve some, and offered some to us. We tried to refuse, because we had no idea what was in it and were afraid of getting ill, but we were handed plastic cups of these drinks. He urged us to drink, but since he didn't speak English we couldn't explain that Westerners could get sick from the water. Finally, he understood and took the cups and threw them out the window, much to our dismay.

Arrival

My flight landed in Cairo last night, and so far I have mixed feelings about this city. I've barely eaten in the two days I've been here because it is Ramadan and very few restaurants are open during the day. (If they are, they only serve sandwiches). Apparently our hotel's chef is sick, so the dining room is closed for the next five days. Great.
The city is probably the dirtiest I've ever seen, and even the nicest area of the city center (Zamalek) has dead cats strewn around, dirt, and flies buzzing everywhere. I saw a dying baby cat in a cardboard box who (it appeared from the empty syringe at its side) had been injected with something to kill it.
I realize after my stilted conversations with locals, that I possess very little vocabulary to help me here. Perhaps I'm doomed . . .
Some of the aforementioned atmosphere, and the two hour round-trip near deadly commute to the dorms (if you don't almost get run over on the way to the bus stop, you can get killed by the crazy drivers on the highway) has convinced me that living off-campus is not for me. I've contacted the student life office to request a single on-campus. If that doesn't work for me, then I'm going home. It's a drastic measure, but if necessary, I'm prepared to make it.
This blog has outlined some of the worst I've seen, but Cairo's redeeming qualities should not be overlooked. The people have been among the friendliest I've met, and it is very safe to walk the streets at night (thanks to Mubarak's armed police forces at every corner). The call to prayer is beautiful, and it is always interesting to see people frozen in one moment of their every day life to pray. (I saw a man stopping to pray in a parking garage).
Despite that, I'm not yet comfortable in my surroundings, and will have to debate what to do next.

Doctor's office

I still have not left for Cairo but I got 5 vaccinations (!!!!!!!) today. The doctor's office was a bit of a preparation for what I will encounter in Egypt. I wore shorts and a t-shirt (obviously thinking nothing of it) and when I got to the office of my new doctor, everyone in the waiting room except Mom and I were ultra-conservative Muslims. I told my doctor apologetically that I wouldn't wear this outfit to Egypt. He joked that I could, but I would just have to stay inside.

Modesty

No, friends and family, I have not left for Egypt YET. But the travel process starts way before the airplane takes off. My flight is in less than two weeks, and I could not be more nervous or excited. Among other things, I have secured my visa (yay!) and have scoured websites and books about living in Egypt.
The one thing that I thought some of you would find interesting is the unofficial "dress code" for Cairo, which can be described by one word: modesty. Most of you who know me probably don't think of my wardrobe as slutty. Yet, I find that (at least according to what I have heard) I can not bring the majority of my clothes. This is a sad development since I have also had to leave most of my shoes behind in Chicago. :(
Unless I want to be the target of some serious street harassment, I need to have long sleeves, high-necked tops and absolutely no shorts or knee-length skirts. Modesty ordinarily wouldn't bother me if it were in the 70's (Fahrenheit), but when I arrive in Egypt it will be around 102 degrees!!!!!!! So, I'm not looking forward to that.
For fun, I went to an Egyptian women's clothing store near where I live in NYC, and I found a beautiful abaya to wear (sans headscarf) for excursions to more conservative areas. The picture above is an example of an abaya, and is very similar to mine.
More updates in the next few days!