October 30, 2007

            We are almost in Egypt! The time on the ship has been going by so fast and I didn’t think it would. We haven’t been on land for 11 days and I didn’t even miss it that much—I am becoming a real good shipmate! I have been doing everything I have wanted to do the last 10 days—besides classes and work and 2 tests, I have been watching a lot of movies and house and sitting outside and journaling and going to talent shows, and doing yoga and Pilates. I went out on the deck a lot and just looked at his moon and meditated and met new people and listened to an amazing piano player ion the union. I usually don’t like piano music—I find it kind of boring, but this person is so good. He picks the most amazing songs, and seems to enjoy it so much.  Yesterday night after class we had the best meal ever. They prepared us a surprise barbeque on the 7^th deck and it was amazing. There were all sorts of hamburgers and hotdogs and ribs and veggie burgers, which they never ever have. They also had tons of corn and bread and deserts and ice cream and everything you could think of. They set up all three decks and had sculptures made out of fruit and chocolate and we all sat outside for 2 hours and just ate. I have not eaten that much in 2 months, but I figured I should eat when I can! Then Meg and I put our feet in the pool, and then went to cultural pre-port. We learned that Egypt has 2 seasons—hot and hotter. It’s going to be about 90 degrees during the day and about 70 at night, which is so nice! We have to cover up though—all the way down to the ankles, and long sleeves and not even any flip flops! They have tons of pita and hummus though, which I’m excited about. We learned how to count to 10 in Arabic and to NOT walk like an Egyptian! After pre port there was a Halloween party. Everyone got really excited about it, and people had amazing costumes. I worked the door for an hour, and stamped people coming in, and got to see all the costumes. It was in the Union—and people just kept pouring in. there were people in lots of different cultural uniforms, and Doc Nancy was a snake charmer, and there were people who dressed up like pepto bismol, and ketchup ( my favorite) and monopoly pieces, and everything. I joined the party after I was done stamping, and just danced and had lots of fun. I didn’t have a costume, ( I know lame) , but I had on a wig ( which people really liked and said I should get my hair like that—some people thought I just cut my hair—but I thought I looked like an Egyptian) and I wore orange and black. After it was over at midnight we all went up to the 7^th deck and slept out. We were not moving at that point because we docked in line to get into the Suez Canal that night, so we were just looking at some skyline of Port Suez, Egypt. We sat out there, talking and playing games, and semi trying to sleep until 4am, and then we decided to go in because it wasn’t too comfortable because the ground was hard even though we all had sleeping bags. I am going to try to sleep out another night when we are in the middle of the ocean, and take a yoga mat from the gym to sleep on. I definitely want to do that before I leave the ship! this morning, after 3 hours of sleep there were people drumming and screaming through the halls because it was SEA OLYMPICS where the different seas (the groups on the ship—kind of like buildings on a normal campus) all competing at different events all day and the winner gets to get off the ship first in Miami (which I don’t want to do.. I want to stay on here as much as possible!) After lots of noise and people banging on our doors, and announcements from the voice, I decided to get up with just 4 hours of sleep. I went outside and saw a sock wrestling match, then a toilet paper fashion show, limbo, slippery twister, big hair competition, synchronized swimming, which was really good, and then trivia and ping pong. Our sea is the Adriatic Sea, so I wore all white (our color) and out team name was the Adriatic Attackers. All day I was just outside enjoying all the fun and games, and enjoying the Suez Canal. It is really thing, and there are rarely passenger boats going through it, so people were waving to us along the edges. There are many boats in front of us and behind us, all carrying cargo. It amazed me that we were actually in Egypt. I stared at the desert all day long, and it never got boring. There were some tents and huts and towns and a sign that said welcome to Egypt. Most of the time it was just sand and sand dunes on one side, and then on the other side it was lush green and houses and resorts. It amazed me how diverse the ecosystems are, just a few hundred feet away. I even saw Egyptian billboards and a toll that looked like a mosque. It looks so different than anything I have ever seen, and I'm still trying to believe that I am in Egypt and people live in these little towns in the middle of the desert!

October 31, 2007

“Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect, it just means you’ve decided to see beyond the imperfections” - anonymous

            Halloween in Egypt. How amazing is that! I woke up at about 9am because I felt like sleep was more important that waking up early and having breakfast, and it was much needed. I wasn’t as excited to be ported in Egypt because we had seen lots of it through the Suez, so I didn’t have that urge to jump out of bed and run outside at the crack of dawn, which I had in all the other countries. I went to the Diplomatic Briefing, which talked about appropriate dress, customs, etc., which was just a review because we already went over it all in detail in the preports, then I went outside to look at Egypt. The port is the nicest one since Hong Kong, and it looked really clean and almost European looking. It was overcast (which is rare) but hot. There was a building across the water that looked like the capitol building—all white and was round and everything.  I was not expecting to see architecture like that in Egypt, and that was my first impression, but as I would see later, the architecture is so different, possibly the most different than I have ever seen anywhere. I looked around and just saw lots of apartment buildings with laundry hanging off of them. The ship was then cleared around 10:15 and I went with Meg and Krista to walk to the famous library of Alexandria. The original library burnt down and is under water, but this library is the new one, built near the old site. As we were walking out of the port, we saw a mosque and decided to stop. We took our shoes off (because people kneel and touch their lips to the carpet and they don’t think it’s hygienic to walk in with shoes, even though if you saw our feet you know it wouldn’t make that big of a difference anyways) and then we went inside. It was a fairly simple mosque, but there were oriental carpets on the ground, and a few people praying, and pictures on the walls. We then went back outside but realized someone had taken our shoes, and wanted money to get them back. We were warned that everyone would want “bakshish” or tips for everything. We thought this was funny since this was our first stop 2 minutes outside of the port and this was already happening to us. We ended up taking back our shoes, and not having to pay. We then were trying to find an ATM and walked up and down the same street a few times trying to find it. There were lots of stores with apartments above them along the street but a lot of places were closed, and sometimes the sign outside the store didn’t match the store, so it was hard to find. We then made it to the waterfront where there were lots of people fishing and there were nice views of the beach and the city and a beautiful castle looking building on the end of a jetty that is a Naval museum. We also walked past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where guards were standing by at attention with guns, like the one in Arlington National Cemetery. We then walked along the waterfront (which we would do a lot that day) to the library. There was a ball like the Epcot ball outside, which is a planetarium and a pool of water outside. It is a very interestingly shaped building, and looked very modern. There were some pyramid shaped structures on the building, along with windows along the whole ceiling. We first went into the conference center because we thought it was the library, but we looked around the mini-museum in the center, which consisted a lot of pictures of Egypt and all over the world. We then wanted to go in to the library, but you had to walk and get a ticket and check in your bags. We got a ticket, and the line for bags was so long. There was a line for boys and girls, and there were only 4 or 5 people in the male’s line. There were about 100 people in the line, and it went so slowly. We were told that we didn’t have to wait in line because we were foreigners, so a man brought us to the front on the woman’s line. I felt really bad because most of the women were students waiting to hand their purses over, and I felt bad just skipping all of them. It still took about 10 minutes to check in our bags, but we finally did, and we went inside the library. We got an English guide and she brought us around the library. It was so different from what I expected. At first, before I went, I expected an old library half under water, and then I read in our Global Studies book that half of the library was underwater, and visualized it actually being underwater, but they meant below sea level. The library was really well constructed, and had 5 of its floors underground, and had windows with “eyelids and eyebrows”, which helped with the rain water, and also made the room remain light during rain storms. We also saw all the old press machines, and then the state of the art machine for book printing, which is only one of 2 in the world (the other one is in D.C.). one just type in the title of any book in this machine, and it will print it and bind it right away—any book.  We then saw a few museums in the library which housed some of the original things from Egyptian movies, including the Mummy. There was also an online database which has many books from cover to cover in it, and you can search for any picture of word, and the text will come up as is, which is pretty awesome. You can even access it from home! Another cool thing was these fire curtains that came down and divided the library in half which would stop the fire from spreading. The thing I liked the most about the library was on the outside. There was this huge stone that went around the outside of part of the building with all different letters on it. They actually had no meaning, but were just different letters from various cultures around the world all coming together as one. After the library we walked to try to find some Egyptian food. It was interesting because it was hard to find. A lot of the places along the boardwalk had American food, or ice cream, but not things like fata or pita and hummus. We finally found a place, and we were brought upstairs, and had a nice view of the city. There were other SAS kids there, along with 3 Egyptians sitting and smoking hookah. We all ordered pita and hummus. They were playing American rap music and rock music, and we noticed that in a lot of places they played that music when we were in there. we figured that they think we will like that because that’s what we are used to, but what we really want is to listen to their cultures music. It’s nice to think that they want to play it to make us feel comfortable, but it was hard to find places that played Egyptian music. after that we walked along the street and went to lunch #2 because Krista and Meg were still hungry. I noticed that everyone was smoking hookah. I knew it was a big thing in Egypt, but didn’t realize how much so. people just sit outside of cafes and smoke it (and never take it out of their mouths) and people sell them everywhere, and it’s on the menus and everything. We then walked across the street from the library because there was a long jetty, but it was closed to the public. We decided to just hang out by the entrance and look out over the water. Some people came up to us, which was very frequent here. People are very friendly, and very flirty. Most people will say “welcome to Egypt” and say “hello” while others will follow you asking you questions about where you are from and if you have a boyfriend. I think all in all they are just trying to be nice, but as an outsider we have to be careful and weary of others, and that makes some of their behavior seem worse than it is. Something in particular that I noticed was that children are always so excited to see you, and unlike the older people a lot of times, don’t have any ulterior motives. They are just so excited to see someone that looks different from them. I thought about it and kids in the united states are told never to talk to strangers and they would never treat others the way they do. I think it’s better for them to explore. Anyways, we talked to some of the people by the fort, and bought some cotton candy in plastic bags because we were curious to see what it was because it looked strange and we didn’t think that they would have cotton candy in Egypt. Two guys then started to walk with us, as we saw the sunset along the boardwalk. We talked to them ( one Mohammad – like 90% of the male’s – we saw 4 boys outside of a mosque earlier in the day and they were all names Mohammad-- and the other guys  name that we were walking with I forgot). They brought us to Ramil Station, where I got stamps to send letters to some friends, and then walked around where there was lots of shopping and McDonalds, and the internet. We then headed back to the ship and realized that people stay up late in the Egyptian culture. the street we walked through that morning looked completely different. Everyone was out, and it was now a huge night bazaar. People eat dinner late here (9 pm-midnights) and people come out at night. It was nice to get a glimpse of the nightlife!

November 1, 2007

Happy November! I woke up this morning and was so excited to go to Cairo—it’s what I was really excited about in Egypt and I was ready for the adventures to begin. I got on bus #2 (the group was big, so we split into 2 groups). Our guide’s name was Manal (she said it’s easy to remember because its Canal with an “M”, she said just don’t call her Canal!) The first thing she said that this would not be a sleeping bus, which I was excited about. A lot of times people sleep the whole time on the bus because everyone is exhausted from everything, but I like when the tour guide talks a lot because I love learning about where I am. Manal told us all about the history of Egypt while we drove through the desert. The drive was about 3 hours, and I learned and saw a lot. There was a city center, which was a mall and a grocery store, and there were police checkpoints along the way. We learned that Egyptians have these pigeon houses, that look like elongated bird houses with lots of holes in them. They house them and then kill them and stuff them. Manal said they taste BETTER than chicken. We also learned that the pyramid shape of the pyramids represents the sunrays, Egypt is knows for its “3 golds”: white, which is cotton, black, which is oil, and yellow, which is gold. We also saw and learned about the houses for the farmers, which are the lower income houses. On the way I saw lots of donkeys and pita everywhere, which made me really crave pita. Manal also told us about things that we would see over the next two days. We learned about the dung beetle, which are self pollinating beetles, which roll their eggs in dung, and then they emerge from it. We also learned about the mummification process and how they threw out the brain because it was considered useless, and they took it out through the nose. They kept 5 organs—liver, intestines, lungs, stomach, heart—in canopic jars. They felt like the heart was the most important part of the body, hence the saying “follow your heart” and “brainless”. We also learned that King Tut was really a nobody—he was really young and didn’t really have that much power. It’s amazing to think that if he wasn’t important and had so many treasures, what must the important people have? I also learned that no one knows how he died, but some think he was assassinated because there is evidence that he had a skull and knee fracture. After Manal told us all this information we were almost in Cairo and got our first glimpse of the pyramids. They were in the distance and looked like shadows, and we all got so excited when we saw them towering out over the city in the distance. We then drove past them to go to our first stop—the Pyramids as Zoserat Sakkara and Masataba. This was the first pyramid ever built, and was called a step pyramid because it was made out of solid steps—the only solid pyramid there is. First we went into the Mastaba, which is a large tomb with painting and carvings in it. A lot of the carvings and paintings were still in tact, and represented daily life—like fishing. Manal also pointed out some old Egyptian humor in some of the carvings (one of the men was represented as a midget—yah, funny humor!) I was just so amazed and in awe that I was in the Egyptian desert. Everything around us was sand, and there was a guard on a camel, and I couldn’t believe it. I then went underground to another tomb, and then headed to the step pyramid. There were lots of SAS buses there, which was kind of annoying because threw are 500 people there at once, but that way I got to see all my friends which were nice. I walked around, and touched the pyramid. My first impression was that the stones were much larger than I thought. I climbed up and felt so small next to each individual stone. I looked up and couldn’t even begin to see the top of the pyramid, and this was not even the Pyramids that everyone knows—the bigger, more famous ones. We then walked around the area, and saw lots of camels and donkeys, and people wanting us to ride them. They will do anything to get you on an animal—they even picked my friend, Shiree, up and put her on one. You have to be careful because when you get on a camel, you negotiate a price, and they agree, but then they won’t let you off unless you pay them a lot, so you end up getting ripped off. We then headed to lunch—the best meal I've had in the last 2 months. We went into a hotel which overlooked the pyramids. We all walked in, and people war playing music for us. we then had a buffet—which was so large, but unfortunately I couldn’t eat most of the dishes because they contained meat—but what I had was plenty! I had tomato soup, pits and hummus, chickpeas, and some deserts. Everything was amazing and the variety was spectacular. I also tried some Egyptian prunes, which grow on the palm trees around Egypt (these are different from the coconut palm trees). We then headed to the famous Museum of Antiquities (Cairo Museum). On the way we saw the Cairo Tower, which was put up by Nasser, and now has some nice views of the city. It is now a symbol of pride. I also saw the opera house, which is not the original one, but a large, new one built on a different site. I also got my first glimpse of the Nile, which looked so different than what I thought. For some reason I imagined it to be this little brown river in the middle of the desert. It really looks like every other river though, and it blue and wide, and there are tons of buildings and hotels around it, and there are tons of boats on it—mostly dinner or lunch cruise boats. One I got that quick view from the bus, we got to the museum which is housed in a gorgeous red brick building. In the plaza outside the museum we saw this really interesting bird with a very long beak which was endangered, which a lot of biology people got excited about. We all got our tickets, and had to go through the turnstile. There were about 100 SAS students there, and they all got through no problem. Meg was ahead of me and they just said “hey, how are you?” and smiled, and then they wouldn’t let me through. They let every single other person through. Except me. They didn’t believe I was a student even though ever other person had a student ticket. They began harassing me and asked me for a student ID, which I did not have. I told other people to get our tour guide, and they tried, but she was too far ahead. Two other girls then helped me, and the guard showed my ticket to someone else, and after much arguing with us they let me in. I don’t know why that happened. I thought maybe because I had my head covered and no one else did, so maybe that made me look older, and I also had my wedding ring on... I don’t know though. We walked in and first saw a copy of the Rosetta stone, which I wasn’t impressed with just because I saw the real thing in the British Museum in England. It is so important though in Egyptian history, and was the keystone to uncovering what hieroglyphics was. We then saw  a statue of Caesar, which was strange because everything else in the museum was Egyptian and I didn’t understand the connection, but we learned that Caesar had an affair with Cleopatra, and she had a cesarean section, hence the name. I thought that was pretty interesting. Everyone else on my bus went and saw the mummies in the museum, which you had to pay a lot more for, but I decided not to see them since I saw plenty of them in my travels. They are very interesting though because you look at people with skin and hair still in tact from hundreds of years ago—sometimes thousands. The whole group was gone so I wandered a while by myself, and then I joined another tour group from SAS (since every group was there). I saw wedding clothes of people from thousands of years ago, jewelry, flowers that were put on a grave of a wife who was killed by her husband (yes, the original flowers), bows and arrows, and some mummies. I didn’t see the actually bodies, but I saw the wrappings. I also saw the sarcophagus of little infants and fetuses (which they buried at that time). It was really crazy to think that these are real Egyptian mummies. It’s just something you always hear about and never think you will actually ever see. I learned that the Romans painted the faces of the people who died on the mummy as the Egyptians either left the facial area blank, or molded gold around them to show the actual features of the person’s face. Every covering of a mummy always seemed similar to me, and distinct facial features weren’t apparent, so that was something interesting to look out for. I then went into King Tut’s room, which was air conditioned, which felt nice because of all the crowds. I noticed the lack of security in the whole museum, and especially in that room. I was looking at all these priceless things, and nothing separated me from them. Some items weren’t covered at all in the museum, and you could just touch them, even though there were signs saying not to, and some other things had glass around them, but were only locked up with a little padlock, and there weren’t many cameras present, which surprised me. King Tut was found in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt, and most of the items found were brought to the museum. He is still in the Valley of the Kings though because his mummy was in such bad shape that they didn’t want to take the chance and move it to Cairo. I saw Tut’s mask, his coffins (1 and 2—as there are many layers of coffins for mummies, but they are all so ornate and completely gold), I saw the jewelry that was placed on the mummy, the toe and finger coverings (which I noticed that the toe coverings were just as long as the finger coverings and was wondering if their toes used to be longer, or if that is just how the coverings were made. I actually stood there and pondered this for a while, and couldn’t figure it out.) I also saw completely gold sandals, which I thought I needed a pair of. Outside of the room I saw huge cases in which some other coffins were found, along with a map of the Valley of the Kings which put everything into perspective. There were many rooms in the Valley—one with treasures, one in which Tut was found, and a room with furniture in it. Lots of people went to Luxor, but I decided not to because even though it was cheap to get there by train it took 8 hours, and I didn’t want to waste so much time traveling when I only had 5 days in Egypt. I then went into another room where all of King Ramsis items were. I found myself reading every detail of everything ( even though the sings were really short and non descriptive when you really think of the importance of what you are looking at, but then again its shortness probably is what attracted me to the idea of reading the explanations as at). The long beards on the masks represented when the mask was made. If the beard is straight it means that it was made when they were alive, and if it curled, it meant that it was made when they were dead. I saw more coffins and the canopic jars with his organs in it. I then went downstairs and saw some more statues and then went outside to meet my group at 5:40pm, and it was already dark. It was weird to get used to the sun setting so early. We then went to our Hotel—the Hilton, right on the Nile River. It was so fancy and I was so excited to be there because it was just so luxurious. We were assigned roommates, but lots of people wanted to change to people they knew or were friends with, which trip leaders usually don’t allow just because it makes things complicated. The person who I was paired up with wanted some other roommate, even though I never met her, and didn’t realize this, so things got really complicated and messed up, but to make a long story short, I got to be along in a huge double room, and I was the happiest girl on the planet. I was on the 22^nd floor, and had this massive room with 2 queen sized beds with lots of pillows, and a walk in closet, and a huge sofa and comfy chair, and a bathroom with a BATHTUB, a fridge, and a balcony overlooking the Nile. I could have stayed there all night. I just couldn’t believe I was in Egypt in my own room having such a wonderful view of the river and the whole city. It was so nice to be alone for a night because I have not had more than an hour alone for 2 months because everyone is always on the ship together and there is really no space to get away. I went out onto my balcony and just looked out on the city and heard the night prayer. The sounds of Cairo are mesmerizing. It’s just humming and music mixed with honking and people. I then went downstairs and met Meg in the lobby because we had an hour before dinner. We ended up walking along the Nile, and across the bridge and just looked out onto the water. Everyone was out at night, since it’s big in their culture to stay out late. We saw lots of people selling pita on the street, and meg bought some chips ( one bag of ketchup flavored ones just for me.) it was funny because she asked how much a bag was and the old man said 1 Egyptian pound, and the younger one said 2 at the same time.. so it’s obvious they just make it up, we thought that was funny). I looked for pomegranates, but they only sell them for drinks, but I was determined to find a whole one someone would sell me. We also saw lots of horse carriages, and lots of people saying “hi” to us, and being really excited. I noticed that Meg and I ignored every male that said “hi” which is just something you have to do eventually, but every girl that said “hi” or came up to us we were willing to talk to. I felt bad because that’s such discrimination, but I know that girls have no other ulterior motives, and they are on our side! We then crossed the road (with a little boy who was selling something and wouldn’t let us go) and walked through another Hilton. It was funny because every place has security and metal detectors, but they beep and no one cares, and only some entrances have them, so if you had something to hide, you would just go through those entrances, so I thought that was a little ironic. Security seems tight in a lot of places, but it really isn’t. But then again, is it really tight in the U.S., or does it just seems that way? I feel like if someone wants to do something anywhere they probably can. I didn’t feel unsafe at all in Egypt though, and even though I was always on guard I didn’t really think of terrorism. There was one point when a bunch of tour buses were all in a row driving to the same place that I realized how much we stuck out and how easy of a target we were. We saw the museum at night, and a square close to the American University of Cargo, and I saw a metro sign. I didn’t realize they had a metro, but I saw lots signs for it. I never took it though.  We then walked back through the hotel through a large section of road which seemed like it was acting like a bus station. They have larger buses, like our buses, but they also have vans that people jump in and out of. the buses and vans never really seemed to stop, but people just jumped one and off as they pleased while it was still moving. We made it back to the hotel, and had another amazing meal—all I had was pita and hummus and baklava and fruit with chocolate on it from a fondue fountain. I loved the pita and hummus (and all the other 25 dishes they had had meat in it). A lot of us then wanted to smoke hookah because we thought it was an Egyptian experience not to miss. We were told at our pre port to make sure its safe and clean because a lot of times on the street (where its 50 cents for a hookah or “shisha”) they don’t give everyone individual mouthpieces, and the water is dirty, so we decided to do it in the hotel and be safe. Ryan, Meg, and I got a strawberry one to share and Jeff and his brother got an apricot one. I didn’t know what I was doing, so Ryan took a hit of Jeff’s and coughed like crazy which wasn’t comforting since he smokes hookah a lot. We got ours though, and it was “softer” which was better. we ended up just all hanging out, and more people came by, and we just smoked and talked for 2 hours. I also tried a few sips of Ryan’s Stella Egyptian wine, and Jesse’s red rose wine, which both were surprisingly good, since I’ve never found alcohol that I enjoyed. We had fun blowing smoke, and filling bottles with it, and glasses, and just having fun. There was a wedding going on in the hotel, so we joined that for a while (we were told if we ever ran across a wedding in Egypt to check it out because they are amazing). The music was all live and was full of drums and very upbeat and the whole hotel was involved. I am officially in an Egyptian wedding video. The wedding dress and suite looked like any other American wedding dress, but it was still gorgeous. I was just expecting something different. We then listened to some live music in the lobby, and then I went up to my room, took an amazing bath ( one of the things I miss most about being home), watched CNN ( which I miss even more), some Egyptian Idol show, and watched the half moon over the most amazing view in the world.