Riding Camels in the Egyptian Desert

Good byes have consumed my life for the past week. Exploring a new city is a welcome change of pace. We arrived at our hotel around 7pm last night, which was perfect. The international flight was 12 hours long with tiny seats, no leg room, screaming children and bad food. After getting settled at the hotel (which has a wonderful view of the city), we headed out into the streets of Cairo. Iftar is the prayer to break the fast of Ramadan that happens every night at sundown. The city wakes up, restaurants open, and it is time to get your nom noms on. We found a sit-down restaurant and had a delicious dinner and managed to navigate our way back to the hotel. Thank goodness that Emily has a better sense of direction than I do; I was just following the sparkly lights. The driving is INSANE here! At one point when driving home from the airport to our hotel, the driver decided to make his own third lane in the middle of the two ones that were already occupied by other cars driving the same fast speed. Sleep came easy after having gotten little of it on the plane. I don't want to speak too soon, but I think that we may have managed to beat the jet lag.

We jumped right into things on our first day. We started with breakfast at the hotel with toast, crepes, tead, and a mystery fruit later identified as a fig. The tea is so good here, I'm almost embarrassed that I brought two boxes worth of American tea (There was a great pun at breakfast about how America's relations with tea have been strained since the Boston Tea party. tehehe) We then headed to the metro to go see the pyramids... when in Egypt, right? The metro is very clean and was easy to ride for about a 20th the price of a cab ride the same distance. We got off at the metro and asked a very nice Egyptian guy by the name of Omar where we could get a taxi. Turns out Omar is about the friendliest person EVER. He offered to help us take the bus, but then we found an illegitimate taxi driver who was willing to take us to the pyramids for the same price as the bus. Omar came with us and the "taxi" dropped us off at this tour agency. Before we knew it, we were being whisked on to the backs of camels and taken up to see the nine pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. Our original plan did not include camels, but I rather liked my camel, Humphrey. I was forced to change camels mid-trip and sit on the mean-spirited Jessie who gurgled a lot and liked to roll over instead of just sitting down like a normal camel. I also had to share my camel seat with one of our guides for part of the trip, which got kinda awkward. Men and women are not supposed to touch here, and I know I'm an American slut and whatnot, but still, having to rely on holding on to a sweaty man in order to remain on a 10 foot camel is really not my idea of a good time, but whatevs. The Sphinx is much smaller than I thought, but all the sights did not disappoint. By the end of the trip I was so dehydrated and tired. I have never felt heat like this before in my life. It wasn't bad in the morning, but traveling around in the desert, during the hottest part of the day, on the back of a camel really wore me out. Omar waited for us while we were touring the pyramids and met us with his friend and a car when we were done. They drove us to the metro, and we made our way back to the hotel. After taking some time to relax, we are ready to head out to Giza again. We have plans to meet up with Omar who would like to take us to his house so that we can break fast with his family.... I'm not really sure what's going on, but I did get to climb a 7,000 year-old pyramid today, and I discovered that camels are much taller than I thought they would be.

*A FEW HOURS LATER*

Ok, so dinner is not what I thought it would be. I didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't that. The friend with the car turned out to be Omar's half brother or "brother from another mother." That term is actually literal here in Egypt as men, such as Omar's father can have multiple wives. So, we headed out to Giza, called Omar's brother and were picked up and brought to this random hut on the side of the road to drink "Egyptian Juice." It's this kind of frothy green juice made from sugar cane. It wasn't bad, but it's not something that I wanted to drink a full mug of on the side of the streets in Giza with all those charming flys abuzzin'. So, after finishing half the glass, Adam swapped his empty glass for mine. Omar's brother (who's name was not something I could pronounce) then brought us to his apartment where we met his wife, who seemed lovely but didn't say anything the entire time we were there until we were walking out the door. Omar is quite open about... like everything. We learned that when he was 16 he had two girl friends, and loved them both but it didn't work out because he couldn't sleep with them because they were both Muslim. He the fell in love with an older French woman, but it didn't work out. He does seem to have taken a particular liking to our friend, Zoya and is very excited to take us all around the country and show us all the spots only locals can go. Ok, so it's really great to have made a friend out of a random guy in the metro, but what's the catch? He paid for our cab, waited while we rode camels around the pyramids for a couple hours, drove us to the metro, picked us up from the metro, insisted that we have dinner with his family, and wants to take us all over the place, interpret, and guide our 4 month stay. He never once asked for money, and he was very nice and honest. I got a little uncomfortable when he brought up Israel. Believe me, four American students know better than to bring up politics with complete strangers in the Middle East, but Omar was all about sharing his views. He used to like Obama, but not so much any more because he has not followed through on promises, etc.. He then proceeded to tell a story of when he met an Israeli and told him that he hated Israel, Israelis, and Israeli government. Zoya told him that she didn't believe in discriminating based on nationality, and Omar said that it did not matter and he could never be friends with an Israeli, he could be civil, but Israelis were essentially inherently bad. Now, I'm not the most Jewish gal in the world, but I was very taken aback by this rant. It was slightly offensive and extremely uncomfortable, just sitting there saying nothing. This is the first Egyptian that I've really had much contact with, so it's hard to say if these feelings are common, universal, or just isolated, but I guess this is what friends were saying when they told me not to be open about being "Jewish." So... yeah, this is emersion I guess. What's on the menu for tomorrow? Sleep, hopefully apartment hunting, and a mild adventure into the city. Yes, we hit the ground running, but now we've got to walk off the fall, and maybe throw some dirt on the camel-riding rash.