هل تحب أن تأخذ صورتي

But I did already. Many many times. Because this month has been one of the most amazing months of my life. To think that I almost did not apply to the program is crazy, because I am so utterly grateful to have gone. I have met a group of amazing 20-something people, met and made new Egyptian ( and Qatar 😛 ) friends, and done some pretty awesome things. To think that someday I would have family and friends in Egypt, it is really touching and here I am, crying at my keyboard again. I’m crying because I miss Egypt dearly. But I’m also crying because I am so happy that all of this has happened. Day by day, I am still replaying all the trips and events over in my head. I am walking through Horus House Hotel, wandering the streets of Zamalek and sitting in our tiny Arabic classroom. I’d like to thank our bus driver for giving us some of his CD’s because that is the best souvenir I could take away. I have this strange way of imprinting all my feelings, reactions and memories into the music I listen to during that period of my life. So every time the “yani yani yani…shisha” song comes back on, I feel as if I am transported back into that white van, on my way to class or a lecture. From the pyramids to downtown Cairo, I fell in love with every part of that city. Many natives do not like living there, and I am sure that if I had to live there for longer than a few months (and needed to find a job there), the wonder would fade away.Coming back to Cairo is definitely on my to-do list…and perhaps it will happen during spring break, or maybe the summer. Or maybe I’ll even get an internship there for three months. Who knows. But this dear city will stay in my heart forever, all of it (even the poverty, even the lack of traffic lights, and even the deathly smog that always floats over the city).

I also dearly love everyone I met on the trip. I still wake up in my room now and expect to see my sleepy roommate Simmi. When I come down to breakfast, I miss seeing everyone’s faces, usually buried in their Arabic books because they are doing some last-minute studying for a test. I miss talking to all of them and making all the inside jokes we came up with…(“No, these are bananas.” “But we will though, but we will!” “Izquerda, itnasher, el bano!” “Yeah, sure” “Getting into cars with strangers again” “Hit me with a phonebook” “I kill my wife for you” “ROMANIA!” “Give me a hug, I like your body” etc etc)

I miss making late-night scary movies and having massage chains in our rooms. I miss going out to Hardee’s (the shame, oh the shame) and Koshery and Pizza Hut. I miss blowing the smoke into your faces when we do shisha, I miss going out and driving around Cairo at night (while asking for directions over and over again) and I miss just sitting in class with you, learning Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. I also miss the adults (because god knows, the rest of us were all children on that trip :P), Abdo, our teacher Aya, Dr. Denis (lovingly dubbed by Simmi as D-Dog <3), Nevenka, Rahim, Jamal and the hotel guy who taught us new arabic phrases at dinner. Thank you all for making this such an unforgettable experience. Though this month can never be recreated, I hope every amazing detail of it will stay in my heart and mind.

Finally, our whole awesome, awesome group of people on our last Arabic class day in the park (minus Abdo, Nevenka and Rahim):

After we had a guided tour of Islamic Cairo with Dr. Tariq [I hope I have the spelling right], we were required to do a tour of our own according to a textbook. So me, Simmi, Bing, Carissa, Ioana and Rosie hit the narrow streets to do some exploring of our own. Since a picture is worth a thousand words (if you aren’t lazy to come up with that many words for it, that is. Otherwise it is probably worth like 100), I’ll let them do the talking. Also because I’ve done a paper with my group on this tour and I don’t feel like writing again. Yes, I am lazy.But if I were to give a general impression, it would be this: Yes, there was a lot of trash, dirt, garbage and decaying buildings. Yet I found beauty in everything I saw. It is probably true if I said that the only reason I see all this as beautiful is because I am a tourist experiencing a culture shock. In reality, the area is probably far from beautiful for the people who have to live with all the dirt, trash and mud there everyday.

I know I don’t update this as often as I should. But every time I set foot into my room, I turn into a zombie who, instead of wanting brains all the time, just wants sleep. So I walk around my bed, then I sit on it…and eventually it claims me and I wave away all the journaling, blogging and arabic studying I have to do. If my arabic teacher does ever read this: Aya I study really well every night. Two hours minimum! Me good student! (JKLOLSNOIDONT)

So for your sake and mine, since it is 3am, I will try to keep this mainly to pictures. I’ll talk about the felucca ride and what we did this friday. AS for my overnight trip to Luxor (which was rushed but so worth going on), that will be up tomorrow…unless my bed wins again.

since we never went on a felucca for New Years like we planned, Simmi, Ioana, our local friend and I went on one at night! The view was gorgeous and the boat was very…erm…colorful? At least our was not spazzing out with lights. Some of the boats that were passing us on the Nile looked like they could trigger an epilepsy attack with their lights. O_O

Then on Friday we went to Dashur and Saqqara pyramids. Dashur was very impressive. It was massive and we had to climba  good amount of life-threatening steps to get to the entrance of it. Observe stairs and epic-ness:

The view from the little “porch” before the entrance to the staircase offered a breath-taking view:

This was the entrance, along with the mister man at the entrance, to the long and scary staircase. You had to be crouched over, going down a steep plank with raised metal bars (these were the “steps”) and your head kept touching the “ceiling”. I was sad that halfway down I quit and climbed back up. The air was getting too thin for me and I was getting dizzy and panic-y. But some people who did manage to go down all the way brought back pictures (even though they were not allowed to take them).

Around Dashur, there were so many adorable stray dogs that looked bug and rabies-free. They would walk after you and stand there next to you…waiting for either food or scratching of the back.

After Dashur we visited Saqqara:

and then after a good lunch, we were off to our horse-riding. I was scared to death, having had a bad memory of a horse ride from childhood. But the horse I got, a four year old filly named Shakira, was one of the most calmest horses there. I was so thankful for her. We almost got run over by an RV buggy and Shakira didn’t even flinch. She was so lanky and skinny though, it made me sad thinking that maybe she wasn’t getting enough to eat. But she was in a better state compared to some of the other horses. This a photo of me and my shakira. the shorter horse behind me was Simmi’s and was also named Shakira 😀

The view was amazing as always: