excuse me, are you a movie star? julia roberts? shakira?

Contrary to my expectations, the comments Egyptian men make are quickly becoming one of the funniest parts of this experience. More often than not, they are completely ridiculous, rather than being creepy or offensive. They range from simple and sweet ("beautiful," or gameela in colloquial Egyptian Arabic) to outrageous (you can be called any Western celebrity, regardless of what you actually look like, from Michelle Obama to Catherine Zeta-Jones; I get Shakira a lot, for some reason). My favorite example so far has been finding myself walking with a guy friend in Islamic Cairo or the bazaar area called Khan el-Khalili. At least three times now, my friends have been approached and asked loudly for how many camels they will sell me (this happens to all of the women in our study abroad program on a pretty regular basis). I merited an offer of 500 camels on Tuesday, which I thought was pretty fair; I've heard camels can cost or be worth up to $1,000 here, so that's a decent dowry, so to speak. I was a little insulted yesterday, though, when my friend Nick was offered 11 camels for all four of his "wives" (myself and my friends Toby, Laura and Rosie). The worst part was that the vendor who was making the offer from across the bazaar then held up a stuffed camel; he didn't even mean real camels? Seriously, eleven stuffed camels? Thankfully, Nick turned him down, saying we were worth a little more than that.

I'm still having an amazing time here, although now that the second week of school is over, the routine is beginning to erode the sense of wonderment that I felt for my first three weeks here. I'm planning to make a separate post about Arabic in general; since I get a lot of questions about the language and my study of it, I'm assuming some people reading this may be interested. But for now, I'll say that my Arabic journey has been a little rocky, and it's been tough to figure out which class I belonged in here. I'm excited that I have finally found an Arabic course where I feel (semi-) competent, and I really like the professor; she strikes a great balance between being kind and demanding. But more about that later. The only downside to this class is that it is accelerated, which means we meet for between two and three hours a day, four days a week, at 8:30 am. With Zamalek being about 45 minutes to an hour away from the AUC campus in New Cairo, I now find myself having to wake up at 6 am every morning-- earlier than I had to wake up even in high school. Those of you who know my sleeping habits may correctly guess that this hasn't made me any more likely to go to bed on time (it's 1:33 am here, and yes, I do have class tomorrow). I feel okay about it, honestly; Cairo is a nighttime city, where nothing really opens in the morning, and everything stays open until at least 2 am. I'm pretty at home here, at least in that sense!

While I've had to nap a lot this week to do so, I still managed to go all over the city and visit several attractions I've been wanting to see. Sunday night was the Super Bowl; after a full day of classes, my friends Chelsea, Gordon, Matt and Rosie helped me pull what was essentially an all-nighter at the Cairo Marriott to watch the game at 1:30 am our time. The viewing room was gorgeous (picture below) and the food was great, but that didn't change the fact that I was exhausted and had class at 8:30. So, Rosie and I left at halftime.

The beautiful chandelier in the TV room at the Marriott! Definitely the most upscale Super Bowl viewing party I've ever been to.

Since we have Tuesdays off here, Monday nights are like a little weekend night in the middle of the week. I actually really like that; it makes it easier to keep from getting overwhelmed. On Monday night, a huge group of AUC people all sort of ran into each other at Deals, which is the closest thing to a "real" bar I've been to here (as in, it's possible to order drinks other than the Egyptian beers Stella and Sakara). Apparently, you can also order a banana split, as my friend John from the University of Florida did immediately upon sitting down with us.

We had an awesome time, but it was a little tough to get up early the next day to go sightseeing in Islamic Cairo. That was probably the most authentically "Cairene" experience I've had since arriving here; a group of nine of us took the Metro (only 1 Egyptian pound/about 20 cents for a ticket!) into Islamic Cairo, where the streets are very narrow, most of the women are veiled, and carts drawn by donkeys are more prevalent than cars. We walked for about thirty minutes deep into the area. There are so many mosques and historic buildings in Islamic Cairo that our Lonely Planet guide (the definitive guide, apparently, since everyone in this program seems to have bought the same one as me!) says it will take a full six days straight to see everything it has to offer. We decided to only try to tackle one major sight: the Mosque of Ibn Tulun.

The mosque was built about twelve hundred years ago (completed in 879 CE) and is considered both the largest mosque in Cairo by square land area and the oldest surviving mosque here. It underwent a major restoration in the early 2000s by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (funny story: Rosie, Nick, Toby and I stumbled upon the actual headquarters of this council in a tiny back alley in Khan el-Khalili). It's also the first example of the use of a pointed arch in architecture anywhere.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, and so calm and quiet compared to the hustle and bustle of the outer city. The huge inner courtyard just spoke so deeply to me of the religious and contemplative purpose of the building. Hopefully you'll be able to glean some of the same sense from my pictures. The most amazing part, however, was getting to climb the minarets of the mosque and a second mosque next door; the views were unbelievable! As seen in the picture below, you can see the Great Pyramid from the minaret at Ibn Tulun, and that's all the way on the other side of this enormous city.

The central dome in the courtyard at Ibn Tulun.

The gorgeous courtyard!

Kelsey and I outside the mosque; you can see behind us the minaret we had just climbed!

On Tuesday night, I went to a restaurant called Crave with Nick and Toby. I had read in the guidebook that the burgers at this place were the best in Egypt, but I didn't know if I believed it; there's some amazing food on the island of Zamalek (I'm going to be mentioning it quite a few times in this post alone), but in all of Egypt? Really? After all, there is a Fuddruckers in the big mall in Cairo. And a Hardee's down the street from the dorm. But this burger was absolutely one of the best I have ever eaten. Nick and Toby were very jealous just because of the expressions on my face while I was shoveling it into my mouth. I don't know what exactly was on it, so don't ask me; just promise that the next time you're in the neighborhood, you will order the Zombie Burger at Crave (yes, that's really what it's called).

Wednesday was another busy day of classes; on Sundays and Wednesdays I have three hours of Arabic, followed by Comparative Middle East Politics and Self and Society, an ethics course. I went to bed early, too-- not too exciting. But on Thursday, I had what might be my best day here yet: I finally, finally got to go to Sequoia! I've been so excited about this restaurant ever since the New York Times reviewed it in early January (see earlier post all about it). And it absolutely did not disappoint. It was gorgeous, to begin with; it's situated on the point of the island, right on the Nile, and is basically a huge white tent filled with beautiful lanterns and soft couches. You can order all kinds of food, and we did have Egyptian mezze (small plates, like hummus or baba ghanoush), but then I had to have the sushi I had been so excited about! Definitely almost as good as Tsunami in Columbia, SC-- but not quite :)

DELICIOUS Mori sushi tuna roll at Sequoia. Every bit as good as it looks!

Amazing design with the lights of downtown Cairo outside the tent!

I'm actually a little disappointed at how little Egyptian food I eat while at home on Zamalek. There are definitely Egyptian places, but far more prevalent on the island are Asian restaurants (in the last four days, I've eaten Japanese at Sequoia, Chinese at Peking, Thai at Thai Elephant, and Asian fusion at a place called, strangely, "Ethnic Cafe"), Italian places, and those that serve a miscellany of Western food. We've also got Hardee's, McDonald's, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, and a Chili's that my guidebook, confusingly, lists under recommended dining while on Zamalek. I try to save money on food, because it's possible to eat a very filling meal of traditional Egyptian foul (beans), falafel, koushary (noodles, rice, fried onions, tomato sauce, chickpeas, and lentils), or shwarma tagen (pasta with shwarma meat) for about 1 USD. But Zamalek really does have a lot of legitimately great restaurants, like Sequoia and Crave, where you will spend about what you would to eat out at an average-priced restaurant in the U.S., but get so much more food and a great upscale experience for it. It's hard to resist! And there's still so many more I want to try, so it's a good thing I've still got three-and-a-half months here.

On Friday, I went to Khan el-Khalili, the major bazaar in Cairo, for the first time. It's a huge, sprawling, ever-changing district of alleys upon alleys of vendors selling everything from fresh produce to copies of the Qur'an to comforters and lingerie. We wandered for about three hours, and while I saw lots of stuff I wanted to buy, I was trying to be careful and not touristy. I did buy a scarf and earrings, and bargained appropriately for them; the vendors will try to charge western-looking people much more for the items than they are worth. The Khan was complete sensory overload, too; a constant crush of people, huge carts and trays of baklava and bread coming through the streets, salesmen shoving their wares in your face, and constant sales pitches and (as I discussed earlier) marriage offers being yelled your way. It reinforced the decision I've made that the pedestrian right-of-way is not just given to you in Cairo; rather, you have to take it by force, and earn it by being completely fearless as you dodge donkey carts and speeding taxis. The Khan was a great experience, though, and I'm sure I'll return soon; I want one of the beautiful hand-quilted tapestries they make on-site in the little shops to put on my wall, and some of the comforters are actually beautiful. And everything's very, very cheap if you know how to bargain (I'm learning)!

Crazy street scene in Khan el-Khalili!

After all that, I wound up my week today with a pretty relaxing afternoon. I ran errands and avoided doing homework (the usual, haha) and some of my friends and I had a Valentine's Day gift exchange (how did we all know to give each other food? It was perfect). Valentine's Day is a huge deal in Egypt; apparently they actually celebrate it twice (again in October). And Facebook takes forever to upload pictures here, so I've spent the last three days or so uploading my first album of pictures from Egypt, but it's finally done as of tonight! So, if you're my friend on Facebook, definitely check it out-- there's way more pictures than I could ever put on the blog. There's more to come, and hopefully I'll be able to post more frequently soon so that these won't be so long! I'm sad to have missed out on the snow days this week in Atlanta and Columbia, but you know what? The sunshine and 70-degree weather here isn't so bad, either :) I miss all of you at home! Thanks for reading!