Only 6 more days in Egypt...so weird!

I have just come to terms with the fact that I will probably be good about posting blogs frequently and on time. So probably just get used to it.
Thursday...it was so awesome! We learned how to cook this amazingly delicious Egyptian dish called kushri (spelling?). It is pasta and rice and chickpeas and onions all mixed together in homemade tomato sauce. It is really good, so mom, get ready to have some when I get home! To learn how to make this, all the girls went over to Abduh's house after Arabic and his wife had a huge feast prepared for us. It was kushri, baked chicken, vegetables, potato chips, hummus, and pita bread. Before we were allowed to eat though, she went through all the dishes and told us how to cook all of them. They are really pretty simple but taste amazing. All of us devoured the meal afterwards and were so full. We played games with Abduh afterwards and they were so funny. There was this one that was like telephone but with charades and all the people have to go down the line and act out something and the person at the end has to guess what it is. Such an entertaining game. There is another game that we play a lot that is a person puts their hand on their back with their palm facing out. They cover their face with their other hand and then everyone gets behind then and one person slaps their hand. The one person then turns around and has to guess who did it. People were getting pretty into it and it is really funny. After lunch, Abduh took us to a perfume shop. We got a 50% discount there because the owner knows the leaders of our dialogue. They aren't really perfumes though, they are all essential oils that are hand squeezed out of different flowers and stuff. It was a really near experience.

Friday, we went to Alexandria. Alexandria was ABSOLUTELY stunning. The ocean there was so pretty. One thing that was pretty disappointing there though was that the people were rude. We got a lot of comments and like I have said previous times before, it gets really annoying to have people just stare at you and yell American stereotypes at you all day long. All they yell is "howdy", "howdie doodie" "God bless America and nowhere else" and "OBAMA!!!!" over and over again. Ya... so we went to this gorgeous fortress on the tip of the city. It was right on the mediterranean and was absolutely beautiful.

This is a few of us at the fortress. We walked around the city for a bit and got some lunch at the famous fish market. I got grilled shrimp and it was fantastic. Then we walked to the bibliotecha Alexandria. This is probably one of the best libraries in the entire world. They have archives of EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE since 1996!!!!! That is so many websites!!!!!! The technology they have was just unbelievable. Also, they had a museum dedicated to Anwar Sadat, the third president of Egypt but was SUPER popular. Everyone in Egypt loves him, but he got assassinated by a Muslim fundamentalist in a military parade in 1981. The reason that all this is pertinent is because this museum had the suit that he was assassinated in!! It was kinda gory but kinda cool. He cause demolished when we died, people threw grenades at him and shot him like over 10 times so I couldn't believe when they said they had the suit. It was kinda put back together but it was definitely still stained with blood and had lots of tears and bullet holes in it. After we came out of that museum in the library, we got accosted by a bunch of boys that wanted our pictures. It took like 20 minutes and was really annoying but at least they weren't creepy. After the library, we just came back to Cairo and I just fell asleep cause I hadn't slept in like 2 days. 

Saturday, or yesterday, we had a free day. Lauren and I slept in and then went to find this bazaar that we really wanted to go to. It is called the tentmaker's bazaar and it is just a street filed with guys that make wall hangings and stuff like that, but they are all beautifully embroidered. We walked around the whole area before we bought anything. I got the COOLEST tent! It is like 8 inches tall and even has a camel to go with it! haha. I have no idea what I will do with it but I thought it was cool! Then, we met this guy that spoke English and he took us to his workshop to see all the stuff he made. It was so impressive and he basically tore his store apart for us to show us all the stuff he had so we could decide what we wanted to buy. Funny story about this as well, there is the guy in Arabic folklore named Joha the wise fool, or Goha as they call him in Egypt. Our Arabic teacher at Northeastern teaches us these stories about Joha and makes little powerpoints about him with pictures. When Lauren and I were at this store with this guy, we looked down and say that there was a book that had the same pictures of Joha that our teacher uses. The explained to us that he quilted the illustrations for the book and we even saw his picture and a description of him in the back of the book! So we met the guy who animates the book that we use in class in the US! It was kinda weird. 

So we ended up buy some stuff from this guy and then just came back and relaxed the rest of the evening in the hotel. 

Today was our tour of Islamic Cairo. Our tour guide had his PhD from Harvard in Islamic Architecture. He basically knew everything about this entire part of Cairo. It was amazing. We went into a bunch of mosques and saw a lot of really cool monuments. I had already been to a lot of them at night and I thought they looked a lot prettier at night than they did during the day, but it was still really cool. I learned so much history about all of the building. 

This is the first mosque we went in to. It is inactive now but it has an amazing history behind it. 

After the tour of Islamic Cairo, we came back to the hotel and most people took naps. We then went to Al-Azhar park on the outskirts of Cairo, by the citadel. It was a nice park, and basically the only green space that I had seen since being in Egypt. We watched the sunset over the city and then headed back. Now I am here and have to study for my Arabic test tomorrow. I dislike Arabic. So thats really it. We leave for Syria on Friday morning I think and are CRAZY busy after that. We move hotels almost every night. Hopefully I will be able to keep blogging. Comment comment comment!

XOXO

Katie