Cairo!

So this weekend we had a trip to Cairo! The trip began with our bus ride. The bus was brand new and had air conditioning so I was very excited, and thought to myself "at least we will be comfortable". However, it was the slowest bus ride I have ever been on in my life. It took us six hours to drive to Cairo which from Cairo to Alexandria is only a 2 hour drive and a 3 hour drive at most. But it took us 6 hours. People were walking past the bus. It was very sad. We also started to roll backwards a few times in the middle of Cairo traffic which was actually quite funny. Only the people on the bus found this amusing though. One car side swiped the bus and there is no doubt in my mind that it was the buses fault. So because the bus was so slow we had to go straight to our cruise boat for dinner instead of stopping at the hotel and changing or whatever. Luckily the boat came back to pick us up because we were starving. On the boat there were belly dancers, singers, Sufi dancers, and delicious food of course (there was om aly my favorite!!!) So after dinner I met my friend who lives in Cairo at a cafe to watch the Egypt versus Italy match. It was amazing. Egypt won 1-0 and the whole city was cheering. So we walked around the city a bit to see the cheering people and then afterwards, Amy (my friend) and her friends took me to a place in Cairo I had never been. It was a cliff overlooking all of Cairo. It was sooooo Beautiful and the weather up there was perfect. So we sat up there until 3 in the morning drinking tea on this cliff before returning to the hotel.

Friday morning I had made plans to visit my Uncle. So I got on a bus to go to his part of the city and walked around, ate a felafel sandwhich (it was sooo good), went to church while I waited for him to wake up. After we met and ate a bit he took me to Zamalek where I used to live. There I said hi to my door man and met up with one of my friends from my program and hung out with his friends and Amy. I was there until 3 in the morning with the rest of the people from my program.

Saturday was the day we were to return. In the morning I went to alazhar park which is a beautiful park next to the Citadel. I spent the morning there just sitting in the shade a relaxing then I met up with the rest of the group for lunch. After lunch we visited the citadel, coptic cairo, and a perfume shop. I was not in good mood at all this day because we had to wake up at 6:30 am so I only got 3 hours of sleep and I just don't like going places with big tour groups. And by the end of the day I was extremely hungry so that was no good. Anyway we were suppose to have left Cairo by 5 but we ended up leaving at 8 (Because they had to take us to the stupid perfume shop) and for dinner they gave us MacDonalds which did not help my stomach, which is still trying to adjust to Egypt anyway. So I was very grouchy on the bus but calmed down after I ate. Anyway on the bus ride we had a bit of a talent show. There were two poets, who were amazing, there was a girl who sang to us in french and in spanish, there was a girl playing the tabla, a guy who could do bird calls, and the rest of us felt worthless because we were talentless.

Luckily we got extensions on our homework since the bus was so slow and we didn't arrive back in alex until 1 in the morning. So today all of us are hussling to finish our homework before the Egypt versus America match tonight! This should be so exciting, sorry but I think I am going to cheer for Egypt just because I don't know anything about the american team. I will let you know how the match goes:)

Caio!