Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - Back to Cairo

One of the interesting things about my trip to Egypt is that it feels like this hybrid between backpacking and living in a place. Jon and I had this discussion one very late night sitting on his roof over a hookah. If anyone were to ever ask me the places I had lived in, I would never include Cairo on that list. However, I am most certainly living a more "normal" life here than a backpacker rolling through town would. This may best be shown in the way the week returning to Cairo went.

I have to admit that some people may think that for being in such a foreign place I was just wasting my time. As I had already done most all of the tourist activities in the city which I wanted to do, the week went by much as you might imagine it would for an unemployed fellow with the ambitions to just enjoy himself. We would wake up, make some instant coffee (as it was all that was available to us) and usually sit on the roof in the sun for a couple of hours reading and getting tan. Then, maybe we would get some food and wander over to the cafe where the wireless internet was free and spend a few hours there. If the day was right, we would get on the metro in the evening and head out to the Maadi suburb to play ultimate frisbee with some of our friends. Or, maybe we would walk down to the Makan and hear a concert.

My night life was certainly healthier than it ever has been. Jon was known for throwing great rooftop parties, and as it was his last week there were several. Actually, I believe there was only one night of of the entire week that I was in bed before 4AM. Anyway, Jon had a group of friends who would come over to play music, and we would just sit out by the fire (yep, the fire on his roof) and play harmonica, guitar, drums, mandolin, and udt. And of course, there was the horrible singing from the rest of us on songs ranging from Frank Sinatra to the Eric Clapton to John Denver. If people were still there, it seems that the predawn call to prayer coming from the various mosques was usually a good sign that it was time to start ending things.

Hmmm...maybe not such a "normal" week after all...but the next post on going to the Sinai should prove a bit more interesting.