Parents in Egypt!!!!

I think my parents had a blast! and had quite a cultural experience for sure. I made sure of it. ;) Don'tworry they survived. The traffic was a little hard to get used to but i will say that my parents did great trying Egyptian food and riding the metro! We took some great pictures! We saw the pyramids of course and went down into one. We rode camels!

We went to the Egyptian museum and rode a felucca (sailboat) on the Nile.

We saw the Hanging Church and the cave churches and the Greek Monastery in Old Cairo.

To celebrate my dad's birthday we went to Hard Rock Cafe in Cairo!

We went to Sharm El Sheikh and i finally got some good Vitamin D in my skin! We went to the Khan El Khaleeli (which is the popular market place here) on our last day and mom bargained away! Overall a fantastic trip! and i am so thankful for my parents! Hope you enjoyed the pics!

ally

Lyrics I'm Humming:

She's Only Happy in the Sun by Ben Harper

Suez Canal

One of our language helpers is very adventurous and loves to take us places all around Egypt and I mean everywhere. So last week, my roommates and I went to the Suez Canal in Ismalaia. To cross the Suez you take a ferry. We were coming back from the other side (Asia side) and we were on the ferry with a bus filled with women from a retirement home in Port Said who invited us onto their bus for a little dance party. Arab music was blaring, and a lady named Zuzu was playing the recorder, harmonica, cymbals, I mean any instrument you could think of. Another lady named Sayeeda was playing the drums. Sara ended up playing Maracas and I attempted the drum but it’s a very unique drum that takes a little more practice than just winging it. So who knew that we would be on a party bus filled with old Arab women playing instruments and dancing, while crossing the Suez Canal on a ferry. These women also have a talent for doing the wedding call which sounds a little bit like Xena the Warrior Princess. Definitely the highlight of the day!

update! ...finally

First, sorry for the extreme lack of updates....we're really bad at blogging....

in any event. it's hard to believe we've been here for almost more than 5 months. this first year is flying and it's even harder to believe that we should be beginning other projects around july or august. how exciting! language continues to get increasingly hard--as you learn more and more about arabic your eyes are opened more and more to how much farther you have to go. it's awesome to be able to use it a bit more but it still is tough to realize the consequences of the realization that you are no where near where you want to be with one of the hardest languages of the world. it takes some serious time. and effort....

other than it's cool. yesterday ally and i (kt) went to an oasis out in the desert. it was pretty awesome. we rode in several different forms of transportations (metro, taxis, microbuses, and truck beds) to get there. but it was well worth the time. we were able to see a temple that supposibly was used to store grain by the King's assistant, Joseph, during the 7 year famine. Pretty awesome.....

as well as eat some pretty sweet fish next to a massive lake that apparentely is the source of the Oasis. It was gorgeous. green lush--not like cairo. very tropical and exotic it many areas. 

we look forward to returning! 

Top 6 pickup lines (Gag me) by ally

From the Pyramids to the Khan El-Khaleeli

6. “You want to marry Egyptian? Here’s my brother.”

5. “Are you from the moon?” (I don’t get this one.)

4. “I’m a doctor! I’m a doctor!” (as if this is what I’m looking for only.)

3. “You have beautiful eyes.” (This was a strange one considering Katie was wearing very dark sunglasses and he couldn’t see her eyes.)

2. “You dropped something!” (I turn to look for what I dropped) “My Heart.”

1. This was said to my team leader(TL), who the Egyptian(E) man assumed was my father (BTW: offerings camels is a marriage proposal.):

E: “How many camels?”
TL: “10 thousand camels.”
E:”Oh, that is not enough.”
TL: “10 million camels?”
E: “10 million camels for 1 eye.”

Quite the lines…huh? I was sooooo glad my team leader played a long. (being extremely sarcastic here guys.)

Lyrics I'm Humming:
Relax, Take it Easy by Mika

Cultural Experience #39 and counting....

so i went to oscar's the other day to get some food. oscars is sorta like a grocery store about the size of one aisle of walmart. so there's maybe like 10 items to choose from that don't look shady. but unlike the others, it feels more "cultural" i.e. instead of hearing "what goes around comes back around" playing when we (americans) walk into our metro market (another grocery story maybe a  bit larger than oscar's), we hear blaring arabian music in which every song is about a "habibi" (girlfriend/lover/whatever). In any event, Oscar employees don't know any english. Not that it matters as I spoke to them in arabic. Anyways, here's the story:

I ask for 4 bananas. just 4. i said "I would like 4 bananas please" in arabic. but apparentely you have to clarify a little more than that which I had forgotten to do since I had been trying to use my arabic all day and everything was now flying out of my head so that I couldn't remember anything. In any event, the man cut me 4 Kilos. Which is a TON of bananas. Like a whole palm tree. He might have well just let me carry the tree back home. i think i would of been eating bananas for like a year. ew. in any event, i tried hard to explain that no i didn't want enough bananas to feed a family reunion in lower alabama, i just wanted 4 bananas for myself. Finally, he caught on and erupted in laughter and cut me 4 new bananas. Which he could of just taken 4 out of the supersized plastic bag he had for me. but whatever. When in Rome.....

or in egypt. 

whatever. 

Atleast i know how to get bananas now. 

-kt

Black and White Deserts-from kt

Mese' el KHeer from one of the many local coffee shops here in the big city. Right now ally and i are enjoying a mocha. it's so weird here, they always ask you what flavor you want in it. apparentely people here get more than just chocolate in their mocha. ew. but we stick to a mocha plain. we're boring i guess. ha. 

anyways, we just got back from our first ever desert safari. we coasted through the sahara at amazing speed (no speed limit signs in the desert) with our 4-wheel drive in gear. we actually put them to use for what they were made for. each car would swerve through sand and fly over dunes at a breakneck speed. at one point our driver forgot that when you fly over a dune there is usually a giant hill on the other side and this time is was more like a cliff so we got some sweet air only to land and sink 3 feet in deep soft arabian sand. we got out, dug out the tires and basically watched as the men pushed. it's almost like going on a rollar coaster for the first time except your not buckled and your car doesn't exactly have tracks so there is no traction which means you swirl around. we camped out under the stars and enjoyed the desert freezing air at night and hid our shoes from the desert foxes. apparently they like things that smell like dead animals. ew! the scenery was inspiring. landscape for miles that didn't help us miss the big city's smog and dust. we traded it for sand and hiking volcanoes. it was awesome. you should go. 

well, as they say often here, Ma Salaama!

Jezebel the Machine- by Sara

So i'm trying to wash my clothes in this weird washing machine. I couldn't even find the start button. Apparently, you have to put the soap in, plug a wire to the socket, put your clothes in, put it on a cycle( didn;t have a clue what cycle to put it on because i couldn't understand what it said) and then turn it on.  It won't start until those are done in order. (ally told me all this) Ally and i set out the door for some much needed food, and Katie stayed home. As we came back from our errnads and walking in the door, poor Katie had the worst look on her face and she said, "The machine is possessed!" There was 2 inches of water all over the floor and the machine had somehow moved FIVE feet way from the wall, so the plug was unhooked. Thus, causing water to come outonto the flor instead of the drain that the plug was used for. AND my clothes that were in it were all soapy.

There was no drain in that room and we didn't have enough towels for all the water, so just like my amazing roommates we thought, pondered and discussed and came up with an amazing idea! We had a mop and a shimee. Ally mopped and I shimmied, all the water down the hall through the door and into the drain that was in the batroonm on the opposite side of the house. It's a good thing the whole house has tile and not carpet! So our house is nice and clean thanks to the washing machine exploding :)

A few days later...

We had somemore laundry to do, so we decided this possessed machine would not win this battle. Katie thought of a wonderful idea of ducktaping the plug to the wall. (This way it couldn't leak) then once the machine started performing its rinse cycle we just took turns sitting on it. It only lasted for an hour! Plus, it was a great butt massage! No sireee that machine will not win. We are more then conquerors!!