Dream Park. Mall. Arabic class.

Thursday Night--> Felluca ride with the AUC kids ( they think everyone in America has a villa and their own car.....hrmmm. not so much)

Friday--> Dreampark: the Disneyland of Egypt. A pretty hilarious place. I thought it was gonna be bad when we paid to get into the park and then found out that we needed to buy tickets to actually ride the rides...grrr. Luckily our security guard (yes, we travel with a security guard annnnnd he has a gun) showed us to the part of the park that had free rides :-D

There was a Ferris Wheel, spinning tea cups, bumper boats and a ride called "fancy cars" where you couldn't control the cars which made it perfect for chinese fire drills. Hi-lights of Dreampark: riding a bumper boat with the security guard,  going on an Egyptian roller coaster, and having lunch at Little Caesar's Pizza where they sell pizza by the meter!

After Dreampark we went to the Heliopolis Mall to round out our day of Egyptian culture. Avery and I found a Bebe and some horribly fantastic dresses to try on. There were shoulder pads and excessive amounts of ruffles involved but  my favorite dress by far was the white halter with black lepoard spots. Best Finds in the mall: TWO Starbucks,  pizza in a cone, and a sweeeet belt to go with the dress I always steal from Ashley.

All in all, a good day :-D

SATURDAY:
Went to Islamic Cario, wore some ridiculous green booties in a Mosque. Climbed a Minuet to the very, very top and saw a sick view of Cairo through the smog. This was kinda a long day 'cause we toured ALOT of Mosques and historical sites and they're definately all blending together at this point. 

On a kinda random note. Meg's Mom was in Munich for a business trip and had the weekend off so she decided to pop down to Cairo for a visit. She took Meg, Avery and myself went to dinner at a place called Abu el Sid (Sp?),to try some local Egyptian dishes. The menu there had funny little comments about some of the dishes, pointing out which ones were "very old recipes" or "traditional egyptian meals". nom nom nom.

SUNDAY:
The photo kids and myself went to the Cairo zoo and played with the lions. No joke- lions. Rob and Victoria took pictures with a lion cub (the thing was drugged out of it's mind, but that's besides the point), and seemed to be having a good time posing with the kitty. I wanted nothing to do with the baby lion and maaaaay have hid behind Meg until the zoo people locked it up again.

Yesterday:
Took a walking tour of downtown Egypt with Prof. Sullivan and ended up at the "Gates of Heaven",  a  Jewish temple that was mentioned in a book we had to read for our int'l affairs class. I was stoked to go inside and get out of the busy city streets for a couple minutes. Oh, we also lost Clancy while we were downtown. Luckily, she got back to the hotel just fine and we found her later in the afternoon.

That afternoon I went to my second "survival" Arabic class. As part of the international affairs class we take 3 intro to Arabic classes. Yesterday we learned how to barter, say "your mom" and that t-shirt is t-shirt in Arabic and that when you conjugate it, it's t-shirt-taco.

There are only 10 days left in the trip and I'm feeling pretty ready to leave Cairo, not necessarily Egypt but the city of Cairo. It's loud and crazy and I would love to jump in a car and drive up to the LOJ right now, but that would be a lonnnnnng drive from here. So in the meantime, I'm making the most of the time I've got left here and am geting stoked for the class trip to Alexandria this Friday :-D