Convocation (?) Day

Menna, Louise, Me, and Noura

Playing games in class...

Sharaf's MJ impression :)

We were all really REALLY interested in what the teachers had to say...btw i'm sitting by the angry Belgian ;)

Some of the really awesome people in my class :)

Omar and Louise and part of me

Noura, Salma, and Menna :)

Class of 2012 *w00t*

So I guess this was a 'special' day (and it was cool when you got past all the lameness of school assemblies.)  Everyone had to dress up nice and all of the guys were wearing suits and the girls were wearing dresses and skirts. The weather picked a horrible day to try and melt us (at least Louise and I weren't wearing suits like the poor guys.)  So after listening to our principal talk like King Arthur, we grabbed our chairs and moved so we could 'listen' to the teachers as they told us why their subjects matter.  Then we grabbed our chairs again and went to our homeroom class and cooled our heels and played games like 'truth or dare' and 'messege'.  Then we all went  outside and took a class picture and then had lunch took some more picture, went to Religion, skipped Religion (got our books and lockers instead), wanted to go dip our feet in the pool, but our books weighed so much that we decided we had better get our lockers asap.  Then we went and got a 12A class photo (minus so people), went and hung out with the people that had missed the photo until they told us to come back for another one (w/ everyone this time.) Then we all went and relaxed in the nice airconditioned cafeteria until school was over.  I left the picture taking to a guy in my class (Ahmed Lotfy) and Yara so all the pictures attatched are theirs :)

AFS 'Visa Get-Together'

We all met up at Tahrir Square- extended our visas and went to hang out.  We stopped for a little bite to eat of fittur which is like a mix of keish and pizza minus the sauce.  Then we went down to the Nile and took a felluca ride :) It was very cool- I forgot my camera, but there will most likely be pictures for you on fb.  It was just this little boat and the guy played Egyptian music and we just chilled and hung out for a little bit. Then after we meandered back to Tahrir and took the metro a little bit away to a small cafe.  I didn't get to keep my metro ticket (darn!) and we split up and rode in the women only compartment.  It seemed just like in Paris or NYC, except less complicated because there are only two lines.  Then we walked a little further and hung out at the cafe and talked and joked and all was good :) But my host mom insisted that Louise and me be back at Tahrir by 3 :( so we took a taxi ($1!)

P.S. Gehad and Ahmed smoked hookah at the "cafe"* but I didn't try it.  The smoke smells sweeter than a cigarette, but it looked repulsive flowing from their mouths and noses like a dragon or something.

*outside seating in the street on plastic chairs and table- let's not be fantasizing here...

Family

Instead of going and seeing Bebo wa Bashir w/ Lama at Stars, we went and visited Sarah's great aunt, her two daughters, their cousin, and the daughters' three kids.  They were adorable! Ali, Malek, and Omr.  Malek really likes drawing so she drew me a letter, and I also got a small collection of stickers from her and Ali.  There was a party for the opening of a store across the street w/ 3 kids on stilts and three of the dancers that spin the really heavy skirt.  Also, alot of Christmas lights :) There was also a wedding going on w/ drummers and people making that really annoying tongue trilling sound.  It was a nice visit.  I also had some duck, not bad.

First Day of School- Senior Year, BABY!

A lot of things went wrong, but at the end of the day I don’t feel bad.  So I woke up at 6, got ready, Amani drove me to school and we waited to meet up with Louise and her mom.  Then we went and got our class.  It was really confusing, because they didn’t explain anything.  They just said, “Follow me.” And brought us to the class.  We’re in 12A, which means…I’m a Senior!!!  I’m also with Louise for class J So we found out how school works from our classmates; I guess the teachers don’t like explaining things and like watching us fumble through our day. Losers.  So we finally figured out that we stay with the same group of kids all day, all week, and I think all year.  There are probably 20 of us.  There are 3 tracks: A, B, and C.  A-mine-is for like doctors, nurses, and med school; B- is for math geeks (engineering); and C is all the cool creative stuff (where I should be…)  We have different classes everyday of the week.  Today was English, AP Calculus, Biology, break, Biology again, and then English again.  Everyone was really nice; making friends won’t be a problem.

Okay, now for everything going wrong…

1^st- no schedule (found it halfway through the day in the hallway.)

2^nd-It wasn’t the first day for everyone else (school had started on Sunday, but they had told us Tuesday L)

3^rd-both of us had on the uniforms of another school…

4^th-didn’t get our bus #’s, so Ahmed (awesome new friend) helped us out at the end of school – I swear what is wrong with the teachers???

5^th-my bus was nowhere to be found…the lady in charge said to ride Ahmed’s bus and that driver would take me home. (Louise found her bus straight away)

6^th-En route the bus’s battery died… XD hahaha wow. First day… Ahmed called his dad and he took the rest of us home :P hehehe lulz

Yep so there you go – my action packed first day of school… but don’t worry we got the uniform business taken care of J School won’t be so bad after all.

P.S.  I also figured out that they have Prom and Homecoming and they want to make a yearbook J They also want me to help w/Homecoming!  Soooooo happy and excited :D

Sunset and the Call to Prayer

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The view from my apartment :)

It was harder for me to get pictures/video of both of these, because the sun goes down so fast here; one second it is light out and the next it's dark and I've missed my moment :/ but I finally got some pictures :) The same goes with the call to prayer (except the short part, it kinda long...) It seems like it happens at random parts of the day and it catchs me spontaniously so it's hard to get a video, except I have narrowed one time down to around noon.  It's my alarm clock here.  Today I missed it though so I brought my camera with me to the living room to stake it out :) About 10 or so minutes after there was another smaller one and a little after that there was another in the distance...like I said, RANDOM.  Well probably not, but I haven't been here long enough to figure it out.  In the video I found a red bus; these are the ones that you have to run and jump onto :) I saw someone do it, but didn't zoom in fast enough, dang.  There was also a dude walking down the street with TP on his head...

My First Football Game!!!

The other team had no fans....

Al Aly ia red (Ahmar)

I loved it soooo much J shukran shukran shukran Gehad!  It wasn’t a very important game and everyone knew Al Aly would win, so I’ll spoil it for you now- 4/0 to Al Aly J It was beautiful out and Gehad told me about the group of fans that Aly had that chanted the entire game-if I was on the other team I’d’ve been running away in terror!  They all yelled in unison about how they would support Al Aly until they died; there were probably around 100 and at the end the police lined up just in case they stormed the field, but Gehad said that they never have (Al Aly fans at least.)  They did however set off fireworks after they scored and this one time there was this one random firework that went off and we were like, “What was that for???” and then they scored J I guess that guy was a psychic!  It was great and I also braved crossing the street…four times J YAY!

Some pictures :)

Lahma, Sarah, and Maya

Me and Sarah

Citlalli drinking our fancy German water in a carton from the German McDonalds :)

The view from our hotel the first day

All us AFS egypt kids

Day 3

I woke up a little before noon to the sound of the call to prayer.  I’ll try to record it and post it on here J The A.C. guy comes on Wednesday Alhamdulillah!  I met some new awesome friends today:  Lahma and Maya.  Lahma is an Egyptian version of Tots, I swear!  She is awesome I love her.  She came over before her and Sarah’s class.  I unpacked and Lahma found something suitable for Sarah to wear.  Then I transferred pictures to my computer and got on facebook and we ate dolmas called mahshi  in Egypt.  They were very good.  The “Rock” added me on fb (his real name is Gehad) I hopefully will be going to an Al Aly game on Tuesday with him Inshallah J By the way I always write at 2 a.m. and everyone else is still awake J cool.  Then Lahma and Sarah left and I also watch my host mom interview Miss Vietnam on TV.  Then Ali and me left and picked up Lahma and Sarah and went to the mall for a surprise party! J It was great and we went shopping and I bought a purple scarf J heyya hilwa awi!  I also met Maya who is my height finally!  I feel like a clumsy giant around Sarah and Lahma!  Then after the party we walked (and crossed the street) to Lahma’s house.  She has an older sis and younger bro.  We talked and played games until 1:00 a.m. when Ali came to get us!  Right now it’s 3:30.

Day 2

Stupid Adam woke us up in the morning!  I met Gabriel and we went down to breakfast (early-ish) with Maryam and Yusuf (it was okay, but I’m not a big fan of foul or soft cheese, BUT the bread was good!)  Then we went to this meeting room area and met up with Muhammed.  Then we started the orientation and a little after Achmed joined us.  Then we did some more stuff and had a 20 minute break, but we cleaned up quickly and let the maids in.  Then we chilled and laughed outside the meeting room for 20 EGYPTIAN minutes ;) w/ Muhammed and Achmed they told funny stories and Muhammed gave us all jobs after joking w/ Adam about looking like a cop with both of their sunglasses on inside J Maryam later said that he looked like a young Bruce Willis…I wish our cops looked like Adam!  Hahaha By the way I love it here.  I just had a moment J Anyway there was a teacher, photographer, tour guide, Lalli was an unemployed surgeon, and I was a microbus driver! Which if you’ve been to Egypt and know how I drive is frickin’ hilarious!  They are notoriously crazy, but get you there fast!  Then Maryam and Yusuf came and reminded us that it was probably longer than we thought.  Then we did more stuff and at the end we met the AFS EGY director and the “Rock Jr.”  Nobody but Lalli knew what I ment about Dwayne Johnson!  No one knew him!  Anyway they looked him up while we were waiting for lunch (more of Achmed’s awesome driving!  Crammed in with him, Mohammed, Lalli, and the Rock) We had Kushari which I absolutely LOVE!  It was so much fun I joked around the entire time with Lalli and Adam and Muhammed :D Good times! There is this really HOT sauce that Muhammed warned us about and him and Achmed put it on theirs and they were sweating so much Muhammed was saved from the brink of death when the Pepsi came!  Then we went to go to dessert (lunch is like dinner) and of course Yusuf got lost…we waited for a long time at some random place for him and Maryam and Adam.  The Rock I guess hit his car and he climbed out of his window and we all laughed as he chased him down the street!  Then Adam ran after a bus and jumped on and off and scared the AFS lady, but the rest of us just laughed J She had warned strongly against it at the orientation J Then we went back and somehow had gotten dessert in all the craziness.  It was good, but messy.  Then we just hung out waiting for our families while Adam tried to do an American accent XD Then everyone started leaving and the Rock started to warm up to me and we talked more- he’s a big Barcelona fan and we had both watched the Arsonal/Manchester game so we talked about that. He denied that he looked anything like the Rock, but Muhammed agreed with me, because I was right ;).  The more he assured me that my family would come the more nervous I got.  Then they came and Muhammed said next time he was in Cairo we’d hang out J I can’t wait I already miss him!  Then we went home and Sara and I went and got me a SIM card and some dinner which is like a snack J Then I went and took a shower, called back to America and hung out with my Egyptian family until around 1 a.m. when I went to bed.  Because of the heat I didn’t fall asleep until 4 a.m. We wear shimshim (flipflops) around the house and light the hot water heater with a match!



Cairo Day 1

So…Day 1, no family. Achmed (18) picked us up at the airport with Yusuf (18).  Achmed is what I think my stereotype of Egypt was; short, skinny, always smiling, and always joking with the other guys.  Yusuf was tall, with lots of wavy hair and really bored all the time.  Mariam (who we met later) always said what a horrible driver he was, but to me it was hard to tell!  With Achmed, after awhile I saw a method to his madness.  He is training to be a pilot.  One thing to know about Yusuf- he ALWAYS gets lost! J Anyway…it took a while to leave the airport and we went to our hotel.  We were so tired and me and Lalli shared a room, we settled down, checked out our view and took a quick 2 hour nap.  Then they woke us up and we met Mariam who was smaller than me with brown half curly-half straight hair.  Okay so with us (in order of appearance) was Adam from Denmark, next was Lisa from Germany.  It was just the six of us until Mariam showed up with a girl from Belgium.  Then we went out for dinner (concept of time completely lost) and had shwarma (wasn’t a fan in Paris-not a fan now…sucks, because Sarah loves it) and water and decided not to wait for the Brazilian guy and went straight to sleep.  At sometime I met Muhammed from Aswan who goes by something else that I can’t remember so he’ll just be Muhammed.  He was awesome, the first Egyptian guy I consider my friend.  He isn’t yet 18 (driving age) so I was able to joke about having my licence, while he was still a kid J Love him in a totally older brother way after just 2 days J I always wanted one!  Okay, then we went to sleep J