What's Up Everyone?

Make sure you look at the post before this, as I posted a ton of pictures I should have done a long time ago. They're awesome!

I had a fun night last night. It's our last weekend here in Cairo before we leave for travel component, and it was Steve Kool's 24 birthday, and we have a ton of stuff to do this weekend for finals and essays and stuff next week, so we all decided to go out last night. So some of us went to Applebees on a boat, and it was nice - very American feeling. Then we went to a movie theatre where we met the rest of our group, and they saw The Last King of Scotland and The Queen, but we weren't really excited about any of them, but one of the girls I had dinner with, Esther, was really excited about seeing "Ghost Rider" so soem of us saw that, and it was pretty much the worst movie (short of As Good As It Gets and most other films with that one guy) I've ever seen. It was creepy and bad, but we had fun.

Oh yeah and then earlier yesterday we watched a movie as part of class called "The Yacoubian Building," a really famous movie by Egyptians about Egypt (I read the book a couple weeks ago). We watched it with about 6 Muslims from the website www.IslamOnline.com, writers and editors and such. Then we had lunch with them and spent time talking with them, about life and Egypt and such. We had a really great time. One of the women I talked to was wearing the full necab (face and hand coverings), and she was the first woman I've talked to like that. It was really interesting, as she's 24, very very confident and forceful (in a personality type way), and is a full blown feminist (we realized this once we started talking to her). It was fascinating. She's the editor for the Family/Women section of the website. Hopefully we'll be able to take a tour of the place after we get back.

I slept in this morning til noon, which was nice. I LIKE SLEEPING! I'm at an coffee shop right now, and had some french press coffee for the first time in my life. I really like it!

So I think I'm really going to miss Egypt. Today is their holy day and they broadcast over loudspeakers their sermons from the mosques (they all start at the same time) around noon and I was laying in bed, forgetting that this is what's going on. So I was laying there thinking "there's NO way the call to prayer can be going on this long! (about 20 minutes into it). Finally I got up and went into our living room and the girls mentioned it was the sermon. I sat on our patio with a cup of tea listening to the broadcast and the sounds of the birds chirping and the cats meowing, the people yelling “aaeeeeeyyyyshhhhhhh” to sell bread, and all the cars honking, and it hit me that I will wake up in my quiet room in Rio Rancho and truly miss the chaos that is Egypt. I knew this feeling of attachment would probably happen, but there have been enough times I’ve woken up and hated it all, so I wasn’t sure I would end up really loving it. I felt that way last night too as we walked across a bridge over the Nile and there were cars everywhere and we walked by a wedding party taking pictures on the bridge, and there were lights everywhere and boats floating along the Nile, and the city felt so alive. Have you ever seen the first episode of 6 Degrees? I felt a lot like that girl, like I was a part of the whole city around me. What a beautiful feeling! The woman I spend time with at the Geriatrics Center told me that anyone who drinks of the Nile water comes back. I feel this way, as though I am falling in love with Egypt, like it is my country, my city, my home. I have always hesitated calling myself Irish because I’m not really – I hadn’t been to the country before last summer, and how can someone call a place home if they’ve never even been there? Well, now I think I’m not Irish anymore, I’m Egyptian. Sure I don’t know the language or have a drop of Egyptian blood in me, but I feel so invested in this place. Maybe it’s just enchantment, but that’s alright with me. If I had to choose enchantment over nothing, I’d take enchantment any day.