our apartment! شقتنا

It turns out that the school overbooked housing, so we're no longer staying at the Marwa Palace. "Palace" is a name meant to make up for a lack of stars. One boy got stuck in their elevator for twenty minutes. When the elevator finally arrived at a floor, the doorman refused to open it, because it was stuck at the girls floor. Also, their windows are the size of water bottles, and they don't have internet :)


Now we are living in the Masri Towers. Our apartment is on an island in the Nile called Zamalek, across from downtown. The neighborhood has cute cafes, pubs, great bookstores, cheap grocery stores, and a small expat community. The one downside to this neighborhood is that we aren't forced to use our Arabic as much as in Dokki. In other ways it's easier to use our Arabic though, because it's not so sketchy, and I'm more comfortable talking to strangers. Also, we're allowed to have boys in our apartment. hehe.


The video is our sketchy elevator :)



The dining room/kitchen. Notice the bar!


Living room. The breakfast nook!

ridin dirty

Despite what outwardly may seem like chaos in a metropolis of sixteen million, the city of Cairo actually seems to function extraordinarily efficiently. The traffic is often bumper to bumper (which takes on a whole new meaning here) during rush hour which is between the hours of 12:00 noon and and about 10:00 p.m. However the taxis charge a very fair price, never more than 4 dollars, allowing those without substantial means to travel around the city easily at any time of day. The taxis themselves allow their passengers an outlet to vent, as we haggle the price for any trip, flying into minor rages over their gall to charge us 50 cents to a dollar too much. The taxi drivers are able to, in turn, release their rage on passing drivers as they swerve around them knocking into them just enough to inform them of whose right of way it really was. A little game of bumper cars. On more than one occasion I have been reminded of the ability cars have in the Harry Potter books to squeeze in between small spaces using magic. I swear that on at least one occasion I saw a normal sized taxi squeeze in between two cars that can't have had an inch over 2 feet between them. They just seem to push aside objects that are in their way, whether they're other cars, lampposts or pedestrians. Despite this, I have yet to witness any serious accidents nor hear of them from any third party. Additionally there is one noise distinctly missing from the din: sirens. I have not seen one ambulance, one firetruck or one actual police car. There are men with guns everywhere you look, but no actual police cars. This leads me to believe that Cairo has no crime, no accidents and no fires; perhaps by allowing everyone the outlet of screaming all day long and smashing cars up at night they have eradicated the kind of pent up anger that leads to disaster? The West should investigate.

khan al khalili

"You have magic eyes--do you want an Egyptian husband?"
"This shop--everything free for you"

"Spice Women!"

"All I want is your money"

"I don't want to marry you, I only want your money."

"Shakira!"