Ahsan Nas

I'm in Jordan now, but my last couple of days in Egypt were rather eventful. On Saturday, fourteen of us went to Alexandria. The night before the trip (when I wrote the last post) I was not feeling too good about Egypt. I was thinking Egypt in general was a horrible place that I would only return to if it was someday necessary. My trip to Alexandria changed my mind though. The train ride there was rather interesting as it was a cultural experience. We sat in second class among the real egyptian people, not tourists. We had to make sure that the people running the train didn't know we were American or they would have insisted that we sat in 1st class instead...this was according to a guy who is one of our teachers that lived in Egypt for a year. When we got to Alexandria, we walked to the beach and took a microbus to the place where the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the acient seven wonders of the world, used to stand...all thats left of it though is a couple stones in the doorway now. After that we went to a restaurant where we had the best food in Egypt. We hardly spent much time in Alexandria as we had to run back to the train station after that. Throughout my whole three hour experience in the city, I noticed that it was very different from Cairo. The people were happier, the weather was nicer, there wasn't rampant poverty everywhere, nobody followed us asking for money, and the microbus drivers charged us reasonable fares instead of ripping us off. One thing in particualr that I noticed was that I saw a lot of families and couples together, something I never saw in Cairo. It seems to me that the people in Cairo are trying to just get by with their difficult lives, while the people in Alexandria are more laid back. This could be because Alexandria is on the coast of the Mediteranean Sea, and most places on the medeteranian are like that...more relaxed. I think that when I go back to Egypt, I'll spend my time there. The experience reminded me of a song by the late Egyptian/Italian/French pop star Dalida's song called "Ahsan Nas" in which Dalida sings about the different places in Egypt and how the people in Alexandria are "Ahsan Nas" or in English, the best people.

That night we went to Al-Azhar park which is located on the mountain above Cairo. As we watched the sun go down, the call to prayer began, being blarred from hundereds of mosques around the city. It was amazing. When we got back, me and six other people went to go see a movie staring the an Egyptain actor who was in several videos on the DVDs that came with our Arabic textbooks back in America. The film was entirly in Egyptain Arabic and without subtitles, so we had to figure out what was going on during the whole two hours by the 1% we could understand. The movie was pretty bad, but I enjoyed all two hours. What I loved about it was that every conceivable thing you could put in a movie was in it. There was comdey, drama, romance, action, gang violence, drug use, terrorism, something that may have either been a lesbian love scene or some really wierd cultural thing, and some really bad green screen effects. It was hilarious.

The next day, some of us went to a place in Cairo that is called the Citadel. Our professor told us that it was his least favorite place in all of Cairo and therefore not worth the visit. I found it to be one of the most interesting places I visited in Cairo. The building is a giant fortress complete with the largest Mosque in Egypt which was built on the mountain overlooking Cairo. At the citadel, we visited the Egyptyian National Military Museum. Outside of the museum was a display of some of the tanks used in the Israeli-Arab conflicts including some captured from the Israelis. It was funny because the Israeli weapons were obviously much better than the soviet made Egyptian tanks. Outside of the Museum was a plauque which stated that the Museum was funded in part by North Korean leader Kim il-Sung as a gesture of friednship between North Korea and Egypt. After the Citadel, everyone in our group wanted to visit a place called the City of the Dead and after that a place called Khan al-Khalily. I had had a bad experience a few days previous at Khan al-Khalily and wanted to stay far away from it (tourist trap). One of our guides had told us that the City of the Dead was the most dangerous part of town, but some of the people in my group still wanted to go. When they talked to the taxi drivers were waiting for tourists outside the Citadel entrance like vultures, they said that it was safe and a good experience to "go see the poor people in their poverty". When we said that we just wanted them to drive us there and not out of the City of the Dead, they said that they couldn't do that because it was dangerous and the police cite them for leaving foreigners there. The whole thing sounded too sketchy to me and two other people, so we decided to go to the al-azhar gardens because they hadn't been there the night before. When we tried to take a taxi, I told the driver in Arabic where we wanted to go and he replied to me in English, "Sir, you speak very good Arabic. For you, I will give you special price...40 Pounds ($8)." 40 pounds is about four times as much as a normal tourist would pay for a taxi so we started to walk away. He then came up to us saying, "okay, 35 pounds then. Let's go." We kept walking away and the guy started yelling at us really loudly. Once we got down the road aways from the Citadel, we flaged another taxi for 10 pounds.

The next morning we flew to Jordan. At the airport we had an unfortunate experiance. In Egypt, everyone had picked up the word "bashiish" which means tip because people were always asking for Bashiish in Egypt. At the ariport, the guy loading our bags on the bus asked us for bashiish, and we told him that our professor had the bashiish. This didn't stop him from bothering us though. He boarded the bus while the professors and driver were still outside and came by demanding money from everyone. Him and the other baggae guys had stoped loading the bags on the bus until they got bashiish. Eventaully everything worked out, but it was kind of a bad thing for everyone who hadn't been to Jordan yet because it gave the impression that Jordan was going to be just like Egypt. This soon changed. It was amazing to watch everyones' expressions as we drove into Amman because it was nothing like the caotic world of Cairo. There wasn't trash anywhere, no rampant poverty, the police weren't sitting around doing nothing, and the weather was nice.

Right now I'm trying to get into the lanuage learning frame of mind. I've had some difficulties over the last couple days talking to people, but we've only been here for a few days. I'm sure things will start to pick up.