MYPRADVENTURES
IN EGYPT
12/13/05
The Holiday/Trips/Bathroom Remodeling/Egyptian Museum Update
Wow....I have REALLY been a slacker
this time! There has been a lot going on in these last two and a
half months. We had Ramadan and Thanksgiving, I made two trips,
my bathroom is being remodeled, and I finally made it to the Egyptian
Museum! Also, I have been working hard on organizing my family's
vacation to Egypt. That's right, they're ALL coming! I
couldn't be happier and more excited. But of course it takes
planning, so I have done up a lovely Excel spreadsheet, complete with
charts and colors and every good thing (except for formulas; I haven't
figured out how to work one in yet....but give me time). Also
Christmas is coming up so I am busy getting ready for that. All
in all a bunch of lame excuses, I know, but they're the only ones I
have. So without further ado, here is the long awaited
update!
RAMADAN
First off, as many of you know, the Ramadan holiday was from October
4th through November 2nd this year (it starts about 11 days earlier
every year...I have heard horror stories of what it's like when Ramadan
is in the summer! <shudder>). I had heard many stories of
what Ramadan was like, so I was looking forward to actually
experiencing it. Since around 95% of the country participates, it
affects EVERYTHING. Sleep patterns, schedules, traffic, store
hours, attitudes...all are affected in some way.
Every night at sundown the call to prayer would go off as normal, but
during Ramadan everyone waits for this call more anxiously than usual
because that is when
you can EAT! You are allowed to eat from sundown to
sunrise. So the obvious answer would be to simply change your
schedule, right? WRONG. Schedules are slightly altered, but
you still have to go to work and school during the day. So people
would "break the fast" at sundown by eating for a while. Then
they would sleep as much as possible, getting up just before sunrise to
have another meal to help them make it through the day, and then sleep
again until it was time to go to work, school, or whatever.
During Ramadan, most stores open a bit later, and schools cut down the
number of hours each day. But life still goes on. (Of
course, some of those who didn't have work or school DID change their
schedule....they slept during the day and stayed up all night eating
and talking and watching TV. Wouldn't you know I was fortunate
enough to have neighbors who kept this schedule. =)
Actually, I stayed up later and slept later during Ramadan too, so it
wasn't that bad.)
Those who were not participating in Ramadan were still expected not to
eat or drink in public during the daylight hours out of courtesy.
Some restaurants were still open, but they were basically only for
take-out, or for parents who wanted to buy
something for their kids. (Children do not have to take part in
the fast.) The fast includes food, drink (yes, water too), gum,
candy, cigarettes...basically anything you would put in your
mouth. So it was hard to do that while I was out during the day,
but I survived (especially since I could go home and eat all I wanted)!
When the sundown call sounds, everything grinds to a screeching
halt. Stores close, taxis and trams stop running, and the streets
empty as everyone rushes home to eat. The first few days, I took
advantage of this by walking to the sea and just enjoying having it all
to myself. No crowds, no guys hassling me, and no need to use the
underground tunnel to cross the busy street since there were no
cars! It was crazy. I have never seen the streets so
empty! A few times, though, I forgot and found myself out
away from home close to sundown. Then I would hurry to get home
before the call
sounded. One time my roommate and I were racing the sunset trying
to get a taxi home before it was too late. We caught one and had
barely gotten in when the call sounded...WHEW! He wouldn't take
us all the way home, but he got us close enough....we were very
thankful!
Three times I was on the tram when the sundown call went off. The
tram didn't care where it was...when the call sounded, it just
stopped. Whether it was at a station or not. DOH! Two
of the times it stopped within walking distance to my house, so I just
walked. Once it was farther away, but still doable, so I started
walking, but happened to find a taxi driver willing to take me the rest
of the way. Thank you Lord!
As far as people's attitudes went...when Ramadan began, it was festive
because there were decorations everywhere and everyone was in good
spirits. The decorations stayed (in fact some of them just stay
up all year), but the good spirits faded. Imagine an entire
nation of people not eating all day and operating on little to no
sleep, but still having to go about their lives. Also imagine
that 90% of the men in that nation are addicted to smoking and are not
allowed to smoke all day for a whole month. Yeah....it got a
little hairy! =)
But towards the end, spirits started to pick up a bit more as the
three-day feast approached. And then schools were out and
businesses were closed and everyone was in party mode. If I had
ever stopped to wonder what it would be like if everyone in Alexandria
decided to go out at the same time, I would've had my answer.
EVERYONE was out. The malls were jam-packed, people were
literally hanging out of the trams, and the streets were crowded.
Also, when the fasting ended and it was time for the first day of the
three-day feast, the mosques marked it by doing some kind of service
ALL NIGHT LONG. I still have the catchy little feast song in my
head, since they sang it OVER AND OVER FIVE THOUSAND TIMES. I'll
put
a link to it with the pictures, if you think you can handle it. =)
Click here for some pics of Ramadan decorations and a link to the
Ramadan feast "jingle."
EGYPTIAN MUSEUM
I made the mistake of going to the Egyptian Museum during
Ramadan. Not that it's a bad time for the museum itself, but it's just a bad time
to
travel or be outside for extended periods. During the train ride
on the way down to Cairo, I usually have a bottle of water and a little
snack of some kind. Not this time! I did have a bottle of
water in my bag, but I didn't dare drink it on the train for fear of
the unofficial reprimand. Once I got to the museum, it wasn't so
bad, as my friend and I snuck hits from my water bottle by hiding
behind random statues and displays. =) And of course, water
wasn't the only thing I snuck in there....you know I took my trusty
spycam in there too, even though cameras weren't allowed (again, this
policy never seems to apply to cell phone cameras, as people were using
those right and left)!
The museum was pretty cool and definitely worth the price of
admission. But you had to pay extra to go to the mummy
room, which of course we wanted to see, so we paid the extra $10
or so and went on in. There were like 10 mummies in there and
only three of them were labeled! My friend had her Lonely Planet with its guide to the
Egyptian Museum, but even that didn't help us identify ALL of the
mummies. AND they don't allow any tour guides in that room, so we
couldn't even eavesdrop on a tour! On the way out of the museum,
we saw a book for sale in the museum gift shop that identified the
mummies. It figures...always looking
to make that extra buck! ("You wanna see the mummies? It'll
cost. Oh, you wanna know who they ARE? That'll cost more.")
The King Tut display was one of the coolest things--they had his gold
mask there, the one that you see so many pictures of. But I'm
telling you--the pictures come nowhere NEAR doing that thing
justice. It is INCREDIBLY shiny...it absolutely gleams under the
lights. There is a room where the mask and a couple of other King
Tut things are kept, and the hallway outside the room has more Tut
memorabilia. In the room, the mask was in a glass case in the
center of the room, and everyone crowded around it. So it was
really hard to get a shot, much less a GOOD one, but I managed to snap
a couple of pics! (I would liken it to the crowds around the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, except
that room is MUCH bigger than the room where Tut's mask is, and Mona is hanging on a wall, not
sitting in the center of the room.)
The animal mummy room was pretty interesting too....I think those
ancient
Egyptians would've mummified anything if the price was right!
(Hmmm...maybe that's where some of their descendants get their
"anything for a buck" mentality!)
Click here to see (illegal) pics from the Egyptian Museum, but remember
no ice cream, hamburgers, or hands allowed! =)
TRIP TO JORDAN
Right after Ramadan, I took a trip to Jordan for a seminar on
safety. It was specifically for Westerners working in the Middle
East. Well, guess what happened while we were there? You
got it, the bombings in Amman (oh, the irony)! Thankfully, I was
not in Amman on
the night of the bombings, but I was there the next day. Talk
about a quiet city...wow. The streets downtown were pretty empty,
and military humvees were driving around patrolling.
Jordan was very different from Egypt. It was much cleaner, and
there was much more greenery. Also, the standard of living there
is higher, so it
had some Western chains that Egypt doesn't have. It even had
Starbucks! I hit one Starbucks in the Mecca Mall there in Amman,
and another one in the Amman airport on the way out. That makes
only two
Starbucks drinks I've had in a year. :-( I'll have lots of
catching up to do when I get home! (Oh, and when I told the
Starbucks employee at Mecca Mall that we were supposed to be getting
Starbucks in Egypt soon, he just started laughing. I don't know
if that's a good sign.)
Also, the streets were much more orderly and quiet than in Egypt.
People stayed in actual lanes for the most part, and there wasn't
nearly as much horn honking. When we were walking around in a
bazaar area, the shopkeepers were NOT yelling out at us to come into
their shops. Strange. And get this--the Jordanian guys
could have cared less that there were foreign women walking
around! There was no, "How are you? What's your name?
Where you from?" Amazing.
We didn't get to do many tourist things while we were there....it was
pretty much just the bazaar and the mall. But we could see a
crusader-era castle from our conference center. And we drove by
the town where the Biblical prophet Elijah was from...that's gotta
count for something!
Just look at how green it
is!
If you look closely (or open the picture in a separate window), you can
make out the crusader castle/fortress
on top of the hill there
You can see one of the tan military humvees driving around downtown
Amman the day after the bombings. Also, note how empty the
streets are (and how clean!). And note the presence of a traffic
light--there were many of them in Amman which actually functioned, and
people even OBEYED them! Be still my heart...Alexandria should be
so blessed.
THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving here was
interesting. Of course, it is only celebrated by the Americans,
and maybe a few other people that the Americans invite
over. The supermarkets that carry imports had small corners in
their stores dedicated to pumpkin pie filling, cranberry sauce, and
turkeys. My roommate and I ate with some friends of ours--a
young married couple and their daughter, and two of our Egyptian
friends (a brother and sister). It was the first Thanksgiving for
the Egyptians, and they thought all the food was so
strange! Guess they got a small "taste" of how we
foreigners feel
sometimes! =) Anyway, it was a great meal, and we even got
to help decorate the couple's (artificial) Christmas tree after the
meal!
A view of the dining room where we ate
The Christmas
tree with our two Egyptian friends and the American couple's daughter
THE GREAT BATHROOM RENOVATION
Well, this is something that my landlady had been promising us for some
time, and the opportunity finally came to actually do it. Our
bathroom (which actually consists of two rooms) is going to get a face
lift! Nothing was wrong with the bathroom, it was just old and
kind of run-down looking. And it was nowhere near the kind of
bathroom we should have had for
what we were paying for the apartment. Also, the landlady wanted
to upgrade it to make this flat more marketable after we leave.
The renovation work began when I got back from Jordan in mid-November,
and it is still not quite finished. When it is done, the toilet
room (which previously was just a toilet) will have all new wall and
floor tile, as well as a small sink. The shower room
(which was previously just a big room with a sink and a shower head on
the wall) will have all new wall and floor tile, a bathtub, a sink,
and another toilet. We are so excited to get a bathtub...movin'
on up in the world! =)
With the beginning of the work, we also gained five new
"roommates."
We call the five workmen "roommates" because they are in our flat
pretty
much all day every day. They drink their tea here, smoke their
cigarrettes here, keep changes of clothes here, and just generally
dirty up the place as they see fit. I even saw a pair of men's
underwear hanging on my clothesline when I came home one day! (I
don't DARE ask
what happened to the underwear that it needed to be removed and washed
at my flat...some things are just better left a mystery.)
When the men are here, we just leave the apartment door open so they
can
come in and out as needed. Sometimes we're here while
they're here, sometimes we're not. These men are known by our
landlady, and do all the bathroom and kitchen remodeling (and plumbing)
work for our building, so there's no danger of
them stealing anything. Besides that, the landlady had warned us
in advance about the excessive amount of dust that would result from
this
work, so we moved everything out of the front room into our bedrooms or
the den--all of which have doors. So we
close all of those doors and, if we are here while the men are here, we
stay in one of those rooms.
Anyway, the men started by tearing apart all of the old stuff.
They took all of our old wall tile off of the walls and carried it down
to the foyer in bags--lots and LOTS of bags--most of which are still
sitting in the foyer. They
put our toilet in the hall, along with the shower head, the gas water
heater, and the pipes. Then they put our sink on the balcony and
our bathroom doors in the hallway. (At one point we also had a
bathtub in the living room for a few days!)
What, you might ask, did we do for showers and a toilet in the
meantime? Well, we had to use the facilities in an empty flat two
floors down. That's right--anytime we needed to use the restroom,
even in the middle of the night, it was two floors down, baby! We
got pretty comfortable wandering around the building in our
houseclothes. Hey, everyone else does it too, and it's a small
building anyway--everyone knows everyone. Our toilet was finally
re-installed last week, so we were only without one for a month.
We still
have to go downstairs for the shower, but at least we can go to the
bathroom in our own flat now! The new tiles are up on the walls
and the floors, and the bathtub is in place, but there is no water
being routed to the large bathroom, no sinks in any of the bathrooms, no second
toilet, and no estimated time of completion. (I hope it's done
before my family comes to visit!)
Page 1
Page 2
Click on the above pictures to see the phases of The Great Bathroom
Renovation!
TRIP TO BAHARIYYA
At the end of November, I got to take another trip to the Bahariyya
Oasis (for an account of my previous trip there, see the update for
2/26/05). Well, you know what that means--that's right, lots and
lots of tea! But this time we (my roommate went with me) also got
to take a trip out to the
Black Desert, the White Desert, and Crystal Mountain...none of which we
had seen before, but always wanted to see. The trip was awesome,
and the way it came about is its own interesting story which deserves
telling.
The story started when we ended up with a free afternoon that we hadn't
anticipated having. So
we went to the front desk of our hotel and asked if they could arrange
a trip for us. (Most hotels arrange desert safaris for their
guests upon request.) They said sure, we agreed on a price and a
time to leave, and went back up to our room to get ready. Well,
when we counted our money, we realized we didn't actually have enough
for the trip! DOH! We had only brought money enough for the
hotel and food, since we hadn't planned on doing such a trip.
Well, it turns out there are no ATMs in Bahariyya, and no one in town
takes a credit card. For the loss! So we walked back
downstairs in shame and informed our tour organizer that we didn't
actually have enough money for the trip, so we wouldn't be able to
go. To our surprise, he said, "Oh, that's no problem. You
can still go!" In response to the puzzled looks on our faces, he
said, "You're taking the bus back to Cairo, right?" I said,
"Yes.....," and he said, "Well, we have a representative up
there. He can meet you at the bus station, go with you to an ATM,
and you can pay him there!" WOW. He was talking about
financing our desert trip on trust alone, and that sucker cost about
$85--no small amount, especially for Egypt! Just WOW....that's
how it's done here in
Egypt! (Come to think of it, my local stores have let me
"finance" stuff before when I was short on cash...so I guess it's not
too unusual after all!) So of course we agreed to this sweet
deal, and off we went
on our trip! It was just fantastic....I hope you enjoy the pics!
Before we checked out of the hotel two days later, the tour organizer
and I exchanged cell phone numbers. I told him the color I'd be
wearing so his guy could recognize me when I got off the bus in
Cairo. "No problem," he said,
"he will meet you there!"
When we got to Cairo, my roommate took off to another bus station to
buy some other tickets she needed, and I waited for the guy. My
roommate and I
planned to meet at the train station later to ride back to Alex.
After waiting for
about 10 minutes, I called the cell phone number I had. The tour
organizer assured me the guy was on his way and asked me just to keep
waiting. After about 10 more minutes, the guy showed up. I
knew
it was him because I didn't figure anyone else was gonna walk straight
toward me and say, "Are you Megan?" Then we had the fun task of
finding an ATM. We walked to a hotel nearby to see if they had
one, but they didn't. However, the guard there pointed the way to
the nearest one. It was a bit too far to walk, so my escort
hailed a cab and we took that to the ATM. Then I got the money
out and paid him for the safari, plus a tip for his troubles and for
carrying my suitcase the whole time! He then asked where I was
going next, and I told him I wanted the nearest Metro station and asked
him if he knew how to get there. He said it was within walking
distance and proceeded to accompany me there, carrying my bag the whole
time. What service! All in all, it was a pleasant
experience, if somewhat bizarre. =)
I guess if I had stopped to think about it, I would've thought it was a
bit
strange for a foreign girl to stand alone on a street corner in Cairo
with a suitcase, waiting to pass money along to an unknown guy.
(But then again, at that time I also had a sink on my balcony, a
bathtub in my living room, and a toilet in my hall....so my perception
of "strange" had been somewhat altered.)
Click here to step off the bus and see some pics of the deserts around
Bahariyya.
Click here to see pics of the White Desert...some say it's white from
limestone, and some say it's white from salt because the area used to
be the bottom of a great sea. Whatever the explanation for its
white color and many strange formations, it is one of the most
beautifully surreal places I have ever seen!
Well, that's it for this mega-update...I apologize again for the delay
and thank you for reading! I hope to
get another update out before my family arrives in mid-January, but I'm
not making any promises. At least I'll get one out when the
bathroom is done....so hopefully sometime before I return to the States?
P.S.--December 15th will be the one-year anniversary of my arrival
here...hard to believe, huh?
Click the arrow for previous updates.
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