Arcades and Castles

I feel like my last few posts have been on the more serious side, which is kind of distressing to me. I’m not much of a serious person, for the most part, in general and the like. So I’ll devote this post to what I’ve done in the past few days: namely, arcades and castles.
Thursday we went to talk to the information minster and then just sorta hung around. During this hang around period, James and I decided to do one of our favorite things: find fast food to eat. So we went to this mall here and went over to Shrimpy’s (fantastic chicken fingers), which gave us an interesting look, overall, at Middle Eastern culture. Their weekend is Friday and Saturday, so Thursday night is kind of like our Friday night. And Thursday night at the mall hit us like a hurricane.
The place was packed, like, crazy, crazy packed. I guess that’s just one of the things to do on Friday night in Syria, or something. But it’s a complete departure from what we think of as Friday night. Like, the food court was packed. People were just hanging around, and it was like 11:30. Not even young people, like old folks and whole families and little kids all running around in the food court of the mall as it approached midnight. It was kind of surreal, really.
But so then we ate and, somehow, we came upon the idea to go to the arcade. And so, in Syria, of all places, we wound up: riding bumper boats, playing air hockey, playing arcade basketball, playing arcade bowling, and shooting at hillbillies, which, yes, is an actual game you can play. But we really had a fantastic time. I mean, I dunno, it’s kind of ridiculous that we went to an arcade, but, I really just can’t help myself. I love arcades.
Friday we went to the Crac des Chevaliers, which was this big huge awesome castle that was built during the Crusades and we spent a ton of time exploring it. I don’t really know how to describe exploring a castle in writing, other than I recommend it. It’s a great time. We climbed to the top of lookout towers, went down various little corridors, walked around a moat, crawled in and out of little places. It’s just way fun. We went to another castle in Aleppo yesterday, and there wasn’t as much to explore there as at Crac, and that’s where this entry ends. Fun for everyone.

I’m bad with titles, so in lieu of headlining this with “thoughts” or “reflections” or something, you get this.

Last night was a fun time, as some representatives of the National Union of Syrian Students brought us along to a club here in Damascus and gave us free dinner and an open bar (if nothing else, they know the way to an American’s heart, free food and booze).

It also wound up bringing up a weird sort of dilemma, as they had earlier given us these papers with questions on them and requested that we answer them. They were pretty loaded questions, and the one in particular I remember went along the lines of “Now that you’ve seen the Golan Heights, what are your thoughts on the Israeli’s monstrous massacre?” Personally, I didn’t feel comfortable answering that, as answering it, in my opinion would be acknowledging an agreement with the phrase “monstrous massacre.” I simply don’t know enough about the history of the conflict to know if “monstrous massacre” is a fair term and, secondly, I don’t know enough about the specific situation to put together a comprehensive answer anyway.

It wasn’t the only sort of strange dilemma presented to us yesterday. The official Syrian TV and newspaper people (or so I gathered that’s who they were) followed us around on our tour of Golan and interviewed a number of us. I’m not sure what some of the other kids were asked or how, exactly, they were approached about being interviewed, but in general I tried to avoid that situation because, as I’ve said, I don’t think I know enough to have given them a complete answer, and, more importantly, I don’t feel like supporting their government by giving them an interview. An interview they could use for any which reason (like, say, propaganda). That was my personal take, but I certainly don’t condemn anyone who did feel like giving an interview, especially if they felt they did know enough to give a meaningful, honest answer.

So I bring that up now today because that was kind of the discussion we had at our group meeting this morning and I had thought about it off and on throughout the day. Today we went to a meeting with the Minister of Information, although it wound up being kind of a weird sort of press conference where the Syrian and our group took turns asking questions of the panel, which, unbeknownst to us beforehand, wound up including our professor, Denis Sullivan. I think he did a wonderful job of fielding those questions on the fly, though, and bits and pieces of the meeting wound up on the Syrian news, so that’s always fun for vanity’s sake.

And now I just got back from a Syrian bath house, which was an interesting sort of experience. The place was 800 years old, so if you can just imagine a really, really old steam room-ish sort of building, I think you can picture what we had going on. The corresponding dinner was really solid, too. I do love a good dinner.

Kind of a random thought that just happened upon me, but being at the Syrian-Israeli border yesterday was kind of a trip. I’d never seen UN troops in person before, so that was something, and then just being next to a field that was separated from me with barbed wire because it was full of landmines was a weird sort of feeling too.

Other reflections on Syria

Yesterday I tried to give my initial impressions (hence the title) of Syria and to illustrate the point that it’s not all big bad and evil. Today I want to illustrate the point that, while it’s not all big bad and evil, it doesn’t necessarily get a reputation for no reason.

One of the sticking points, one of the really truly jarring moments of the trip in general so far, in fact, happened for me yesterday. As I briefly mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Colby asked the other group pretty generally “are you allowed to speak out against your government?” To which the general answer, as I said, was “no comment.” I just typed out about 150 words that was going to explain the rest of the story, but I’ve given it a second thought and deleted them because I’m afraid I could possibly get somebody in trouble. I’m honestly not sure I should even mention this much, because I spoke with the person after the dialogue and they seemed like a very brave individual and the last thing I’d ever want to do is screw up their  chance at making a difference in life because I felt the need to post something on my blog. That may seem a bit over the top, and maybe it is, but I think it’s a telling sign of how life is here without free speech, and I don’t think my caution is entirely without reason. I saw real looks of fear on faces when that question came up yesterday, and it’s one of the most jarring things I’ve ever seen.

In all the meetings with government types we’ve had (there have been many in the past 3-4 days) one of the things they’ve liked to boast about, and one of the things I think they’re in fact somewhat rightful to boast about, is their treatment of Palestinian refugees. They’ve taken in a lot of them, and from what we can tell treated them as well, if not better, than their own Syrian citizens. It’s an admirable display of good neighbor-dom. But they’ve also like to talk a lot about how these Palestinian refugees are given the same full rights as Syrian citizens, to which I wonder: what, exactly, rights are those? It’s one thing to give a large foreign refugee population full rights when typical full rights don’t include, for instance, the right to gather in protest or speak freely. I commend the Syrian government for taking in a large number of Palestinian refugees and treating them well, from what we can tell, but it has to be taken with the understanding that “rights” in Syria are not necessarily the rights we believe should be basic and inalienable.

I’ve mentioned a couple times that I’m no expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict. One thing I’m certain about is that these two groups hate the living guts out of each other, at least on the governmental side. In the past few days I’ve heard a great deal about all the wrongs Israel has done Syria, and if true there’s certainly a lot there to be upset about. But at some point I start to wonder how responsible Israel can be for every single plight in Syria. It seems like there’s a lot of finger pointing going on and it all goes in the same general direction. We’ve read government pamphlets that reference “Israeli Nazism,” and heard many tales of their brutality. Like with the Syrian government, I believe the reputation can’t possibly come from nowhere and I believe there must be something to what they’re saying. Nothing is ever as black and white as people want to make it. But I’d also contend that while there are extreme, extreme differences between these two sides, if peace is genuinely desired, I can’t believe it will ever be achieved with this kind of rhetoric.

That said, we visited the Golan Heights today, and a terrible, terrible thing was done there. We saw a bombed out hospital, a bombed out church, and a city that had been categorically destroyed. It does run both ways, which I think is something neither side tends to acknowledge, which is why I’m pessimistic any progress will ever be made.

We’ve also seen a lot of the very nice side of Syria. Lots of beautiful countryside and a wonderfully modernized, clean Damascus that’s been very open and welcoming to us. But there’s also a lot of poverty in this country, and today we saw some of that as we drove to Golan, but I think it’s something that, in some ways, has been hidden from us so far. This much was also hinted to us by a couple of the students we met with yesterday.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that the people of the Syrian government have been extremely, extremely accommodating and helpful to us. They’ve opened up a lot of usually closed doors to us, and given us the kind of opportunities most people, let alone American journalists, ever get a chance at. I’m incredibly grateful for all they’ve shown us and done for us, and I haven’t a bad thing in the world to say about a single individual I’ve met. There are, however, as I’ve noted above, some policies of theirs I strongly disagree with, and I’d be remiss to post about the good side of Syria, which is certainly wonderful, without also expressing my distaste with the bad side. There are always two sides to a coin, and two ways to view something, and that’s not a bad thing. I hope the Syrian government can someday realize that.

Initial impressions of Syria

Between the first days of travel on Friday and getting settled in and realizing it’s rather troublesome to get an internet connection worth a darn here, I haven’t posted in far too long. Hopefully this lengthy one will make up for some lost time, and I plan to get another one up later tonight.

-The first thing you really notice, I think, is how wildly modernized Syria is. If you didn’t know better, you’d think on the drive from the airport to the city of Damascus that you’d landed just outside Atlanta or something. For whatever reason (general lack of exposure to the region, my own particular brand of ignorance, you know, whatever) when I thought of the Middle East I had arid desert areas kind of pictured in my mind. But at least inside and outside Damascus, it’s incredibly green here, lots of trees and shrubbery and what have you. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place.

-The second thing you’ll notice, after you realize you’re not exactly in the middle of the Sahara, is, like I said, how modernized everything seems. The cars all look new or relatively new, the roads look newly paved, the buildings and architecture are modern. I can’t say it’s at all what I expected of Syria. Then again, before coming here, I can’t say I knew anything of Syria, either. There’s a mall within walking distance of our hotel, a mall that would fit right alongside any of the ones I’ve been to in the United States. I ate chicken fingers and fries yesterday from a fast food-ish type place called Shrimpy.

-And that’s not to say the place is highly westernized. If you get into the city center you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who speaks a lot of English, and most of the signs in the city, unlike in Egypt, don’t offer up any relief to us English-only speakers either. So a lot of Damascus, I would say, is definitely modernized, but not necessarily westernized.

-Speaking of English, we had a dialogue with Syrian students at Damascus University today. And one of the issues with American culture I think they conveyed was its homogenous nature. And I think that’s a legitimate point. Here we are, in Syria, having a discussion with Syrian students at their school, and it’s entirely in English. We can’t even be bothered to understand some of their language before we come here, and a lot of the general discussion I felt centered on how their culture compared to ours, as if ours takes a precedence that warrants comparison. I dunno, I may be off base in that, but in a way I felt a little ashamed, even, that I have to be catered to in order to merely communicate with them. And I think in a lot of ways that, sometimes, is part of what’s at heart with the difficulties in American relations with the Arab world.

-Kind of keeping in line with that, yesterday we met with the president of the National Union of Syrian Students, and one of the points he made during our discussion that really stuck with me was one of his criticisms of the American media with regards to its coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The point he made was that often times, we’ll hear about a suicide bombing somewhere by a Palestinian guy, but we’ll never hear that this guy lost his entire family in a previous bombing or something along those lines. And I think there’s legitimacy to that. I wouldn’t ever condone blowing yourself up on a bus and hurting, killing other innocent people. But it’s hard to make progress in a situation such as this one if you never acknowledge that there’s at least a very real vantage point, even if it’s extremist, the other side is coming from. You can look beyond it and shout past it all you want, but it exists, and if you don’t want to address it you’re just gonna continue blowing each other up until time ceases.

-One of the funny cultural quirks I had no idea about that I’ve learned of in the past few days is that a lot of Syrians really love basketball. I’ve met about half a dozen guys that talked to me about the NBA. They love the Lakers, Shaquille O’Neal, and Lebron James and Kobe Bryant. They follow the NBA playoffs more closely than I do (although that’s probably just because I’m a Warriors fan). Our tour guide, Osama, has the NBA TV package. Here I was thinking it was all about soccer in the Middle East, and there’s this society here that loves basketball. It’s amazing what you’ll find.

-In a good example of how legislation often affects things in ways bubbled-in lawmakers never probably consider, it’s really, really hard to find a reliable, quick internet connection in Syria. Damascus University experienced this problem, as they couldn’t, a few years back, import reliable routers from America, because of the Syrian Accountability Act of 2005. It was intended, I suppose, to get Syria to fall in line with western expectations of human rights laws and in dealing with extremist groups and such. I won’t pretend to know an extensive amount on the subject, but I can acknowledge there’s some legitimacy to that. The problem, though, is that one of the Act’s provisions is that Syria can’t import anything that’s more than 10% American made. If 10% of the parts in a given product are American, they can’t get it. So while the Syrian government gets slapped with these kinds of sanctions, it’s the people who can barely use the internet that get affected. I’m not trying to say the American government is this big evil entity or anything like that, but it’s important to remember how good intentions aren’t always enough. Sometimes you have to really think about how your actions are going to affect people on the ground.

-Along that line, both the people in Egypt and in Syria have been wonderfully friendly and open with us. They make it clear they’re not entirely happy with how our government has affected their part of the world in recent years, but they also make a clear distinction between the government and the American people, which I appreciate, because part of me thought before the trip that wearing a baseball hat and clearly branding myself American might draw some ire my way.

Other quirky things:

-The president’s face is everywhere. Like, evvvverywhere. Plastered inside and outside government buildings, on merchandise, in shop windows, on car windows. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s a little funny, to be honest.

-A lot of us had this preconceived notion that the government would be all watchful and Big Brother-ish on us here. I don’t think that’s been the case so far, but then again, how can I know for sure? I’m a little more confident now though that my blog postings won’t get me in any trouble now, at least.

-That said, it’s one thing to be an American tourist, and it’s another thing to be a Syrian. When asked about whether they’re free to criticize the government in this country, the Syrian students today largely agreed that the appropriate response would be “No comment.” Makes you appreciate what you have in American freedoms, goofy as our country can be at times.

-The chicken schwarma and falafel I had the other day at the market was absolutely delicious, and almost criminally cheap. I quite loved it. The market itself was also a really cool spot.

A post for posting’s sake

I haven’t much to report on today. There was a discussion that centered around ethics in the morning, largely spurred by a dilemma in which a couple of the other kids had a guy ask them to take stuff he had already said off the record. After hearing the specifics behind it (he’s a professor at American University in Cairo and sounds more like he’s worried about what his friends will think than any real danger with the government for his comments), I think his words should stay on the record, but in general I’m torn on the subject here, because I think it’s really, really presumptuous of us to assume people here specifically know the ramifications of saying something to the press. More importantly, it’s merely presumptuous of us to even to assume we know enough about their culture after spending just a couple weeks here to feel like we’re in a strong position to make a knowledgable decision about that. My feeling is that we just don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and people do get in trouble with their government for saying certain things. It’s not like America, and they don’t have a press here like we do.

But I don’t know, what I suppose I really think is that it’s hard to pass judgment on that kind of decision until you yourself have to make it.

We also had our dialogue with the AUC students, talked about a range of subjects such as the role of women in society and the merchant culture here in Egypt. I’m forgetting things, but all of the other students were knowledgable and accommodating and I enjoyed the experience. It’s the kind of thing that does help you understand a culture in a way going around as a tourist doesn’t allow.

Then we watched the final minutes of the final Egyptian Premier League regular season game for Al Ahly when we got back. Ahly scored the go-ahead goal in the 90th minute, incredibly enough, to salvage a tie with Ismaily, who won easily, in the final standings. So there’ll be a final tiebreaker match between the two to determine league champion, which will be utterly and absolutely insane, to say the least.

Picture catch up II

Because it’s easier than getting Egyptians to go on the record about anything.

that's my tourist face

i don’t know how these two pictures got stuck together, but i think both james and the statue guy both look very pretty. rachel, on the other hand, doesn’t seem too excited.

alexandria

So now I’m stuck with centered text for some reason, but the point I mean to make here is that my camera battery died the other day and I’ve realized I left a component to my camera battery charger at home, so, uh, I guess we’ll see how many more of my own pictures I’ll be taking. My guess is not many.

This journalism thing can frustrate a guy

Well, we came here to learn about working as journalists in the Middle East, and, suffice it to say, I’m learning a bit. Learning that, you know, getting people to answer even basic questions is like pulling teeth.

Without trying to sound overly complain-y, and merely just trying to relate my experiences, I can say I’m finding some of this a bit difficult. I’ve been working with Jared on a story about the Ultras, Al Ahly’s fan club, to basically illustrate how the sport figures into this country’s culture, and such. One of the guys I wanted to interview was a man named Muhammed Sawri, a member of the board of directors of Al Ahly, whose phone number I got from Ali, a kid involved with the Ultras we had already interviewed.

I called him, and immediately he sounded suspicious of me and wanted to know how I got his phone number. Then he hung up, telling me to call him back after he had time to think of why I would have called him. This is a story about soccer, mind you, not government policy or anything remotely approaching controversial. Soccer. So I called him back after about 10 minutes, and he agreed to do an interview at a place called Misr Hospital at 2 pm. Jared and I showed up at the place, at the time, and waited around for half an hour and he never showed. I tried calling him when I got back to the hotel, and got no answer. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that right now, but if the guy never intended to meet with me, and is overly paranoid about something, as I think the case might be, he could have simply told me he wasn’t interested in talking. But I also suspect that might be tied to an Egyptian cultural quirk where they feel they have to help you with anything. For instance, as the NY Times’ Michael Slackman told us yesterday, if you ask an Egyptian for directions, they’ll give you directions, even if they’re wrong. It’s a bigger cultural faux pas to give no help at all than to give unhelpful help. It’s shameful, even. So I feel like this guy might have not wanted to meet, but set one up anyway because it was simply a worse option than saying he couldn’t help me at all. This is just hypothesizing, but I dunno, I can’t otherwise understand the no-show.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a story waiting for about a week now on just one quote, preferably from an economics professor at American University in Cairo. I’ve e-mailed seven of them. One e-mailed back to say he didn’t know anything about my subject, and another e-mailed me with two other people to try e-mailing. I e-mailed Dina, a woman at the research center we visited last week, asking her if she had any contacts with economic expertise, and haven’t gotten a response from her either. I’m not sure if these experts simply aren’t interested in talking to journalists, or aren’t interested in talking to a student journalist, or simply don’t like responding to e-mails from pesky kids, but I just wish I knew what it was.

We came to learn about the ins and outs and difficulties and pitfalls of working as a journalist in the Middle East. To that end, I’m learning a lot, but at some point you reach the feeling that merely learning just isn’t enough. Hopefully tomorrow I find more luck, because now I’m running out of time.

I’m just not very good at soccer, it turns out

The day began with a meeting with Michael Slackman, the New York Times’ Cairo bureau chief. More than just telling us about the ins and outs of working as a journalist in the Middle East, I think he did a really great job of articulating just how Egypt works. As he said, there’s no concept of accountability really anywhere, especially not from the government.

His example, the slaughtering of all the pigs in Egypt in lieu of the swine flu nonsense, showed particularly well how a lack of general infrastructure in Egypt leads to a kind of haphazard administration of government decision-making. About 400,000 people in Egypt make their livings by collecting trash and feeding it to pigs, it’s more or less the only kind of trash collection in the country at all, in fact. But the government decided all these pigs needed to die and, without considering the repercussions, the job was just sort of carried out. That’s how a lot of things work in Egypt, laws are made and decrees are passed down and there’s no real infrastructure for any of it, so it just sort of gets haphazardly done, one way or another. No traffic laws, no garbage collection, none of the basic kind of infrastructure that allows the United States to run so smoothly. It’s kind of a weird departure.

Then we played some soccer, against a group of middle-aged Egyptians. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how at their age, they’re in such better shape than I. We actually managed to score once, and wound up keeping it kind of close, losing 5-1. We decided that our team would be called FC Flamenco, after our hotel, and that the other team would be called Abdu United, after Abdu, our awesome caretaker here in Cairo who helped his Egyptian friends beat our lazy American butts. So Abdu United 5 – 1 FC Flamenco. That’s your final. The girls also scored, so in total the Americans managed 2 goals in 2 games, which is about 2 more than I was really expecting.

My tired, tired body will now go to bed.

The fairer sex

I’ve never considered myself much of a feminist; in fact, quite the opposite. I’m actually a playfully practicing chauvinist (who am I kidding, it’s full-fledged and totally real.) But I mentioned the meeting with the blogger for Islam Online, Raya, in my last post down there and I just wanted to expound on that experience a little bit.

She spoke a lot, a lot about how women should be submissive to their husbands and modest and such to please Allah. She spoke about her own personal experience with being fully veiled to keep in line with that modesty and please her husband. She spoke about how Allah created women to be more patient with children, and so they should be at home looking after them. She spoke about how it is woman’s nature to avoid the workplace, that in her research she has found that women who work have more health problems and are generally less happy than women who stay at home and serve their husband. She spoke about how she was comfortable being in a polygamous marriage because men were created by Allah to have more sexual desires, and that the only way to legally satisfy those is to find more wives.

I can’t honestly say I agree with any of this. I also mentioned she was a very polite and accommodating woman, and just because her culture and beliefs do not mesh particularly much with mine does not discredit or devalue them, but this is one of those culture shock moments we’re supposed to be blogging about and so I wanted to blog about it. I believe the Islamic role for women, as she described it, sells women short. Puts them in a place suberservient to men where they don’t belong. That is one of the stark departures between my westernized upbringing and the culture of the Middle East, and without expending 1,000 words on the subject, I simply find it interesting, and in some ways a bit jarring. I can’t understand why I have to play a soccer game tomorrow when there are easily 10 or 11 girls on this trip better than myself. I can’t understand why a man can justify not talking to his wife for two months because she gave a lecture without his permission (something Raya said happened to her). I can’t understand why I can lie down at a Mosque but our female colleagues here can merely sit. There are a lot of things I can’t understand, but in a lot of ways that’s what this trip is about.

But keep it on the down low that I wrote this. Long live chauvinism, guys rule, chicks drool, and all that jazz.

Long weekend in Alexandria

So Wednesday night is kinda where the blogged-about portion of my journey left off, I suppose.

Rock Show at the Cultural Center

To begin, a group of us spent Wednesday night taking our trip to the cultural center in Cairo, the Culture Wheel. We saw a band play called The Room Band. It was definitely, erm, an experience. I actually didn’t mind them, even if they weren’t my sound. As the lead singer described, “we’re heavy, we’re a rock band.” Normally not my favorite type of music, the heavy part that is, but it was still worth going to see, just, well, to see. James and Melissa figured they were a cross of  Tool, Nine Inch Nails, a bit of MGMT thrown in, with a lead singer who sounded like the one from Cake, and lyrics that could have been written by Kurt Cobain at his worst. Honestly, I’m not sure that would help anyone understand what this band sounded like, but if you cut out the extras thrown in there, I’d say a poor man’s cross between Tool/Nine Inch Nails just about does it.

James and I took a cue from the lead singer when he said, “come up to the front, have fun, we’re a rock band” after he seemed a bit disenchanted with the crowd, and moshed with each other. Which basically just consisted of the two of us jumping up and down and into each other with no discernible cohesiveness to it. Some guy, with a very offended look on his face, asked us to stop at one point (so, uh, sorry Egypt) but the bongo player from the band actually jumped down off the stage and gave us two thumbs up. So I’m not sure if what we did was appropriate or not, but I think we gave it an honest effort to support the poor band up there.

Thursday, or, as I like to call it, a day where Alexandria didn’t seem so awesome.

Thursday consisted of a meeting at Professor Sullivan’s apartment where he taught us about Egyptian politics, which I thought I learned a nice deal from. Like just about anything you learn here, Egyptian politics are a lot more nuanced than “It’s a police state and Mubarak controls everything.” We learned about the Muslim brotherhood, which is basically the most notable secondary political force in the country after the state, although because of the state’s handle on controlling things, the brotherhood can’t really accomplish anything other than “affecting debate” as Prof. Sullivan put it, which, to their credit, is a start, especially in this part of the world.

Then we traveled a bunch.

And then we were in Alexandria.

(Side note: On the way there I bought a soccer ball, because Carlene has seen fit to sacrifice us to a group of Egyptians and make us play soccer against them tomorrow night. If we win (we won’t) I’ve decided it’ll be the Miracle on Pitch. I even have a goal celebration picked out, even though I know I won’t score any goals. If we keep it within five, I’ll be pretty stoked.)

In Alexandria we went to an amazing restaurant called the Fish Market where I had this delicious fried grouper that came plentifully and cheap. And then we checked into our “hotel” called Hotel Acropole, and I guess the best way for me to describe it would be to simply say that there were cockroaches seen. But it was cheap, at least.

Friday, or, as I like to call it, a day where Alexandria totally ruled.

Friday we woke up early and went to the beach. Steph taught James and Ian and I some soccer moves. The girls are teaching us how to play, because for the most part I haven’t found a single one of us who could say he’s better than any of the girls, even though we’re the ones who have to play because guys and girls don’t really play sports together in this country.

I got a tan, kicked the ball around on the sand, swam in the Mediterranean Sea (which is an awesome experience, but not one that really warrants a lot of words. I mean, it was swimming. But it was definitely great). We then went to the library at Alexandria, which isn’t kind of the historical place you might think, but it did have the internet. Ate at a restaurant called Tikka, which had great chicken, and then we went out for the night to a bar called Spitfire where I saw, for the first time here, an American flag on the wall of an establishment. There were also tons of British flags and such, so it was definitely a more westernized place.

Saturday, or, as I like to call it, the best day ever.

Saturday was awesome. It was one of those days where all the little things go right and it just puts you in a really solid mood. I had a fantastic, fantastic day, even if Carlene doesn’t want me to be all hyperbolic and call it the best day of my life. But to heck with that, it was the best day of my life. I used an ATM that gave me 300 pounds in 20s, which is just fantastically convenient because everything in this country is usually really cheap, and nobody ever has any change for the 100s and 200 pound notes you have. 20s are way easier to get by with. The little things, people, the little things.

Then I had a huge lunch that consisted of a big caesar salad, a big BBQ chicken pizza, and a tall glass of mango juice that cost me about 16 American dollars. The day before I had lunch that consisted of half a pizza, french fries, a shrimp sandwich and a coke for 4 American dollars. If you ever go to Alexandria, rest assured you’ll eat like a king with a spectacular view of the Mediterranean and pay little to nothing for the experience. It was truly wonderful dining in that city. Then, much to my chagrin, we left Alexandria and returned to Cairo.

I slept the entire van ride, which just furthered my awesome day, and then we went to the soccer match between Al Ahly, the Egyptian Yankees and Africa’s finest footballing club, and Santos FC, a team from Angola. As a pretty big sports fan (and aspiring sportswriter, of sorts) it was an incredible experience. I honestly felt like a little kid again (hyperbolizing I guess, because I can). I bought a flag, I bought a scarf (which for soccer is kinda like buying a baseball hat at a Red Sox game if you’ve never been to one – you just sorta have to), I got my face painted. (I’ve kinda given up trying to put pictures in posts, but don’t worry, there’s pictures of me with face paint. Likely on one of the other blogs, just go searching.) Ahly won 3-0 and enjoyment was had by all.

Today, or, as I like to call it, a day that sorta happened.

We spent the morning with a blogger for Islam Online, Raya (not sure of the last name). She was a fascinating woman who spent a great deal of time telling us a lot about her personal life, beliefs, and Islam in general. My personal beliefs didn’t always mesh with hers, but she was an incredibly nice and open woman who was definitely worth hearing and definitely worthy of our respect.

Then we went to the American Embassy, which I can’t blog about because everything they said was off the record because our government tends to be a little uptight about dumb things like an informal conversation with a bunch of college students. But there were American outlets (as opposed to the two-pronged Egyptian outlets) everywhere, which was kinda cool to see again.

I would also like to note that my mom is now officially our collective blogs’ biggest fan, having commented on (I think) every single one of them. I have nothing bad to say about this, because I want to be cooked for when I get home.