12/30/10

Today, I had the same breakfast as yesterday (bologna sandwich, croissant, boiled egg, and tea). Since the majority of the students have arrived, even though we all arrived in small groups on different days, we had an orientation for the program today. We walked a few blocks down from our hotel room and visited Leslie’s apartment for the orientation. There Professor Sullivan explained the new updated schedule for the program that had changed because of the blizzard. We also raised some questions and issues we had. One of them was that we wanted to try a traditional Egyptian breakfast at the hotel. For lunch, I went to a Chinese restaurant called Peking, which was very close to the hotel. Chinese food is my favorite food and so when I heard Noureen didn’t like Chinese food, I dragged her along with me to try out this Chinese food. I got Hot and Sour soup, spring rolls, and chicken noodles. It was all delicious, but my favorite was the Hot and Sour Soup.

Later that night, we left the hotel in vans to go ride on the felucca and sail the Nile at night. The ride was fun although a bit chilly. We took many pictures, unfortunately because it was so dark, some of them were not showing what they were supposed to. The sir who was sailing our felucca told us about his family and sang a traditional Egyptian song for us. At first, we lost control of the felucca, but eventually was able to steer it.

After we tipped the felucca guy, we walked back to the hotel. Although the van ride from the hotel to the felucca place was only about seven to ten minutes, it took us 40 minutes to walk back to the hotel because we basically had to walk in a circle around the Nile to get back to the hotel, not to mention the crazy traffic we had to cross, which none of us were used to. Then, we walked through the Marriott, which so elegant and luxurious that none of us could imagine ever staying in such a hotel. After that, we went to the Culture Wheel to buy tickets to see Naseer Shamma, the worlds greatest oud player. He’ll be performing a show at the El Sawy Cultural Center tomorrow on New Years Eve.

Rosie and our felucca fellow on the Nile at night