If you ever think you should move to Cairo, Do it.

Life in Egypt is going good. We are leaving tomorrow to hike Sinai and then its off to Jordan to study our brains out for 3 months. Hopefully I’ll learn a lot of Arabic during that time – because being here has made me realize how insufficient mine really is. The internet cafés are super slow here (and we have very limited free time), so I only really upload pics to flickr. I'm one of the people that only really likes to see pictures. So if you’re like me, and want to, all my pics are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35316747@N05/sets/

If your not like me, and like to read words, here’s a few notes from two days of sightseeing:

(Please forgive any egregious spelling errors and any non-sequtor comments. We don't get a lot sleep, and breathe in a lot of smoke.)

LUXOR DAY: Luxor was the bomb! Cairo is so dirty and big and noisy – Luxor is relatively clean and calmer. The Nile actually looks enticing down there. Angie and I even had an “American Night.” We swam and laid out by the pool w/our group, in one piece swimming suits. I only note that because again Europeans are ridiculous – all the men in speedos and all the women in bikinis- regardless of whether they were massively overweight and saggy. We ate at Pizza hut with beef pepperonis (pork is haram and not available anywhere) and then got a pedicure from some Copts. 

 MOSQUE DAY: was somewhat torturous in that we got off the night train from Luxor (on which it is impossible to sleep) at 4:30 am and then proceeded to see roughly a million mosques around Cairo.  It was blazing hot and our 65 year old tour director stops for no man (he reminds me of my Grandpa Hales). It was pretty much the Battan death march. I finally got ahead enough to pull of the side on one street and buy and ice-cream bar from a street vendor. Best 2 pounds (20 cents) I ever spent! We saw all the different periods of architecture (Fatimid, Mamuluk, Ottoman). They have some incredible beautiful buildings, and its mind blowing to think how old they are. I admire the devoutness of many Muslims and there is definitely a spiritual experience to be had in the Mosques.  I’ve seen a lot of men here with bruises on there foreheads. I took me a while to remember from my MESA class that it’s a show of devoutness – that you drop to you knees and bow your head against the floor enough to leave a big mark. The call to prayer can be kinda scary – me and Angie and Lindsey were in kinda scary neighborhood (we got off the Metro at the wrong station) when it went off. It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. And nearly everyone prayed, not something you seen on the main streets of Cairo.