First Impressions

With two full days of exploring, I think I might be getting a basic feel for this place, meaning that I found my hotel without wandering in circles for four hours asking confused locals where a nonexistent square is. That was Tuesday. Yet for the most part I've enjoyed getting semi-lost repeatedly over the last two days; that way I see parts of Cairo I would normally have missed. On the other hand, I haven't made it to all the famous places I intended to go, but I suppose I still have 5 months.

Tuesday morning I headed vaguely east, and before long found myself in Khan al-Khalili, the famous market for just about everything, but especially for tourists. Before long I had accepted a nice fellow named Ali's offer to guide me to any section of the bazaar: spices, silk, gold, and so forth. I chose the spice market, figuring that there couldn't be too much harm, since he wasn't actually taking me to his shop, right? Well, not exactly. First he guided me through the spice market, and gave me all sorts of good information about which saffron was actually safflower, and thus should be avoided. I bought some basic spices, mostly for tea, and then he asked me if he could host me for tea. Hint: tea is a Cairene salesman's most potent weapon. After all, once it's served you can hardly leave until its finished, and if it starts at near boiling then that could take awhile. Meanwhile there's time to discuss all matters of topics: family, football, Obama (Egyptians love him), and of course whatever happens to be on sale. To be fair to Ali, he did give me considerable practice in Arabic, and was always very nice. I'm only a little riled because, somehow, he managed to get me to buy 8 small bottles of ointment. Sure the price was nice, but soon after leaving I realized that I now had enough perfume/musk to last me approximately 500 years at my going rate, which is basically occasionally putting on after-shave.

The other notable event Monday happened when I finally gave up on finding my hotel on foot and hailed a taxi. Luckily the driver figured out that by "Midan Ibrahim Pasha" I was actually referring to Midan Opera, which happens to have Ibrahim's statue. Then he took off, and for the next thirty minutes I saw more near accidents than in the rest of my life. First of all, most Cairo taxis are old black and white vehicles which are invariably missing some part-on mine it was, of course, the back seat belt- and only continue running because all the taxi drivers are secretly MacGyvers. These vehicles are then driven with a recklessness that makes the little street racing I've seen a joke. I'm convinced that if someone practiced defensive driving skills they would never move, because any forward progress of the car is a mini game of chicken, as two or more vehicles compete for the coveted position. I'll probably keep blathering on about the traffic during a later post, so I'll stop for now.

On Friday the other ND students will be showing up, and by now I'm quite looking forward to their arrival. Having complete independence is nice, but eventually it would be good to know someone who I didn't meet five minutes earlier. Finally, I put some pictures from Amsterdam and Cairo up, you should be able to access them here. And just to keep this place a little visually interesting, I'll throw one in here.