Welcome to Egypt

We landed in a very hazy Cairo at about 11:30pm. Then, I had my first experience with Cairo’s traffic. Rather than driving in between the lines in a multi-lane road, drivers seem to center their cars on a line. Everyone does this, though, so there is a system. Eventually we made it the dorm. My roommates and I were all on the same flight so there was no awkward moment of barging in the room in the middle of the night.
The dorm is in Zamalek, a more upscale section of the city, directly west of downtown-Cairo:

(The images get bigger if you click on them)

This is the view from my room. There is some sort of celebration going on at the church as I write this:

(I am told it is a Coptic Church)

However there is an artistic-fence-shield contraption on the outside of the window, so the view is slightly obstructed:

I will put up more pictures of the dorm itself later... It is a neat, old building.

Today, I wondered with a couple of guys around the part of the city where our dorm is. I tried speaking in Arabic with a taxi driver. Failed. Miserably. He asked if we wanted a cab and when I said no, he began following us, asking why we didn’t want to take a cab. He was on a mission to get us in the cab, so I felt like I needed to strongly decline. I stopped walking and he asked why I didn’t want the cab. My mind went completely blank. I kept asking him to repeat himself over and over while I thought of a response, a trick I learned in Arabic class. Nothing came to mind. My professors would be disappointed. EDIT: Maybe he was just trying to mess with us? "Oh, they can say 'No' in Arabic, let's see what else they know!"

I took a few pictures of some large mosques (they are everywhere), but for some reason they did not turn out on my camera. I can see the thumbnail of it, but when I open it up, only 1/3 of the picture shows. If anyone has any ideas, tell me. This picture kind of turned out. No mosques in it, though:

(That is the Nile. That may actually be a minaret to the right. Notice the haze- it was noonish when I took this. Also, notice the copious amount of satellite dishes on the rooftops- nearly every building is like that):

Sidenote: The celebration at the church is a wedding. I can see the bride right now.

We stumbled across a street full of embassies- they all have one guard standing outside with either a Cold War-era rifle or an AK-47 slung over their shoulder. One of the guys I was with went to take a picture of the Iraqi embassy and the guard started yelling at him. We quickly walked away. None of us remembered that you cannot take pictures of embassies... We ate chicken shawarma at some random place. I had a pineapple-soda. Converted, the meal cost less than $2. I think I am going to like it here.

I picked up an empty pack of cigarettes off the ground on my way back. Apparently Egypt is in the midst of some hardcore anti-smoking campaign:

(Yes, that man is attached to a respirator.)

Later, I went to a hookah bar that is just down the street from the dorm. It was very nice, we sat outside. The temperature dropped down to about 60 degrees so it was almost chilly. Their hookah is very nice, but very intense. You could feel it immediately. We had an orange flavor and a cantelope flavor. I probably should not go back for awhile with my asthma... I had a delicious lemon juice drink- it is not lemonade, just juice. I did not bring my camera, but everyone else in the group did. I will steal some of their pictures at some point.

The plan for tomorrow is to adventure to Islamic Cairo and Old Cairo... we’ll see what happens.