Saturday, January 31, 2009

a new year, a new you.

Ah, Cairo. That wonderful and bewildering city.

Coming back home after 6 weeks away, I had the peculiar sensation of being in a new and foreign environment in which I strangely already knew how to act naturally. My eyes were all wide as I was taking in a fresh view of Egypt, now comparing it to what I had seen in my travels through other parts of the Islamic world in Morocco and Turkey--but my body was already back into its Egyptian rhythm, making gestures and jokes and rattling off Arabic that I had consciously forgotten. Some part of Egypt has imprinted itself deep into my muscle memory and unconsciousness. Watching my body go through the motions was a bit like watching myself in a dream. While a little disorienting, I was encouraged and relieved to remember how well I've come to fit in here. Making jokes with Egyptians might be the greatest feeling ever--nothing else gives me such a sense of belonging. I spent last night eating eggplant sandwiches and telling jokes with a Coptic friend about upper Egyptians (the Cairene version of rednecks). My heart was strangely warmed.

One thing my body had forgotten: dust and bacteria. It seems my body has sissified after 6 weeks of detox, and a cough has already started rattling around my chest a bit. To be fair, though, this cough may be due more to the toxic mold that has developed on the wall of our bedroom, rather than to ordinary Cairo dust. Oh, Egypt, you sneaky jokester, you--developing mold even in a desert climate.
For those of you tempted to be concerned--yes, our landlord is probably going to deal with it sometime soon, and no, we don't know for sure that it actually is toxic... and what's a mold-induced headache, anyway, for a fierce and independent woman?

I have returned to Cairo with a batch of New Year's Resolutions, however, all aiming to maintain a sense of zen tranquility and Pauline contentment in the midst of all the energy and noise of life here.

1. 2x a week yoga with Rodney Yee and his awkwardly revealing spandex shorts
2. Taking Arabic classes 3x a week from a language center down my street, rather than a slightly better center that's a half-hour commute away. The preservation of sanity is worth the slight ding in quality, I think.
3. Walking slowly. Everything seems nicer (and my body hurts less) at a slower pace, even as you have to jostle for walking room on the sidewalk and defend your space from all the other power commuting pedestrians.
4. Eating strawberries and oranges. Ah, thank you, Egypt: strawberry season starts in January here, apparently. My body threw a small party when I first popped some into my mouth. Best of all? 2 pounds of strawberries costs about 60 cents. Strawberries from now 'til judgment day.

In other words, I'm trying to kill a sense of busyness so that I can take in my remaining months in Egypt more enjoyably. Some changes in my work schedule have enabled that, too--my 6-month internship at the AL has officially come to a close. While I'll work every night teaching English, this gives me infinite ways to enjoy the bright sunshine of Egypt in the mornings. Aside from Arabic class and yoga, I'll hopefully begin volunteering with Sudanese refugees once a week.

More traveling stories to come soon, but for now, just a small update on life in Cairo.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Speaking French.

Dear readers—

I write to you again from the lovely, smoggy, bustling city of Cairo. Flying back to my adopted home at 3am today, I’m a bit too jet-lagged to know what to make of this loud and dusty environment after 6 weeks away. At the very least, my heart strangely warmed at the endearing familiarity as I woke up once again to hear my roommate hit her alarm and groggily mutter, “what time is it?” as I stretched out on my lumpy bed and breathed in the smell of my mothball scented sheets. I’m not sure anything in Cairo is as beautiful as the snake charmers and stark white mountains of Marrakech, the blue walls of Chefchaouen, or the pristine mosques punctuating Istanbul’s skyline, but aesthetic beauty isn’t really what I’m after. Six weeks away from Cairo, I’m ready to be back with my roommates, colleagues, and host family again. Ah, yes. It’s good to be back.

And sucks, too.
Yes, your savvy traveler/intrepid intern has become a big softie over the past few months. I may have spent a few weepy moments at the Ataturk airport trying to delay the inevitable end of my 3 week trip, crying like a big blubbery cliché into an overpriced airport beer. The super depressing Turkish violin music piped into the airport food court wasn’t helping anything, either. Damn Turks and their melancholy. In any case, rather than bore you with an account of long-distance relationship heartache, let me instead begin to catch you up on a few more misadventures from my recent travels.

Speaking French.
Between the two of us, Nod and I are somewhat conversational in a variety of useless and semi-useless languages: Amharic, Oromifa, Farsi, Japanese, Egyptian Arabic, Spanish. Notably, we speak not a single word of Moroccan Arabic, French, or Turkish, which was going to make our travels through Morocco and Turkey a bit tricky. Armed with a Lonely Planet phrasebook, we were determined to teach ourselves a few French phrases to help us get around. Plus, who doesn’t feel a little vampy speaking French? Ordering a glass of orange juice (Excusez-moi, avez-vous un jus d'orange?) suddenly makes you feel like a charcter in a film noir. The trouble is that it’s a little tricky to figure out pronunciation just by looking at a French-English dictionary. I find that speaking English with a Hollywood French accent actually gets you a little further than you’d think, but we knew that we were bound to get ourselves into trouble eventually.

Some moments of linguistic confusion were more demoralizing than problematic. At one rooftop terrace in Marrakech, overlooking the snowy Atlas mountains and a colorful plaza of acrobats and snake charmers, we decided to sit down for a small Moroccan lunch. In addition to discovering a mutual love for fried pigeon with powdered sugar, mint tea, and cous cous with raisins and cinnamon, I had also become smitten with Moroccan almond juice. Now, in a pinch, most anyone can rely on a simple point-n-grunt method to ordering food off of a menu in an incomprehensible language. We had been in Morocco for a few days at that point though, and I felt pretty good about my budding French food vocabulary.

Jus d’amande, s’il vous plait? I asked, batting my eyelashes like a good French/Moroccan/film noir girl should. The waiter repeated my order back to me in French. It sounded a little different than what I said, but hey, I don’t actually speak French. It’s a little tough to hear all those silky smooth syllables clearly.

What arrived on my table was a beautiful glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Not almond juice. I should also mention that orange juice usually makes me gag.

“No, no,” I said, immediately switching back to my broken English I have a bad habit of using with non-native speakers abroad, “different. Not this. Almond. No orange. Almond. Amande. Amand? Amoond.” I tried different pronunciations to see if I could hit it right. Almendras? Hey, maybe Spanish might work.

The waiter looked back and forth at Nod and I. “Speak French?” He asked.
Non,” we responded, defeated.
“Oh my God,” he muttered, shaking his head disapprovingly.

Bringing out the menu, we resorted once again to the point-n-grunt method, but couldn’t convince him not to charge us for the orange juice I didn’t order. Or didn’t mean to order. Or, who knows. Maybe I ordered it.

Our most epic night of butchering the French language (which we have now both resolved to learn in earnest once we return to the United States) came a few nights later, in Fes.

The story begins with a wicked sweet tooth. Or rather, make that two—you have never seen true sugar addicts until you see Nod and I together. Throughout our travels, we ate at least 6 kilos of baklava and Turkish delight, and at least another 3 kilos of raw sugar in the form of sweetened mint tea. Nod was happy to discover that Moroccans had another sugar-drenched pastry called Chebakia that was close to an Iranian dessert he grew up with. That one was so sweet it could almost make you faint—naturally, we ate it almost every day in Morocco. And that was when we were trying to exercise a bit of restraint.

In Fes, we noticed an abundance of cafes with big, neon “Glacier” signs. Given the pictures of bright, sweet, colorful balls of ice cream accompanying said signs, we figured Glacier must mean “ice cream shop,” and that we were in a kind of ice cream utopia. Even though it was less than 10 degrees Celsius outside and we were losing feeling in our hands, we couldn’t get ice cream off our minds. Dreaming of hot fudge sundaes, we put on our parkas and wool socks and embarked one night to find the best glacier in town.

From a few days of French menus, I was pretty sure (and incorrect, it turned out) that the word for ice cream was “glace.” We sat for a minute flipping through our guide book until we were fairly certain how to form our first, real French sentence: “avez-vous glace?” “Do you have ice cream?” We took turns marching up to French waiters up and down the main street, cheerfully and confidently asking, “avez-vous glace? Avez-vous glace?”

One by one we were turned down—or, more often, told “oui, oui,” seated, and then found out that, non, non, they did not have ice cream. Quoi?? Are there not “glacier” neon signs above each and every one of these shops? Granted, it was mid-January, but our ice cream cravings do not stop for the seasons.

Finally, we found one lonely “glacier” sign down a dim-lit side street, where one man sat behind an ice cream counter with his cat, watching the news together on a staticky tv screen. Hardly able to contain our excitement, we began pointing and ordering big, sweet scoops of chocolat and nougat, (“how do you say 'strawberry' again? Oh, oui, monsieur, strawberry would be great, merci”).

It was only a week later, when we were talking with some French Canadian backpackers on a bus, that we realized we had been walking around asking all those cafes if they had ice, not ice cream. Savvy travelers strike again.

More to come. In the meantime, today is the last day of my internship. I’m wrapping up some final reports for them this afternoon. After that? Jeans and t-shirts every day, baby. My skin is nearly singing with excitement.

Of course, my internship has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had and could have ever asked for, and I am sad to be finished. It has been a solid six months with them, though, and I’m eager to begin focusing more seriously on Arabic class, as well as resume English teaching and volunteering with Sudanese refugees. It’s also nice simply to be free right now to look into any opportunity that might come my way. I welcome all of your thoughts and prayers as I begin to transition back into and reconnect with life here in Egypt. Cairo can be a tough city.

Take care and be well, my friends.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Savvy Travelers pt. 2: the saga of Iberia Air

Our time in Madrid afforded me the opportunity to recover from jetlag, cram in as much last-minute pork into my diet as possible, and remember why it was that I live in a Middle Eastern country where it doesn't snow in the winter (though if we had been dressed for it, the snow in Madrid really was pretty). Copious amounts of hot chocolate kept our thin, sissy blood from freezing in our veins, and we both agreed that Spain, while very pleasant (and undoubtedly easier to enjoy in the summertime, when we weren't shaking from the cold), was not where our hearts lay. It was time to go back to Africa.

Now, as savvy travelers, we have mastered the art of the train, bus, mini-bus, tuktuk, Nile felucca boats, donkey cart, camel, and politically-sensitive border crossings on foot, but the airplane seemed a bit sophisticated. Our other option was to pay in euros to take a train from Madrid down to Gibraltar, take a ferry across the Mediterranean to Tangier (the Tijuana of Morocco and known for seediness more than its scenery), and then a Moroccan train down to Marrakech. Or, we could take a 2 hour, $85 flight direct from Madrid  to Marrakech. It was an easy decision to make, but an air itinerary didn't jive so well with our laidback, "let's just do things as the come" plan-less vibe we had been rocking until this point. $85 or no, it was also an international flight, with all the extra time required for customs and security. Feeling invincible, we showed up at the airport 1 hour before departure. 

Now, I admit, showing up at the airport an hour before the flight isn't the smartest thing in the world (but how could we leave before getting in one last tortilla and cafe con leche [or churros and chocolate, if you have Nod's insatiable sweet tooth] at a picturesque and snowy cafe in Madrid? Surely we can be forgiven...). 

But Iberia air is the worst. The entire country is trying to fly out on one, government owned airline. They had maybe 6 check-in booths. The check-in line snaked out and around all the way through the terminal. There was no way we were going to even check in for our flight before it took off, much less make it to the gate. A very helpful Iberia air rep (ok, 1 point to Iberia air for her) called out flights that were leaving soon so that passengers could cut in line if they were leaving soon. She kept calling for Casablanca. Our flight was to Marrakech....both in Morocco, but were they the same flight? I was shy to use my Spanish, which was getting all garbled after a year without practice. An American backpacker girl was standing behind us and overheard us stressing about the flight. Smacking her gum with a condescending flat stare, she interjected,
"Uh, if you guys are leaving soon, you should probably go tell that woman. She's been calling your flight for a half hour."
Listen, emo backpacker girl with more Spanish cred than me, there's only enough room in this departure area for 1 savvy traveler. And...ok, it's you. 

We cut in line (with permission) and gave the Iberia rep our information to check in. After heaving our backpacks onto the tray to be checked, she told us our gate information. Great--we only have 2 minutes to get there! We started racing away. The Iberia air rep started yelling after us. Oh, right, our boarding pass might be helpful? We had forgotten it at the desk. The savvy travelers strike again.

We dashed towards the gate. The signs posted in the interminable and glistening hallways did their best to dash our hopes: 25 minutes to our gate, 2 minutes to departure. Coming from O'Hare--the busiest airport in the world but delightfully compact--it is beyond me why they felt the need for this airport to be so spread out. 

Dressed for the snow outside in beanies and scarves, we were sweating and puffing as we finally showed up at the gate. Could it be? Did we make it? I excitedly asked a middle age Spanish woman if she was headed to Morocco, too. "Yes, yes," she replied, with a look that said, "don't get so excited, my dear--this is Europe, and we do things with a bit more sophistication than America." Whew, whatever--we made it! It turned out that our flight was delayed by an hour, giving us just enough time to get there before boarding.

To celebrate, Nod decided to go off in search of muffins at the nearby food court. The second he was out of earshot, an Iberia air rep got on the PA system, announcing in Spanish that our gate had changed to the other side of the terminal. Nod doesn't speak Spanish, so there was no way he would have understood the announcement, even if he had heard it. The entire plane of passengers picked up their carry-ons and started walking to the other end. 5 minutes until boarding. Could it be that we had miraculously made it through security in time, only to miss our flight because of a muffin? It was so ridiculous that I was afraid it just might happen.

4 and a half minutes later, Nod returned triumphantly with a blueberry muffin in his hand. "Run!" I said, and moments later we were bolting down the terminal to our new gate. We made it just in time to scarf down our muffins, snap a photo, and tag onto the back of the boarding line. Still a bit flustered from the harried morning, we also almost left the plane with our massive copy of Lonely Planet Africa behind on the chair, until a helpful passenger grabbed it for us.

Alright, we already took home the wrong bag from the airport and almost missed our flight to Morocco. With a few early bugs out of our system, there was nothing more that could go wrong, right? To be continued...

The story of the savvy travelers.

You'd think two people living overseas for the past year would be up on their game: exuding a kind of "don't mess with me" vibe with the pick pocketers and knowing how to charm the locals into free cups of tea and local folklore and such. The Great American Backpacker life, right? You've all read about such people in Lonely Planet or smelled their unwashed third world funk at the end of your row on the airplane, thankful that America's youth are exploring the developing hinterlands but grateful that you, at least, go home to a hot shower every day. Nod recently marked his 500th day in Peace Corps; when I left Egypt for Christmas I was clocking in at a combined total of 9 months in the Middle East. Hardly young grasshoppers in the world of third world travel.

It turns out that a combined 25 months of experience across the Atlantic adds up to, well, nothing--or at least is overpowered by the greater force of googly-eyes. Eager to meet up with Nod at the airport in Madrid to begin three weeks of North African travel, I could hardly contain the little flock of butterflies giddily prancing about my stomach. Having been apart for the past 3 months, I had spent many wistful moments imagining the moment I would step off the plane and see him waiting there for me at the baggage claim. I had even brought him some special Seattle-only organic chocolate bars and an apple fritter donut direct from the States. After all, he had spent his Christmas laid out from an "intense bacterial infection of the bowels" and an allergic reaction to his antibiotics after that, while I enjoyed eggnog, a fireplace, and my family during a white Christmas back home. I figured he'd be happy for some simple pleasures from Uncle Sam territory.

First of all, the Madrid airport is awful. Sprawling and obnoxiously hygenic, infuriatingly precise signs blink on and off informing you that you have 23 minutes of long, spotless white tile hallways to walk to until you reach the airport tram, which will arrive in 2 minutes and travel for a total of 3 minutes, until you reach the baggage claim, which is another 7 minutes away by foot from the tram station. With a boyfriend waiting outside, when you see those signs you mostly just feel like dropkicking the nearest Iberia Air representative, or perhaps impaling yourself on a churro. 

I arrived at the baggage claim. I looked around eagerly, until I realized that my half-Iranian half-Japanese boyfriend's vaguely brown features resembles nearly every ethnicity on the planet. Is he that Spaniard over there? The Turkish tourist? The Arab passenger? I stared down the faces in the terminal. Nope, not there yet. I waited for the bags to come out. The belt started to turn. My heart raced--finally, I would get my bag and go and find Nod (who I figured was waiting outside the exit--which turned out to be the case). 4 bags cranked out. The belt stopped. I took a deep breath--no problem, they're just loading up more bags and don't want to waste energy, right? 8 minutes go by. Finally the belt started again. 3 bags. It stopped. I started looking around for that churro to put myself out of my misery. Finally, my backpack rose out of the murky underworld of the baggage loading dock, and I snatched it up with eager glee. I flounced out of the baggage claim area, where I found Nod waiting for me. We sat down to split the apple fritter that I had painstakingly searched out and carried with me oh so many thousands of miles across the sea. We both agreed that it tasted mostly like puke. Oh well, so much for romantic gestures.

When we arrived at our hostel in Madrid, I opened my bag to get out my Christmas present for Nod. As I unzipped the top pouch, a pair of dirty gym shorts fell out. Hmmm. My stomach sank.
"Nod, I think I have the wrong bag."
I should mention that outside it was snowing, we had both been traveling for over 30 hours straight, I was jetlagged, and my brain had yet to switch over from Arabic into Spanish. We both looked at the bag with a mix of contempt and disbelief. Way to go, Alissa--1 hour into your 3 week trek through North Africa (and you're still in Europe where you speak the language!), you managed to botch it already. Savvy traveler, no way. 
We bundled up and went back into the cold, back onto the metro, and back into the terminal we had just come from. Luckily, the unfortunate backpacker with my exact same bag hadn't decided to spite me by taking my bag as ransom, and it was waiting for us at the lost and found. Sorry, Stephen of Flagstaff, Arizona. 

This was just the first of many harmless but ridiculous blunders to follow, all of which I will recount to you in the coming days. In the meantime, I'm writing you from Fez, Morocco, 8 days into our quest. I'll do my best to catch you up as we tap into unprotected wireless networks and janky wi-fi connections from our 6 euro hostels. Until then, take care!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Yulla.

My dear friends, the time has come.

Time to say goodbye to eggnog, wi-fi, central heat, a car, and ling-ling's frozen potstickers; time to breathe a huge sigh of relief that my grad school applications are finally all completed; time to rejoice that this is the last time I'll see snow or ice for a long, long time.

Yes,  the time has come to leave America behind for yet another 6 months. I must say, America treated me very well for the past 3 weeks. No complaints. There have been times when I've come home and reeled a bit from the incongruity between America's lifestyle and the developing world--nope, this time I was just grateful to be able to rest and refresh myself so I can go back to Egypt with that much more strength and energy. And really, I aim to be grateful for what life brings me. And if it brings me 3 weeks of hot showers and my family? I'll take it. 

It was also a relief just not to be busy. Busyness is a curse no matter what corner of the globe you're on--my Egyptian daily grind is just as bad as any schedule I've had back in the States. To be able to take the time to sit on the couch with my parents and watch "The Superstars of Dance"? Incredible. There's something kind of endearing about puttering around the kitchen during a commercial break while my mom yells, "Aliss! The South Africa duo tribal dancers are coming back on!" I mean, that's what relaxing with your family is about, right?

So now that 98% of the world is going back to business as usual after the New Year, I'm glad to be able to sneak a few more weeks of relaxation (and starvation, given my travel budget) before I head back to work, too. First stop: Madrid. 

I'll talk to you all again from across the Atlantic, isa. Until then, take care!

Friday, January 2, 2009

to Samba into ot-nine.

Gentle readers. Best wishes for all of you in 2009. We've actually embarked on a mission to change "oh-nine" to a much cooler sounding "ot-nine." Not sure on the spelling just yet, but say it like the first syllable in "otter." Which reminds me: when I was five years old, every penny I was given to throw into a fountain I used to wish that I would become a half-mermaid, half-sea otter. Every penny into every fountain for probably 3 years straight. Needless to say, regardless of my marked persistence, it never came true. Here's for hoping.

My time in America is coming to a close, I'm afraid. I think I have managed to eat bacon every single day state side, though, so I know I've used my time well. If I haven't blogged very much over my Christmas vacation, it's perhaps because I expect that my vacation at home looks remarkably similar to your respective vacations at home (no camels, no fig vendors, no screeching cats for you all, too, I suspect). Also, because everything deserves a vacation once in a while. Even a blog. And I'd hate to contribute to excessive eye strain with my infamously verbose posts. If you've ever gotten a "How are you doing, really?" email from me, you know they can clock in around 10,000 words (counted and verified). Consider it a Sabbath.

Yet my time at home has been delightfully varied, for still being refreshingly normal and fully blue-blood American. My sister and brother-in-law flew in for a few days, and then my dear friend Mandy took the train down from Michigan to spend a few days puttering with me in the great Chicagoland area. And then, of course, there was New Year's.

Fitting for a proud owner of dvds like "Bollywood Burn" and "Cardio Salsa," the lovely Mandy and I decided to samba dance our way into the New Year. Searching for New Year's Eve parties online already seemed like a risky (and pricey) proposition. Who knew that some people think a great start to the year is blowing $150 to get a hangover and a bad one-night stand? We were almost ready to give up and ring in the New Year at my kitchen table with my parents at 9:30 when we spotted a winner: $25 for samba, champagne toast, and carnival dancers. How could you go wrong? 

Ok, that could actually go wrong a few different ways. But happily, there were no Fabio figures to be seen, and no one was too fancy of a Samba dancer to make us feel stupid. We were owned by the rapid-fire hip shaking of the carnival girls, though--they even put my Tahitian Aerobics with Kalika moves to shame. Still, the Brazilians certainly know how to throw a good party, and Chicago knows how to do public transportation. New Year's Eve? Free el rides around the clock. Beat that, Seattle--oh, wait, you don't even have any kind of rail service. Just sayin'.

So now I'm packing up my bags with gifts for Egyptians and a few small comforts of home. Now, culture shock isn't always a rational creature. There are some amenities that may seem silly from the U.S., but are hugely significant when you're out of your element.  Root beer, for instance. I hardly ever drink it when I'm home, but the second I'm abroad, that's all I crave. Bacon is another one, but slightly more understandable given that Egypt is a pork-free zone. But the real one for me? Muffins. I would almost consider marriage to an Egyptian if the dower included some muffins in the mix, that's how much I love them. The trick is that muffins are fairly easy to make from scratch, and you can even find some muffin mixes in the super market. But I'll be damned if I can find a muffin tin anywhere in Egypt. And I think we'll all agree--a muffin without a muffin pan is just kind of crappy coffeecake.
I'll be traveling through Spain, Morocco, and Turkey on my way back, though, using only a backpack. It was a sad moment when I realized that a muffin tin won't actually fit. Sigh. Be sure to eat some Almond Poppyseed for me so that I can enjoy that vicariously.

For those of you so inclined, I will be in the States until Tuesday evening, and I do actually have a cellphone here. It'd be great to talk to you guys before I go back for another round of life in Cairo. Until then--take care!