These Days

Please allow me to jump to the present, and share some thoughts from home and Ramadan life. (I am unable to upload photos at my current location.)

I love it when my 13 year old brother prepares his cornflakes; he first grabs enormous handfuls of the cereal from the box rather than pouring it into his bowl. Then he pours milk into a plastic measuring cup, adds sugar, and whips the mixture vigorously. After a minute or so, he’s convinced that the sugar has been satisfactorily blended in; he pours the milk into the bowl. The whole process is very methodical and serious; it is a delight to watch.

I finally got a sleeping companion! Up until last night, every time I would try to carry the kitty into my room she would escape my arms before I made it. Well, last night, she was sleeping on a kitchen chair, and I scooped her up and ran to my room too quickly for her to understand what was going on! After a minute or two I didn’t even have to hold her down, and she seemed quite content except after I sprayed bug repellent on my legs and feet. The aroma was obviously displeasing to her, and she jumped off the bed and sat by the door for five or ten minutes, but eventually returned, and she stayed until breakfast. I feel very triumphant.

Ramadan started Thursday. The night before my family was telling me, it’s okay, not everyone in the family is fasting (the dad takes too many meds, the daughter is six – too young - and the 13 year son “isn’t always very good at fasting”), so I could eat whenever I’d like. I said, “no, I really want to fast. I want to try.” “No Kreestin, no problem, you eat anytime.” “No, I won’t be eating. I am going to fast.” “All day, no eat?” “If you can do it, so can I!” Ah…it went on. No one believed I understood, or could do it. Which just made me more determined than ever. So Thursday when I got home and told them I hadn’t eaten or drunken (?) anything, they were tremendously impressed. It made me happy because I had felt like they thought it was stupid that a non-Muslim would fast, but I realized that it was more that they didn’t want me to feel in any way like I was obligated to do so.

The not-eating is the smallest trouble of the fast. It is the desire to put food in the mouth that is a far bigger issue, if that makes sense. I wasn’t hungry during the day (breakfast was had at 4:30am, iftar-the break of the fast-at 6:51pm), but I just wanted to be nibbling on something! Not drinking water was also extremely hard. I had decided the previous night that I wasn’t going to abstain from water, that’s silly and not all that healthy, but once I got up it just felt oddly wrong to take a drink. I had a water bottle with me, but I only took one sip all day, to wash down a pill. The most intense challenge happened around 2:30pm, when two friends and I were at Carrefour, the mega-wonder-grocery-store-land. For some ungodly reason, there was an OPEN Cinnabon stand!!!! Tears nearly came to my eyes as the fresh-baked smell assaulted my nose.

Hahaha. I just got an email from my mom in which she said: “every time I feel hungry I think of you.” That’s one of the most charming things anyone’s ever said to me!!

Yesterday was shameful. I met some friends at Books@Cafe (aka “Books” in the local parlance; not surprisingly, a bookstore-cum-coffee shop) and my plan was to order a bottle of water and that was that. Well, when I went up to the barista, I was on auto-pilot and asked what I ask every time I go there: “what kind of drip coffee do you have today?” HUGE mistake; he just had to say hazelnut, the jack-ass. It was like I entirely lost control of my speaking organ. So there I was, with a massive cup of hazelnut aroma coffee, and I drank it. I didn’t enjoy at all. I was angry, but I feel that I learned my lesson. Today I had a bottle of water after going to the gym, but no food fasting mishaps.

I find that from roughly 3pm on, it is extremely hard to read. My head gets just foggy enough to prohibit progress beyond a paragraph every five minutes or so. Maybe I should find something easier to read, though. I’m out of novels, and I looked through every shelf at Books, and was unable to locate a SINGLE novel that I had ANY desire to read. And I’m not talking about a couple shelves, they have an extensive fiction section. The problem being that massmarkets far outnumber trade paperbacks. After every half hour or so in the café upstairs, I would get myself re-encouraged that there must be something, anything, down there that had missed…and I would return and pore over shelf after shelf…of absolute crap. Luckily I can go to the school library tomorrow, and surely find something!

Real school begins tomorrow. I'm far from thrilled. Despite the fact that I left quite a bit of the placement test blank, and the other parts I know were filled out abominably, and when in the oral portion I was asked to give four reasons why I would prefer the mountains to the beach for a vacation, and I gave none, other than saying "I like" and then miming "hiking," I was placed in level four out of six!!! They say they know what they're doing, and I should trust the people who evaluated me, I'm terrified. My vocabulary base is minimal, embarrassingly so, and I'm not sure how I'll be able to keep up. Two things make me feel better about it though. First, the primary teacher for level four is one of those sweet kind people who give you the impression that they genuinely what to help you learn. I know that he won't be cruel to us. And secondly, there are two girls who were in my colloquial course who liked to whine about how it was too easy, and blah blah, he moves too slow, yadda yadda. Yeah, they both got placed into level three!! Ha, it gave me a small bit of pleasure to discover this.

Assorted Aswan Photos Around My Hotel

This is the big square in front of the train station, about a block from our hotel. It would have been more pleasant to walk in this area, where the waterfront is lined with parks, if everyone wasn't staring and making comments at you.

These are the views from Tracey's and my hotel room at the Marhaba Palace Hotel. It was definitely my favorite hotel of the whole trip, largely because of the fact that when keys were being passed out, Tracey randomly selected the only suite!!! We had such a massive beautiful room. And the pool here was the best of all the hotels as well. They even let me swim at night (the sign said it closed at five) with a bottle of beer! A delightful couple of days were had in Aswan.

I would always welcome a chance to let Marhaba puts me together again! I also like the idea of "internet coffee" - is that like where you press a button and a caffeine fix is programmed to your brain?

Abu Simbel

This is really a fantastic temple, three hours south of Aswan, on Lake Nasser, which supposedly has the highest concentration of crocodiles in the world.

We were supposed to depart at 4:30am, to meet up with the convoy that makes the trip with police escort (you can't go any other way). Well, we all dutifully met in the lobby at 3:45am, drank tea, nibbled on breakfast, waited...and waited...until around 5am Khaled informed us that the bus hadn't shown up, he couldn't get a hold of the bus driver, and the convoy was leaving as we spoke. Awesome. So we agreed that we would try the 11am convoy, even though the heat would be oppressive and the lighting a little less beautiful.

But it turns out we got lucky!!! There were maybe 10 other people there in total, the whole time we were visiting, and in the morning convoy, even in low season, there are hundreds and hundreds of tourists getting in your way. We all were thrilled with how things went. Khaled had never gone on the 11 o'clock convoy before, and he thinks he's going to sugggest to future tours, I love it when things that seem awful turn out fantastically!

Ramesses II had these built into the rock in the 13th century BC. They had to be relocated in the sixties to preserve them from the rising height of the Nile in response to the construction of the Aswan High Dam. So the temples were cut into pieces and reassembled a couple hundred meters back. I can't even fathom how that kind of project actually happens. It cost 80 million US dollars.

Oh, tree friends. I thought they were cute.

This is a temple to Ramessses II's favorite wife Nefertari. She is the only wife to get such a lavish dedication. Most wives would just be represented as mini-statues between a Pharaoh's feet or something.

The only bad portion on the experience was the three hours each way on the bus. The bumpy bumpy, bumpy bus. And even thought the air conditioning was on, it still felt a bit like an oven.

The landscape was interesting on the way down, but really not at all on the way back. I liked seeing the bus stops in the middle of absolutely nothing that would periodically pop up. And I did get to see some desert mirages...it was eery!

Kitchener's Garden Isle

Elephantine Island

Here there is a Nubian village (Nubians are an ethnic group, blacker than the rest of the Arab-looking Egyptians, from this area of southern Egypt and the Sudan, who are mostly Muslim but have a distinct history). In truth, I do like to see small towns like this, but it feels gross to be part of the endless tourist parade, oohing and ahhing at all the cute little houses and children.

The Aga Khan's Mausoleum and Surrounding Area

Felucca Riding in Aswan

Aswan is the southernmost large city in Egypt. Many of us thought it was our favorite city in the country (sometimes I count myself among this group, sometimes not). The Nile is beautiful here, and there are lots of islands to visit near or in the city.

A boy swam up and started singing at our boat. He wanted money. Khaled wanted to throw coins for him in the water and see if he could catch them before they sank.