Monday, August 24, 2009
touchdown!
well, after a journey of somewhere around 24 hours, i touched down in cairo. it was long, but it went off without incident. i think my bags may have been THE last to come off the airplane, but other than that no issues whatsoever. and when i walked out of customs, there was Mohamed with my name on a sign. ha! he's been chauffering me around town for the past 24 hours, buying me groceries, lending me a cell phone, teaching me bits and pieces of arabic, and testing me on cairene geography. i've already had a homemade iftar feast (the evening meal that breaks the Ramadan fast). so i've been well taken care of. and too well fed. Mohamed's brother Ahmed said, "you'll notice that we'll try to feed you to death." here's to not gaining 100 pounds over the next two years...
Saturday, August 22, 2009
on my way...
welcome to JFK international airport! my home for eight long layover hours. traveling "cheap" sure does have its disadvantages. including not only this absurdly long layover and the fact that i had to get up before the crack of dawn this morning, but also my journey from syracuse to JFK by way of... washington DC! yes, syracuse and NYC are actually in the same state. and our nation's capital is not exactly on the way between them. oh well...
anyway, i'm officially on my way to cairo. there are butterflies waging war in my stomach, and i'm at that inevitable point at the start of every journey when i begin to wonder why i do these things to myself. what's wrong with a life lived in the comfy environs of the places i already know? but it seems that is not to be the way of things. and so i find myself sitting between the duty free shop and the "famously fresh baguettes" at Upper Crust, waiting for the ticket counter to open, so i can wait in the boarding area, so i can wait on an 11 hour flight.
hopefully Mohamed will be there to meet me on the other end of this interminable journey. i don't know him, but he's the friend of a friend of my mom's from grammar school way back in 50's cairo. supposedly he'll be wearing a grey checked (or was it striped?) jacket, armed with a picture of me and a sign sporting my name. i'm having visions of myself calling out to the assorted folks at the cairo airport, "Mohamed? are any of you Mohamed?" that would be, in a word, amazing.
hopefully, though, it won't come to that hilarity, and i'll end this day without incident at Dahab Hostel in downtown cairo. then it's a week to wander the city looking for an apartment, grad student orientation, advising and registration (oh yeah, i'm doing all of this for school, right?), five days of Survival Arabic, and then CLASSES! i speak zero arabic, am moving to a city of somewhere around 16 million people, and haven't taken a class in 11 years. oh, and did i mention it's the start of Ramadan, a month of fasting and celebrations and from what i understand, a certain amount of fasting-related irritability... no worries! like i said, how to i get myself into these situations???
despite the panic that threatens to overwhelm me every few minutes, i'm incredibly excited. i've come armed with a list of people to call once i get there. seems all you have to do is ask around (or more accurately, get your parents to ask around), and the cairo connections just come flooding in! here's hoping these folks- friends of parental friends, friends of friends of parental friends, you get the idea - can help me find my way around the chaos of the most populous city in both africa and the middle east. my home for the next two years, inshallah...
anyway, i'm officially on my way to cairo. there are butterflies waging war in my stomach, and i'm at that inevitable point at the start of every journey when i begin to wonder why i do these things to myself. what's wrong with a life lived in the comfy environs of the places i already know? but it seems that is not to be the way of things. and so i find myself sitting between the duty free shop and the "famously fresh baguettes" at Upper Crust, waiting for the ticket counter to open, so i can wait in the boarding area, so i can wait on an 11 hour flight.
hopefully Mohamed will be there to meet me on the other end of this interminable journey. i don't know him, but he's the friend of a friend of my mom's from grammar school way back in 50's cairo. supposedly he'll be wearing a grey checked (or was it striped?) jacket, armed with a picture of me and a sign sporting my name. i'm having visions of myself calling out to the assorted folks at the cairo airport, "Mohamed? are any of you Mohamed?" that would be, in a word, amazing.
hopefully, though, it won't come to that hilarity, and i'll end this day without incident at Dahab Hostel in downtown cairo. then it's a week to wander the city looking for an apartment, grad student orientation, advising and registration (oh yeah, i'm doing all of this for school, right?), five days of Survival Arabic, and then CLASSES! i speak zero arabic, am moving to a city of somewhere around 16 million people, and haven't taken a class in 11 years. oh, and did i mention it's the start of Ramadan, a month of fasting and celebrations and from what i understand, a certain amount of fasting-related irritability... no worries! like i said, how to i get myself into these situations???
despite the panic that threatens to overwhelm me every few minutes, i'm incredibly excited. i've come armed with a list of people to call once i get there. seems all you have to do is ask around (or more accurately, get your parents to ask around), and the cairo connections just come flooding in! here's hoping these folks- friends of parental friends, friends of friends of parental friends, you get the idea - can help me find my way around the chaos of the most populous city in both africa and the middle east. my home for the next two years, inshallah...
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