Day 29: October 3. Welcome to Egypt!

We intended to make an early start to the day, but got quite distracted by a pleasant breakfast and great conversation (Noha is so interesting to talk to!), and before we knew it, it was 10:00.

Noha allowed us to borrow her personal driver for the day to go practically anywhere we wanted to go. Amazing!!! Our only time contraint was getting back to Noha's house in time to meet Kit at 1pm (and for lunch of course) who was getting there from the airport. For those of you who don't know Kit, he was a classmate of ours at Wesleyan (also played baseball) who had studied in Cairo (actually happed to live right down the street from Noha in a dormatory (it's a small world!)). The plan was to go to the Citadel as well as the oldest mosque in Cairo before he arrived. The Citadel had a really great view of the city (you could even see the pyramids!) And housed a beautiful mosque, a lovely open-air mosque, the military museum, and Muhammad Ali's throne room inside the palace museum.

After this we made our way in the car (stopping often to ask for directions) to the Ibn Talun mosque, the oldest but not the biggest mosque in Cairo. Unfortunately we got there during the call to prayer and we couldn't wait to go in because we had to get back to meet Kit. We decided to go back later.

We got back to the house to find Kit having already arrived. It was a joyous reunion. We had a lovely home-cooked lunch of a traditional Egyptian soup, then were off to try to visit the Tulun mosque again. Unfortunately our driver, although extremely friendly and well-intentioned, has a terrible sense of direction, and doesn't know his way around Cairo all that well. At least he's not afraid to stop and ask for directions, something we did often.

When we finally made it to Ibn Tulun, it had closed for the day. We got ushered into a small mosque next door, fending off demands for baksheeh (tips). We stayed in there about 5 min, then asked our driver (whose name is Karam) to take us to this area of the city where the people sort the trash that comes in from all of Cairo, called Zuberia.

Karam really didn't want us to be there. We tried to explain that we were interested in seeing how garbage was sorted, but he didn't understand, and got pretty upset. He told us we had 5 minutes, and he wasn't happy about it. It turns out that he just gets very sad to see his fellow egyptians living in such poverty. Who can blame him?

We started walking through the Zuberia, watching the people literally sitting on top of garbage and sorting it to be recycled. They make a living selling the stuff they sort to be recycled, and they live there amongst all the flies, dirt and animals.

Karem drove through less than 3 minutes later and told us to get in the car. We drove through the main street, and he tried to explain that it made him sad to see people living like that, which is why he didn't want us going there. The whole experience was very enlightening.

At this point it was too late to go to Old Cairo, which had been our plan. The traffic was atrocious, and everyone was leaning on their horns, but we got the full Cairo experience! Karem still seemed to feel bad about Zuberia (as well as the fact that he got lost every 2 seconds!), and offered to take us out to dinner.

We tried hard to refuse, but he wouldn't have it, so he took us to...KFC! We think he thought that's what we would want, but when Kit pointed out that it was more expensive than some other restaurants, we explained to him that we would prefer to try Egyptian food.

We walked to a foule place (beans), and Kit and Karla tried sandwiches, while I had a dish. It was delicious! Since foule is not necessarily meant to be a main meal, we went to another restaurant to grab some koshiri. Koshiri is a delicious concoction of beans, rice, macaroni and tomato sauce. Karla and I loved it!

Next we went to a cafe right on the Nile to have tea. We watched to feluccas moving by and the colors of the boats and hotels reflected in the calm water. It was beautiful!

Because it was a nice night, we decided to walk back to Noha's. We're currently in the middle of the festival that comes at the end of Ramadan, so the streets were packed with people of all ages. It's amazing - we were treated like minor celebrities! Despite our attempts to blend in, we still stuck out, and people would stare at us as they passed (especially children!) and many many people yelled at us, "Welcome to Egypt!" It was kind of cool. One group of teenagers even asked to take a picture with us! It seems quite bizarre to me that in a major city with one of the ancient wonders of the world just minutes away, they would still make such a big deal about seeing a white person. But I guess a lot of people just take big tours, and don't really walk around much on their own.

Regardless, we enjoyed our little walk and got home virtually unscathed, except for Kit who got his butt pinched twice. But actually.
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