American Embassy, Nile Party Cruise, and Other Tangents

The week following the Alexandria trip was action packed. Actually it was really more of the weekend following the Alexandria trip that was action packed. The week consisted of me going to class and then coming back and hearing Oliver's adventures in this ridiculous city. One of the days (Wednesday?) he came out and experienced the campus. I do not think I have really discussed the campus too much, other than when I first went out there.

The American University in Cairo is the elite private school in Egypt and it is where the wealthy send their kids. Marketers have taken note of this fact. On certain days of the week, the campus is like a fair/expo. On these days, you can expect to find Sprite, Coca-Cola (same company, different brands, so different booths), Apple, Segway, various travel companies, random DVD vendors, and clothing dealers (I think). EDIT: Microsoft was on campus today (5 April) preparing what looks to be a 'Vista' Booth. I have not caught the pattern of when it happens, but I will, I will. The campus also brings live musicians to perform during the school day- not in the evening when people could attend, but 10 or 11 in the morning. Maybe most schools have this, but since Ohio State has such a large campus, I do not see it go on too much? Tangent, sorry.

The same morning of the day Oliver came to campus with me, we went to the American Embassy. We had to get our apartment lease notarized since I would not be able to sign it in front of the Realtor. This was my first time going to the embassy. Trying to describe what the embassy looks like, 'ominous' is the word that jumped in my mind, but I think that is too negative sounding. I don't know- it was a big, windowless, concrete-looking building with heavy security. There was something weird about the giant, black, iron American seal hanging over the entrance. It was a nice building inside, though! There was a very large mural that was a combination of a red, white, and blue eagle and a Cleopatra-with-wings-esque design. Getting the lease notarized involved a lot of waiting. There was a woman with a heavy Amerian accent sitting near us complaing about, if we heard right, her dog getting stabbed. She was a character. Eventually the lease was notarized and we ran out of there because we had to get back to the dorm to catch the bus. I had to check in my phone and camera when I went in so I was not able to get pictures of anything- I guess I could have taken some of the exterior, sorry.

Wednesday was my friend Steve's 21st birthday. We celebrated it on Thursday with a Nile Party Cruise. If you walk along the shore of the Nile at night/in the evening on the downtown side, people will try to sell two things to you: 1. A horse-carriage ride or 2. A boat ride on the Nile. This is especially true if you look like a tourist. It is comparable to walking through Khan al-Khalili, just without the sales pitches that use random non-Arabic words- "Hey, Spice Girl, you are very pretty, come to my shop." " 'ello mate!" "Amigo, Rolex?" (the last one actually happened in Alexandria, not in Cairo). The shore is usually lined with these boats that you can rent by the hour. When they are out on the water, they are hard to miss- they have bright, multi-colored, flashing lights and are usually blasting techno music. We rented a boat for two hours.

The boats lining the shore (pic stolen from Rachel):

Steve is the one front and center with the striped jacket. You cannot see it too well, but we bought him a Cuban cigar (they sell those here):

This is what I recall happening. It was about 1:30am and I looked over the side of the boat to see a police boat pulling up next to our boat. It cut its engines and drifted into our boat, kind of ramming us. One of the officers then started yelling at our boat's captain (he wasn't really captain, more of a Giligan-esque character). I asked one of the Egyptian guys to translate to me what was being said. The officer said something to the likes of "WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT SO LATE?? YOU KNOW YOU CANNOT BE OUT HERE AT THIS TIME!!! I OUGHT TO RIP UP YOUR LICENSE RIGHT HERE!!!!" The police boat then sped away, which I took a shot of:

We then went back to shore. We were only out for about an hour and a half while we paid for two, but apparently there is a curphew or something.

EDIT: This is a rough recreation of the path our boat took.