One Month Left- Last Free Weekend

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This past weekend was the last one left.

Well 'last one'. However, if you think about it... yeah. We now have next weekend: American Thanksgiving
week after: Eid break (a big holiday)
week after: finals

this is ridiculous! What happened to everything! Well... hospital time took up a good portion of my trip, I feel, but I'm not talking about anything medical this post because yeah: there is nothing wrong with me.

I feel like I'm tempting the gods everytime I write something to that effect.

But yes. Thanksgiving we get a day off, so many people are going somewhere, Eid break is a week long holiday and definitely a lot of people are leaving, and then finals weekend is not so conducive to the 'let's hang out' as much as 'let's rant and stress in a togetherish fashion'.

I have big plans for the next little while though: I'm climbing Mount Sinai (ten commandments anyone?) next weekend, then I'm planning tohit up Morocco with some of the gals the week after. I'm very excited.

It's funny though: as much as I was stressing and killing myself over not leaving Cairo over the past couple of months (along with everything else I was worrying about), I feel sad that I'm not spending more time in the city. Sure, I see nothing, I don't do any of the touristy things, and I hang out with a bunch of international kids... but I'm prioritizing.

These people have taught me a lot about myself, and in consequence I have gotten more attached than I could have previously thought possible, and again... in such a short space of time. I figure I'll see Egypt again someday, and hit it up proper, but when am I ever going to be able to be in Egypt, living here, with all these people?

It's the impermanency of the thing that is seriously weirding me out. This is the last time we are all going to be together in this environment, and that ... yeah!

You start to think about who realistically you are going to see afterwards, and you have to therefore do a rather coldblooded and unfortunate weeding out of those that you unfortunately won't. I feel like I haven't had enough time here; or at least, most of it was ill-spent.

Anyway, enough freaking philosophizing. This past week was awesome. I went out Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and happily didn't sleep very much (as my parents die a little inside- haha, I swear, I'm taking care of myself!). I dropped half of my classes, and I didn't even realize how burdened and guilt-ridden I was until I did it (wait, I feel like I've written about that already). I'm almost bored now! But I go about life happily- even willingly going to campus when I really don't have to be there. (Campus, I feel like I haven't talked about much: it's a mirage to me. A bizarre formation in the middle of nowhere; in the middle of the desert.)

Anyway, this weekend was really especially fun- I even managed to make it to the infamous '100 pound beer and wings' at Hard Rock Cafe on Fridays- 100 pounds being 20 dollars, for unlimited beer and wings. It was a lot of fun. And I was table hopping, so I somehow managed to slip in between the cracks payment wise.

I've had a lot of 'the most ____ moment I've had in Cairo thus far' moments too- for example, I freakishly woke up at 6am this one morning (I did then next morning too- and this morning...) and took the brutal 7am shuttle to campus. Wherein I sat in front of my friend Vince, and I need to shake the hand of the guy sitting beside him- Vince had to hit him in the head with a pop can and elbow him in order to get him to stop sleeping on him, and this guy barely registered it. And the drool, oh, the drool. Funniest moment I've had in Cairo thus far.

Saturday morning, I'm awoken to the doorbell ringing incessantly at 930am, the phone ringing, general chaos. I'm thinking Mariya, my roommate will get it, but after 5 minutes I'm opening the door for this random Egyptian guy who can't speak a word of English. Apparently this is the guy to fix our water heater, which we've been trying to arrange for weeks.

Hours later, after having everyone and their mother wander through our apartment and ring our spare phone, there is a virtual garden in our washroom of bits of pipe, mortar, and what looked like dirt that came out of our floor and the side of our bathtub. Mariya is yelling at our landlord, who is refusing to pay for a new knob for our shower, because apparently That's the problem with our hot water shortage.
I'm no plumber, but really? ...the KNOB?
I'm trying to figure out if the technician if saying something important, or something inappropriate, and all the while two of our guy friends who speak much more Arabic than us are watching and laughing at our attempts to figure out the madness.

A couple hours of having these two random Egyptians stare at us and sniff everything in our apartment, they leave. All we had to pay was a tip, our bathroom no longer had remnants of a fire in it (do not ask me), and showering in what is now become freakishly cold mornings is amazingly warm and toasty. Most ridiculous morning I've had thus far in Cairo.

Everything is great. I can't believe that I'm seeing everyone in a little over a month!

Hope all is well,
Stacey

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