Well, our visit to Egypt is almost over. I've been thinking about it today and it makes me sad. I feel like I've just gotten used to this place and comfortable here, and now we're uprooting ourselves and going to another place that will take me a while to get used to. Totally different culture, totally different area (rural instead of urban), different languages, etc. It's hard to be prepared for India when I just got used to Egypt. However, I'm also really excited!
On Saturday a couple of us went to the Cairo Operahouse and saw the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. It was beautiful and they played Beethoven and Schumann. It was a beautiful, classy show, and our tickets were only 6 US dollars (35 Egyptian pounds)! It was nice to hear music again and made me realize how much I miss St. Olaf music.
Yesterday we had our last day of touring in Egypt. Our tour guide took us to Old Cairo, which consists of a lot of mosques built in the 800s AD and onward. We went to Ahmad Ibn-Tulun's mosque, which was different from the mosques we saw in Turkey because it was open air and had a huge courtyard with a fountain, as well as columned halls called riwaqs and a large minaret with a spiral staircase. That minaret was fantastic, especially when we found out we could climb to the top! We climbed up the spiral staircase and got to what we thought was the top, with a small wall that only went to my knees and no guard rail. There are no guardrails in Egypt that I've seen yet and a couple of us surmised that this was probably because everything in Islam is up to the will of Allah--whether you fall or not! It's all in God's will, so if it happens it was meant to be. Anyway, at the top you realize that you're not actually at the top, and you can take a smaller spiral staircase to a circular room with large windows at the very tip top. When you step out of the windows you find yourself on a two-foot ledge with no wall, no guardrail, no nothin'! You look down and see the people on the streets looking like ants and in front of you is the skyline of Cairo, at least some of it because it's so smoggy you can't see much. It was literally breathtaking because it was so beautiful but you also realized how perilous it was. We took some pictures and then got down pretty fast. After this we went to two more mosques that were very intricate and then we went on a bus tour of Cairo with our main professor from Egypt. He took us to the quarries that house the wealthier people of Cairo because here they are outside of the polluted air of the city (that land is in high demand, if you can afford it!). We also saw part of the slum ring that surrounds the city and a lot of illegally built apartments in the middle of the city. I actually fell down the bus stairs that day, badly bruising my leg (it's the biggest bruise I've ever had) and hurting my foot, so I didn't listen to much of his lecture because I was in pain! I'm better now though.
Today was a day of studying. Study study study. That's all I did all day, except for lunch and dinner breaks. We got delicious falafel, mango popsicles, and milky rice for dessert and I also had a piece of chocolate cake. No sweets for a while for me--I'm almost sick of them after that!
Our final test is tomorrow--wish me luck!
On Saturday a couple of us went to the Cairo Operahouse and saw the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. It was beautiful and they played Beethoven and Schumann. It was a beautiful, classy show, and our tickets were only 6 US dollars (35 Egyptian pounds)! It was nice to hear music again and made me realize how much I miss St. Olaf music.
Yesterday we had our last day of touring in Egypt. Our tour guide took us to Old Cairo, which consists of a lot of mosques built in the 800s AD and onward. We went to Ahmad Ibn-Tulun's mosque, which was different from the mosques we saw in Turkey because it was open air and had a huge courtyard with a fountain, as well as columned halls called riwaqs and a large minaret with a spiral staircase. That minaret was fantastic, especially when we found out we could climb to the top! We climbed up the spiral staircase and got to what we thought was the top, with a small wall that only went to my knees and no guard rail. There are no guardrails in Egypt that I've seen yet and a couple of us surmised that this was probably because everything in Islam is up to the will of Allah--whether you fall or not! It's all in God's will, so if it happens it was meant to be. Anyway, at the top you realize that you're not actually at the top, and you can take a smaller spiral staircase to a circular room with large windows at the very tip top. When you step out of the windows you find yourself on a two-foot ledge with no wall, no guardrail, no nothin'! You look down and see the people on the streets looking like ants and in front of you is the skyline of Cairo, at least some of it because it's so smoggy you can't see much. It was literally breathtaking because it was so beautiful but you also realized how perilous it was. We took some pictures and then got down pretty fast. After this we went to two more mosques that were very intricate and then we went on a bus tour of Cairo with our main professor from Egypt. He took us to the quarries that house the wealthier people of Cairo because here they are outside of the polluted air of the city (that land is in high demand, if you can afford it!). We also saw part of the slum ring that surrounds the city and a lot of illegally built apartments in the middle of the city. I actually fell down the bus stairs that day, badly bruising my leg (it's the biggest bruise I've ever had) and hurting my foot, so I didn't listen to much of his lecture because I was in pain! I'm better now though.
Today was a day of studying. Study study study. That's all I did all day, except for lunch and dinner breaks. We got delicious falafel, mango popsicles, and milky rice for dessert and I also had a piece of chocolate cake. No sweets for a while for me--I'm almost sick of them after that!
Our final test is tomorrow--wish me luck!
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