Sunday! Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Recap of Sunday:

We went to downtown Cairo. The traffic is intense. Crossing the street in said-traffic is insane. It is a lot like Frogger. Seriously, you just walk out in moving traffic. The trick is to look confident. If you do not look confident, the drivers will not stop or slow down for you. That means once you start to go, you go. There is no stepping back- hesitation shows fear and Caironese drivers do not have time for that. At least they drive like they don’t… I do not have any good pictures of the traffic (taking pictures of the traffic would alert the drivers of my touristy-ness which could only imply that I would be likely to hesitate), but imagine four lanes of moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic in a three-lane road- the little space is left between the cars is used as a lane for motorcyclists. Now walk out into it. Frogger.

We picked up some Kushari (according to Wikipedia, Kushari “is a popular traditional Egyptian national dish… It consists of a base of rice, brown lentils, chickpeas, macaroni, and a topping of Egyptian garlic and vinegar and spicy tomato sauce [salsa]”) and went to the American University’s old campus which is near Tahrir Square. We ate in the courtyard. Kushari is delicious (and super cheap!) and the old campus is beautiful. It is now used as administrative offices for the university.

Lemon Schweppes! Cat!

(This is not my picture- I stole it from my friend, Jessica)

I had some more pictures of the campus, but the camera did that thing again where it cannot open up the files... I think I have figured out how to prevent it, I just do not know how to recover them. You are going to have trust me on the campus’s beauty.

We then went to Garden City, which is directly south of downtown. It is home to a lot of the government buildings, including the Parliament and the Ministry of Interior. The security in this area is very high. Everywhere you look there is a security outpost or trucks full of young guards. There are guards and outposts throughout the city, but it is much more intense in this area. Garden City is also home to a lot of the embassies, including the American Embassy. You cannot take pictures of government buildings in Egypt so again, I have nothing to show. When I took a picture of a street in the area, a police officer waved at me and told me not to take pictures. That is why it is important to wear sunglasses- you can pretend to not see the officer until after you take the picture and they will have no idea. Here are some of the pictures I took in Garden City:

We walked back to the dorms:

This is the sqaure-sort-of-thing on the west side of the October 6th Bridge. This one should be viewed larger (click on it). The bridge commemorates the first day of the 1973 Yom Kippur/October/Ramadan War. I assume the statute is of Sadat, but I do not know for sure.

That night, the dorm sponsored a program called ‘Bedouin Night’. The place we went to was heavily aimed at tourists. You sit on floor cushions in a big tent, while the employees try to get everyone to dance to techno music. That is how the bedouins live... That being said, we got to ride horses in the desert, near the pyramids, at night. Someone got thrown off the horse and got hurt in the group before us, so we had to leave early and did not get the chance to ride up right next to the pyramids. It was still a lot of fun- we went up to a dune that overlooked the pyramids and all of Cairo.

This is looking down on part of the "bedouin camp" (Pyramids in the back-left)

Inside of the Bedouin encampment

I do not have any pictures from when I was on the horse...sorry.

I am going to post more tomorrow to catch things up, I am tired now.