Just as a disclaimer, I apologize if parts of this don't make sense or spelling is wrong or anything. I haven't been feeling well and I am on some medication that makes me a little...off.

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted! Surprise, surprise, I have been really busy! The last thing that I left off was Coptic Cairo Day. This was an amazing day and I really enjoyed it. We took a van with our whole security team (usually 3 security guards provided by the Egyptian government armed with automatic weapons) to the entrance of Coptic Cairo. There, we regrouped and prepared for our tour. The thing that was really neat about these tours is that we did them ourselves. We were divided into...7 groups I think and then in each group there were 6 or 7 people and we each researched one of the sites inside Coptic Cairo. It was really cool and a lot easier than getting a tour guide for roughly 50 people. We learned a lot about Christianity in Egypt as well as Judaism. There are a lot more Christians in Egypt than I thought. Most of them are  Coptic, which is a really old denomination that is very orthodox.

After Coptic Cairo, we went to Abduh's house for lunch. I don't think I have explained who Abduh is yet though in the past few posts. He is really close with professor Sullivan and basically does everything for us while we are here. He organizes all our trips and goes everywhere with us. He is HUGE too! He is like...at least 6'5" and probably 250 or something like that but is the nicest person you will ever meet. He is such a big teddy bear and all the students love him. But we went to his house for a huge lunch that his wife cooked us and it was amazing!!! We had turkey (I LOOOOOOOOVE turkey!!!) and all these other weird things that I didn't really know what they were. We just hung out and played some games and chatted for a while too.

We left Abduh's house and went back to the hotels for a while to rest and then we went on feluka rides at dusk, which was beautiful. A feluka is basically just a big sailboat. We had like 20 people on each and just rode on the Nile for like an hour. Seeing the sun set was really amazing. Uh...thats really all there is to say about that. After that, we just hung out in someone's hotel room and then went to sleep.

Sunday I had a free morning cause I had already gone to the Egyptian Museum on Friday. I slept in till 12:00ish and then just hung out for a while. At 3, we left for our dialogue with students at the University of Cairo, or UC. Their week is Sunday-Thursday, just FYI. Going there was a really life changing experience. We had a really deep conversation about everything, but we talked a lot about terrorism, westernization, and how each place perceives the other. It really was eye-opening. We were asked to pick one word that described our country and its culture and the students from the US decided on individualism. The Egyptians picked religion. They didn't pick Islam, just religion in general. I think that right there goes to show how different it is for our cultures to understand each other when religion is really only a private practice in the US but a huge communal issue in Egypt and much of the Middle East. Anyways....afterwards, a few of the students came up to talk to me and told me that I was very well cultured and they thought my ideas were well constructed and I was well educated! WOOT WOOT! I seriously was so happy when they said that. SOOOOO HAPPY!!!!! I hope that I was able to break the American stereotype for just one person that day. We just came back and did homework after that and went to bed.

Now....I am sick. I got sick Monday morning at Arabic class so I left and came back to the hotel and slept all day yesterday and slept almost all day today. It has been so nice but I have missed 2 arabic classes so I will have to work to catch up on those. Other than that everything is good. We go to Luxor on Thursday night and will be SUPER busy till like Tuesday of next week so I am not sure when my next post will be.
XOXO
Katie