The Weekend

I want to start out by thanking Sarah Meyer. This should have been in the first post, but Sarah is the originator of the blog's title. Her wit should not go unnoticed. Sarah, wallahi thank you. YOU DA BEST!

I feel like I really settled in this weekend. The Egyptian weekend is Friday and Saturday, so after our four hour orientation on Thursday (I had to leave for Cairo eight hours after graduation in order to arrive on time for this important orientation...) I was free to roam around, get acquainted with my neighborhood shwaya (means "a little" or "slowly." It is a must-know word) and hang out with my roommates.

On Friday I formally met my Egyptian roommate, Ahmed Shadid. He had been living with the CASA people who lived in my apartment before me and was highly recommended as he only speaks Arabic with us and can help out with random Egypt-specific things that might occasionally arise. He is living in the makeshift room I mentioned for free and I'm pretty sure he isn't working these days but he is hoping to move to Qatar for a while, find a job and make some money. I told him I know a guy there who is (was?) pretty well connected there and that I could put them in touch. Too far?

Ahmed Shadid

He took us around on Friday to a couple of the local cafes, or ahwas, and he introduced us to some of his friends who live in the area. You have to understand that ahwas are a huge part of Egyptian social life and one can easily spend 2-3 hours chillin with a small cup of turkish coffee. We probably spent a total of five hours split between two ahwas! (I exclaim for you, Jeremy)  I'm not sure if it was just because we were two (two being myself and Adam, one of my roommates) random Americans with these groups of Egyptians, but there was a lot of silence. At first I felt a little uncomfortable with the flow of our conversations, thinking maybe we were unwanted, but looking at the other groups around us it seemed like the long silent pauses were common, almost embraced. On a Friday afternoon in 106 degree heat in downtown Cairo, the pace of life simply slows down. Kinda nice actually.

The Nile!

Later that evening we went to a birthday party for Shadid's friend. Even though the party itself was not really my style (think Tower, but smaller. Haha?), it was pretty cool. There were probably about 40 or so people in this guy's apartment dancing, talking, and eating (not the cool part yet) and I think 12 different nationalities were represented. Americans (whaddup), Egyptians, French, German, Sudanese (yes, both North and South), Central African Republic and more. Though English was dominant, I heard a number of others being used throughout the room. Out of all places in the world, I figured Cairo would be relatively homogeneous. I asked Shadid about the diversity of the crowd and he said it was very typical of the crowd in which he hung out. Though not your average Egyptian, still pretty cool to know that a party like that is happening in Cairo.

Sunday we had another day of orientation at the new AUC campus which is way out in the middle of nowhere. It is about an hour+ drive way out in the middle of New Cairo (see map) The old campus which is still somewhat functional is located downtown about 5 minutes from Tahrir Square so though a cool area to be in, not so much these days.

I start class tomorrow morning which I am genuinely excited about. Even over the past few days I have felt that my Egyptian dialect has kicked up so I'm hoping to get some new words and phrases to play around with. It's like a big puzzle and I keep getting new pieces to mess around with. Love it.