Cairo, Egypt

**Note: Post Date is August 1, 2009**

Kate, Erik, Lauren, Scott and myself boarded the buses at about 7:30 in the morning to leave for our two day trip to Cairo. Erika unfortunately booked a 3 day trip, and even though we hope our paths will cross from now till then it can‘t be certain. All I hope for is that we get to be together when we see the pyramids.

“One beep means excuse me, two beeps means thank you,” our tour guide explains. This is the clever language that vehicles have on the road here in Egypt. And they need this communication badly, seeing that the lanes, the traffic lights and any other traffic laws are non-existent and, if they are, they are not paid attention to at all. With no traffic lights, pedestrians must cross on their own accord and they do so without any regard to the on coming traffic. They put their trust in the immeasurable amount of drivers on the road that they will nicely stop for them. “If you knock someone down, you must take them to the hospital right away,” again explains Randa; our tour guide for the next two days. It takes too long for an ambulance to arrive in cities this size making it more convenient and polite to bring them yourself, especially if YOU hit them, I think. Also, there is hardly any cars with insurance in Egypt, so drivers either solve issues on their own, or flee from the site of the crime. All of this makes for an interesting time as we travel for two hours from Alexandria to Cairo.

And the ride just continued to be informative.

**Did you know Egyptians eat Pigeon? They actually skin the pigeon, fry it and then actually consume the dirty, disgusting bird. I mean I’m sure a chicken isn’t any less dirty but gross! I would never think of eating a pigeon, the bird that I encounter hundreds of daily in the streets of New York.

**There isn’t just an officer on our bus to protect us, there is an entire Tourist Police armed with machine guns stationed all throughout the major cities such as Alexandria, Cairo and Luxor. Scary huh? 

**Friday is the day of prayer in Islam, similar to the Holy Sunday in Christianity. Therefore the Egyptian’s weekend also begins on Friday.

**Shopping in Egypt isn’t necessarily done by a certain store but more so by a particular street. One street sells rugs, while another sells kitchen appliances and so forth. It seems like it would be difficult to choose whom to buy from and competition amongst suppliers must be brutal but nonetheless this is their system.

**Egypt’s population grows by a million ever 9 months.

I saw a young boy going to bathroom on the side of the congested highway today. He was literally taking a crap in public with no shame and this just heightens the poor conditions in which these people must endure on a daily basis. And as I continue to look out of my window, down upon the poor citizens of Egypt, I begin to feel really bad. Here I sit in comfort in a high rise, air-conditioned tour bus, packed with bottled water and soda, with electricity and a working bathroom waving to these young children and people who seem to have such excitement and happiness in their eyes as we pass by. Why? What is so special about us? For all we know, their lives could be so much more enriched and so much more full of passion and pride than half of the American population. But I’m simply making assumptions to attempt to understand this fascination. I just feel so pompous and arrogant as I ride by these packed vans of women and children who are probably on their way to a long, hot day at work while I’m on my way to check into a five-star hotel overlooking their overpopulated city.

And this awful separation makes me think again of how unbelievably lucky we are. I don’t think many people stop to think that we don’t choose to be born in the United States. We don’t choose to be born into our family. It all happens by that amazing thing I discussed a few posts back: chance! I could have been born in India or Japan. I could be living in conditions like Egypt or even worst. If you had the choice what country would you like to have been born in? This question is actually obsolete, for your way of thinking is already adjusted to your nature and your nurture that you can’t accurately make an unbiased decision of where you would like to live. My answer would still be the United States. Yes, our governments and financial policies aren’t the greatest. It may be corrupt or unbalanced but how much influence does the government have on our daily lives? Nevertheless the concept of government is the most bizarre creation to ponder. We as people rigidly expect for some organized system to provide care and protection for us. Yes we pay taxes but the amount of taxes that we pay singularly couldn’t possibly provide that care and protection for us. It is only as a collective that we have the power to supply such demands. We depend on each other. But even then our country is so vast, so populated and so diverse that an unanimous satisfaction is merely implausible. Our nation does a pretty darn good job considering the intimidating size and completely separate demographic of people. While Italy or Egypt, a small fraction of the Unites States’ size, doesn’t even have a welfare program in the works, let alone unemployment or health insurance. It is funny the things that we blindly expect without the thought and understanding of how much work and passion must be put forth in order to accomplish such establishments like a government.

There they were, after a two hour ride of napping and pondering I could see the silhouette of two triangles in the distance. I was beyond excited but equally in shock. I’ve seen this figures many times throughout my life. In history books, in picture books, in movies such as Transformers 2, on T.V. particularly on the news or discovery channel and on the back of the U.S. dollar, and yet here I could see them only a couple miles away. Our first visit wasn’t to these pyramids though but to the Step Pyramid instead located in a region called Sakkarah. It was there that we went inside an ancient tunnel with walls covered with hieroglyphics and artistic representations of Egyptian life. I was actually here. I was actually seeing the Egyptian drawings that we only see in movies. As we came out of the tunnel and looked around all you could see were the miles and miles of sand that make up the desert. Again, there it was. The actual desert. These next set of discoveries are just going to come out incoherently for I can’t intelligently process the amazement of these lands. Camels, an endless sight of sand, ancient Egyptian tombs, and man-made pyramids: it all seemed to be hitting me at once and I couldn’t process it all, except to be in complete and utter amazement of it all.

Did I mention the sun was also hitting me? Yes, at an all time high, I could feel that blazing ball of fire that sits 96,000 miles away from planet earth. With the golden rays hitting the golden sand, my sunglasses were essential otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see anything through my squinty eyes. My skin was baking as I’m sure I gained another layer of skin tone and despite all the various ways in which the sun effected my day, heat was the least of them. It wasn’t all that bad. I mean I’m not all that accurate in determining heat. I wear jeans in Florida as I walk miles through the parks of Disney and without a complaint. But it is respectful for men to wear jeans in Islamic countries, so even if I didn’t want to wear jeans, I couldn’t and it was still an enjoyable and comfortable time. This opinion has been validated by Kevin, Bo and the hardest to please Erika.

By this time, despite any amount of amazement, it was time for lunch. Unfortunately it didn’t help any, considering that the food was less than appetizing. It all looked great! But the tastes were either too strong or ultimately tasteless. I don’t consider myself to be all that picky and yet I barely touched my food. Lunch was held at the Meridian Hotel and we were unexpectedly greeted by Egyptian musicians that were playing American songs on bagpipes. Selections such as Aud Lein Zein which is the New Years Song and the ever popular jingle bells. It was nice that they were trying to comfort us by playing selections that we may be familiar with, but the point in traveling is to experience another culture. I wished they’d have played something of their own heritage and shared it with us. Many say that Americans are ignorant to other cultures but sometimes we don’t have a choice in the matter. We made our effort to visit, now it’s up to them to offer us their culture.

After lunch we made our way to the Egyptian Archeological Museum. What other civilization has more archeological discoveries than the Egyptian civilization? We were excited and expecting great things along with air-conditioning. But there was none. It was so unbelievably hot in this large, multi-room building full of endless amount of artifacts and collections that it multiplied our time there by five. There were a few select rooms that were blessed with the technology of air-conditioning and we took coverage in there whenever we had the chance in order to recuperate from the stifling, sticky heat in the rest of the historic building.

 Erik is very conversational with everyone especially foreigners which calls for an interesting and enlightening time whenever with him. Not only does he try to learn words of each language we have encountered, he also goes out of his way to experience the culture. I admire his bravery to come out of his comfort zone and experience new things as well as immerse himself in talks that bring about conversation not only of mundane statistics of the given culture but also about life in general. An Egyptian with his beautiful daughter sits by us and talks to Erik about how we must recognize our past in order to create a future. And that education is the gateway to knowing thyself, which the great Socrates strongly suggest we all do. I’m not sure I know what the guy meant by the relationship between the past and our future, personally I think the present is the essence to our being and the creation of ourselves. I think the moment that we create right now is that exact relationship in which he speaks of. It is the receiving of the past and the birth of the future which is in fact the present and in fact us as we know it. I’ve never been one to inquire of my past, beyond the discussions of which I can have with my elders and even after the enlightening steps of this trip I still can’t say that I consider the past (as an ancient or historical) to be of importance. It is of course informative and if one deigns it with such importance than one can’t deny it so, but personally it is nothing but a distraction from the precious moment of the present. And at that present moment Lauren was so kind to give me a reality check. “We’re in Egypt,” she whispers to me in the quite halls of the museum. And that we are!

As we walked around the rooms full of mummies, Egyptian tools, jewelry, fashion, architecture and fashion I couldn’t fathom the existence of such a civilization. And what was more unfathomable was its destruction. How could such a predominant and affluent race just decline into one of the most repressed? How could such an extravagant way of life be lost amongst the sands of time. (literally and figuratively?) These artifacts had to be lost at one point in order to be found by archeologists. But I don’t understand how they could have ever been put of use. Things such as gold and clothing and tools, how did they vanish and be dismissed from the progressive world. In the future I doubt some archeologist will be digging up the remains of a cell phone for technology will advance and we will simply place our old phones in a drawer. I don’t have an answer, nor pretend to even conjure one, but I do find it frustratingly interesting that the premiere and most intelligent lifestyle ceases to exist. Rather transforms, for now many consider the American lifestyle to be premier and maybe that is why we have the pyramid on the back of our currency. But this scares me. The American Empire has been in a fluctuating existence for the past 250 years. It is bound to face its decline.

Anyways, after the Museum, Semester at Sea appropriately allotted some valuable time for us to relax and lounge in the comfort of our five-star, air conditioned, hotel: The Cantor. We couldn’t believe the quality and size of our rooms, let alone the gorgeous hotel itself. Most of the other SAS students, who have been on previous overnight trips, expressed to me that the others weren’t any where near the quality of this one and at that moment I realized that I lucked out! But Erik lucked out more. He got his own room! So Kate, Lauren and I all sat in Erik’s room and napped in the ever so comfy beds for the next couple of hours so we could catch up on our exhausting day thus far. The rooms looked out to the Nile river and the rest of the Cairo. It was beautiful and that reality check was coming in handy. But almost all of the channels on the television were in English and broadcasted American movies and television series and it was like being in the twilight zone. We were in Africa, yet still confronted with our dominating culture. We even watched the shuttle return to earth at NASSAU from its travels to the international space station. But certain things, that the others pointed out and I was fortunately oblivious to was, the image of the broadcaster on CNN. The broadcaster was female and of a larger size than we are necessarily accustomed to in the U.S. I strongly disagreed for I think our image has improved a bit but nevertheless you could definitely notice the change in culture from that aspect of the spectrum.

After a lovely siesta we boarded the buses once again, but this time to enjoy a lovely light and sound show at the Great Pyramids of Giza. We arrived at the outside seating area just as the sun was setting behind the pyramids. The view was gorgeous as we all scrambled to take as many pictures of the lasting moments. As we take our seats I see a stick in a green shirt come bouncing up the aisles. Erika! I run to give her a hug and then, what else? Take a picture in front of the astounding creations. Not only was I graced by Erika’s presence but also by Kevin who I had actually missed so much. Kevin had left the first day in Egypt early in the morning and I had yet to share anytime with him in this interesting nation. Ok so the Pyramids are undeniably great, the sound and light show: not so much. I still can’t get over how unbelievably corny and stagnant the show was. The lights were static, the dialogue was informative but sounded as if a professor was teaching a class and it was just not what I had expected. The entire time I sat and thought of how much money I could make these people. With my event-coordinator hat on and my spectator hat on I could imagine the fireworks, the music, and the action that would be involved in a light and sound show at the Pyramids. It is an Ancient wonder, not an Ancient book. This thing needs major revamping! But complaining aside, I had a great time. I was sitting in front of the Sphinx and the three Great Pyramids of Giza, with the wind blowing in my hair, my friends by my side and enjoying every minute of it.

After the evening, I waved goodbye to Erika as she went to the Marriot and I went back to the Cantor. When we arrived an Egyptian wedding was taking place and that was quite the culture shock. It was unlike any wedding I’ve ever heard or seen before. I haven’t seen many but I’m sure this was quite different. It was loud, bright and exotic. I was entranced for a while until my stomach caught my attention.

Dinner was so extravagant. First off, it was the longest buffet I’ve ever been graced with. It had over 50 selections of food and the dessert didn’t only look delicious it also tasted so. I wish I could explain the food but I just don’t have time to register it. Before I know it, I’m already eating it and any contemplation on the matter has passed.  Dinner was much more appetizing than lunch but still not the best. Maybe I am picky? I don’t know but being in a giant ballroom accompanied with an almost equivalent sized chandelier I was content.

Enjoying each other’s company so much Kate, Lauren, Erik and I all decided to have a slumber party in Erik’s room. And by slumber party I mean go straight to bed. We are seeing the Pyramids at sunrise tomorrow.

Good Night.

Explore. Dream. Discover.

~Michael-Anthony

P.S. I can't believe it's August.