DAQEEQA WAAHID FII HURKA AL MARUUR (one minute in traffic)

There are a lot of different cabs in Cairo, some metered and some not.  Sometimes you can haggle out a better price ahead of time but otherwise most white people get quoted outrageous prices-- Well, outrageous by Egyptian standards, not American standards.  A 20-pound cab ride back to campus is realistically only about $3.25, but it SHOULD only cost 5 pounds, or about 75 cents.  Insist on the meter if you're a bad haggler, and don't get in a cab without one-- the black cabs, the white cabs, or the checkered cabs.  Sometimes unmarked cars will offer you rides and then demand a lot of money if you're not paying attention.

No car in Cairo looks clean.  Nothing in Cairo looks clean, honestly, but it's so dusty and it never rains, so what can one expect?  There's an interesting spread-- I've seen a family of four on a moped, I've seen minivans akin to a VW bus packed full of people (they're slowly pushing the public transit buses out of the market), I've seen lots of really cool old jalopies that look like Old Reliables, I've seen tanks, and today I even saw a guy bicycling through all this with a ramshackle wooden pallet loaded with bread balanced on his head like it wasn't no thing.

The following are purely optional in Cairo traffic: Turn signals, yielding to pedestrians, staying in lanes, headlights at night (they're occasionally flashed on as a warning), traffic lights, traffic control officers holding rifles

The only thing crucial to navigating Cairo traffic: A functioning horn.  The horn is used to tell people you see them, to warn them you're not slowing down, to spit game, to get an American into your cab, and to just say hi.

Our bus was blocked by a series of double-parked cars in a narrow street last night but any time this happens a random stranger will run into the street and start waving at you to indicate how much room you have.  They will, in groups, navigate you safely through scant inches of space.  Double-parked cars leave brakes off so that they can be pushed around the street so that others can get by.  The horn is used, it seems, to indicate that you will not be slowing down or stopping.  Typically pedestrians or other cars or carts take their time until your driver honks at them.

Early Friday morning, driving back from the "Bedouin Night," our bus driver smashed up a parked Mercedes Benz.  None of the Egyptians, driver included, seemed to think much of it, and we drove off in no real hurry.

ASDAQAA'II GADEED FIL GAMIYAT (my new friends at the university)

There are some 300-something people in this group of international students.

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
I know of two GWU kids, neither of whom I have had any significant interaction with, nor do I have any burning desire to.  One is a chestnut-haired boy with a little scruff on his face; the other is a slack-jawed wavy-haired boy named Billy.  Next.

One of the first girls I talked to was a Norwegian girl named Mari, and together she and I discovered that there was a surprisingly large contigent of Norwegians-- Tora, Eldar, Marius, Miriam, Ulrikke (a girl's name), and one or two others.  Their first language is Norwegian but their second language is English, because as they've explained it to me, German and French folk are spoiled because people actually speak their language.  In Norway everything is subtitled but the English is never dubbed over.  They taught me a Norweigan toast at the dim European-looking Pub 28, two blocks away: "Skol!"

Ali and Ariana are the Georgetown Girls-- they're here for a semester and they have become fast friends with Mike and I.  Ari is a plump blonde, hysterical and full of poise; Ali has kinky dark hair and nice eyebrows and a deep conversational bent and a bit of an edge.  It's funny-- Ali and I seem to have paired off, and so have Mike and Ari.  We already talk about hanging out together when we get back to DC, which would be really nice, I think.  I keep having to remind myself that I've known Ali for all of five days and that this is my first time out of the country and that I can't say for sure what kind of effect that has on one's sense of affection, but I do really enjoy talking to her.  The two of them both admitted to facebook-stalking the hell out of me, and during a 20-questions session they asked a bit about the black-and-white pictures I had taken with Martin when I came home from school last Christmas.

THE SUPPORTING CAST
My friendliness has gotten me far, it seems.  The security guards and the faculty talk to me all the time:

• Yassir, the kind mid-30s security guard who sits with me on my laptop while we google translate back and forth.  He speaks FusHa (Modern Standard, or formal) Arabic and a bit of English, so we can have some stilted conversations.  I like Yassir a lot; he's a real gentleman with a good-natured sense of humour.
• Asheef, a hefty, moustached and bespectacled Coptic Christian who works on the Zamalek dorm building.  Asheef is a philosopher-at-heart who, in defiance of his age, uses a young American's slang: "Rob!  What's up, man."
• Rashid, the RA from Lebanon who speaks perfect English and talks candidly about young Arab culture ("All the guys in the international advisor program on campus are just trying to bag all the American girls" and "It's hard to get an Arab girl in bed but once you do they are CRAZY" and "All the Egyptian guys think my Lebanese accent is gay and the girls all think it's hot, which sucks because I'm engaged now").
• The dodgy-looking young but totally friendly Egyptian guard whose name I don't remember; he loves to give me a hard time, friendly-like, about my horrible Arabic.

There are some other students as well:

• Jason is a dark-skinned boy who is often mistaken for Egyptian and Jen is a lithe white girl with a blonde pixie cut.  They hang out together and I can't decide if I like them or if they seem a little snobby.
• Not in their group but a boy I have a similar sentiment for: Bespectacled and New-Englandy Davis, who was had when he bought a 50-cent piece of papyrus for 50 American dollars, and when I told him he got ripped off he shrugged as though $50 was a drop in the bucket.  He told me a story about how he was drugged in a brothel he stumbled into in Paris and blew 100+ euros to get out without getting mugged by the bouncer.
• Darius has emo glasses and a lilt to his voice and hair like steel wool; he and jovial Lauren are in their fifties.  They're not a couple but they became friends quickly because of their outlying age; both have visited Egypt before and are experienced loners in the know.  Darius is the one who recommended that I buy mangos at the Metro Mart.
• Rebekah and Yamato are sweethearts-- a bit older than me but not as old as Darius and Lauren.  Rebekah is in a master's program and Yamato was sent by his insurance company in Japan to learn Arabic.  He's friendly but shy and he admits he doesn't want to be here but he does it for his work.  I talked to them on the felucca & barge rides on the Nile that we had on the second night of activities.  I like them but I suspect I won't be able to hang out with them as much as I want.

GHURFATII FII ZAMALEK (My Room in Zamalek)

The ground floor has common area which is very large and I think it's interesting-looking: Arabic arches for the doorways, some walls of beige cut tile and some of glass and brass.  There's a little courtyard with some trees and wicker chairs and couches, and an attached grungy little gym with a range of free weights in intervals of 5kg, a few treadmills and machines.

To the left: courtyard, elevator to dorms.  Archway on the right: exit to street.

Zamalek (three syllables, zam-EHH-lick) dorm has two separate towers, one for boys and one for girls.  You may never have alcohol or even someone of the opposite gender in your dorm room; the only place you can mingle is in the common area.  With the big glass walls.  Oh, and PDA is also a punishable offense.  Offenses earn you points.  If you accrue 7 points you get kicked out of the dorms.  Alcohol?  4 points.  Women?  Also 4 points.  Both in your room at once?  Goodbye.

My roommate Mike is tied with Julian for my favorite roommate ever-- no offense to you, my other roommates (except Scott and Sergio.  Offense to you, Scott and Sergio).  He's got a great sense of humor and is a really charming dude and he just came from studying abroad in Germany.  We mesh well.

The room itself is a double, with bathrooms down the hall-- a line of stalls, urinals, showers; a single washer and dryer for the whole floor.  It's got a bland common room with a wood-and-copper table and a bunch of old couches and a television.  The whole of it's very 1970s looking.  There is no kitchen.  I can rent a fridge for about $180 but I'm not going to.

Today I saw a late-30s man with coppery hair in the courtyard on his laptop.  We exchanged pleasantries and I went wandering around the neighborhood.  When I came back he was just leaving, and we made some small talk in the street: His name is Kevin and he's a professor of business here.  He said that the top four floors of the dorms are all for staff and faculty, and he gets a room as part of his arrangement, but he'll probably move elsewhere because it's too much space for him: two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room.  I said I was jealous that he had a kitchen and that I couldn't do any cooking, and he lit up:

"I'll tell you what, you can use my kitchen whenever you want if you leave some of what you cook behind--"
"I accept!"

I went back to my dorm to cut up my delicious and fresh 75-cent mango, which I washed down with my 25-cent bottle of 1.5L of Aquafina.

DHAHABTU ILA Al-QAHIRA (i went to cairo)

Whenever I travel I wear my favorite suit.  People seem to treat others better when they're in a suit, and I don't have to struggle with a garment bag or suitcase wrinkles.  This backfired when I arrived in Egypt-- more on that later.

I've been doing Ramadan all month but travellers are allowed to not fast and make up those days later if they so choose.  I bummed myself out when I realized that I did this but most of the Muslims on the plane just waited until sundown anyway-- in retrospect I wish I had too.

Air France is amazing: every flight regardless of distance serves at least one meal, and who knew I'd get served early because I chose the vegetarian option when I bought my ticket?  An appetizer, main course, dessert and drink, in addition to complimentary red wine, white wine, or beer with dinner (more than one if you ask nicely) and a cognac after.  Blankets and pillows and headphones for everyone, and I watched Thor and the Adjustment Bureau on my two flights-- I seem to remember movies costing money on domestic flights.  Available music to listen to: Radiohead's "The Bends," Massive Attack's "Mezzanine," Moby's new album which was better than his last New York 70's dance album I didn't care for.

Detroit to Paris was not so bad-- seven hours, I think?-- but I dozed only a little.  We had a few hours of darkness, and then sun again.  It's really quaint to me, being a poorly-travelled American, to be addressed first in French and then in English by all the flight attendants.  The plastered stewardess smile is universal (though I saw a couple legitimate ones too).

Inside the enormous Charles du Gaulle airport.

I badly wanted to leave the airport but I got really worried about 1) money and 2) missing my flight.  A taxi was, according to someone in the airport, something like 30 euros, which I think is close to fifty dollars?  Going through security was so fast, though, and I didn't have to take off my shoes, and duty-free shopping in Charles du Gaulle Airport is all stupid-expensive stuff like 800-dollar scarves and 200-dollar bottles of whiskey.

The flight from Paris to Cairo was shorter and more scenic.  I saw Paris from the sky and flew directly over the Eiffel Tower, and the city looked like a fantastic little cardboard diorama put together by a puzzle-maker; I can easily see now that a Frenchman laid out DC because all the diagonal streets named after states look just as haphazard as all the Rues de Whatevers.  I passed over unbelievable mountains near Zurich and little seaside villages near Athens.

I arrived in Cairo late and bought a visa, which involves a cursory glance at a passport and 15 USD.  Here my suit got me in trouble: all the excessively helpful and friendly people milling about in the airport assumed I was a rich American and would grab my bags to help me despite my insistence to the contrary.  I knew about this beforehand but didn't realize I was going to have to yell at people not to do it.

One guy shook my hand and introduced himself as "Mohammad, friend," and offered to help me look for my bag.  I told him laa shukran but he insisted, and ran around the conveyor belt looking while I did the same.  After a few minutes he said, "Not here.  All done with luggage."  Oh hell no.  He pointed me to the Air France desk, where someone inexplicably trolleyed my suitcase without telling me.  "You give big tip," Mohammad" said, and then looked at me like I was a cheapskate when I gave him 2 USD (which is a huge tip) for doing basically nothing but irritate me-- my one-time tribute to Egypt, acting to a script I had heard about but could never have guessed to what the performance would really be like.

A few AUC reps were waiting on the other side of customs, and we spent about 20 minutes waiting five more minutes for the shuttle to arrive, an unmarked full-size van.  Another man took my bags literally out of my hand while I was taking them to the shuttle, to carry them about 100 feet and ask for a tip.  Laa laa laa, I told you not to.  He walked off unfazed, and after the driver navigated a hilarious choreography of forcing buses to drive in reverse for hundreds of feet to let him out we were on our way to the Zamalek dorm.