Cairo

Ok, ok - I know this is LONG overdue.... I have been so very very busy here in Cairo.
London was a lot of fun - and it was great to see my friends there. Wednesday the 25th was a long day for me. I woke up about 9AM so we could get ready and then head out with my luggage. I needed help to get myself on to the tube train that takes me to Heathrow b/c I had all my bags for Cairo with me. So I got on the train and arrived at the airport and was ready to check in at 1pm for my 6 pm flight. So I chilled outside a while smoked and enjoyed the last cool day I would have for a while. Then I checked in, went through security and still had about 3 hours to kill. I finally got aboard my flight to Frankfurt Germany and landed an hour and a half later. I had another two hours to kill in Frankfurt. Thank God for the Germans who still have smoking rooms IN the airport terminals! Then I finally arrived in Cairo at about 3:00AM, headed through Customs, and got picked up at the airport with my friend Justin. He is a one-year study abroad student from UC Berkeley. We were on the same flight but didn't meet until the ride from the airport to campus. I didn't get any pics from the airplane b/c I was in the middle row (had it all to myself though) and it was too dark to see anything anyways.

Everything my Arabic professor (thanks Dr. Mashhour!) told me about driving in Egypt
was true! Even the campus drivers drive CRAZY! There are speed bumps every so often to encourage people to slow down - but all they do is floor it to like 90 and then hit the brakes hard when they see a speed bump - and they don't drive in lanes and they pass whenever they feel like it! It was a little scary! But every ride since coming here has been similar.

So I finally arrived in my room after check-in at about 4:30AM. I though about unpacking for a minute - but decided against that quickly and just hit the sack. The room came a lot more furnished than I had expected. I had sheets and a comforter and trash can and desk lamp and rug and towels, etc. So I had to buy much less than I had originally expected to.

The first day on Thursday was pretty low-key. I met a few people and then Friday I met LOTS of people and took my first trip to Rehab (a suburb of Cairo). I should take this moment to explain where I am. I am living on the new campus (this is the third semester for this brand new campus) in New Cairo. New Cairo is a suburb about a 25 minute drive from Cairo and is in the MIDDLE of desert on all sides. It is QUICKLY expanding and in the next 5 to 10 years it projected to have a population of 2.5 million. It is mostly upper class and upper middle class. There is housing going up EVERYWHERE around us and also shopping centers and such as well. There are buses that normally leave every hour for various destinations around Cairo and its suburbs until 10pm and buses that come back to campus from these locations until 2AM. So it is pretty easy to get into the city easily and quickly.

I don't want to put too much in this first post, so I will post more later today with pics and a little more about whats been keeping me so busy, en sha allah.

ma salaama!
~Randy
راندي