the water connoisseur

Egyptian water is strange. We have been told different things by different sources about the drinkability of water here, and none of us are really sure who to believe. Our program told us that the water is safe, just highly chlorinated and therefore sort of gross-tasting (check) but the Lonely Planet guide rather emphatically states that you should only drink the water if someone is holding a gun to your head and even then you should go to the emergency room afterwards for preemptive care. Our residential coordinator has been drinking tap water since the day she got here, and she's fit as a fiddle. The rest of us are sticking to bottled water and brushing our teeth with the tap water, which leads me to the topic of discussion for today.

I can't remember what the water in Cairo tasted like, but I can tell you that the water here in Alexandria strikes me as the kind to be coming out of rusty taps. Two out of the four working sinks have water that might pass as marginally more average, but one in particular (the third from the left) is one of the prime candidates for my recent stomach queasiness. It has a stale, rather metallic taste that worries me a little bit, but then again it doesn't freak me out nearly as much as did the water in Dahab. There, it was like a salt lick, and probably came from the same source as the toilet water. I'm not going to lie -- I brushed my teeth with that shit once and then used bottled water for the rest of the five days, which might be wasting water but I'd rather do that than ingest poo.

Bottled water, too, has different types. In the dorms, they give us bottles of AquaSky for dinner, which is nice because it's free but tends not to be as refreshing. There's a brand called Hayat that I bought in Cairo, but I can't tell you how that is because I haven't had it for a while. I do have an unopened bottle next to my bed, but that's what I call my "rainy day fund," which is a really stupid joke but sometimes I do forget/don't have the chance to buy water and then it's bad news bears. I think Hayat wasn't bad, but I was more or less dying of thirst every day in Cairo and any water I could drink tasted like heaven. There's an American brand that I can't remember, and some stuff that comes in a bottle with a pink cap and label, but those are strangely difficult to drink. The best water, in my not-so-humble opinion, is Pure Life water by Nestle. It tastes like water, with all the refreshing coolness that makes drinking H20 so wonderful. All S wanted to drink in Dahab (besides a3seer limon, of course) was Nestle water, and we went on a search specifically for that brand. She also bargained it down to three guinean from four, which doesn't seem like much, but it was a half liter bottle and I bought my 1.5 liter bottle of (nameless pink brand) for two. Nestle makes another type of water with an Arabic name that I always forget, but that tastes like plastic. Considering the rate at which stores seem to sell things, however, plastic taste is not uncommon -- a lot of things have production dates from over a year ago or more.

On the topic of drinkable substances, the best juice in Egypt by far is a brand called Juhayna, and it's the only brand I will buy at any store. Karim bought some for me when I was laid up with Death in a shitty hostel in Dahab, and I swear that refreshing, life-saving feeling still hasn't dissipated. Juhayna is wonderful. There's another French company that makes smaller, serving-sized packets (Farragello? I think.) and we get those every morning for breakfast, but they're just not as good. Little stores on the street really only sell Farragello, though, so I have to go to the supermarket (oh, Carrefour) where I can buy Juhayna and satiate my seemingly unquenchable thirst.

I don't drink dairy products in Egypt. I know they taste strange in Europe, and the one time I had some milk in the morning here it was even stranger, so I'm passing for the semester. That doesn't mean I will forgo yoghurt, however -- I eat it when I can, but hey, it's not refridgerated half the time and that's just slightly sketchy. Refridgeration in Egypt is actually something of a mystery to most people -- everything tends to come room temperature (i.e. warm) unless you specify, and even then you're often out of luck in terms of cold beverages.

In other news, I found Nutella in Alexandria, and stocked up with two little canisters. I also consumed an entire bag of Chipsy today for lunch (a knockoff of Lays, but they taste better and they also were my sustenance on the bus back from Dahab). My health is probably going to suffer from all the crap I'm eating, but seriously, I crave sweets all the time.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

churn that butter, wolf bitch

Yesterday we went bowling. Bowling in Egypt is like bowling anywhere, complete with cigarette haze and loud noises. The only difference is that bowling shoes are an alien concept, and therefore most of us attempted to roll the balls down the lanes in sandals, and sometimes barefoot. I have not bowled in years -- I do not believe I shall do so again. I am a bad bowler. Of course, I am an ever worse pool player, and somehow Sameh (an Egyptian guy from the men's dorms) managed to rope me into a game. He won both times, the second only because Wes shot the eightball into the wrong pocket.

Afterwards, we went out to a Lebanese restaurant, where I ate a delicious cheese sandwich (kind of like a grilled cheese wrap, only better) and introduced my classmates to the concept of olive oil and vinegar together in one bowl. That was sacrilege to Eric, but he ate it too and so he's just a hypocrite. Karim, an Egyptian fellow who graduated from the engineering college at the University last year, drove us back to the dorms, and told us how honking and flashing lights actually has meanings in Alexandria (more on driving here, later). I am sixty percent sure he made it up, but hey, I have no idea.

Then, it was Andrea's birthday. Everyone met at a bar on the Corniche called "Mermaid," where the DJ changed the music to fit the majority nationality (hint: it wasn't Egyptian) and where one shot of anything is more expensive than one cold beer. You only have two choices in Egypt: Stella, which is bigger and tastes better, or Meister, which is a dark-but-not-really beer with a higher alcohol content and a worse taste. Most kids drank Stella -- I stuck with water. The night started off with a friend teaching us all the words she knew in American Sign Language, which are "wolf," "pretty," "higher education," "girl," "boy," "lesbian," "lunch," "where's my money, bitch," and "what now, bitch." Someone else threw in "Jew," "cookie," "dance," and "whore." When we began dancing, it was a relatively normal affair -- it wasn't until Abe decided to play the game "I sign something and you dance it" that things got weird. "Jew boy cookie dance" was the strangest dance by far, but Matta signed "lesbian wolf bitch" at me, too.

A word on the dancers. All but one of us was from the US. Most of us danced like your average white American early adults, with hip movement and swaying and bopping galore. Karim, the tall, skinny Egyptian hipster, danced like a maniac but in a totally odd way that somehow managed to look good although goofy (something about his limbs being so goddamn long). Matta, on the other hand, tore up the dance floor and probably also some discs in his back. That man dances like a fool. Karim worked as a bouncer for a couple of years and even he confessed that he has never seen anyone dance quite as badly as Matta, and you can imagine that he's seen some pretty awful folks. Matta, oh Matta. His famous line (most of his lines were good, but this was the best) was "Churn that butter, wolf bitch!" And yes, he did make a churning dance to go along with it.

Funny thing was, we were all completely sober. Well, not all of us. Some of the boys left, found a liquor store, got wasted off of cheap, Egyptian vodka, and came back to be completely obnoxious tools. But those of us dancing and having a great time? We were sober, sadly enough. I'm sure our shenanigans made us look drunk, but we were far from it. There was a table full of Egyptian men sitting, watching us, and also, in an alcove right next to the dance floor, was a man and his wife, who was wearing a hijab and an abaya. We must have been quite a sight for them. They were definitely watching us with a mix of wonder, confusion, and a bit of fright.

Anyway. It was a good night. "Clubbing," as you might call it, in Egypt is fun. Apparently they don't make a big deal out of drunk driving, though, because Karim complained the whole way as he was driving us back to the dorms that he didn't get drunk that night, and "tomorrow is so far away." Also, if we ever get locked out of the dorms (we technically have a curfew, and they do lock the doors at night), he offered us a place to crash at his apartment, which is just down the street. We may end up having to take him up on it, one day. I fear the Egyptian dorm keepers are a little... inflexible in their curfew rules.

Three posts in one day, imagine that! Won't happen again, most likely. Revel in my fleeting talkativeness.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

bint hindiyya miyya miyya

The weekend past we took a trip over to Sinai. It took us twelve hours by bus to get from Alexandria to Dahab, a little town on the peninsula with a very strangely hippie feel. I mention the time it took not just because it was a long-ass bus ride, but because driving across the entire country of Egypt takes less time than it took for me to drive from Washington, DC to Vermont. Humorous, really. I slept the whole way there, since we left at ten pm (more like eleven, since Egyptian time is permanently lagging) and there was no way I was going to stay up for a consecutive forty-eight hours. Sleeping on a bus is pretty difficult, though, I must admit -- I'm really happy that I managed to steal a blanket from Delta on the flight over here, because those things are extraordinarily easy to roll up and stick in a bag, and they're remarkably warm considering how thin they are. They're also flame-retardant, which is a bonus I'm hoping never to need.

Our hostel, and I do say hostel, because hotel is way too generous a term for the places we've been staying lately, was called the Crazy Camel Camp. It's run by a European woman, and the rooms are nicely sized but there are no blankets or towels and the sheets probably hadn't been washed in the last month or so. But hey, I wasn't there for the room, and although our bathroom light didn't work (peeing in the dark is really hard) it was okay with my Delta blanket. We had three girls in our room, and one of the boys' rooms had four men living together -- three students and our bus driver. The majority of the students stayed at the Penguin House, about ten minutes away from the Crazy Camel, which was a considerably nicer-looking building but about the same quality of rooms. It was attached to a pretty decent restaurant where we ate breakfast every morning, and hung out for a few nights on the rooftop, playing Arabic Scrabble (do not do it, it's harder than everyone says).

The first night we were there, a group of us took a trip up into the mountains for a "Bedouin" dinner, involving a camel ride with two barefoot overseers aged eight and seven, both named Mohammed. Camels are smelly and odd, and it is very difficult to take pictures from a moving camel, but as touristy a thing as it was to do, it was pretty fun. Dinner was the most amazing food I've had since I got to Egypt -- normal as far as type goes but miles more savory than what we get at the dorms. Our guide, though, was what made the night. His name was Ramadan and his brother's name was Juma3 ("Friday," and yes, we made the obvious jokes, "What's your name on Monday?"), and while they weren't sure what to make of us at first we had a great groove going as the night wore on. I mean, a group of college-aged white kids, out in the hippie town in Sinai: we obviously could have been the average folks looking for a great time, drinking and being obnoxious, but when we talked to Ramadan and Juma3 in Arabic, not English, I think they were pleasantly surprised. They were also pretty happy when we chose topics like Islamic politics and history, Bedouin culture, and dialect differences between Alexandria and Sinai and the Gulf. Ramadan has a pretty good sense of humor, too. "Bint hindiyya miyya miyya," was one of his great quotes, meaning "Indian girls are amazing." Marriage propositions and other silliness also had their moments, but he only had three camels to his name (Shakespeare, Bob Marley, and Ahmad) and S demanded two hundred. "Miyya miyya, firakh jama3iyya!"

The next day, we split into two groups: one went snorkeling to Blue Hole, while we went on a desert safari to the Colored and White Canyons. We drove over a hundred kilometers per hour through sand, weaving and bobbing and all sorts of other shenanigans, playing "follow the leader" and other games. It was entertaining for sure, although hot as hell. S and Karim were fasting, which was really, abhorrently tough for them -- Karim cracked at two pm or so, taking a sip of my water and then quickly downing an entire Coke in more or less one gulp, and finally happily smoking a cigarette. S prayed, though, and stuck with it, which still amazes me when I think about it. She's more or less the most amazing woman I know, for sure.

We went to Ras Mohammed on Saturday, a national park with some fantastic snorkeling. When I imagined a beach and a snorkeling spot, I had in mind something like Hawaii, because that's what I know. Instead, we found nothing but sand, hot sand, and howling winds, and a very strong current. Good fun, but I was more concerned about not getting sucked out to sea. We changed spots, and I noticed that we had a fellow in a suit and sunglasses accompanying us in the bus. There was a gun under his jacket, I knew, but it wasn't until he walked past that I noticed it was not just a pistol but an MP5. A bit of a shock, but I'm a dork and I thought it was awesome. My joy was short-lived, however, as a friend developed a breathing problem and weakness in her left arm, and another friend sliced open his foot on the reef. We took a trip to the hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, which was an experience, and then it was time to go back to Dahab.

Saturday night, however, was the worst night of my life. We ate some delicious Indian food and I realized I was not feeling well. I went back to our room and tried to sleep, but the excruciatingly painful gastrointestinal cramps kept me awake and literally in tears. I had to call the residential coordinator at one in the morning, then she had to call a doctor, and I ended up having to receive emergency injections via a very pleasantly painful IV. The whole village apparently came to watch me cry and then man up in front of the doctor, because not only was the residential coordinator there, but the deputy program manager, my colloquial Arabic teacher, an Egyptian friend, and the bus driver all paid a visit to my door. After the injections and some apple juice and crackers, I finally slept until I got kicked out of the room at noon. Then I slept for the rest of the day in another room, and we made our way to Mount Mousa by bus.

I did not want to make the climb up the mountain, and the friend we took to the hospital for chest pains had a bout of vomiting on the bus, so our friend with the MP5 and our bus driver put her and me up in a hotel room for a few hours. They also picked us up the next morning, which was highly entertaining to be escorted in and out of a hotel by a man with a submachine gun. I sat up front on the bus to avoid nausea, ironically right next to our special travel buddy, and managed to surprise him by naming his type of gun.

But all in all, our trip to Dahab was fabulous. I'm bummed I missed out on the mountain climb and St. Katherine's Monastery, as well as what apparently was a great Saturday night at the "Dance Cave," but sickness aside it was a great time. The bus trip wasn't bad, either -- on the way there, I was asleep, and the time on the way back flew by with me being a total dork and my friend (no longer vomiting and now consuming bags upon bags of Chipsy) tolerating my foolishness. And to be honest, I'm pretty nutty, here in Egypt. Go figure.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

look, a foreigner!

I have an hour and a half until my first oral exam, and instead of singing Shereen for that whole time I am just going to continue with this. We do have a lot of catching up to do, Internet.

I am trying to revive my vocabulary of big, complicated English words, but I feel like I'm falling short. My vocabulary of big, complicated Arabic words is nonexistent, though, so really I guess I'm still vaguely ahead of the game. Arabic is difficult to remember, for me, because there are very few cognates (Spanish? I could be fluent by now.) and a lot of things just don't stick. Not to mention, when you speak to people in the street in fosha, they stare at you awkwardly because they really, eighty percent of the time, do not understand fosha. Our speaking capabilities have gone down the toilet, mostly because when we do talk, it's a verbal mash of formal and colloquial Arabic, understandable to us students but largely incomprehensible to the majority of citizens. We meet the occasional sahib who knows some fosha from his university days, but taxi drivers? The raees of the microbus? The guy selling you pomegranates? Forget it, man. I do apologize in advance for any weird, convoluted English grammatical constructions I may invent, because I imagine that will be a reflection of my Arabic thought process working its merry way into my general language skills.

Our first week in Alexandria was an eye-opener for a lot of students. I really, honestly, had very few preconceptions of what life would be like in Egypt, and what little I had imagined was vague and more of an emotional ideal than actual thoughts. All I know is that it was not what I expected, but I can't tell you what, exactly, I expected because I don't know myself. Still, one schoolmate took one look at our dorm building the night we arrived and went, "Oh, shit." It's a large concrete slab, much like the rest of Egypt, with absolutely no character save the police shack outside and the group of men sitting on plastic chairs who seem to have taken up permanent residence in a spot where they can get a glimpse of young girls walking to class every day. But I mean, hey, it's a dorm, and Egypt once had some pretty strong Communist leanings, so it's no surprise that the newer apartments and such are functional and devoid of personality. St. Mark's College, on the other hand, is very pretty, and right across the street (behind an iron fence) and affords a nice view at which to stare longingly. But I don't speak French, and that's a French school, so what can you do, eh?

Alexandria is not like Cairo. It's more open, at least the closer you are to the sea, and there are a lot less foreigners. People stare at you everywhere you go. I have seen one group of white folks walking by the Library, and that's about it. The others, who obviously do not belong, are us and the other study abroad students who are arriving in large part this week. I feel bad for the others (not in our program) because as we discovered last night at dinner, they do not speak Arabic very well, and we can at least get by. It's a bummer for them because a) we cannot speak English here and b) while Egyptians know "hello" and "how are you" very well, any more advanced English requires education in the sciences, since those exams (and classes, in the medical school) are in English. So, yes, like I said earlier, good luck trying to work your way around the language barrier.

Being a woman here is... difficult. We get stared at more than the men, which is not surprising. I imagined it would be worse. I thought I'd get harassed constantly, but it has generally been limited to some catcalls and a lot (and I do mean a lot) of staring. It's blatant leering, too, not just what I would call staring, because leering has that creepy connotation that simple staring lacks. I wouldn't mind being stared at. I mind being leered at. It's not really a nice feeling to know that conversations stop when you walk by and the shabaab follow you for a few feet before they figure out you're really not interested. There are people who will turn their heads to gawk at you as they're walking by, which is not very subtle and, dare I say, incredibly rude. The ladies here aren't much nicer, sometimes, because although they're not checking you out, some of them have this look of absolute disdain as their imperial gaze sweeps over you, and if you ain't wearing a hijab then Allah save you from Madame and her judgments. Also, girls with hair on their arms are like girls with Chewbacca legs back in the States -- if you're wearing short sleeves and you have hair, it's considered pretty gross.

But folks are generally really nice. You get the occasional groper, the occasional asshole, the occasional fellow who shoves his way to the front of the line because lines don't exist in Egypt and also because he's a man and you're a woman and by law of nature he comes first, but people are people, and there's kind ones too. Egyptians like to help people, and if you're lost or if you need help, be prepared for a long, ten-minute help session. Sometimes people will just grab you by the hand and lead to where you need to be, which is awkward for those of us who aren't used to touching but very normal here. Speaking of touching, the bro love is intense -- you see guys walking around with linked arms, arms around each others' shoulders, holding hands, but without any sort of sexual implication. The American guys find that a little weird (a lot weird).

The girls in our dorms are all sweethearts. They're very loud and very giggly, and they're quite tolerant of our bumbling Arabic. Unfortunately for me, my roommate doesn't get back until next week, and some woman came in and rubbed the mold off my wall with a wet rag, but that doesn't get rid of the MOLD ON MY WALL that will probably grow back within a few days. And I don't know the words for "mold" or "fumigation" so I'm more or less up shit creek without a paddle.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

the rebirth of procrastination

Well hello, Internet. Long time no talk. I've been bad about posting on this thing, and I think I may just have to fix that. As I stared up at my dark ceiling last night, wondering vaguely about whether or not I'd get a fungal infection from the mold growing on my wall, I realized that I'm going to forget everything I did here unless I write it down. And hell, I've been searching for a way to avoid doing the piles of homework on my desk (ten solid hours of it on Tuesday), so what better way than chronicling my adventures? ... except they're not really adventures. I'm not an adventurer.

Let's start at the beginning, and do this in installments. First off, we have Cairo, and the gloriously crappy two days we spent there. Cairo was not a good idea, and my pick of hostel was an even worse one. The rooms were hot as hell, and I got eleven mosquito bites the first night there. On the bright side, we only paid like, fifty Egyptian pounds each for the two nights, which amounts to ten USD or so. Not bad. And I'll admit, the room was cleaner than most hostels.

We hung around with some kids from our program who were there early, too, one of whom is an extraordinarily tall, skinny, white dude who attracted many stares from many people, including the airport police who took one look at him and went "enta taweel," which is Arabic for "You are tall." Thanks buddy, didn't notice before.

Our first meal was at a popular joint called Gad. It was freaking amazing, especially since we were all starving, but since we were sitting outside on the street (and I do mean literally, on the street, with tables and chairs and everything in the middle of traffic) we had to sit there and wait until sundown like everyone else to dig in. That was an excruciating 45 minutes. Our food was right in front of us, with delicious smells wafting up to our noses through the tinfoil and plastic, and the most we could do was watch the flies devour the meal we so longingly desired. As soon as one woman cracked a Coke, though, it was like an eating contest -- everyone managed to tuck away half a chicken in less than twenty minutes, maybe even fifteen. And us, the table of obviously not-Egyptians, made our poor waiter's life a bit difficult when we paid in very large bills (the bank only gives you big bills) and made him run around trying to find fakka for us.

The second day was when S and I overslept by an hour, and all four of us went out into the city to look around. We walked down the filthiest-smelling (and looking) street I have ever seen, and found our way into Islamic Cairo from Downtown. It was har neek, as they say, fucking hot, and we got lost in some back streets that led to some folks' houses. A group of gals was nice enough to show us the way to Khan el-Khalili market, though, which was exceedingly kind given that they were on their way to visit their father in the hospital. Khan el-Khalili is big, narrow, and full of touristy trinkets, although there is a wonderful little store which I want to revisit, that sells the most gorgeous tunics on the face of the planet. I want the red one, hanging from the ceiling on a mannequin -- I know exactly which one, surprise, surprise. All in all, that was pretty entertaining, what with S being mistaken for a Spaniard (she doesn't speak Spanish, and the advice on where to find the "salida" was pretty much a mystery to her) and C being complimented on being a pimp with three girlfriends. I also caught a very obvious pickpocket, who sidled up to me, looked pointedly down at my bag, into my amused gaze, then back down at my bag. He was not the world's craftiest thief, that's for sure.

We took a little trip to see the Nile that night, which was pretty but really not much to look at. Dinner was at the Hilton, which was swanky like usual, and as expensive as Anna Nichole Smith must have been, but it was amazingly wonderful to be able to eat the salad and not worry about whether that crunching was from the food or from the dirt or from something else you don't really want to know about. Also, they had fabulous desserts, which I of course devoured to the point of bursting. Note to future travellers: don't buy water at the Hilton -- buy it somewhere else for like, two guinean, and bring it with you. Ignore the offended garcon.

The second day was a half day -- we took the train up to Alexandria at two, which was great. Three others joined us, fresh off the plane from the States. A friend and I got dropped off at the rear entrance of the train station, though, and had a rather heart-stopping half hour or so while we tried to figure out a) where we were, b) how to get where we needed to go, and c) how to drag our elephantine suitcases with us up and down two flights of stairs. We made the train, sat in first class (another ten USD) and enjoyed the two hours or so it took to chug our pleasant, air-conditioned way up to Alex. Got picked up at the train station by Khalid and some of the Egyptian boys, dropped off at the dorms, and slept.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

sitting at gate a4...

There is a child sitting across from me in his mother's lap, staring at me and eating a Kleenex. That can't taste too great. Of course, JFK sucks enough to make me want to eat a Kleenex, but I've had enough of those things for a while.

... holy fuck, I'm moving to Egypt.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW