I was back in Cairo today. It was great. I met Basma early and we went to fill out some paperwork at AUC and ran into her philosophy professor again. I don't think I've mentioned him before but we run into him basically every time we go to AUC now. He always talks on and on about some random topic. Today it was his troubles with getting money to the sick mother of his son in Iran. He's really actually quite a friendly guy; it's just that any encounter with him is sure to last at least 2o minutes. After our little chat we went to get fiteer from the place by Greek campus on Falaky street. It's kind of our little ritual because we always used to go during the semester. Fiteer is fried dough that is served with honey or sugar usually, kind of like a crepe. It tasted so good when we first got it but now, especially because of the summer heat, it's kinda lost its magic. We still get it though because it's tradition. :D After fiteer we went to Costa to escape the heat for a while. After spending about a half hour trying to get their free wireless to work (we ultimately failed), I went over to the Greek campus to ask my mom something quickly and I ran into Laura! It was terrific. Basma left to get ready for her cousin's wedding and I hung out with Laura a bit. We had some fun times trying to figure out how to make her new cell phone function properly. It was good to catch up with her again; I can never get enough of Laura. :D
After I left Laura to tackle her mounds of ALI (Arabic Language Institute) homework, I headed over to Arkadia mall to meet Mona and Maha, my cousins. We walked around for a while. A lot of the stores have neon green and yellow shirts. My cousins pointed that out to me...it's crazy...yellow and green are everywhere. The sisters I met in Marsa told me they noticed that too...everyone is wearing yellow and green. Rahma decided that it must be part of a long-term plan to change the colors of the Egyptian flag...Mona says her aunt thinks that Egypt is just envying Brazil...who knows? At the 2.5 pound store I bought a wind up truck for Kimo. On the package it said "LORDLY FOR FRESHLY NOTION" in one of those big stars that usually says something like "New and Improved" or "Sleek new design" in it. If anyone has any clue what lordly for freshly notion is supposed to mean, please, by all means, share. After we were done walking around we sat in this cafe that overlooks the Nile. The view was nice, the drinks: not so much. I got lemon juice that tasted like water with maybe a couple of drops of lemon in it...It said on the menu that it was 8 pounds but the guy charged us 11, saying that the prices had changed since the menu was printed. Considering all of the prices on the entire menu were whited out and had different prices written, I doubt that, but...hey! What could I do? While we were sitting a couple came and sat at the table next to us. As soon as she sat down the woman pulled a small furry white dog out of her purse. Yes. That's right..out of her purse, Paris Hilton style. The guy then proceeded to take a very long series of pictures of 'Pooky'. It was hard not to laugh.
I needed to give the taxi driver on the way home 7 pounds but the smallest change I had was 20. He didn't have change so I went to the stores around to see if anyone could give me change for my 20. It took me about 6 or 7 minutes and 8 stores to finally find one that had change. It's crazy how hard it is for people to give you change here. It's really common for even big stores to not have change for you when you buy something. I had the same problem this morning. I bought a recharge card for my phone for 10 pounds and gave the woman a 50. She left the store and came back around 5 minutes later with my change. About the only people who have change on a regular basis are the microbus drivers after they've been working for a few hours and the metro station.
Now I'm home. It's almost midnight and I have to pack...again. We're going to Tunisia and Morocco for a few weeks, about a week and a half in each country. I'm really excited. If nothing else (which hopefully won't be the case), it's a chance to get the coins from two more countries to add to my coin collection.
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