Today is Wednesday... right. I'm starting to lose track of the days again.

Our two good, free internet sources have disappeared. Both dragon_guardianangel@hotmail.com and 3 Com Mansour have deserted us, and cut off most of our connection with the world outside of Cairo. We've been able to briefly connect to some sources for maybe, five or ten minutes at a time, but we can't be on for hours like we used to be. It's one of the things I'm not so crazy about that comes with being here, but I'm getting used to it. Since typing that, I have discovered that sitting in the restaurant at Flamenco, at the corner table in the back provides for steady internet. Sweet.

Yesterday, after class, we had a few hours to kill before meeting at the Egyptian Museum. April, Joyce and I went over to our favorite falafel place, Fel Fel Beh for a $.40 Sandawitshe Talma9a and took it back to the AUC campus to hang out and eat in the two hours we had. It was nice to just sit and hang out. We talked for a bit and fed the kittens and when 2:45pm rolled around, we joined a group of engineers and walked over to the museum. It's really only about a two-minute walk, but with crossing the streets, it's more like ten. I've gotten the hang of knowing when is a good time to cut in front of which cars and when it's a good time to back off, and where to stand so the cars can go around me. Crossing Huntington Ave. is going to be a breeze after this. We got there kind of early, and baked outside until the rest of the group showed up. That was definitely one of the hottest days yet. We had one of our guides from Luxor back with us, Melinda, and she gave us a thorough historical background of each exhibit we stopped to look at. The best thing was upstairs. In the hallway, there were four large glass cases and each one had a gold-plated box, increasing in size, sitting inside of it. What Melinda told us was that when King Tut was exhumed, his sarcophagus proper was in the smallest box which was inside the next-smallest box, which was in the medium-sized box, which was inside the biggest box. Pretty sweet. She continued to tell us that the archaeologists who went about it had to use whatever measures they could think of, and get into all sorts of embarrassing positions in order to get it out of the tiny tomb when there were directions written in hieroglyphics directing how to disassemble and reassemble it. I think that's pretty funny, but also really awesome to see how the past communicates with the future.

The entire hallway was dedicated to artifacts taken out of his tomb, which is unbelievable because of how tiny the space was. I can't even imagine how they managed that one. There was one room dedicated to all of the jewelry and the famous golden headdress that he was buried in. That, along with the golden sarcophagus, was pretty ridic. I can't imagine there are many people in the contemporary world who would be able to afford all of that. I was pretty impressed by the amount of material things that Tut had acquired in such a short life, but I guess if it's just material, and not substantial in other ways, it doesn't really matter much, does it? It doesn't seem as if this was the way of thinking back then, but I guess having stuff was just as important.

We left the Tut area of the museum, and Melinda showed a few more exhibits, but I zoned out and kind of wandered off a bit. Right before we left, we found this exhibit of King Tut's contraceptive method of choice. It was pretty much just a piece of burlap with ties, and it looked pretty painful. I guess that explains why sex wasn't for enjoyment back then. We were all beat down by the end and decided to hitch cabs back to Flamenco. Eight of us left together, and we just figured that we'd split into two cabs. Makes sense to do that. As we crossed outside of the museum to get on the side of the street in the direction we'd have to go, a guy came up to us and was like "I have cab for eight people. 20LE for 8 people." It was the same price we'd pay if two cabs paid 10LE each, so we figured why not. It turns out that the guy who found us wasn't the driver. He put us in this rinky dink old station wagon cab, and the driver was eating his lunch. We ended up waiting almost 20 minutes for the guy to finish eating, when he proceeded to ask us for some water, and then he did about 10 mph all the way back to Zamalek in the most backward way possible. It took almost 45 minutes to go maybe a mile and a half. MAYBE. We were all a little fed up when he asked us for more than 20LE because that's for a "small cab" but we were like, suck it, you took forever and this is what you're getting.

We all relaxed for a bit, and then went over to Café Vivant to try and study a bit for my Arabic final the next day, but I just ended up uploading some pictures onto Facebook instead. I tried really hard, I just couldn't concentrate hard enough to really study as much as I could've somewhere else. That was one of my biggest struggles in Cairo. I wanted to devote as much time to my studies as I needed to, but I also didn't want to lock myself in the hotel room every night. I did, admittedly, stay out too late on most nights, and could've balanced the time I spent studying with the time I spent out better, but as far as I know, I made the grade so no regrets.

Omar had said that he would meet us at Vivant and take us to dinner around ten, but that never happened. We kept getting the "I'll be there in 45 miuntes, I promise" texts until around 12am, we decided to go back to Flamenco, and if he showed up he showed up. Sonja, Bridget, Diana and I ended up watching a few episodes of Family Guy and semi-sleeping before Omar called around 12:30am, telling us he would be there in ten minutes tops, and we were going out. We dragged ourselves out of the hotel and into his car, and by 1, we were at Route 66 ordering burgers. As tired as we were, we still had a lot of fun, as we always do. I ordered [when I say "I", I mean Omar because I can't see over the counter at that place] a mini-burger, which was so tiny, but the perfect size for how hungry I was. It was definitely satisfying, but still weird tasting. The beef here is totally natural, unlike our steroid-pumped goodness in the States, and it has this weird kind of salty taste to it. Enough ketchup and toppings on it, and anything will taste like a burger. We all had our fix, so Omar took us back to Flamenco to crash into bed. It seems like we do a lot of that.

Wednesday morning was our Arabic final. Eeeek. I have a basic grasp on what we've learned so far when I can hear something and think of it and not have to speak it out loud, but write it down and see it in front of me, but once I have to recite things, I get totally lost. I wanted to go first, because I had all the information fresh in my mind from my morning study session, but Syonara wouldn't let me. I went first on the last quiz and froze up, so she made me wait until almost the end before I could go, which made me more tense and uptight than I was to begin with. I finally went in between Bridget and April and she tried to make me wait longer, but I just wanted to get it over with and be done and not stress out anymore. I was so wrong. She gave me a picture of a family in a living room with a mother, father, son and daughter and I had to describe it. I was fine with the he's wearing, she's wearing stuff, and what kind of furniture and how many windows there are. I would've been okay to keep going on my own, but I hesitated to think about what I could say and how I could put it so that the sentence would be right, but Syonara jumped in and started asking me questions, which always flusters me. I tried to explain that by trying to goad me into giving certain answers, I forget what I was trying to say and then it's fuck-all and I don't remember anything because I get frustrated. I don't know if she really understood because she kept doing it anyway, but after a few pictures, I had put together enough of a spoken repertoire that she was satisfied and gave me a semi-generous grade. I think I did fine in the class. I did enjoy it, and I know even though my language skills may not be the greatest, I did get so much out of it. We talked a lot about cultural things that I wouldn't have learned anywhere else but straight from first-person experiences and I'm so grateful for that.


After everyone was finished, we had a sort of debrief and reviewed the things that could've been said about the pictures before taking a walk to Syonara's house to learn how to make koshery and help her with her kids' birthday party. I didn't really know what to expect because she kept saying that her flat isn't the greatest place and that it's not very nice, but it was a very cute place. It had a beautiful view of the Nile and Cairo Tower over the British Embassy and it seemed like a very homey kind of place. We all got comfortable fairly quickly and we started right in on the koshery before Syonara had to leave to pick up her kids from school. Turns out, it's a fairly simple process that just has to be mastered over time. Just brown a couple of onions in oil, cook the rice and pasta, soak the lentils overnight and then boil them, get some sauce, mix it all together and let it sit for a bit so the flavors mix, and then serve. April wrote down then recipe so we can all make it when we get home. It was so delicious. Syonara was nervous because she had never made as big a portion as that before, but it was perfect. I couldn't even eat as much as she gave me because it's so filling.

When we were done eating, we all pretty much passed out in her living room in food comas. After a while, her sister Dina came over with her son, and we played with him and some balloons while they prepared the party. Sai and Amanda had to leave to go to service at St. Andrew's so it was just me, Joyce, April and Bridget. We had so much fun playing with Suleiman and Balquis [I think that's how the transliteration would work] and just hanging around with them.
It was a break from routine that we all needed. We joked that she would never ask us to leave and would probably end up offering us beds and then she did. It was pretty funny that we were talking about it and then it happened. She's so nice though, that we were expecting it.

We finally decided to head back to Zamalek around 5pm and it took forever to hail a cab and get through the rush-hour traffic. We got back, eventually, and had a relatively quiet night aside from a minor misunderstanding that has since been cleared up. I'm glad that we got to see Syonara at home, with her kids, in her comfort zone. We totally called that she would have wild curly hair, and she did. I'm definitely going to miss her and there are things I know I'll be saying for the rest of my life that I got from her class.