Alexandria

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, life here has been getting busier (which is nice). I also managed to come down with the Black Death (ie, a nasty sinus thing). I just got back from three days in Alexandria—our “Off-Campus Orientation.” The take all the international kids away from Cairo for a few days before the semester starts, which is very nice.

We got up early Tuesday morning and caught cabs over to main campus. (N.B.: Main Campus and the dorms where I live are about a 45-minute walk or a 15-minute drive. Usually there’s a shuttle running between the two but it was before 7:00am so nothing’s up and running.) We got onto the buses and settled in for a three and a half hour ride from Cairo to Alexandria. Along the way we drove past quite a bit. It was nice to see a little more of Egypt because honestly all I’ve really seen is Cairo. I saw green fields backing right up to desert, tiny mud brick houses with a goat tied outside, women and little children working.

In Alexandria, we checked into the Helnan Palestine Hotel. (If anyone thought that Egypt alone from the Arab World didn’t fixate on Palestine, think again.) It’s a five-star hotel in easten Alexandria, which has on its grounds Montazah Palace, a palace of Egypt’s kings in the 20^th century. Now, heads of state visting Alexandria stay there. My room—a double with three girls, so they brought in a cot—looked over Montazah to the left and the Mediterranean Sea to the right. Not too shabby.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday mostly just hanging out. The food at the hotel was really good (a nice mix of American, European, and Egyptian), and both nights they took us out to dinner. Everything was pretty much paid for, so they just brought us food and we ate! Tuesday was a bit grey and rainy so we walked around the grounds for a while—it’s a big complex—saw the palace and the sea. Wednesday was sunny and warmer, so what did we do on the last day of January 2007? Oh, sat on the beach next to the Mediterranean listening to the DJ playing a mix of J-Lo, Shaggy, European techno, and Arab pop.

Of course we went swimming in the Mediterranean. Of COURSE! But wow it was freezing. So very cold. But I got in, dunked under, and then stood there shivering for about 5 minutes before we decided we’d proven whatever we needed to prove and could now get out. Then I found out that I didn’t have any pictures of me in the Mediterranean in January, so I had to get back in for photographic evidence. I refused, however, to go in very far again. Getting out is hard when your toes don’t work. But I made it out and after about 15 minutes I could feel all ten toes. One thing about the Mediterranean (or at least where I was): it’s gross. It was FULL of trash. Absolutely disgusting, and really a bit upsetting. The Mediterranean was perhaps a letdown on the trip—it’s absolutely gorgeous to look at, at any time, in any light. But once you’re IN it, it’s freezing cold (you do NOT expect it to be that cold) and full of gross things!

The only problem with our hotel being on the outskirts of Alexandria was that everywhere was a long ride. And every time, my friend Olan and I ended up with the most obnoxious people behind us. It made for a good bonding experience, we just had to look over at each other every time someone said something absolutely stupid. Wednesday night after dinner they dropped us at a mall for an hour or so. We went to CarreFour, which seems to be the Middle East’s equivalent of a Super Wal-Mart: fresh and packaged food, clothes, toys, household items, hoardes of adults and screaming children. We found a “politically correct” Barbie (Barbie in an abaya—a loose long overcloak—and a headscarf), located predictably next to the “Belly Dancing” Barbie. Irony? After CarreFour, we walked a bit and located a Cinnabon. I hadn’t eaten Cinnabon in years upon years, until the day I left the US and Suzanne and I ate a Cinnabon in Dulles Airport. But here it is again! One of the guys with us bought one, we took a couple of pinches, and when it was gone we took a great picture of me licking the Cinnabon box. Gross, but oh-so-fun. At CarreFour, two people bought Scrabble: one in English and one in Arabic. So three of us sat up at the hotel until two am playing Scrabble in English. One day we’ll break out the Arabic.

Thursday was our “touristy” day. They got us up early and shuffled us onto the buses to head to three spots in the morning: the Catacombs, the Roman Theater, and Qaitbay’s Citadel. A little old lady (Ebtisam – means “smiling”) climbed onto the bus to be our tour guide. She was very cute, and I understood about 90 percent of her English. The bus, however, was about 85 degrees and everyone had been up late having fun the night before, so we did a lot of sleeping. I felt bad for her and tried to stay up, but failed pretty regularly. The Catacombs were a really neat spot—general catacombs, obviously, but from the first through fourth centuries AD. Most of us associate catacombs with early Christianity, but these had little to nothing to do with Christianity. It was an amazing mix of Egyptian and Greek—but not really a mix. There was Egyptian, there was Greek, but the two were always separate: Medusa protected the tomb above two serpents wearing the double crown of Egypt. In some places, the upper half of the wall was decorated with Egyptian paintings and the lower half in Greek paintings. It was a “never the twain shall meet” situation, I guess. But they were really awesome—carved by hand out of sandstone some 50 feet under the ground. In many places you could still see original color on the walls and columns, scratch marks from the tools they used to hollow out each chamber, and the stucco they tried to put up. Unfortunately, cameras were prohibited inside them, so only a few people snuck them in and took pictures.

Our next stop was the Roman Theater. It’s a bit of a random juxtaposition: in the middle of a rather poor neighborhood in Alexandria, there’s a huge fenced-off area—it’s where they’ve excavated not only a Roman theater, but also Roman baths. And the theater is gorgeous—beautiful white marble, some columns still hanging around.

Back on the bus, and we drove to Qaitbay Citadel. This was my absolute favorite part. Qaitbay was a Mamluk in the fifteenth century, meaning he was a warrior slave in Egypt. He went on to become sultan of Egypt and was a huge patron of art and architecture. He built this citadel in 1477 to defend against Ottoman and Greek encroachments by sea. It was amazing—this 450-year-old structure is probably good enough to serve faithfully today (okay, I guess if we were still using crossbows and fireballs), but is absolutely complete and beautiful. There’s a mosque inside with a marble floor, room after room, and windows. Everywhere windows. Of course by windows I usually mean arrow slits, but they are enough to make the entire building bright and keep the air fresh. The outer wall surrounds the building itself and looks all around the city. Looking out onto the sea, it’s absolutely gorgeous. I really understood why someone would want to defend Alexandria.

Lunch was our last free meal (and even though there’s no such thing as a free lunch, this one was pretty good). Then we trudged back to the buses to head to what everyone knows is in Alexandria: Biblioteca Alexandrina. It’s, of course, not the original structure. Nor does it hold many of the works for which it was so famous in ancient times. It’s honestly a sort of “commemoration” of the Library that was in the city in antiquity. But it does have some really great stuff. We only had about a half hour to look around, but found our way to their display of rare books and manuscripts, which was really pretty cool. They have a copy of a Gutenberg Bibe among many other important works of philosophy, medicine, etc. Most of what they had out are facsimilies, since the paper is so fragile. But beautiful and pretty awesome, all the same. The outside architecture is very striking—writing on it from over 100 different writing systems.

One thing: if you weren’t sure, Egypt does pyramids. EVERYTHING in Egypt has pyramids associated. I’m not kidding. You drive down the street and any famous or important building from the 1800s on incorporates pyramids into the architecture. Occasionally, one thinks Okay, I get it. Pyramids. Overkill?

So we made it back to Cairo, and my sinus thing got a complementary cough to go with it. Pollution is such a great thing, really. Now I’m sitting here hacking up a lung, and going to head over to campus for an activities fair we think is going on today, and also to purchase a webcam!

That’s enough for now. Miss you guys so much. All of you.