Alexandria, and some football

Thursday: 5-29

Wake up, breakfast, off to class for the second midterm…feeling a little worried because this material is way harder than the previous test. Test begins and I start cruising. Finish the test and fell very confident. He goes over the test and from what I remembered from the test it seemed like I got most of it right…after class we all decide to have a celebration for both being done with midterms and Chris’s birthday that was last Tuesday. So after hanging out for a few hours we all meet up in Emily’s room and play cards and other games till late. A bunch of the Egyptian students from the dialogue came over and hung out with us as well. After that some of us went to Versailles Palace and hung out…afterwards, meandered back to the hotel and crashed…waking up early tomorrow for a weekend in Alexandria…cant wait. I have always wanted to go to the city with my name in it.

Friday: 5-30

Wake up at 8am…breakfast real quick before loading up the vans…dead tired after being out real late, so I figure I can get some sleep on the 3 hour van ride to Alex …that’s what everyone calls Alexandria, it actually got annoying cause I thought everyone was talking about me the whole time…Got a few hours of shuteye on the van and then woke up just in time for a rest stop. After the rest stop I finally finished reading my manual for my camera…I wish I had finished it earlier because right at the end I finally learned how to change my white balance settings and color and vibrance settings…so now all of my pictures are coming out with much nicer color contrast…finally arrive in Alex. This city is amazing. It is right on the Mediterranean. Absolutely beautiful.

Here is a rundown of the Alexandria trip. Dr. Denis did not set up for the group to stay the weekend. But he gave us the option if we wanted to, to find our own lodging and stay for a night. So most of the engineers decided to stay, as well as a few of the IAF majors.

So when we arrive, we obviously hadn’t set up a hotel yet, why would we that would make way too much sense. Some of the kids had, so we decided to walk around and find a cheap place to stay. We split up and decide we will all meet up and talk about the places we find. So Sean Matt and I check out this place we had read about online before we came, and it was about 30 pounds a night (6 bucks). We get there, it is kind of crappy, not a great view, but we feel it’s a pretty good deal. So we head back to the meeting spot, and tell them about the great deal we found. And then molly comes with a huge smile on her face and says “15 pounds…unbelievable view…we can all stay” so we go check it out. And when I tell you unbelievable view, that doesn’t do it justice at all. The rooms looked out over the Mediterranean from the 5^th floor. The whole bay of Alexandria was in view, with the Citadel way off to the left, and the Library of Alexandria all of way to the right…with the main street underneath…please check out the night shot from my room, I think It might be my favorite shot of the whole trip…so we pay for our room and go meet up with the group back at the vans to go sightseeing…first stop, the Citadel. Unfortunately we did not have a tour guide, so I did not get all of the history about this white stone barricade, but with the freedom to walk around and experience it was awesome. The fort was used to guard Alexandria way back…I think I overheard someone say it was built around 800A.D. it was a bleach white color, with a massive walkway all the way around the outside. And inside there were lookout windows with passageways everywhere…very cool…so I walked around by myself just looking around and snapping a few winners. It was awesome to walk around the outside with Alexandria and the Mediterranean on the horizon…we left there and headed to tourist spot number 2…the catacombs. Again, no tour guide so the only history I got of these was from a sign that had been transliterated English, so it was hard to follow. The sign said that the catacombs were found on accident because a man was riding a donkey and the donkey fell through a hole in the ground and he ended up in a tomb…I thought that was pretty funny…the catacombs were interesting because they had ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the walls, but the carvings were reliefs, unlike any of the temples which were just etched into the wall…unfortunately cameras were not allowed but that’s fine with me, my eyes work just as good…Another thing that was cool about the catacombs was the mix between the Greco-roman art and the ancient Egyptian art. Alexandria was highly influenced by the Greeks and Romans. So the tombs had statues of roman and Greek gods to go along with the Egyptian carvings…it was cool to see how some of the Egyptian gods were carved in a more Greco roman way…hard to explain but just the body shapes and poses were different than anything we had seen before from the temples….out of the catacombs and off to the library…the library of Alexandria is the largest library in the world. The architecture of the library was awesome. They engineered the windows and the slope of the roof perfectly for the optimal lighting for reading and preserving the books. You should Google the library of Alexandria and check it out…its pretty cool…we got a tour of the rare books collection, as well as an art exhibit. We also got a tour of the ground floor etc etc…but by the end the whole group was so hungry that no one was really paying attention anymore…we herded back to the vans and they took us to dinner…ordered up a steak, damn it was good…a funny side note, but not so funny for Rod…He ordered “fried fish” but they misinterpreted him and gave him just “French fries” so while he was waiting for his nonexistent fried fish, everyone else had been eating...Sean finally realized that they had most likely misheard him so he reordered, and they were out of the fried fish so he had to settle for the mixed grill…very funny…back to the cheapest hotel in the world, and we hung out for a bit but we were all beat and we just passed out…

Saturday: 5-31

Wake up in Alex, gaze at the wonderful view out off of our balcony, snap a few goodies and wait for everyone else to wake up to grab some grub…order up some pancakes at this nice breakfast place…an hour and a half later and they finally have them ready…and guess who got there’s last…unfortunately it was rod, again…he is having the worst luck with food hahaha…finally finish breakfast and we load up the vans and head to the beach…this was awesome…although I would have liked to walk around Alex a little bit more, hanging out at the beach for the day was just as nice. Everyone went in the water, but for some reason I decided not to. I was just comfortable sitting in the chair on the beach soakin the rays that I just didn’t feel like getting wet….3 or 4 hours later, we hopped in the vans and rolled back to Cairo…a great stay in Alexandria…I think if I ever come back to Egypt (a BIG if) I will stay in Alex, its way nicer than Cairo and its much more relaxing…so we arrive in Cairo at about 7pm and head out to grab some dinner…we were going to play soccer tonight but that got cancelled…so a few of us just went to Versailles to hang out…usual night…headed back to the hotel and crashed.

Sunday: 6-1

Yes, its June, yes I have been here for a whole month, yes I can’t believe it either. So today is a service learning day, except that its not really service learning because all we are doing is going to the 3 places that we have been helping out…glass blowing, knitting and carpet factory…remember cruella deville…so we go to the glass blowing workshop first, and we showed them the website and the pictures I took. We also gave them a photo of them that I took, it came out great. Some people bought some things, and we finally got out of there after about 2 hours…off to the knitting factory…same deal, showed them the website, stood around for 2 hours and finally left…off to cruella devilles carpet factory…same thing and of course she hated our website and wanted us to change everything, we said no, blah blah blah I didn’t really care because it wasn’t my part of the website I was on the glass blowing team…anyways we finally got back to the hotel and I have been leaving the best part of the day out just for some surprise…so The Egypt national team plays Congo tonight for a world cup qualifying match…and guess whose got tickets…for 25 pounds…(less than 5 dollars)…SOOOO pumped…so 530 rolls around and a bunch of us pile in a van and head to the stadium. We met up with a bunch of the Egyptian students, and we entered…the entrance was lined with military vehicles, and there were an insane amount of police with riot gear already on…we get through the gates and there are even more police, and the knight sticks here aren’t like the ones at home, there like 5 feet long…pretty crazy…we get in the stadium and it is HUGEEE. Not very packed yet cause we got there very early, and we got front row seats…so that was pretty cool, if you like front row seats, at world cup qualifying games, in Cairo international stadium…so the game starts, and we are going crazy, and the whole stadium is going crazy and it was just awesome…so I got to do 1 of the things that I really wanted to do over here, see a live game…and it was sweet…Egypt came back from 1 down to win…after the game, back to the hotel…crashed…more for tomorrow.

Peace

-Al