Thursday, March 17, about 20 degrees (68-ish).

Another productive day after all. The afternoon meeting with Fulbright went very well; yet another organization willing to go above and beyond (of course, we have to kick in some money, but that’s to be expected in such situations).

I spent the morning wandering all around Zamalek. I did something I didn’t do when I lived right here in this very neighborhood: I walked up to the end of the island. Turns out that there’s a nightclub there. Also, the view isn’t really that interesting. So, mystery solved. During my wanderings I saw fishermen trying to fish out of the river. I’m not sure what they were trying to fish for, since God knows any fish with decent sense should have left the Nile a long time ago…

Slightly amusing side note: Since we didn’t have a morning meeting, Kamran slept in – turns out he slept in until 2:45 this afternoon. I knocked on his door and woke him up – he thought it was about 11 or so. Good grief.

During my solo wanderings today I wandered over half of the island (granted, it’s not really that big, but still I managed to cover a lot of territory). I found a bookstore – oh, dangerous bookstore. I dropped 300 pounds on books (that would be Egyptian pounds, not the measure of weight) ~ around $50. There’s some good stuff I bought for the teaching collection, including Harry Potter I & II bil arabiyya. Let’s just say that the translation is a bit uneven (what I can understand – I’m a bit loathe to mention that my ability to read appears to have significantly diminished).

While I was walking around, I was treated to the usual sort of annoyances that foreigners encounter. To begin with is what Kamran refers to as “Foreigner Non-comprehension syndrome,” which basically means that he and I can say the same thing in Arabic, exactly the same way, and they’ll understand him but not me. Why? Because I’m a khowaga and there’s some disconnect between the way I look at what I’m saying.

The other fun thing is what I call “Khowaga can’t walk.” When a taxicab approaches a foreigner on the street, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that the 7,342 taxis that have already passed said foreigner in the past ten minutes have not been courteous enough to offer to stop and give him a ride, so they slow down and honk. At which point (if it’s early enough in the day), the foreigner may shake his head to indicate his non-interest, or he may not because after a while whiplash becomes a real possibility. Hence, I associate Cairo streets with constant honking. While there IS constant honking, it really does seem to be concentrated around the foreign population a little more than others.

At any rate. I’m SO glad we came here for this planning trip. The past two days have been so greatly productive that I may very well be able to sleep every night for the next three months. Tomorrow being Friday, we’re talking about going to the souq to do souvenir shopping. Assuming Kamran can get up early enough. Maybe *I* should handle the wake-up calls tonight …

Tags: Arabic - عربي, Books, cairo, egypt, fulbright, khowaga, nile, shopping, souq, Travel, zamalek