This is Moodi. He works at the hostel Sasha stayed at when she arrived and has proved to be our local life-saver, see post about the shaming of the local grochery boy. He is from a village in the Nile Delta called Mufriyya, or something similar that I can't accurately pronounce, and it is where most of the Egyptian politicans come from. He invited me to his village last week for Iftar and I met his mother, who cooked for me the most amazing food! I think I liked meeting his youngest cousin best... I forgot his name, but his dad used to smoke his water pipe allllllll the time and would have him get the coals for him, so the poor little boy has been given the life-long nickname Shisha. Adorable, no? Check out my other blog for video clips of driving thru his village. I literally just held my camera out the window, so they are very poor quality and depict nothing in particular, but you can play "Only-in-Egypt 'I Spy'" with them... bonus points if you can accurately count the coffee/shisha places or spot the horse-drawn wagons amongst city buses and taksis.
Our lovely Amanda celebrated her 21st birthday on Greg's pimp rooftop apartment last week, too. The gathering was a soooooo nice, even though I was only there for a few minutes. It was cool to see the different clusters of people we know in the same spot at once: AUC graduate students, Aladin, Walid, Ramy and the rest of the Imbaba gang, our CairoUniversity boys, several of the SCUBAdivers, and even a tolken British guy (Greg's landlords extremely attractive son) to make the event truley cosmopolitian. Perhaps the happiest moment was the two seconds after we sang "Happy Birthday" to Amanda when the Egyptians began singing it in Arabic..."Sana helwa, ya gameela, sana helwa ya gameela...". Please note, Amanda is terrifically picky and in place of a proper cake, Ali is holding a tray of peanut-buttered apples with candles in the photo.
This is a verrrrrrrry blurry picture of Karim, Osama's buddy, and his Bulgarian ladyfriend and her beautiful daughter. I'm posting this photo just because Cafe Pasqua, Osama's local favorite and where this pic was taken, makes me feel like I am back in the Davenport back at AU... They play jazzy music and have chess boards and books lying around. There's also live Arabic music at night, to ensure I am indeed still inCairo. 
It's getting chilly in Cairo!! In fact, at 4am when this photo was taken, I was actually COLD! When we were learning weather-related words in Arabic this week and I responded to a question about DC weather right now with words like HOT and HUMID I realized I was forgetting that time is passing back home too... It's deep into autumn there. I'm curious if depressing DC wintertime will be missed?
These are photos of the church I teach at on Monday nights... I still trip on how beautiful and odd Coptic Cairo is everytime I go there. I repeat what I said about florescent lighting and its intricate connection to all things religious here in Egypt.... Funny phrases from my classes this past week."Miss Aminah - I have a problem. When you speak, you're Ds sound like Ss, your Ls sound like Rs, and I do not hear your Rs at all. Bishwaaaaaysh, min fadlik!"
Student: "So, you mean it's a modifcation of the verb" Me: "uh...I guess so?" to be continued....
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