OK friends! Here it is- the blog post that has taken me six weeks to write. Apologies for that, & I swear I'll be on top of it from now on. I'm aiming for once a week, so after I update you on the last month & a half it will be much easier to keep you posted!

Side note- I'm going to divide this update into two separate posts: one for life in the city & the other for my travels thus far.

Right! Well last time I wrote I had just gotten into Cairo, was feeling out the city, giving you my first thoughts. Now I can say that I'm feeling much like I have lived here for years, & oh what a wonderful feeling that is! I am living in an apartment on the 8th floor (I'll add a photo soon!) of an apartment building in a district called Zamalek, which is an island in the middle of the Nile right next to downtown. It's a great place to live! Very charming & it has a great neighborhood feel to it whilst still maintaining all the senses of the city. It's an easy walk to Medan (Square) Tahrir (central Cairo which is about 30 minutes), & it's really nice to be mixed right in with the Egyptians as it is giving me exactly what I was looking for in living here. If I were to be here for longer I think I'd prefer to live in downtown so I could experience living in the nucleus of the crazyness that is Cairo, but this is perfect! I live with four others (our roommate situation changed slightly after we got here so instead of having four of us each with our own room, there are five of us sharing three rooms- I have my own- whilst the fourth "bedroom", if you can call it that, is being used for storage). I absolutely love my roommates & I think we have a perfect blend of everything so it's great! My rent is dirt cheap for American standards so that's really nice as well since I'm able to save more money for travel! My room is the corner of the building & I have a small balcony as well as floor to ceiling windows (like the rest of the apartment). Our plumbing is a bit of an issue but I'm not complaining- this is far nicer than anything I expected in Cairo anyway!

School is going great! I can't remember if I mentioned, but I switched out of the normal study abroad program (where I was just taking classes that had no relevance to anything other than my personal interest) into a program here called ALI, or Arabic Language Intensive. I hadn't really heard anything about ALI until I got here- it's a wonderful program where people come from all over the world for whatever reason because they want to learn Arabic. I decided in about 5 minutes that it was for me as I want to come back & work in Egypt/the middle east, as well as have a third language and cultural background with which I can enhance my culturally sensitive nursing care. To give you a perspective on how good the program is, my roommate who was here last semester & didn't speak a lick of Arabic before coming here can now pretty much fully converse with the locals...also after only a month of school I can read, write, & have developed a lot of vocabulary. I can get myself around in the city, have small conversations with the locals, & basically am able to always at least try speaking Arabic before resorting to English (& in the last week or so that has transferred to only speaking Arabic). The program is much more rigorous than the normal study abroad program as it is about 9:30-3:00, five days per week, & there is an actual attendance policy & quite a bit of work/studying to do, but it's SO worth it & I'm really happy that I decided to make the switch! We spend 30% of our class time in Amaya (the Egyptian colloquial dialect) & the rest of the time in FusHa (or modern standard Arabic- the formal written language that is used in business, media, the Qur'an, etc etc). The teachers are fantastic as well & I only have 8 people in my class so it makes for a very conducive learning atmosphere. & of course the best thing about it is that everything I learn in class is directly applicable to my life here! Overall, very good stuff.

Anyway, so I've made lots of new friends as well & am just having an overall great time with the people here. I have gotten particularly close with one girl named Laura, with whom I have kind of become travel buddies & we're coordinating most of our trips for our time here. We've had many adventures in & around Cairo thus far! The weekends definitely have their fair share of partying, but I'm really not fussed with getting involved in that aspect- if it suits what my schedule is, I'll go out, but I don't feel as if I'm missing out (not that I ever do at home either...) by not mirroring life as an American college student. The nice thing about that is most people have that general attitude as well. A new enjoyable pastime we've discovered is going & getting shisha (when in Rome...) or hookah as it is mis-named in North America. Basically Cairo is the most polluted city in the world (yes, more than Mexico City), so really I don't feel that guilty for my lungs if I go out & get some shisha, tea, & watch time pass by a time or two per week.

Football here is also huge, & in the first couple of weeks I was here we really got a taste for that. It is wonderful to see how into it the Egyptians get- it's nothing like any team spirit you'll ever see in the west. The first game we watched was with Egypt's intense rival Algeria- this was a pretty big deal (it was the African Cup semi-final) as it was the first time playing them after they narrowly booted Egypt out of the world cup running a few months back, causing rioting (cars flipping, stuff getting burned, etc) around the Algerian embassy which is only a couple of blocks from me. This time was a much more pleasant experience as Egypt won, resulting in happy celebrations of people pouring into the streets, riding around tooting their horns & sharing in each others' ecstasy. The following week was the African Cup final with Ghana- which we won again & was hands down one of the best nights I've ever had. Picture a city the size of New York with it's downtown streets undriveable because they are so full of people, vans & trucks stuffed with 15-20 fans flying their flags, & an entire city stopping to erupt with pride- if you think Boston winning the world series back in '04 was team spirit, you have not seen how much Egyptians love their football. That night I also ended up on 8 or 9 TV stations somehow- I had a giant Egyptian flag & was running through the streets with my friends & along the Nile shouting the Arabic cheers I'd learnt, & I guess they really liked that as crowds upon crowds of people started swarming us to celebrate- it was pretty intense but totally wicked awesome! We even got a police escort through Medan Tahrir- I can't even begin to tell you how many WTF moments I had that night. Fantastic!

I've gotten to know many areas of the city pretty well- let me tell you, if you ever come to Cairo, you will NOT be bored. A new practice of mine which I'm really enjoying (especially since it's a bit hard to find time/a place to exercise here) is taking the bus from school to downtown everyday & exploring/having a nice walk home. Even though it's the same walk every day it never gets old. I think the thing I love most is just soaking up the city. Nothing compares to the feeling I get walking across the Nile watching people pass by & looking at all of the different facets of the city. These are the times when I feel like I'm doing the most learning & absorbing because I'm not just an outsider looking in: I'm living their life. I was actually thinking earlier today that many of the social norms here have become instinct quite quickly to me, & it's a pretty neat feeling to know that I can quite easily adjust to a culture so different than my own.

I'm learning a lot as well firsthand about the status of women in society here. I've definitely had more than my fair share of harassment here due to my being a clearly very western looking woman, which for sure does my head in, but to be honest that only really seems to happen to the foreigners. They say this is because of the media/films/etc portrayal of western women as being "loose" by their terms, so in general many of the people here expect us to be like that. I've spoken with a couple of Egyptians about this & they seem to agree. Anyway, it's still very hard for me to form an opinion on how I feel about the female status here, especially with Islam tied into it, but I do find it really amazing that Cairo is a city where women get to choose how they express both their modesty & their religion. I think this goes to completely disprove the misnomer that women are somehow second-class citizens everywhere in this region. Again, yes, there is harassment toward foreign women, & it is definitely a highly patriarchal society, but not once have I ever felt that I or another woman was being, in a harmful way, discriminated against, ignored, put down, etc, simply because of our gender. There are a fair number of Muslim women here who choose not to wear the hijab. One of my teachers actually told me a really wonderful story of how she came to cover her hair: no one in her family had ever been veiled, but because she was in two very severe accidents which should have killed her due to traumatic brain injury, she decided to give her hair to God & cover it permanently. I'm not here to argue towards certain religious beliefs or anything of the sort, especially since I personally have chosen to detach myself from organized religion, but I think that people need to take stories like these as eye-opening so as not to make the countless ignorant comments that they do about how Islam suppresses women, everyone in the middle east is backward thinking, & the men here are aggressive beasts that belong in the prehistoric periods. I'm taking lots of notes on my observations & eventually I'm going to form a deep analysis on them. Clearly my thoughts are quite scrambled on the issue, but the picture is becoming clearer by the day.

The power of faith is another thing that is very hard to ignore here. Religion is clearly very pervasive into the culture, & I think it has a lot to do with why (aside, again, from getting harassed by certain men) I feel so safe. Muslims take their faith very seriously, & for most their morals & values are of utmost importance in how they carry out their daily life. Yes, they do try to rip you off, & yes, as said, there are the ones who harass you, but for the most part these are harmless (though violating) annoyances that do not put you in any real danger, or at least any more danger than most cities in the western world. An interesting paradox: Laura & I were in the Khan el-Khalili market (the massive world-famous bazaar) one night when I, completely covered & wearing loose-fitting clothing, got groped by a man walking past me. While this obviously pissed me off & shook me up, I was equally if not more relieved & grateful by the reaction around me. When the guy grabbed me I turned around, shoved him as hard as I could (you HAVE to bring attention to yourself in these situations) & started yelling Arabic shame phrases, & immediately all of the male shop owners around me started yelling at him & about fifty people went after him. He did get away, but I felt so defended by the people around me that it reinforced my feeling of security & reminded me that the vast majority of the citizens here view harassment as completely wrong, immoral, & shameful. Shame is a big motivator here as well, as sinning against another is not only shameful upon oneself but upon their family as well. Since the family is the most important unit in society, most do everything possible that they can to avoid putting down their name in any way. Again, this is just a collection of my ramblings on the issue, but the bottom line is there is something to be said for the discipline & good will that comes with a strong sense of faith & adherence to religion. This is what makes me so angry when people tell me that I need to watch myself because of the big bad Muslims I am surrounded by. I hope to continue to be able to spread this word & change people's minds around me both here & when I return to the US.

Anyway! Whew, sorry if that made no sense, I'm trying! My favorite area of Cairo is definitely Islamic Cairo (the area where all the markets, including the Khan, old mosques, & the Citadel are). This area is like the image that you think of when you picture Cairo- small alleyways in a maze formation completely congested with shops & stands, people everywhere, shopkeepers trying to lure you to bargain with them to buy their products, families doing their shopping for whatever they need, shisha cafes, coffee houses, fruit markets, food stands, sufi dancers, etc, etc, etc. The energy that you feel wandering through this area is hypnotic. I've been there three times so far & plan to spend a fair amount more time there. Another area I really enjoy, as I said, is the downtown-Zamalek area along the Nile. Even though you should never, EVER, stick a toe in the Nile, it is a beautiful sight & again great for people watching & a refreshing but relaxing stroll.

Hmmm, what else? I don't think I have much else I can say on this part of my update without writing a massive dissertation. I'll quickly say that there is a special someone here, & I'm tremendously happy :). I'll keep the details from being broadcast all over the internet for now! Haha. Right, on to part two...oh yeah here are some photos of around Cairo!