Agouza!

Hey Everyone!

I've made it to Cairo and I'm loving it here! I'm living in a part of the city called Agouza that is predominantly Muslim (like most of the rest of Cairo) in a flat with 8 other girls -- the total number of students on the program is 30. Most of our time so far during Orientation Week has been spent in the Villa (where we will take classes -- it used to be the director's house) and learning our way around the city using taxis and the metro.

Classes start on Wednesday and Service Projects on Tuesday. I'm hoping to teach ESL to adults as my service project, and on Wednesday structured Arabic classes will begin, inshallah. I'm really looking forward to being able to communicate better in Arabic.

The Egyptian people are very welcoming and helpful. Although Cairo is a big city, I feel comfortable walking up to a woman on the street and asking for directions. Things are also a lot cheaper here. For example, the internet at the cafe I'm using only costs 3 LE an hour (the exchange rate is 5.5 LE to 1 American dollar). I haven't bought much yet, but soon we'll have to start buying some of our own food and stuff.

Last night, the group went on a felucca ride and to the Khan-al-Khali bazzar, which is huge and very hard to describe with out the aid of pictures. Since it's Ramandan and there are several mosques in the general area of the Khan-al-Khali, there were lots of people wandering the markets and smoking shisha (the Egyptian word for hookah). I sat down to talk with people and drank hibiscus juice, which was really odd at first, but quite good and supposedly lowers your blood pressure.

I've been hoping to post pictures on the internet for everyone to see, but that's going to have to wait until I figure out how to ask to hook my computer up to an ethernet cable... Language barriers can be difficult to work around.

I don't have wireless internet access in my flat, so I hope to be able to update again within the week.