God is here

Before anyone takes the title of this post the wrong way - the "god" to which I am referring here is the restaurant جاد, which is transliterated as "gad" but pronounced almost exactly like "god."

Despite being exhausted last night, the entire apartment woke up at 1:30am this morning and could not fall back asleep. Lauren and I both managed to fall back asleep somewhere between 3 and 4am, but Shama didn't sleep at all. Lauren says it must be because we have a jinn hanging out on our balcony - or maybe it's the weird possessed-sounding owl-thing outside our windows. Or just, ya know, the time change.

More orientation and survival Arabic today, hurray! We were on our own for lunch, so Christine and I wandered a couple of the side streets around Qambiz Villa (where we take our classes) and Babel Villa (where orientation and other activities are). I eventually got something from Costa Coffee, which was less than exciting, but I really needed some black tea. And they could break my 200 pound note that no other place would, so that was a success. (200 pounds ~ 35 dollars).

The really fun part of today came after orientation. We all went up to the roof and got to meet our Egyptian language buddies from Cairo University. Not all of them were there, because this is right in the middle of CU's final exams.  We did meet a good number of really awesome people though. I can not stress the awesome enough. They are all fluent in English, and will be our guides and friends (and occasional homework-helpers) throughout our stay here.  A bunch of the girls were talking to Miriam about Egyptian food, and she asked us if we had been to "God." Or at least that's what it sounded like! After laughing a bit about the name, Miriam took a large group of us there. Imagine 18 people walking in a herd in the middle of Cairo's streets... it was pretty ridiculous, and reminded me of the good old days of Ruby 1.

The restaurant though, was AMAZING. Miriam wasn't kidding when she said they have the best Egyptian food around. I had falafel (best I've ever had), Lauren had foul - pronounced "fool" (also amazing), most people had shewarma (Miriam had me try some of hers, also very good), Ian got hummus and some kind of light cheese dip thing (as you can probably guess... amazing.) Sorry Dad, I didn't take any pictures... but don't worry, it's already been decided that this restaurant is the place to be, especially because it's close to both our apartments and our classes. I'll get pictures next time. Once I actually start bringing my camera around with me. As you can imagine, we were all talking about how great god is after eating at that restaurant.... haha. "God is on Tahrir street!"

After a great (early) dinner, numbers and facebooks were exchanged and us crazy Americans and our fantastic new Egyptian friends are going out on Thursday, after their exams are over. Can't wait!