Acting spontaneously on a desperate need to get out of our dorms (more on that later) and out of Alex, Marisa and I decided to head to Port Said in the delta for the weekend. Port Said's main claim to fame is as the home of the Suez Canal, but to Egyptians it's mostly famous for having the best shopping in the country (because it's a duty-free port). The city saw a lot of action and destruction in the Suez Crisis and the Yom Kippur/October 6th War, but has recovered economically in recent years.
We went just because we needed to get away. We didn't really know anything about the place, had no train tickets, no hotel reservations, just a little preliminary internet research. We stayed up all night so that we could get the 4 am train to Port Said - our only other option was a 4 pm train, which would have cost us a whole day there. But unfortunately, our horrible old dorms lock us in at night and the guards absolutely refused to let us out. After considering scaling the courtyard walls and bailing out a second floor window down a drain pipe, we decided we would just wait until 8 am and get a bus from downtown Alex. The bus turned out to be much faster and a little cheaper (Egypt doesn't make sense sometimes) and surprisingly clean and comfortable.
We arrived in Port Said, amazed to have even made it this far, grabbed a taxi and headed to the nice hotel we'd read about online. After bargaining and jockeying for a room, and inspecting the beautiful pool, we settled in for our long weekend of relaxation.
We lay out and sunned for at least 3 hours every day. We both caught up on our pleasure reading. We drank fresh mango juice while dangling our feet in the pool. Just feeling the sun on my bare skin was such a precious sensory pleasure. Upper arms, shoulders, legs all got their first sun kiss in 6 weeks. It was wonderful.
We wandered around the town, did some window shopping, bought some ugly tee shirts with fuzzy bears printed on them, and saw the Suez Canal. We couldn't get up close to the canal, because it's super high security, so we just hung out by the ferries, watching them cross from Port Said to Port Fuad and watching the sunset and moonrise.
We wandered along the beach, got our feet wet, had ice cream, smoked delicious sheesha, played a public park with swings and seesaws, and explored the city a bit. There was a wedding in our hotel on our second night, and after I had stood watching the bride and groom be circled by drummers and bagpipers for about 20 minutes, two little girls in the wedding party came up to me and shyly asked me my name and where I was from. I told them, and we talked for a moment, and then they smiled and ran away. When Marisa and I went out onto our hotel's balcony for our sheesha, the little girls followed us and brought some of their friends! We ended up talking with them for quite a while - some Arabic and some English. They asked if we were artists, and I told them that I was a singer, they would not be satisfied until I sang. I tried everything to talk them out of it - I'd been smoking sheesha for half an hour! - but they wouldn't take no for answer, so I sang them a verse of "Danny Boy," and they couldn't have been happier. Then one of the girls sang an Egyptian pop song for us, and one sang an English nursery rhyme, and they left. Marisa and I laughed and laughed - and then they came back! We talked some more, and I had to sing again. This time one of the girls requested "you know that song of love from Titanic" - and so there I was, sitting in a sheesha cafe in Egypt, singing Celine Dion with a bunch of Egyptian girls. What a strange country.
We did have some bad experiences in our hotel, but they got resolved without too much problem and we tried not to let it affect how enjoyable the rest of our stay was. Egypt is a land of extremes, and it was too much to hope that any experience could just be all good.
But what really made the weekend wonderful was how self-sufficient we were. We set off on our own, with no plans, no reservations, no information, no guides, no prep at all - and we made it work all on our own, in Arabic and English, and had a lovely time. We both felt so proud, and felt that we had really come a long way.
This current weekend marks the halfway point of my first semester in Egypt. I've been here seven weeks, and I'll be here seven more. One of those will be blissfully spent in Italy with people I love, and one will be spent cruising down the Nile from Luxor to Aswan and Abu Simbel. My program responded to all of our complaints and health concerns about the dorms we were living in, and has moved us into gorgeous new apartments (hopefully I'll be able to get pictures up soon). We're in the nicest, poshest neighborhood of Alex, we have a huge kitchen, a balcony, a sun room, three separate living rooms, a dining room, two bathrooms, picture windows - it's probably the best apartment I'll ever live in, actually. Some of our friends came up from Cairo to see the place this weekend and with a bunch of Alex resident friends, we christened the place with a proper hefla (*party) and feel very settled in now. Having this beautiful, comfortable living space in a neighborhood where I feel safe is going a long way to change my feelings about Egypt. I feel stronger and more willing to take risks knowing that I have a safe and lovely space to come home to.
So, seven weeks to go - midterms and finals and travels, oh my. But it feels like these next seven weeks will be drastically different from the last seven weeks in all kinds of positive ways. It's still Egypt, so it'll be crazy and impossible as usual, but better. Definitely better.
And the cool weather has just moved in for fall. Yesterday, I stood out on my balcony to catch the first rain of the season, and let my bare arms and head get soaked. The change of seasons and time is in the air.
And the cool weather has just moved in for fall. Yesterday, I stood out on my balcony to catch the first rain of the season, and let my bare arms and head get soaked. The change of seasons and time is in the air.
Salaam,
Helen
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