Lazy Friday mornings

I love Friday mornings... it's the quietest that Cairo ever gets.  I hear barely any horns honking, there aren't as many people yelling on the street, and the call to prayer just started. We got to sleep in, so instead of the 7:30am wake up call that I've been having since I got here, I got to sleep til 11. Yay!

Today we have a free day to decompress and get miscellaneous tasks done, which is good because yesterday was exhausting. We had our own Cairo version of the Amazing Race. I've never seen the show, but apparently it was basically the same. We split into teams of 3 or 4, got a packet with instructions, 200 pounds, and two sealed envelopes. We had places to find, information to get, pictures to take. Our group got the packet called "You May Call Me Your Royal Highness" and it started us out at the Abdeen Palace. In case you wanted to know, it was built by Khedive Ismail in 18-something something and has 550 rooms. It was actually pretty fun to figure out how to do everything ourselves. It was a little frustrating because someone gave us bad directions on the metro, so we got off at the wrong stop, had to backtrack, and then ask people directions to the palace, and then we basically walked around the entire thing (which took awhile) to find the museum entrance. All in all though, that part of the race was pretty fun.

But then we had to take a cab ride to the train station on Ramses Street. Apparently it's still under construction... so we tried to get all the information we could, but were so frustrated we just went on to the next task. We had to find Tahrir square. We asked so many people along the way, who all pointed us in the right direction (and some actually helped us cross the street) but it didn't seem to us that we were headed the right way since we were walking next to a huge highway. After about half an hour of walking though (and picking up another team along the way) we found Tahrir square, the Cairo Museum, and a delicious and apparently well-known koshary place to eat. (Koshary is an Egyptian food that has noodles, beans, meat, and some kind of sauce on it - very very good!) We also got tricked into going into some perfume guy's shop because he was showing us where Koshary Tahrir was, but luckily we didn't pay for some huge thing of perfume. That was my first experience in Egypt of haggling! Even though we didn't really want the perfume in the first place...

There were still many things left on our task list, but we were already past the time we were all supposed to meet back up, so we just took the metro back. (A few girls and I rode in the ladies-only car, it was so much nicer than riding in the crowded cars of mostly men!) Some groups actually completed everything, and some groups had a much worse experience than we did. I love scavenger hunts (like the ones Mary George and I put together for the Magnificent Mile in Chicago and the Brookfield Zoo), so I kind of hope we do something like this again later in the semester, when we might actually be able to get around easier. But this was a good way to force us to talk to people (asking for directions), and just experience being in the city on our own. I know that if we hadn't done this, I probably would have been too nervous to leave Dokki. But we knew that Matthew and Salma and Tamer were a phone call away if we got lost or something happened, which is also true at any point in the semester, so it made me feel like I didn't have to worry so much. I definitely want to go back to Tahrir Square and spend more time there soon!