Pledge Tomorrow

The past two days have been great for feeling more settled around here. We've been eating more Egyptian food, mixed reviews on that but overall better than I expected. Kushri was yesterday. Picture, as someone today put it, every simple carb put into a bowl, plus beans and some red sauce, served with hot sauce and garlic sauce to be added to taste. It's literally rice, random pasta, chickpeas, beans plus sauce. Pretty good though. Amr passed on a good explanation for where it comes from as a poor woman dumping everything in her cabinet into a pot for a meal and bam. Kushri.

The foul sandwiches are a good, filling snack. It's like hummus but of smashed fava beans and wrapped in pita often. Filling, low on taste, like most Egyptian food I'm starting to sense. There have been exceptions. I forget the name but we had some eggplant cooked with a spicy red sauce, eaten with pita, like everything, and that was great. Also, all the food they serve us here in the dorm has so far been amazing. Great rice, chicken, kebab, salted yogurts for breakfast (trust me) with incredibly friendly people always.

We did a lot of harassment talks, and for good reason. I don't think I would be able to travel in this region as a female. Quite honestly. The stares, cat calls, groping stories, cars stopping, being followed. All of it. Way worse than you can imagine until you've seen it. It didn't exist in other places I've been besides the Middle East and its much worse so far in Egypt than in Jordan. Foreign women obviously get it worse, largely because of course if you're a foreign woman you're easy. That being said, natives get it too, right up to fully hejabed, conservatively dressed, even older women. It just doesn't seem to matter. Probably more than anything else here this is what makes me boil. Insult my country, bash the polices, bash my religion, bash other countries, other religions, all fine, and I do it myself more often than not, but please stop so goddamn gross around everyone woman you see. I guess it would make me less angry if the sexual tension was just always high and everyone was intensely sexual, but its just guys, they act ridiculous when no one but their male friends can see them, and god forbid they find their sister or wife without a hejab or looking at a man. We actually saw a guy slap a girl in front of us twice, apparently for looking at us. We couldn't be sure, and to just get it to stop we moved away.

The Egyptian visa extension form asking for your religion was also a blast. They would also only recognize one of the three Abrahamic religions, and of course you absolutely had to put one. Leaving it blank, not an option.

We did get to check out the museum today, which was very impressive. I saw a real mummy. Pretty sweet. Although it all looks too well preserved to be true. Then we wandered down some alley and found a cafe who would serve us shisha, which hasn't been super common because it's been outlawed for three months-ish (in response to swine flu, pollution, and health concerns??) and across all Egypt. I haven't checked out Cairo, but I can't imagine how this came about. But a tea and a nonflavored shisha was about 20 cents and came with great conversation.

Pictures coming soon? Inshallah?

Tomorrow starts the language pledge, nothing but Arabic with few exceptions for talking with family/close friends, blogging and the occasional english release in form of a book/movie. It's going to be an absolute bitch for a long time, and we're going to be pretty damn quite for a while, hard to get past "izzayak?" with meaningful thoughts, all the time.

Salaam