yo quiero taco bell

Last night we went to Libya for a party. Ok, we didn't actually go to Libya. I'm a terrible liar, but Alex (my roommate) likes to call it that, the neighborhood of the Villa of her friend Mostafa (aka T-fa, Big John). The point is that it is far, and took a long time to get to, even longer considering that we were caravanning(in the desert, how appropriate!) with two other cars, and got lost at various times driving through the strange collection of cement factories, farms and fancy villa compounds that constitute the area outside of Cairo. This is where (wealthy) Cairenes go to get some fresh air, to get away from the grime. I found it really funny driving out there, because it felt to me just like driving out to damascus or some other DC suburb, until you saw the palm trees, or the truck covered in neon lights, or the men in galabbayas walking down the road.
The house was very nice, a pool in the back, candles on every surface, as Alex predicted, a DJ and a copy of the Kama Sutra... held by a little bust type thing of a black woman with some sort of instrument...? Ok that was really strange. The party was fun, despite some sort of obnoxious fellows who were persistent. Highlights of the night (besides the 1.5 hour drive there):
1) The Chips. They were SO good, "exotic BBQ" flavor
2 The conversation I had with Camille about English grammar, which scared the annoying fellows away-- "We're talking about grammar. We are very interesting girls!" (camille)
3) When the DJ stopped playing crappy house music and started playing hip-hop --"sounds like freedom!"- Meredith
4) My favorite EVER egyptian ladies. It's really funny how in Cairo, you can go from feeling completely indecent to very primly dressed in the course of a few hours. These two women, who were sitting on a couch when we arrived and stayed in the same spot, changing poses periodically, were really the best part of the party. They both had about the same smug, collageny pursed-lips expression on their face, like clearly they were the best looking things there. One, the lady in white, was wearing a cropped white sweater which exposed her belly completely, a white belt, low rise, tight white pants and of course, knee-high, furry white boots. And very long black hair. The second, standing right next to her was like her opposite-- she had bleached-blond hair, black pants, a trendily segmented black top with one long sleeve and one short, and some holes across the stomach --one of which left the bottom half of her breast hanging out--with the threat of showing the whole thing if she lifted her arm. And some pretty fabulously sparkly bling bling-- a necklace with huge letters on it that we thing said max, and one huge earring that was a K...? We were pretty sure they must be some sort of singing duo, or advertising campaign.

Ok, so that was the party. The drive back was uneventful, except for the huge taco bell craving that overtook us all. Our entire conversation on the way back was a listing of various taco bell menu items. When we got back, we ordered a "mexican" pizza, the closest thing to tacos we could get at 4 am in Cairo. There's still a lot of sweet corn left over on our living room floor.

I saw a lawn the other day...

ok. so I haven't written much about what it is like being here in cairo. and of course, the longer I am here, the more everything mixes together and becomes harder to single out interesting incidents to catalogue. Which makes it sound like I'm a museum. or something. but don't worry i didn't come to egypt to turn into a taxidermist. Alright enough nonsense. So where to begin. I'll start with classes, because that is freshest on my mind. My classes are:

• Intro to Sufism- j'aime the professor, but the class so far is really unstructured, she just sort of asks if anyone has questions on the readings and then she talks about random things
• Intro to Islamic Art & Architecture-yea it's cool. we haven't learned much, ummm squinches are my fave architechtural term thus far.
• Arabic Literature in Translation: Literature and History- same sort of deal, unstructured but the prof is good.
  
• colloquial arabic- my prof is silly. he makes fun of us, mostly.
  
• and finally modern standard arabic

khalas. so that's the classes. The American University in Cairo is in the middle of downtown Cairo. Cairo is a large city, well large doesn't do it justice, This is what people say: Cairo is busy, crowded, and polluted. This is true, but doesn't really tell you anything concrete about the city, as I discovered once I got here and actually realized how busy, crowded and polluted actually feels. I live in Zamalek, a neighborhood on Gezira island (on the nile duh) which is greener and more chi-chi than downtown. AUC is like a bubble of manicured lawns, expensive sweaters and un-egyptian male-female interactions within downtown, which has a little bit of everything, but is definitely not cosmopolitan. There's a mix right in the area, of really western style coffee chains and mcdonalds, with koshary and fatir hole in the wall type places around the corner. Foul sandwiches (ie bean sandwich) for 50 piasters, which is like 10 cents. Koshary = macaroni style noodles, spaghetti noodles, rice, lentils and chick peas with some tomato sauce, fried onions and lemon garlic sauce. One girl said that Koshary is a lot like cairo. I don't know how, but I believe her. Fatir is like pancake pizza things that can be desserty or pizza-y. So I didn't mean just to write about food... butimean... Mostly downtown just means lots of people. My favorite are the guys who ride around on bikes (which is insane in this city where 3 lanes = at least 5 cars across, i mean lanes? what?) balancing a large wooden plank of bread with one hand. And traffic here, it really is no joke. So these are sort of the things that everyonetalksabout because these are the first things you notice.
My favorite AUC thing is this Egyptian dude in my sufism class, who, when asked whether he had done the reading said "I don't read, I know." Not that that reflects the general attitude, because I haven't encountered enough AUC students to know... but I definitely don't think he's the only one. It's hard to get into school, but jooknow. Ok, i'm really not in the writin mood. Blergh...

glög,glugg,gloeg

if i didn't know what glög was, and had no clue that it was some sort of brownish scandinavian wintertime beverage, I would say that word perfectly describes right now. But since I do know what it is, I guess I don't have anything else to say.

It seems so long ago

Alright, to be a little more comprehensive, since I started out with randomness. I am sitting on the floor of my room right now, getting ready (that should probably be in quotations) for my first day of classes. I arrived in Cairo on a Sunday night, on a flight with about 50 other AUC students, all coming in for the next day's orientation session. The flight was uneventful, besides the egyptian girl who sat in my seat but thought she hadn't and deprived me of the view of the pyramids on the way in. Mais ce n'est pas grand chose. Oh, but before all that little annoyance was ever on my mind, I was on a different plane, well to begin with I was in a different airport; let me rewind.
So, I arrived at Newark airport after a day of dragging Ina around with me on errands. Amina packed my bags for me too (didn't tell security that), then I said a squeal-y goodbye to Errks, and a normal goodbye to Sian and Susie, then set off on the train with stinkers. We said our farewells on the New Jersey Transit, and there I was at the Newark airport. Check in, security, whatever. The interesting part is when I was sitting, waiting for my flight, receiving periodic phone calls from various family members (mostly mom & dad) with last minute reminders: "don't forget, it's a different culture, you can't interact with men the way you do in the US, it's a muslim society" and then Amina's one priceless piece of advice "umm, don't get robbed and stuff." So, I was sitting there, when I saw James--a guy from Pton who I had in fact run into the previous night at Terrace. We randomly happened to be on the same flight. He spilled salad dressing in his bag, I got more phone calls, then we also randomly sat one row apart. weird. Once we arrived to London we took the subway together with our large bags. That was nice, to randomly talk to a Princeton person I didn't really know before.
Ok this is getting really long, and I don't know if people actually like to read this junk... hmmm. But so I followed Howard's instructions and got to his home without any problems. it was slightly early and rainy in London. His mom was sooo nice and gave me breakfast, lent me a map, and gave me suggestions of where to go in London. I ended up going to the Tate modern which i really liked. They had some Juan Munoz stuff, who I remember from the Hirschorn. but my fave was this artist who makes these little figures out of clay, then photographs them with these really human expressions, and really close up, so you can see his fingerprints in the wax. K, I just looked him up, it's Thomas Schütte, and the figures are all two bound together and it's called "United Enemies." My other favorite part was the Unilever series, basically a big slide that I felt slightly silly going down without anyone else to go before or after and meet at the bottom, but that I slid down nonetheless. Then I just wandered along the Thames basically, saw The Globe, Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Returned to have dinner with Howard's fam.
Ok, I'm rambling, so I will just list the rest of my UK trip. I had such a wonderful time in Oxford and wished I could have stayed longer. I hate to shortchange that part of my trip, but this is roughly the rest of my trip:
sleep
Watch Lizzie McGuire with Josephine
Wander around Soho
go to some square-- Leicester square I think, eat a sandwich
oxford tube to oxford (duh) my first time on a second deck!
meet Ells at St. Clements street
eat dinner with Ells
see Magdalen college (which I mistakenly pronounced Magdalen but which MUST be said "Maudlin" apparently)
champagne and chocolates at ellie's college- met a girl who knows people I do from UWC
finally found out why there are so many UWC ers at Princeton
Ellie's college bar
club with a funny name- oh yea filth. long line, house music
girl with pointy heel steps on my foot- I can still feel the bruise
sleep
meet Howard at Ellie's college--walk around Oxford abit
breakfast at Howard's college- St. Hughs- where you can walk on the lawns and see those birds... what are they called? I want to say magpies, but i would feel silly if that's wrong
go to meadowy peaceful place with lots of boats on the river and that flooded a bit beyond the river
wander around Oxford with Ells, see Christchurch, but not the Harry Potter cafeteria and eat yummy cookies- ginger chocolate chip mmmm
nap, hang out, dinner at place with random mannequin in a bath
meet Howard and Princeton people at this pub down a windy alleyway
drink wine, roast marshmallows, sit in the slightly cold, but it was super fun just chatting and such
St. Hugh's college bop- jungle fever theme.
creeeeeepy guys painted all black, i'm shocked
bed. wake up, brunch, bus to airport
wander around heathrow for an hour or so looking for the best way to spend my few remaining pounds (gummies and a magazine)

which brings us up to the beginning again. Which means I'm done, and you probably finished reading long ago. now I must get my laundry and get off to class.

It's raining in cairo, and i'm watching dr. phil

Yes. Don't judge. I was supposed to wake up at 6 am this morning, to go to giza, to see those pyramids. I set two alarm clocks, like I did for our on-campus orientation. I also slept through both alarm clocks, just like I did for that orientation--which ended up fine, I missed nothing, but this time i missed the pyramids... boo :( Sooo instead I have decided to spend the day communicating, watching bad american tv, hanging out with the roomies and applying for summer stuff. In not exactly that order but definitely summer stuff being at the bottom of that list seeing as I haven't taken a look at any of that nonsense yet. Which is actually really not nonsense, since I really need to get something together and figured out soon. classes start tomorrow. I'm not so happy... I am behind on stuff I should do, cranky and tired.