4-0

For those of you that are not aware Egypt is currently playing in the African Cup of Nations. It is similar to the World Cup except just countries of Africa. The Egyptian football team (soccer for you Americans) destroyed Algeria last night in the semi-final match to win 4 to 0. This city went crazy. The love for football here is unlike anything I have ever seen. That passion mixed in with a total disregard or enforcement of traffic laws made last nights win and the hours that followed very exciting. Riots would be the wring term to use because there was no violence, yet it is the only word I can think of to describe it. It is as if the entire city poured out into the streets along with their Egypt gear and flags. Nearly every taxi has an Egyptian flag mounted on it and hundreds of individuals where hanging out of windows waving flags and cheering as if to let all of Africa know that Egypt had won. Eventually the honking and the hollering had stopped but the city is only recharging until the finals with Ghana. If Egypt wins they will become the first county to win the cup 3 times in a row. I have a couple pictures of everything and I make a couple videos.





Today I got up and went to breakfast with a friend here at a place called Cafe Noir. It is about 3 blocks of the Res hall and is more along the tourist lines of places here on the Island. We both got a bottle of water and a full breakfast for a total of 40LE. Long story short is it cost us both a little less then 4 dollars. It is odd getting wrapping my head around the idea that I can spend upwards of 40 pounds on a single meal and understanding its only about 5 dollars worth. I still have the "its 40" thing stuck in my head. One this that is different here is that although they do have a form of currency that divides the pound into 100, similar to cents in American currency, they are hardly used so almost everyplace gives you change rounded to the lowest pound. That part kind of bugs me but I feel bad wanting my 34 piastres (.34 of 1 pound) when I think about it and realize its only like 3 cents.



Two days later...



Citadel and azhar park

We took a trip to the Citadel in Cairo yesterday. More or less is the site was two large mosques (one of the the White Mosque from your Cairo travel guide books) and a fortress wall. It was pretty cool to see the epic scale of architecture and the "view" of the city. It would have been an awesome view but the smog was so bad that day we really couldn't see very far. I posted a video of it to give a better idea of how bad the visibility actually was. It may actually make you at home want to hold your breath. (sorry mom) After the Citadel we went to Azhar park and enjoyed a little over an hour there. It is a very large open green area with a man made pond/lake and a bunch of fountains. We hung out, ate felafell and some of us got ice cream for two pounds from a cart vendor.

cup finals

Last night was the finals of the African cup of nations and Egypt beat Ghana 1-0. This city went crazy. If it was not enough that Egypt defended their title from last year, they have not established a winning streak as this was the third year in a row they have won the cup and therefore will permanently keep it. (A new cup will be made) The streets where packed and there was rioting and celebrating everywhere. Again constant horns until 3am and flags everywhere. I have never seen any group of people express such a passion for something as the Egyptians do for their football.



classes and what I am taking

I got my class schedule set and as of right now I am in alng 111 accelerated Arabic, anthro 247 making of the modern Arab world and peng 301 petroleum geology and exploration. Mondays and Thursdays I only have Arabic but Sundays and Wednesdays I start at 8:30 (which means catching the 7am bus) and I finish as 3:15. For a my full class schedule go to my schedule link on my face book page.

any questions or comments post them on the face book group "phil goes to Egypt" wall. I will try to get more pictures up tomorrow.

The rush to the lazy

Hello again.



I really feel like I have been as busy as the city is and it has been tough to find nice relaxing free time to sit and do some blogging. For the most part everything has been go go go but on a "o ill do it later" type attitude. I have found that its very common to try to get to where you want to be here so that you can be there and not have to do anything. The rush to the lazy. For those of you who don't know, I am not a morning person. So far I have been hitting the sack around 12:30 and getting up about 6:50. I don't have class this semester until 10am but I will have to make the 8am bus everyday to make sure to be there on time. The traffic is really unpredictable and the trip can take between 40min and an hour and 40 min. Religion is way more prevalent here and I think it is rooted in the traffic. The deeper your religion, your faith perhaps you will be able to cross the street with out getting clipped by any of the speeding taxi's or the moped with 4 guys on swerving in between cars, trucks and buses honking non-stop to let others know he is coming up fast. That all being said, the morning this is a pain because unless you want to wait two hours to eat on campus at the half-Egyptian half Americanized places or the over prised cooperate America franchises you have to give yourself enough to hit up a deli or sidewalk shop before making the bus. At least its not cold here- at least respectively to home. We are running about 17 degrees average. For you crazy Americans and your F, that's about 60 or so. It would actually be really nice and most of my clothes are dressed to match the high winds on campus where not a variable I accounted for. The campus is out in the desert therefore there is nothing to stop the wind from gusting pretty hard.



Old Cairo



The other day we took a trip to Old Cairo and got to see some pretty cool looking buildings that where really important at one point or another and have lots of "history." I took some pictures. It was cool to look at, I gave out some ohs and ah's but that was about it. It was neat to stand next to walls that where 1,000 years old but honesty It wasn't super impressive. It was a wall, an old wall, but a wall. I see walls all the time. ( I do not want to hear any reference to these comments in reference to the pyramids- I have not seen pyramids before. I have seen walls)



We also saw some large and very cool churches. Church's here definitely wear the pants when it comes to churches in the States. or at least southern Minnesota. (That being said, the Mosques put the Churches to shame-architecturally) Overall it was cool but I didn't really care to much. I know this may surprise some of you but I didn't get a ton out of it. I did get some Molto though, nom nom nom. (its a bread treat wth some chocolate in it)





The campus- koshery el-omda



So far i have been on campus a couple of days and I am still lost. For the number of students the university has the campus is enormous. The buildings are all very nice and there a lot of water fountains around the grounds. It also has random patches of grass next to patches of irrigated sand with flowers and those are usually just next to sand. I still have no idea what buildings are what because they all have names that are hard to say and remember not to mention things are not labeled well. I should expect that though cause I'm in Egypt. On the way back from campus a group of about six of us got off the bus a little early in Zamalek and went to restaurant near the main road but a street back. It was a really cool place. When we open the door it was if a cloud of Sheesha smoke had just escaped. My meal was stuffed Pigeon with rice. The full meal was 25LE, about 5 dollars.





Horse back riding



Last night I got to go on a trip out to Giza to go horse back riding near the pyramids. It sounded like a really good idea and under a normal situation would have been a fantastic time however I discovered something about myself; I am allergic to horses. Honestly I am not all together sure that is what it was because I have been around horses before but I had a wicked reaction which made the trip rather un-enjoyable. Given that I am still glad I went because I got to See the Pyramids-sorta. It was more of a high class tease. Where we were riding was a little over a half mile from them and although we could see them, it was dark and they where in silhouette. It was still very cool to see their outlines and know that if nothing else so far had slapped me in the face with giant red, white and black Egypt first that moment was it.





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Today I went to the Campus again to get some more stuff done. I set an appointment to change my class schedule. If i get what i ant I will be in Arabic, a class on ancient Egypt and General chemistry 1 for 12 credits. There was another class I wanted to take but it is at the same time as my Arabic class. I also pulled out enough money to get by for food the next week or two, pay the dues for the Alexandria trip (Future blog and photos to come) as well has to have a opening amount for opening a bank account here. I really am in love with the Egyptian pound. Well at that most things Egyptian. With an exchange rate of 1-5.4 whats not to love.




The Nile trip

Tonight a bunch of us went on a Nile Dinner cruise. We where on a very large boat and they served a meal plus dessert and then had culturally appropriate live entertainment for the rest of the night. Some of the acts included but where not limited too a belly dancer as well as a guy with a Sufi like skirt that did a heck of a lot of spinning. They played music with it and the performers would walk around for everyone to take pictures with. Those who where lucky enough to have the Camera guy on board take their picture with the performer where also lucky enough to get suckered into paying the 30LE for a print of it; and they brought them out full size printed and in a nice "to go" folder so how could you really say no?

Hope your enjoying the posts- and questions or comments write on my face book group wall.

I also will have more pictures and videos ( videos are mostly of the performers) up as soon as I can.

Phil

Hello everyone. Thanks for the interest in my trip and I think it is a good idea that this marks not only my first adventure abroad but also my first adventure into the world of blogging, so it may be a little rough. As this is my first post, it might be a little long.

Amsterdam

I left Minneapolis Friday night at 7:45 and fly to Amsterdam. Leaving my mom, dad and sister honestly was really bitter sweet. The flight was long and I didn't sleep. I do have to say though that the movie selection was really good and Matt Damon's "The Informant" is hilarious if you like dry humor. I had a window seat and I was really lucky because the seat next to me was empty so I could stretch out a little more. Once we got out over the Atlantic most people where sleeping and the cabin lights where off. I was able to look out the window and see the stars from a whole new perspective. That was very very cool. I got to Amsterdam at 11am local time and had a 10 hour layover there.

My plan for Amsterdam was to take the train out of the city and take a boat tour and fun stuff like that. That was only a plan though. Unfortunately I really didn't know where I was going or what I was doing. I did manage to get a train ticket (thank you Megan for telling me what to get) however I couldn't understand what I bought or where to go because it printed in Dutch. So basically I just picked a random platform, got on the train and road it till I thought the word on the screen sounded kinda like the name of the place I thought I was going. Long story short I got lost in Amsterdam for a couple hours, got on the wrong train twice but eventually (and luckily) got back to the airport. I did manage to find a large our door mall thing with tons of people- see pictures.

Cairo

I got to Cairo this morning at 2:45 am local time. Driving in Cairo is ridiculous. We litterally almost got into 3 accidents on the way to the dorm. After check-in and security ( the res hall has baggage check and a metal detector-the metal detector doesn't work- to get into the dorm) I was in my dorm room and in bed about 5am. I woke up this morning at 7:30 am when one of my two roommates arrived. (the other roommate Jason was already here).

The day has been packed. I went to breakfast with Jason and another girl we met at a deli a few blocks down the street. Jason and I spent a little over an hour walking around the island of zamalek taking pictures, getting to know each other and attempting not to get hit by speeding cars or micro-buses. The only traffic law that applies on the roads here is the horn. It is the request to cross, the blinker, the confirmation of a taxi pick-up and naturally the get the f&@K out of my way.

later that Afternoon we where able to ride the bus out to the university campus and explore it for a while. The bus was 1.5 hours (which sucks) but it was nice to have the time to talk to the other students. It was pretty funny because as you head towards the New Cairo district the buildings go from moderate to nice, to really shitty, to not finished skeletons, to really nice again. I got my student ID while out there (which now makes this trip legit) and got my taste of the falafel and koshery. Both where pretty good although.

We hurried to catch the bus back to Zamalek for the student meeting and following that was just a large gathering with everyone. Tomorrow a large group is going to go explore old town Cairo. Hopefully the bus will be big enough for everyone to fit. We walked around some market and shops tonight and bought some personal goods, had street corner made swarmas for dinner and the ress hall staff told us where to go to get our cell phones and how to do so. Everyone here has the same kind of phone, a super cheep and very basic little cell phone and everyone has a pay as you go plan. Its should work pretty well.

I hope that this is enough for everyone for a start. I am going on about 3 hours of sleep since Friday morning so I am going to call it a night. I will post the pictures I have taken so far on the face book group.

If you have any questions or comments write them on the wall for the group!

Shokrun and massalaima (thank you and goodbye)

-Phil