EGYPT! (or مصر in arabic)

I will try to keep this as short as possible, but Egypt was amazing, so get comfy. Also, I must say that Egypt is indescribable, but I will try to do my best to give it due justice. 

We got to the Cairo airport on Thursday night and got brought to our hostel. On the van ride into downtown Cairo, it was gridlocked (there was gridlock and constant horns until 2 AM), a boy, 3 years old at most, walked into the middle of the street and started pounding on the door of our van and trying to open the door for money; it was very sad. We finally got to our hostel – so sketchy! It was an old, run down building that looked like it was deserted and falling apart. Our van driver got out and shook hands with someone; we thought we had just been sold...We took the elevator to the 6^th floor where the Arabesque “Hotel” was and went to our room…also pretty dirty, but what do you expect when paying 10 euro for 3 nights! (The picture below is the view from our room) It ended up being just fine and the people working there were awesome, we are actually now all friends with one of the guys, Mustafa - he is awesome!

 

Friday = Giza Pyramids! (built around 2700-2500 BC!) We rode camels to the pyramids! I think I can safely say that camels are the weirdest animals in the entire world! They stand up with their hind legs first, and sit down with their front legs first, they are HUGE (8-10 ft tall!), and they make the weirdest sounds. I'm not sure if you will be able to view this because it is from facebook, but here is a video of a camel getting up! Camel ride 
          Anyways, we first had to ride down the side roads by some of the shops and slums, got conned into buying Arab headdress things (that is what we are wearing in all of the pictures) but it ended up being a good thing, it kept us cool and kept the sun from burning my pale white skin. We then came to this gate to enter the area of the pyramids. We got off of our camels and winded through the camel/Arabian horse traffic jam – I got caught between a camel and an Arabian horse and almost got ran over (never thought I would ever say that sentence)! We all got through and had to stand off to the side by the police. They opened the gate slightly and everyone started yelling in Arabic and trying to get their horse/camel through. The police/gate control guys were all yelling and trying to shut the gate, they were whipping the animals and people to get them away from the gate. It was complete chaos - by far the craziest thing I have ever seen and kind of frightening (see picture below). That is when it really hit me that we were in a third world country, it was not Bollywood.

We continued into the Sahara desert to the pyramids, the sun was extremely hot! We went to the 3^rd largest pyramid (Mycerinus), walked around it, and touched it! It was built of granite that was cut and shipped from 900 km away. Some random facts about the pyramids: they were built as tombs for kings, most are solid (some have tunnels to rooms for tombs) and the kings were buried underneath them, the pyramids used to be encased with limestone (that is the “cap” at the top of the 2^nd largest pyramid) and were smooth.

          Then we went to the sphinx. It has the face of the king and the body of the lion to symbolize that the king was smart like a human, but strong like a lion; he was perfect. We walked through the temple in front of the sphinx which is where they used to mummify kings; the floor was made of alabaster and the walls of granite (single blocks of granite were about 5-6 ft tall and 8 ft long!). When the temple was in use, all of the granite and alabaster used to be polished – beautiful!

          We had a delicious lunch with warm, fresh bread, chicken, beef, and falafel!!! NUMMMM!! On our way home we stopped at a papyrus shop; we got to see how the first paper ever was made; it is waterproof, and actually gets stronger after it has been wet, and it is washable!

We then had a dinner cruise on the Nile with entertainment courtesy of whirling dervishes (picture below) and a belly dancer…it was umm…interesting. The weather though was beautiful!

Saturday = Alexandria! We took a 3 hour car ride to the coastal city that Alexander the Great had conquered in 330ish BC. First, we went to the Kom El Shogafa catacomb built in the 1^st century AD; it was amazing how they chiseled this huge tomb so deep into the ground (no pictures, sorry). But when they discovered it in the 1900s there was no bodies in it, only bones from horses. Then we found and ice cream shop, I had to try Egyptian ice cream! It was ok, less creamy and not as flavorful, but it tasted good on the hot day! Then we went to the citadel, a fortress built on the site of the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, along with the pyramids, but it was destroyed by an earthquake), the entrance to the castle part of the citadel is built from remaining blocks of granite from the lighthouse. The citadel had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean water and the city of Alexandria. Our last stop was at the Alexandria Library – the biggest library in the world (bottom right picture)! It supposedly has a copy of every book ever published (not sure if I believe that). It was HUGE and very modernized. The outside of the library has parts of the alphabet of every language known in the world! It was awesome!

At night, we took a taxi (first time going anywhere by ourselves!) and ventured into the city of Cairo to the bazaar! It was crazy - sensory overload! We bartered for everything – I did pretty well :). And the men who were working were so funny they said lines like, “I’ll marry you if you buy this!” “I kill my wife for you” “You don’t know what you want, but I have what you need!” Also, when we were with our tour guide we had to say we were from Canada so we didn’t need a police escort (apparently they have some agreement with US, Britain, and Israel that they are accompanied by police, but you have to pay them), so we occasionally said we were from Canada when we were at the bazaar too and every time we got, “ahh Canada Dry!” or “Canada Dry, never die!” What?! Weird. But overall, I really enjoyed the bazaar, especially because everything was so cheap!

Sunday we went to the Mohammed Ali mosque (AKA the Alabster Mosque or the Mosque of Domes?) - pictures below. It was built to look like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul – beautiful! Then we went to St. Sargius Church and the Holy Crypt (at most 12% of the population is Christian, so churches were not as easy to come across as mosques). The church is the oldest church in Cairo, built in the 4^th century AD on the spot of the Holy Crypt – where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were said to rest/hide at the end of their journey into Egypt! We could only see the entrance, but it was very cool to be there! We then visited the Hanging Church – named that because it was built over a cannel, not as impressive as it sounds though. By this time I was so hungry, so we went to a falafel place and got 2 falafels for only 50 cents!

          Then, the Egyptian Museum – unbelievable! It was HUGE and had hundreds of OLD statues and caskets of pharos and kings with very intricate designs, paint, and hieroglyphics from around 3000 BC! The 3 most impressive things: mummified animals – snake, alligator, cat, and my favorite a perch which was literally almost 5 ft long and 2 ft wide!! (It spanned from the tip of my fingers to the wrist on my other hand!), a HUGE statue of a king and his wife/queen – it was 7 meters tall and 4.4 meters wide of solid granite! I still cannot wrap my mind around how they were able to cut, transport, and carve these things! The most impressive thing in the museum was the remains of everything from King Tut’s tomb! We saw lots of smaller things: thrones, jewelry, canes, beds, etc. but then we saw how he was buried – a GIANT wooden box (at least 10 ft tall and 15 ft long) inside of 3 other consecutively smaller boxes (but still big!), inside of a wooden case with gold on the outside, inside of another case (which his mummy was actually in) of solid gold! That case was 127 - 129 KILOGRAMS (about 250 pounds) of solid gold! Finally, on top of his mummy was a gold headdress/helmet thing. All of this was intricately designed, written on in hieroglyphics, painted, and decorated with gold jewelry. And remember, this was just in the corner where he was buried! This does not include the rest of the tomb where all of the other gold, jewelry, and prized possessions were! It was absolutely unbelievable! 

After lifting my jaw off the ground at the museum, we visited the bazaar one last time and headed to the airport (and it rained! In Egypt, crazy). The Cairo Airport is the weirdest airport ever! We couldn’t get in to get our tickets until 2 hours before our plane left, when we finally could go in, we had to go through security first, and then get our boarding passes, then passport control. But we couldn’t get to our gate until it was boarding time, so we had to go hang out in the airport, and then go through security again before we could enter our gate. Very weird. But we did meet this woman who was very nice! She was part Lebanese and part Syrian, her husband was Egyptian, but born in Canada, and they met in the US, but now live in Egypt – crazy! She told us a little more about Egypt and the culture (some things that we couldn’t experience or understand).

Other notes from Egypt: Cairo never sleeps! Everyone (men, women, and children) was out walking on the streets at midnight and later.

The driving in Cairo is absolutely insane! There are usually 3 lanes painted on the road, but nobody follows it. There will be a row of 4½ cars, then 3½ cars, then 4 cars and everyone honks all of the time – there is actually a system for honking. It is organized chaos, but it works!

Almost all Egyptian women are covered, either in colorful scarves (a lovely change from the ubiquitous black and charcoal gray in Cyprus), or in the all black cloak with only eyes showing. Our tour guide said that this is because when Bush invaded Iraq the Egyptians were terrified because they thought it was the beginning of a crusade and that Egypt was going to be next. They thought that it was speeding up the coming of Jesus, so they began to dress conservatively again – up until a few years ago they dressed like Europeans/Americans. When Obama came into office, they viewed him as a savior. 

Egypt is architecturally built up (in some downtown Cairo) with sky scrapers, bill boards, cars, cell phones etc. but is still a third world country. It is very dirty (sand and smog) and has lots of different smells – when we first got off of the plane is when I could smell it the most – a combination of sand, sewage, and smoke.

Basically Egypt was the biggest culture shock! But the longer I stayed there the more I came to like it. It was by far the best experience I have ever had!

Greek Dance Lessons, Kyrenia, and Carnival!

Sorry, I'm falling behind with my posts; I blame my computer that keeps crashing!!! :(
Anyways, last Wednesday we went to Greek dance lessons!! It was 5 of my friends, me, a girl from Romania, a girl from Cyprus, and the Cypriot instructor. It was so much fun!! We learned 2 traditional Greek dances - I have no idea what they are called (and even if I did there is no way I could write it) so I will just give you a rough description: the first one everyone stands in a line with your arms on the next persons shoulders and you move forward, backward, and side to side while you make like a 4 with your legs periodically (sorry, it is very hard to explain). The second one you have a partner and move in a circle to a crazy 11 count, then you go in another circle but do what I like to call a Greek C-walk: right leg forward, then you go up on your toes while your left foot comes behind to the other side of your right leg (again, sorry for the horrible explanation). But it was a blast!! Who would have ever guessed that Marie Boo would ever go to dance lessons...and like it!?

Thursday my Cypriot friend, Alkea, came over and we taught her how to make cookies - peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies = Marie's heaven! She has NEVER made cookies before; Alkea loved them! Then we went and did a secrete valentines gift exchange with other people in our program, also so much fun! Then we played card games and knives (spoons, but all of the other silverware was dirty).

Friday, we had breakfast on our veranda in the nice warm sun! Followed by frappe's at the university on the patio - so good! Plus it was in the 70s so we were wearing capris and t-shirts! nevertheless, we got some very weird looks all day for our choice of summer clothes during the "winter." Then we took the bus to the old city again walked around the shops on Ledras street and had doner kebabs! We were just leaving to catch the bus back home when we saw these police men running and yelling at this man sweeping the street, followed by a bunch of camera men, weird....then we looked up the street and the entire street (Ledras street is a pedestrian street) was filled with all of these men in suits!? We figured it was someone important, so toward the end of the parade of suited, political-looking men we asked this woman who it was - the President of Lebanon!! Crazy!

     After being in shock/awe for a couple minutes we got on the bus to come back. Crazy Cypriot driving as per usual; our bus driver pulls into a gas station...gets out...and starts having a conversation with a man! After a couple minutes of this, he begins to fill up the bus with gas...with a bus load of people! What?! So we asked a woman next to us if that was normal, she said, "Yes, sort of. At least it's in the afternoon. They sometimes do this in the morning when we are all going to work, then everyone is late." Now, I am not a frequent rider on the metro transit or any bus service in a major city (St. Joe does not count), but I'm pretty sure this would not fly at ALL back home. Oh Cyprus!

Saturday = Kyrenia, a major port city in the North of Cyprus. Before 1974 it used to be a major spot for tourists, especially for British vacations, but since the invasion of the Turks, it is no longer popular. We went to Saint Hilarion Castle - it is what Snow White's castle is based off of! It was built in the 7th century AD! It was very impressive how well it was made (it is still in very good shape) and simply the fact that in 600 AD they could build a huge castle at the top of a mountain and into the side of the mountain. On our way to and from the castle we passed some Turkish army bases/training camps (Jake, I covertly took pictures of it for you...while they had guns!) and heard gun shots while we were in the castle; it was like we went back in time because it was originally built as a watch tower for approaching Arab raids on Cyprus.

    

     Then we winded our way down the mountain to the Bellapais Abbey. A gothic church built in the 1300s AD; it was pretty, but I feel like we have seen every church in Cyprus already.

   

     We then went to the city of Kyrenia. We had frappes right on the harbor with lots of boats and the beautiful blue Mediterranean Sea as our backdrop - BEAUTIFUL! We are actually on an island, who knew! Then we got a tour of the Kyrenia Castle which was built in the 1100s and has 3 distinct periods of architecture by the Ottomans, Venetians, and British. Inside the castle was a little museum with the remains of a shipwreck (pictured below on the left); the oldest shipwreck to ever be found in the Mediterranean, built in 300 BC! We saw a reconstruction of the actual ship, vases, and almonds! Yes, almonds that have been preserved at the bottom of the Mediterranean since 300 BC! Crazy. Long story short, I loved Kyrenia!

Sunday was CARNIVAL! We all got dressed up in costume and the university provided a bus for us to go to Limassol (a port city on the south coast of Cyprus). We got out of the bus...crazy! Carnival is a celebration before lent where they can eat and express themselves in costume before lent - our European Cultures professor explained that the costumes are a way for Cypriots to make fun of something or someone or dress up like someone you would like to be. (But Alkea said people dress up like anything, it doesn't need to have a meaning). Basically it is like a mix of Halloween and a family-friendly Mardi Gras. Everyone is in costume, music, food stands, and a big parade. People were dressed up like everything from hamburgers and fries to Toy Story characters to men dressed up women (very popular actually) to the mafia. And everyone LOVES silly string and confetti; they would spray silly string on police cars or they would walk right up to a random person and just spray them - my friend Alessandra did NOT like that. It was quite the experience.

Monday was Green Monday, no school! It is the first day of lent, and apparently they go out into fields and eat a big family meal with meat. We celebrated by going to our favorite bakery, Zorbas, and trying new desserts! :) We got back, made dinner (sautéed vegetables with rice and pasta) and watched movies...7 of us in 2 twin size beds :)


Tuesday was my roommate, Kaitlin's, 21st birthday! We made a big family dinner with Mexican rice and peppers, bean, fresh salsa, and fresh guacamole! Soooooooo good!

Other fun facts that I forgot to mention before: there are no homeless people in Cyprus. Apparently there was one man a couple years ago that was living out of his bus? Everyone was talking about it and saying how humiliating it was. It was all over the news, and the next day, he had a flat to live in. Very interesting, very different.

     The plumbing in Cyprus is poor, so you cannot throw anything in the toilet...very hard to get used to, and gross.
     Also, there are stray cats EVERYWHERE in Cyprus! It’s disgusting! The ancient tale goes that St. Helen brought them to Cyprus to eat the snakes that were on the island and now they are everywhere! My friends love cats and they think the stray cats are so cute so they feed them all the time...no comment.

Well, one more class tomorrow and then it's off to EGYPT!! :D

Fun Facts About Cyprus and Cypriots

Since I've been here for 2 1/2 weeks already, I have learned a lot of interesting things about this crazy island and the Cypriots and though you might like to hear about them! One of the first things to notice is that there are 2 flags of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus carved into the side of the mountain that faces the south. The flag of the TRNC says something in Turkish that translates to: "How fortunate is the person who can say I'm a Turk." And the the flag lights up and night!

Also, the Cypriots come off as fairly mean and rude. My European Cultures professor explained that the Cypriots are like this because they think that it is superficial to be nice to someone you do not know - this includes smiling at them, saying excuse me, etc. So they will never return a greeting or gesture because they think the person is being fake and pretending to know them. However, once you get to know a Cypriot, they (apparently) are the most hospitable and nice people you will ever meet! They will do everything from invite you to their home for dinner to take you places around the island to meeting all of their friends - crazy!

Cyprus is supposed to have 300 days of sun (they sure are wasting a lot of cloudy days on us these first couple of weeks) and thus it is also been in a severe drought for almost 10 years. Every building has a big water tank on the roof that gets filled up with water on days that they have running water (for our neighborhood it is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday). We have water every day of the week, but we have to conserve it a lot more on days when there is no "running water" because it is only supplied by the tanks on the roof. So we have to do our laundry on certain days, take shorter showers, etc. on the other 4 days of the week.

Even though Cyprus is such a small island (about 1/2 the size of Connecticut), a relatively large part of the island is not lived or built. It also has variety of trees! Just walking down a road by our apartment you can see orange trees, lemon trees, olive trees, palm trees, and pine trees! It's crazy! Speaking of walking, we walk everywhere! And everyone looks at us weird, we thought it was just because we are Americans, but our professor told us that NOBODY walks in Cyprus - they all drive (on the wrong side of the road - I'm just starting to get used to looking to the right first)! She once told a boy to walk to class because it was a nice day at it was less than 1 km away, she said he looked at her like she was crazy and said, "Only immigrants walk!" So I guess we stand out even more now. It seems completely opposite than most of Europe in that sense, and is probably why they do not have many fresh markets.

Another thing is that Cypriots are always late. Island time applies all the time (except for class); everything is very slow paced. It is customary/expected that if you invite someone over for say dinner at 7:00, that they show up at 7:30 at the earliest! It is very rude to show up at 7:00 or even 7:10/7:15.

I think the craziest thing about Cyprus is their weddings! For a typical wedding, about 4,000 guests are invited! Even if you don't know someone well at all, you invite them. They do this usually to get more money since everyone gives money to the couple; they average about 90,000 euro (~$135,000) at their wedding!! The minimum amount you give the couple (if you hardly know them is 50 euro (~$75)! And the parents pay for everything, so everything the couple gets, they keep. We also learned about traditional Cypriot weddings from the 1930s that lasted 5-6 days, very interesting also, but I won't bore you with the history of it all.

Finally, we learned today about how Cypriots value their appearance of status. Even if they are poor and living with their parents, they will buy really nice, expensive cars and designer clothes to make it look like they either a) have money or b) don't value money, and are not afraid to spend it. It's all about how others perceive them. Weird.

Well, that's the major things about Cyprus that we have observed and learned about the past couple weeks. Very interesting place this is, but I still love it!

Classes, a Non-Existent Country, and Super Bowl Monday

As far as the title of my last post "Last day of freedom" yeah, that was a lie. I've had over a week of classes and still living the dream! Don't worry mom, I am actually going to class and my roommate and I had to give a 20 minute presentation in our history class on Thursday...but other than that, I love these classes! The first day, I really felt like I was a foreign exchange student. My first class was with all university students, so that was really interesting! First, I sat down a chair away from this girl and she just stared at me...then I looked around the room and everyone was sitting at their own table, oops! (I met her a couple days later; Alkea is half Cypriot and half American and is very nice!) Also, all of the students were very concerned about writing a 4-6 page research paper (which our professor had to explain, apparently that is an American thing). A guy goes, "Wait, 4 pages?! Does that include pictures??" and the professor replied, "Of course!" I'm liking this! I had to talk to my professor about missing so much class and he was very nice and helpful with everything; and he went to Ohio State for a couple years! Crazy! My European Cultures course is really interesting and we are learning a lot about Cypriots - I will explain more of this craziness later.

On Saturday, we woke up early (9AM is early for us here) and took a bus to the old walled in city into Freedom Square, down Ledra Street (which is their main street where all of the shops are), and ventured to the North! The North (The Turkish Republic of Cyprus) is, to most of the world, and non-existent country! Only Turkey recognizes it - the US doesn't, the UN doesn’t, none of the other countries in Europe or the Middle East; it doesn't exist! We had to walk through the UN buffer zone - which was lined with blue canvas covering all of the old homes/buildings that used to be occupied - and it was dead silent. Once we got to the border we had to fill out a separate piece of paper and have it stamped by the border control. They can't stamp your actual passport because if another country sees it, you might get into some trouble because it doesn't exist. As soon as we got through, it felt like we were in a completely different country! It looked and felt very depressed. Many of the buildings were run down and had not been occupied since the invasion in 1974. It is also very poor because when they invaded they brought the poor Turkish people into Cyprus, promising them a better life, but it is still very poor. Much of the animosity between the Greeks and Turks is because of this - the Turkish authority brought in the settlers and gave them the homes of Greek Cypriots who were forced to leave.

 
     Anyways, enough of the history, the streets were full of only men; we only saw a couple women and that was by the markets. We explored around the city for a while: got into a sketchy part of town, went to a mosque, and had my best meal yet under the wonderful Cyprus sun (chicken kebab, with rice, fries, and salad)! Then we went back to the South side and went to a fresh market - it was gorgeous and everyone was so friendly! By far, the best day yet!

     When we got back we were all exhausted, so we took naps in preparation for the late Cyprus night. In Cyprus, dinner is around 8-10ish, then people go to coffee or a bar until 12ish, and then to clubs from 1-3 or 4 AM. If you get there earlier than 12:30ish, nobody will be there! So when in Cyprus...

Sunday we went exploring more - there’s not much to do around our apartments, so we have to walk everywhere and find things to do. And Sunday night, well Monday morning, we went to the bar near our apartment and watched the Super Bowl! Very weird to have Super Bowl Monday and no Super Bowl food, and the commercials didn't get streamed through :( The game started at 1AM here, so we're out until 5AM! Yes, I know, crazy, but it was the Super Bowl! Should have been the Vikes.

Other than that, no much is new here since classes have started. Enjoying the lovely Mediterranean winter, and loving every minute of it! :)