The mosque by Khan al-Khalily.
The cafe at the Khan, with my Survival Arabic class. An Egyptian kid wanted her picture taken with us...
Khan al-Khalili sook (or sooq, or soo', depending on the transliteration). The oldest and most famous bazaar in Cairo, dating back to the 13th century. It consists of a huge maze of narrow streets spiraling out from a mosque, selling everything from touristy stuff like Egypt keychains to spices to handcrafted boxes to scarves. Everyone, tourists and Egyptians alike, shops here. You have to bargain for what you want (bargaining is fun and a source of pride for Egyptians). The vendors guessed we were American, and kept calling out stuff like "Obama shops here!" to get us to buy from them.
AUC held a welcome party and passed out free belly-dance skirts and keffiyehs. Many of the Egyptian men wear keffiyehs, which are a symbol of Arab culture. I think it would be kind of strange, though, for me to wear one around Cairo, as I'm neither male nor Arab. These are my American friends Janis and Annette.
The view from my window. This is Al-Mar'ashly Church. Christians represent about 20% of the Egyptian population (I think), and the vast majority are Coptic. Yesterday I heard chanting from my window...it went on for at least an hour.
The new AUC campus is in New Cairo, a suburb of Cairo that's still under heavy construction (Cairo is growing fast). The campus is about 1-2 hours from Zamalek depending on traffic, and it's beautiful. The open desert is just to the right. It's isolated, though; it's almost impossible to get into the city by taxi.
We made it back in time to catch our flight. We got to Cairo at 12 AM...the landing was a bit scary because we couldn't see the runway or anything around it. Why? Because the smog was so bad...my eyes and lungs burned the whole first night (but I was used to it by the next day). After a crazy fast ride through Cairo, whipping past palm trees, mosques, old apartment buildings, and a thousand other things, we reached the American University dorm on Zamalek, an island in the Nile (Cairo has some lane lines, traffic lights, and crosswalks, but they're totally optional and most people pay no attention to them. I have yet to see a speedlimit sign. Walking across the street or taking a cab is an act of radical trust...). Here's my room, which I finally got to at about 2 am. My roommate is from Wisconsin and seems like a very fun person.
Parliament and the Thames.
We had no idea that Westminster, Big Ben, and Parliament were right next to each other, so we were completely shocked to see all three at once.
And suddenly, Westminster was in front of us! We couldn't go in because we didn't have the time or money for a tour, but the outside was beautiful.
We rounded the corner and found ourselves here...
With about an hour and a half left before we needed to head back, we decided to find Big Ben. Our search took us through St. James's Garden, where we saw pelicans and other strange birds. Here's a small cottage at the edge of the garden. It looks green, but it was freezing cold.
We walked through a very green park to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the changing of the guards wasn't until the next day, and we did not see the queen. In the distance, though, we saw Big Ben...
I and another girl from Grinnell had a 7.5 hour layover in London on the way to Cairo. Everyone said that wasn't enough time to leave Heathrow, and actually we were the only AUC students to leave the airport. We had 4 hours and 13 pounds to explore, so we got on the tube to Piccadilly. The tube broke down at Knightsbridge, so we got out and walked. All we knew was that Buckingham Palace was close by...oh no, I deleted the picture of the London telephone booth! That's OK, everyone knows what that looks like anyway. Above is the Wellington arch ceiling (we didn't know what the arch was because we were completely unprepared for our little London adventure...but it was in an area with tons of war memorials).
