A Year in Toulouse: March 2009

Ok, this one is long overdue! But instead of wasting time talking about procrastination, how about I just start telling everyone about my amazing trip to Egypt?!

On Feb 15 I got back with the fam (the French one, the Jarlauds) from a ski trip to the Alps (see post and comment on Meghan's supreme picture taking talents below). So I packed my faithful backpack ( I love Gregory packs!) that night and left the morning of the 16th for the land of mummies. After a day of traveling (I had to go up north to Frankfurt to catch my Egyptair flight to Cairo) and waiting in possibly the longest passport line of my entire life when landing in Cairo (and by now I've been in a couple), I met Dan Langbauer - my old, I mean, previous - high school math teacher and Seth, his son. The Langbauers moved to Cairo to teach at an American school last August, and I jumped at the offer to visit them. Tickets to Cairo from France are (at least I'm telling myself this....) after all, cheaper than tickets from Sitka to Cairo. We took a cab (driven by the ever-so-nice Mr.Mostafa) back to the Langbauers apartment in Maadi and I got my first look at Cairo (by night, since it was around 8 or 9 when I finally got through customs).

Cairo was busy. Of course. I mean, it's Cairo, right? We're talking a lot of people. What did get me was the driving. Insane. I thought Mexico was crazy, but Cairo blows everyone out of the water. I think it's safe to say that their rules are:

There are no rules.

Who needs headlights at night anyway? And don't forget to honk your horn once a minute. At least. Makes for an exciting ride back home after sitting in an airplane for 10 hours and watching High School Musical 3 on the plane with a bunch of Egyptian men.

After a good night's sleep, the next day I spent with a guide, because the Langbauers do, after all, have to work. I had a guide and a driver all to myself, which was terrific, and my guide Nadia was incredibly nice. Her speeches went fast, and I had to ask her to slow down a couple times, but it was great learning the history while seeing the sights. That day we went to Giza and Saqqara...we went to Giza first (where the 3 pyramids are, each belonging to a grandfather, father, and son) then to Saqqara, where the first pyramid was built (it's also called the step pyramid). And of course, I was a typical tourist and rode a camel. It wasn't too bad...not incredibly exciting, but it did get a bit more fun when my 14-yr-old guide finally made it go fast. He is also the photographer behind the photo where I "hold" the pyramid and have a scarf on my head. It went like this:

"Get down." (I get down. He ties the scarf around my head). "Make hands like this. Down. Up. Up-Down. Smile. Cheese. You hold pyramid. See? Get back on camel."

Apparently my camel's name was 007. The guide said "Good name, no?" I said yes, of course, what a wonderful name for a camel...(????) After my little excursion on 007, we hit the Sphinx. It was funny thinking that I had just seen his beard in London a couple months ago.

The next day I spent touring again with Nadia, but this time we visited Coptic Cairo and Islamic Cairo. Coptic Cairo (if I remember right...although my memory tends to be spotty, so don't trust me too much) is Cairo starting around the 6th century...historic sites include: the Babylon Fortress, the Hanging Church, a Greek Church, and the Coptic Museum. The Holy Family supposedly stopped to stay there at one time also. After that tour, we went to Islamic Cairo, mainly the Mohammed Ali mosque (otherwise known as the Citadel). The mosque is huge, and really pretty. My favorite part was that they have 365 lanterns inside for each day of the year. After the mosque, we went to the Eyptian Museum which is incredible...so many artifacts!!!! Over 120,000 actually. I saw statues of pharoahs, coffins and sarcophaguses (or sarcophagi?) the golden mask of King Tut, and of course the mummies. Which are AMAZING for being SO. OLD. Queen Hatshepsut and I chatted (at least, I think it was her...the titles were a little confusing, and weren't actually above the glass cases the mummies are in).

Thursday I spent with Sandra in her first (I think?) grade class. It was very fun working with the kids and drawing sphinxes for them...although I think I disappointed them when they learned I couldn't speak Italian, and therefore couldn't read books in Italian to them. (The school has kids from very well-off/diplomatic etc families). I think I'll have to learn another 3 languages before they let me come back....that way I can keep up with the 8 yr-olds.

That night Dan and Sandra took me to the Khan, Egypt's 650-yr-old market. It was insane...I saw the "real" Egyptian district, and a bit of the tourist district. Apparently the market was practically deserted - it was really quiet that night, which was nice, since you didn't have to fight to get through crowds in the skinny streets.

One night (I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday...) we went to see a music/dance group called the Whirling Dervishes. A group of men plays music with drums, tambourines, flutes, a kind of trumpet, etc, and then a group of dancers comes onstage. They wear these amazing colored skirts that look extremely heavy...and they start turning. They turn literally for hours (We watched them do it for about an hour straight) with out stopping. They are supposed to enter some kind of religious trance as they do it.

Friday and Saturday we took a train along with Charlie and Carissa, good friends of the Langbauers who also teach at the school, to Alexandria. The train ride to Alex is about 2 hours long, and we got in Friday morning. After checking into our hotel,
we took a tour to see a Roman theatre, Roman and Egyptian catacombs, a fort (where the light house used to be, I believe???) and the Library. The theatre was really pretty...and the catacombs were really interesting, since you got to go down and walk around in them. Once our guide stopped next to a hole in the wall inside the catacomb, and asked "who will put her hand in?" Of course, Langbauer volunteered me, and of course, as I stuck my hand in to explore the mysterious hole in the catacombs, Langbauer freaked me out by grabbing my leg. Twice. After that we visited the fort, which is right on the the sea, and I loved. It was my first time being on a large body of water since I left Sitka. The air smelled soooo good. Especially compared to Cairo, haha. Our final stop that day was the Library, which is amazing. Apart from a beautiful library and the massive collection of books/texts,etc, they had an exhibition with things like letters written on leather by Mohammed Ali, and a replica of the only remaining piece of papyrus found at the library. The original piece is in Austria...right where it should be, right? It's insane how much of Egypt is somewhere besides Egypt...

We had half the day on Saturday to explore a bit before taking our train back to Cairo. We went to look for the Greek museum, but when we finally found it (after being rained on for about 20 minutes) we couldn't believe it...Langbauer thought it was a museum of Greek TRASH, because there was a big building titled "Greek Museum" and a bunch of rubble inside. Finally we asked a man working there, who laughed at us and said they were remodeling. Well, you never know in Egypt. A lot of grammar and spelling mistakes at the museums are fixed with sharpie.

Quick tangent - if you ever have a question about why something is done a certain way in Egypt, or find something a bit strange I'll give you the answer right now. This ancient knowledge has been handed down since the time of Osiris and Isis, and the wise tutor Charlie was the one to pass it on to me. Here is an example:
A woman sees an Egyptian guard working in a public place sitting on a bench with a sign above him marked "NO SMOKING." He is smoking. She goes up to him and says "Excuse me, but I think somking is forbidden here." He looks at her and says:

"Madaaame, this is Egypt."

So there you go. Always remember that, and you will never have a question again.

After our detour to the Greek Museum of Trash, we decided to visit the National Gallery. They had some really interesting and really hilarious stuff inside(see pics). And of course, explanations and titles all fixed with sharpies.

At 1:30 the Langbauers and I decided to make our way back to the train station since our train left at 2 (Charlie and Carissa left on a later train) so we flagged down a taxi to take the 5-min ride a little early, just in case. It was a good idea. The "taxi" that pulled over to take us was actually a van, with someone else already in the passenger seat. Dan asked if the man knew where the train station was and the driver answered with the usual "Yah, no problem, no problem," then started talking to his friend in the passanger seat. Sandra began to get mad at Dan since he hadn't asked what price they would charge for the ride (sometimes they'll really rip you off when they think you're tourists who don't know what the local prices really are), and none of us knew if we were actually going to the train station. Dan started to talk (in escalated tones) to the driver, because we did have a train to catch after all...and no progress was made except for more shouting. Finally Dan told him to stop and pull over, the driver continued to say "No, no problem no problem!" and get angry, then Dan made possibly the scariest face I've ever seen him make (except for one time in Pre-Calc when the girls in the class got a little sassy and excited, so he sprayed them all down with a water spritzer), say "LA!" (No!) we opened the moving van's door, and jumped out onto the street, taking our packs with us.

I laughed. Why not? Between all the shouting, the Arabic-English, Langbauer's face, and jumping out of the moving van, I couldn't help it...you're right Langbauer, I did get a good story out of it!

The rest of the evening was rather uneventful, and Sunday morning I left, since I had to go back to work here in Toulouse on Monday morning and it takes a good day to get back when you have 7 hour lay overs in the Munich airport.

After that, there's not too much else to recount. Someone offered to buy me for 2 million camels. The Langbauers said no, 6 million, but apparently that was too expensive.

It was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing (if not the) trips I've ever taken - mostly because their culture is so incredible different from ours. Before this, I'd only been to see Western civilizations/cultures, etc. And while they have McDonald's in Sitka, Toulouse, London, and Cairo, that's about all there is in common. It was fantastic to see the Langbauers too. They were hilarious and fun to travel with, and an awesome family. Thank you guys!!!! I'm coming back to camp in the White Desert. ; )

Here's the pics.