Puerto Vallarta

I just got back from my sister's wedding in Puerto Vallarta a few weeks ago and was surprised at how touristy it was. Beautiful, charming, artsy, but mostly for the tourists. More later. I should be working.

All I Need Is the Air That I Breathe

For the past two weeks, it's been hard for me to breathe in Cairo. Literally. The smog is so bad here that when combined with the hot weather and sand and other atmospheric things I don't really know about, the air quality is horrible. It's always polluted, but it's been worse this month. I wake up every morning with puffy eyes and a cough that lingers throughout the day. The pollution is so bad that sometimes you can't even see from one Giza pyramid to the other (the 3 pyramids are a short walking distance from each other and there's nothing else in between them.) It's crazy!

In spite of all of this, and the wicked heat, Cairo is also beautiful. And sometimes, when you're on the Nile, in the middle of the city, things are peaceful and quiet and breezy and calm. Everything is still and you can ponder the things you only do in stillness.

You can watch the gorgeous bright colors of the sunset in a sand and smog-filled sky and find beauty in it. I guess you could say that about the city itself. And like many others before me have said, it's a city that calls you back time and time again. I haven't left yet, but I already know I'll be back. Many, many, many more times. To catch another smoggy, sandy breathtaking sunset. Literally.

Scratch That

I'm not sure about everybody else, but I'm a bit clumsy. It's not uncommon for me to cut a hand or foot or arm or leg on something random. Now, this in and of itself is nothing particularly new or exciting and has little to do with Egypt except for the fact that I've realized how slowly these scrapes and cuts heal here. I'm not sure if it's some kind of vitamin or nutrient that I'm missing here, because it's dirty here or if it's something else. Whatever it is, I'm not the only to suffer from it. In order to speed up, or even encourage any healing at all, I have to take extra special care to rinse my cut with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide after I shower and before I go to bed. Even then, it takes a while and I have to make extra sure that I keep Band-Aids and Neosporin on it. Not that you can find Neosporin or Hydrogen Peroxide here...)

Actually, I suspect that it's the water. The water from the tap comes from the Nile and is not very clean. My parents and I not only don't drink water from the tap, we don't even brush our teeth with it. I know it goes through some kind of chemical processing and/or cleaning because I can smell it every time I shower. The water smells like chemicals and chlorine. Like some kind of cleaner's getting sprinkled onto me whenever I clean myself. This crazy chlorine smell. I think I'm actually going to miss it when I leave here. It's just one of those smells that is so distinct that it reminds you of a particular time and place. This smell will always remind me of Cairo and of my parents apartment.

The Land of 60 Jews

I have it on the authority of Inji, our tour guide, that there are only sixty Jewish people in the whole of Cairo. (It might have even been all of Egypt.) That's right. Sixty Jewish people. It's not the first time I've heard this since I've been here. My dad said the same thing, but I thought he had been spreading some urban myth that he'd heard thrown around his work. But Inji is a trained tour guide. She went to school for four years learning Egyptian and World History, Religion, and many languages to do what she does. She had to take an exam to get her certification and has to renew it every five years. She knows what she's talking about.

Even hearing it from her, I thought it was bullshit. But I guess if you're Jewish, unless you're the Israeli Ambassador or his staff, you're probably not going to want to live here. At the very least, you probably won't admit you're Jewish to many people. And I don't think there are any synagogues that are functioning anymore. Egypt has had an established, if not fragile, peace with Israel for a while now. At least to the extent that the rest of the Arab nations halted trade with Egypt at some point over their objections. That said, Egypt is growing more and more conservatively Muslim every year; and I could imagine that it could be really dangerous to go to a synagogue here.

The Israeli Ambassador is just down the street from where I live, but the street leading up to it is barricaded with armed Egyptian guards on all sides. The synagogue is also blocked off. This Arab/Israeli tension is something all of us know about. We've seen the video clips of bomb sites and fighting and war torn streets. But it seems like something far away. Like if you just choose not to visit Israel or Gaza or the closely surrounding areas, it doesn't directly affect you and you'll be safe. It's only the metal detector you go through before you can go inside the 1st Synagogue in Cairo, (and the comment Inji made about how dangerous it is for the people who live so close to it) that reminds you of how close you really are to everything.

And it's not just the synagogues and Israeli Ambassador. Egyptian police and security check your trunk and run bomb detectors under the car before you enter any big shopping mall or hotel where tourists would go. And there are metal detectors before you enter some of the hotels and tourist attractions, and even high school graduations at the pyramids. I've heard that they won't let cars drive up to the front of hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, a Red Sea resort town on the Sinai where a bomb exploded last year. It's something that goes on in the background and really doesn't interfere with everyday life. But it's there. Reminding everyone that these people aren't fucking around.

Bricks and Stones

Cairo is a growing city and so, there's a lot of construction. It seems that as big and full as the city is, there's always room to put up more buildings. Construction's a bit different than I've seen in other places. There's no building with wooden beams and sheet rock here. No nails or plywood. Nothing that crumbles or molds in the first bit of flood. In Cairo, in the middle of the desert, they build with brick and sand and cement and metal. Even apartments are built this way. Nothing shoots up overnight, like the insta-partments I've seen in Austin. There's no building that's going to be rushed to make a faster profit. Egypt is somewhat disorganized and this is a factor in the slower way of building, but it also hints at something more. These buildings are made to last. It makes sense that in an ancient city with ruins thousands of years old, the notion of being only a small part of a greater whole, a tiny speck in an entire universe of time would be a natural way of being. That things are built with the understanding that far after we are gone, generations after us, will be people that are still here; these buildings will be used again and again until they crumble to the ground. When I first set foot in St. Paul's Cathedral in London in 2000, I felt this. And most other parts of Europe. This feeling of being connected to a deep, rich history that we are all a part of. It's not something I think that much about in the U.S. Our buildings are young and built without much thought for the future, it seems to me. It's easy to forget about the rest of time and the world and other people with nothing to remind us. There's no way to forget it here.

My Space Invaders

After having changed my MySpace location to Cairo, Egypt less than a week ago, I've decided to change it back to living in Texas. I have gotten more friend requests from single men (or boys) living in Cairo than I ever thought possible and it's getting annoying. Funny and very telling of the men here, I think, but mostly annoying and starting to piss me off. Anyway, it's not like all Egyptian men are these creepy, annoying and gross little perverts. And there actually are some Egyptian women that have boyfriends and don't cover their hair. (They're probably upper middle class from what I can tell, though...) And I'm sure some of these MySpacer's are just looking to make friends, but I'm very suspicious. I just can't help it! Anyway, I didn't start this blog just to bitch about Egyptian men. It's pretty easy to do, though.

Lord Help the Misters that Come Between Me and My Sisters

Last week, I gave in and bought 2 skirts that almost touch the ground. They were on sale and actually pretty cute and not too thick for the summer. On Sunday, I went out on the town with Azza (the lady that cleans my parents' apartment) and her sister Donya. I wore the skirt and buttoned up my shirt all the way to go with them and it worked out alright. Azza brought me over to her neighborhood and made me lunch in her apartment (in a building where all of her husband's family lives-I can't even imagine...). Her husband is apparently in Libya, working, and only comes back every few months. Azza lives in a tiny apartment about the size of my efficiency with her 2 little sons. Her husband's family doesn't approve of her nor do they know about the fact that she's a cleaning lady - they think she works as a nurse in a hospital. It's not uncommon to hear of married women taking care of their children all by themselves while their husbands are off somewhere they won't mention, or nowhere to be found - at least with lower middle class ladies that clean expat houses. Nobody's really sure if it's actually as common as these ladies say or if it's a way to guilt expat women into giving them a job. Typically, the truth in such things is somewhere in the middle. In Egypt, though, I suspect the truth lies closer to the side of the ladies that live here. Women don't get a lot of respect and wives don't have a lot of rights.

Inside her apartment, Azza, Donya and I talked, in a mix of broken English and Arabic, about men and marriage. They asked me why I wasn't married. It's a question I get a lot here and it's one that's difficult to explain because it's more of a concept. It's not easy to explain it in another language I don't really know how to speak. Basically, my answer ends up being something like, "I'm too young,"- which at almost 30 years old, doesn't really work much anymore - or, "I marry later." It seemed like I would never get anywhere with this whole why I'm not married thing especially since I've told them I have a boyfriend that's wonderful and who I actually love. It just seemed to be a concept that they didn't understand. Egyptian women don't have boyfriends, both of them told me while making the sign of slitting their throats. It's serious business. Women get married and that's it.

Then Donya, whose English is better than Azza's, explained that American women can get rid of their boyfriends if they are bad; Egyptian women can not get rid of their husbands. I guess that sums it up. At that moment, I realized that women are women and we can all relate to a no-good man. Things aren't so difficult for the men here. I've heard that, literally, all a man has to do is say, "I divorce you" three times and the marriage is null and void. For better or worse, at least in a place where divorce is all-too-common, I could get rid of a man that didn't treat me right. And I wonder how many men here have felt free to treat their woman as horribly as they wanted because they are raised and live in a place where they could get away with it. Anyway, I know I'm just an outsider looking in and that maybe I don't understand the complexity of it all. But I know about women not being treated right. I also know that even without legal or social power, women ultimately stick together; and in Egypt, it seems we need to.

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Elbows

When I was planning to come to Egypt, I was aware of the more conservative dress expected of women. I went to Morocco about 6 years ago and I remember that we all dressed a bit more modestly than we normally would. It was early Spring anyway, though, so it wasn't hot enough for it to be that big of a deal. I knew that Morocco was one of the more laid-back largely-Muslim countries (or it was in early 2001, anyway) and that things might be different in Egypt.

People who didn't know better would try to scare me by bringing up burkas and complete cover and maybe the odd reference to cutting off hands if they catch you stealing. (This punishment comes from "the body of Islamic law," called Shariah, which is a set of guidelines established for dealing with both public and private daily life that was said to come from the prophet Mohammed. These days, most official governments may incorporate aspects of Shariah, but they don't use it as their judicial system. I'm pretty sure there's not a whole lot of hand cutting going on in Egypt. At least, in the media...) Anyway, I decided to ask some women who'd been to other Middle Eastern countries to see what they thought about how I should dress.
These ladies told me that as long as I covered my legs to the knees and my arms to the elbows and didn't show too much cleavage, that I'd be fine. As a result, I bought three pairs of capris, four tank tops and about seven button up shirts to wear over everything. I also brought a few skirts that cover my knees and one that goes to the floor.

What these ladies didn't tell me was that, while no one's going to spit or yell disapprovingly at you in the streets wearing capris and a loose shirt over your tank top (which has happened to some of the women here), you absolutely, without question, still get some undesired attention. Most Egyptian women wear long pants or skirts that touch the floor, long sleeve shirts to their wrists, and cover their hair completely with scarves. A few women go all out with the full-on hijab (women's head and body covering) and wear burkas with gloves and sometimes even a sheer cloth over that so you can't even see her eyes. Needless to say, most expats stand out in Cairo.

Two days ago (when I wrote this, which is about a week ago now), my mom and I went to Carre Four--the Cairo equivalent of a Wal-Mart--that's in a less expatty, more local part of town. I had a longish skirt on and my standard shoulder covering shirt. My mother wore a knee-length skirt and a short sleeve shirt. The truth is that she probably should have covered her elbows, but whatever. Neither of us expected to get so many dirty looks from all of the women. It was like high school all over again with stupid girls, but with more hostility. With women like that, I've taken to looking them in the eyes and smiling very sweetly at them. Every once in a while, one of them smiles back, but I think it throws the bitchy ones off a little and that makes me laugh. Really, there's not much else to do. But the women aren't really the problem. It's the men.

A few days before the Carre-Four incident, I was walking down the street to meet up with my mom who was volunteering at CSA (the organization created to help expats living in Egypt)-- knees covered, elbows and chest covered -- walking briskly, minding my own business and definitely looking down when some guy just pulled up in a car and tried to get me to talk to him. (Sure. That works in America too!) I just gave him the typical annoyed, screw-off look you'd give a lame guy that tries to hit on you at a bar and kept walking. It wasn't really that big of a deal. On the walk back, a car full of teenage guys drove past me and my mother slowly calling out to us and just being dumbasses. That wasn't that anything other than annoying either.

The real issue is that the men in Egypt generally don't respect Western women, and feel that we're easy. And that can cause problems. A few expat women have been walking in my parents' neighborhood and have been attacked by men who tried to drive off with them. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what they planned to do. It's really just not safe for a non-covered woman to walk around alone here. And even if those things hadn't happened, I'd still be kind of uncomfortable. When I'm walking down the street, or browsing in a store, or especially at the gas station, sometimes an ickiness just comes over me and sinks into my gut. I can just feel eyes on me. Creepy lecherous eyes that only a woman could pick up on. And even though I know, at that moment that I'm safe, the feeling stays like an alarm. Like the kind of feeling you get when you know you're in danger. Theresa would call it an alert, I think. That's exactly what it is. And there's not much I can do about it.

Graduation, Egyptian Style

It was totally surreal. A graduation at the freaking pyramids! It was great to see and hear so many young ones full of hope and excitement. They talked about their dreams and aspirations and accomplishments. And then, at some point, I began to feel sorry for my parents and the 8 boring graduation ceremonies they'd had to sit through for all of us. Man, those speeches sure take a long time...

Pomp and Osiris

I ate kosharee for the first time ever today -- twice. Kosharee is a tasty Egyptian dish that's a mixture of macaroni noodles, rice, lentils, tomatoes, onions, chick peas and olive oil with lots of spices. My parent's cleaning lady (it seems all the expats in Egypt have them) Azza came to work today with the kosharee she had promised to make for me the last time she came and it was delicious. Absolutely yummy breakfast. It was also my dinner.

My mother hosted a going away party for her friend Cheril, a Reading Pennsylvania native that's lived in Cairo for seventeen years. It seems that people come and go a lot in the expat community. Seventeen years is unheard of. I'm not sure about the specific details, but Cheril's husband was transfered back to Reading and they have a month to pack everything up, buy all the things you can only get in Egypt and say goodbye. Anyway, the ladies that work at CSA, (which stands for Community Service Association) a non-profit organization that provides resources for expats in Cairo, threw her the party and for food, they ordered kosharee and falafel and eggplant and once again, yum!

I like Cheril a lot and I'm sad to see her go, as she seemed like a good person and a good friend for my mother. Fortunately, before she goes, we've made plans to go to the Marriott Nile River Cruise (or whatever it's called) with food, bellydancers and all! And better still, her daughter graduates from High School tomorrow and the ceremony will be at the Giza pyramids. I can't wait! It's at 8 in the morning and I'm not a morning person, but this I have got to see. My first trip to the pyramids will be for high school graduation. It's going to be the most surreal thing I've ever seen. These people are so lucky and they don't even know it! Stay tuned for pictures!

No Use Crying Over Missed Connections

So, my mom's birthday (a big one that she'd kill me if I disclosed) is on July 13 and to celebrate, my sister Tara and her fiance Justin are coming to Cairo. They were booking their flight this morning (Cairo time) and this reminded me of one more thing that I should have done, but didn't. I should have made sure that I had more than 50 minutes between connections. The plane that was supposed to be my connecting flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam left at exactly the time when the flight I took from Austin finally landed late in Minneapolis. The exact same time. I realize that a few hundred other people missed their connections due to forces out of all of our control, but still, if I'd had more than 50 minutes, I would have made it. And the thing is, after I realized that I had such a short layover (which was a few weeks before my flight), I knew this might happen.

I mean, this particular missed flight was caused by a storm, but really, flights run late pretty damn often enough. It's not uncommon for a flight to take off 30 minutes late. Sometimes they make up the time in the air, but if there are delays at the airport they're flying into, it really doesn't matter. And 50 minutes is nothing anyway. Once you land, taxi through the runway, get to the arrival gate and actually get out of the plane, you've got 35 minutes max. If you're on time in the first place. And what if you forgot to get something. Like, say, gum...

So, anyway, I have decided to file this away in the airplane tab hanging in the travel planning filing cabinet in my head (yeah, I said it...): An hour and a half to two hours minimum for all flight connections. And that's it. Otherwise, sooner or later, I'll end up back at the Ramada Inn Mall of America in Minneapolis for the so-called "reduced rate" of $69 ($80 with tax) with nothing but a Sky Team T-shirt to sleep in, a travel toothbrush and some weird travel deodorant that came in the overnight kit I had to charm a Northwest Airlines employee into giving me. And as much of an adventure as it was; I'm good with the one experience I had. So there it is, nothing really big to bitch about, just something else one would think that my travel agent should have thought about. Maybe he did and that was the best option there was. But, oh well, I got here. Only an entire day late without one of my suitcases. But that's another story...

Travel Agents and Aisle Seats

I made it to Cairo a few days ago and despite jet lag and a cold I'm fighting (which may account for this not being too pretty) here are some things I've managed to learn about flying: Travel agents are great; they can help you find tickets in the confusion of all the ticket craziness and can also answer general questions about travel insurance ( which i opted not to get) and help you with layovers (I chose to stay over in amsterdam -- where I needed to change planes anyway -- for 5 days on my way back.). Still, if you're going to book a ticket with a travel agent, you might not actually get the best fare. (They've got to make their money somehow, I guess. ) Also, you should make sure they let you select your seats while they're booking your flight. I did not insist on this, actually forgot all about it, and by the time I remembered to go online to reserve a seat, most of the good ones were taken. Of course, if you book your ticket well in advance, you might not be able to pick your seat anyway because you can only do it 90 days in advance (I'm pretty sure and I'll check on this to make sure later).

Given all of the questions and requests I had: I wanted to stop over somewhere on my way back from Cairo for a while, I wanted to find out about Travel Insurance (I'll get back to you about that later), I had a limited budget, and I was running out of time -- I would use the travel agent again. Now that I know a little bit more about what I'm doing, though, I would go to kayak.com. Now, I don't think the travel agent was a bad thing. I liked mine. (Tim Goddard from FlightcentreUSA in Redondo Beach, California...) It's always good to have a person you can call and arrange things for you that speaks your language and might have access to more resources than you do. I'm aways a fan of making relationships with people in this way (as anti-social as i can be sometimes) because in a jam it's the person and not the internet that'll help you out. But I would at least check out kayak.com to see their prices and then call the travel agent and compare, even see if you can talk them down.

I also learned that while the window seat is great for leaning on when trying to sleep, that the aisle is actually a better choice. Now, I'm 5 foot nothing and generally, a pretty small girl, but even I was cramped in the window seat on the plane to minneapolis. I'm a constant fidgeter, so my theory has always been to lean into the window to give me more fidget room, but on a 7 hour flight, no amount of fidgeting will help. What does help is frequent trips to the bathroom and not feeling stuck because you can't move for fear of elbowing your neighbor. Anti-perspirant and chewing gum help even more ( I forgot the gum).

Originally, I had selected window seats across the board for my entire trip, but as the gods would have it, I missed my connection in minneapolis/st. paul due to tornado weather (with 100's of others) and was forced to take an aisle seat when my flight was rebooked. Honestly, guys, I'm never going window again!

Planning Ahead Has Never Been my Forté

I was at the library picking up tax forms and I decided to take a look at their travel books. I figured since I'm supposed to be going to Cairo in Egypt in about a month that it was a good idea to start doing some research. I know, forever the procrastinator, but I've never been the best at planning ahead. Don't get me wrong. I DO know what I'm doing, but I don't always care to know EXACTLY what I doing before I do it. It's not really possible in the grand scheme of life to know what lays ahead of you anyway, so really, I'm just living life the way it was meant to be lived. But I digress....

I was at the public library downtown today and since it's Saturday, and therefore, free to park in the metered spots, I was taking my time. After taking two of each 1040 form and accompanying booklet on the table and a few various, hopefully useful, deduction schedule forms, I headed to the third floor of Faulk Central Library and found the travel section. What I found were a bookshelf full of outdated travel books. I'm pretty sure the Europe travel books were relatively up-to-date. (I would assume, although, I didn't look at all of them.) The books I was looking for were another story. I found one, and only one travel guide on the the whole Middle East dated 2001 and not one after that. It makes sense, somehow. I'm sure Sept. 11, 2001 made a lot of people curious about the Middle East in general. I would suspect that after that most people have decided to stay away out of fear.

Anyway, I found a Rough Guide to Egypt book dated 2003 and DK Egypt book dated 2001 with lots of color pictures in it and decided that I should start there. I checked out those two, as well an impulse check-out titled Travel in Africa with your Health Intact (or something like that) or as I would call it: How Not to Die of an Infectious Disease But Still Know Enough About All of the Possibilities to be Scared of it. At that point, I decided I should probably buy a ticket soon and emailed a travel agent at Flightcentre USA who's a friend of a friend to find out how to do it.

I haven't heard back from the travel agent yet and I haven't read any of the books, but I will soon enough. And I promise I'll put it all down here because, believe me, if I can help others make sense of the confusion that is traveling, I'll do what I can. It's a jungle out there, man! And I haven't even left yet...