هل تحب أن تأخذ صورتي

Yes, I copied the title of this post exactly the way it was on my worksheet, so that I don’t make any embarrassing mistakes. Shhh.

So while my crazy roomate Simmi is out having fun god knows where, I am sitting in our hotel room writing this. Most of the time here I am cold and hungry, and now is not different. We haven’t found good places to eat dinner in yet and most of the time we just have no time to eat dinner (for mischivieous reasons I cannot mention). I am stuffing my face with BBQ chips, so when Simmi arrives, there will be none left for her. But I mean, I’m the one staying in and starving here! 😛 BBQ chips and iced tea. What a classy dinner.

The days are starting to take on some form of a routine. I never know what day of the week it is, but that doesn’t really matter since classes flow into tours and tours turn into nights out in town and then the morning brings more classes. Time just flows and I can’t believe it is the fourth of January tomorrow. Arabic classes are fun and our teacher is the sweetest, most cheery person ever. She smiles even though most of the time our class gives her blank stares of outright confusion. Her cheery aura rubs off on you and you end up just feeling very happy sitting there. The classes are two to three hours long, with a thirty minute istraha (break) but they go by so fast!

 [some of the people from our beginner (noob) class]

The other day we had a tour of Islamic Cairo and Bab Zuwayala, which is one of the few remaining gates of the ancient royal city. The gate has two minoret towers and the view from the roof is absolutely beautiful:

Past the roof, one can climb up the stairs of the minorets to get an even better vista. But oh the price you oay for that view. We climbed the spiraling staircase of doom in fear. The spiraling steps are very narrow and very high. There is NO railing and at times it is pitch black so you have to feel around with your feet to find the narrow winding steps. Just when we think that pitch blackness in an ancient narrow tower can’t get any worse…it does. As one emerges into open air at last, the stone steps become metal strips that wind their way up in an even more terrifying way. It is like someone took a ladder, and made it a winding staircase. Now, let me just say, me and my friend  werevwearing skirts. Not only did the skirt keep getting in the way of my feet, making it even more hazardous for me, but the person climbing up behind me was a guy. And its a winding ladder. To make the story short, we made himclose his eyes until we went up the metal death thing and CLIMBED OVER THE EDGE OF A STONE WALL to emerge onto a small balcony that went around the top part of the minoret. Yep. Twas fun.

This is the view of the minoret across from us, but we were on this same kind of balcony, and you can even see the winding ladder of death in the center of the columns  if you squint:

We decided not to even go on the top-most balcony for fear that we will fall doing it. Going down was even scarier and we had to feel around with our feet, arms and bodies to make it back out to the roof safely.

After that we went into a very stunning mosque. Stunning is a strange word to describe a mosque, I know. Its more like the word I would use if one of my friends got dressed up and asked me how she looked. (Response: Gurrrlll you look stunnin’.) But since I overuse beautiful anyway, I thought I would mix it up. Bear with me here. We had to take off our shoes and put on scarves and this is a picture that Ioana took of me.

Simmi and Ioana made me look all contemplative and stuff…I swear I don’t usually stare out into space like that. I think. But I’m rocking that pink pashmina thing. 😛

And then we posed in various places around the mosque. Because camwhoring is what we do best, naturally. I actually really like the pictures I took of Ioana and Simmi around the mosque. 😀

Anyway, after that we did some stuff. And I’ll just move on and leave it like that, just to keep you guys guessing on what it is that we (the continental three, as me, Simmi and Ioana are called) did. 😛

Today we had class and after that we finally had really good food. Abduh, our tour guide, go to guy and helper, also long time friend of  Professor Sullivan (:P), hosted a lunch at his house. His wife and daughter made SO MUCH GOOD FOOD. I swear, I will come back an emanciated child after this trip because I don’t eat. But seeing all that food, I think I put more on my plate than I could handle.

Muffin, or Muffy (as she likes to be called), soon became the star of the lunch, and got passed around more often than food. She must have been in everyone’s arms at some point. That doggy is one small fiesty biter. BUT SHES SO CUTEEEEEEEEEE >.<

Here is a photo of Simmi and me harrassing Muffy:

As you can see, Muffy out-camwhored us in this photo with her cuteness. :3

Abduh (whom we all love) played a game with some of us towards the end of the dinner. Since I am an immigrant, of course, I don’t know the name of this game. I would call it the violently agrresive game where you stare at someone as you slap their hands and pretend it’s fun game. Abduh was very fierce at this game and Tyra Banks would approve of his poker face as he slapped our hands so hard that they turned red. He was fully of glee when he would win:

Because that is just how Abduh rolls.