Breakfast room at Let Me Inn
Climbing on Felucca
From the bow
Egyptian party boat
Sylvana & Cap'n
Sharia Talaat Harb during prime shopping hours
Restaurant GAD
Sylvana & Keith at GAD
Mohamed Shahin
I purposely didn't make any plans during the day today, as it followed the late late night at the Dina show on Thursday. I woke up at 11:30 just in time for breakfast and spent the early afternoon chatting with people in the hostel and then a couple of hours at the computer working on the blog.
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I am having a great time in Cairo, but there is a part of me that feels I am not "doing Egypt" to its full extent. I thought about heading up to Alexandria or down to Luxor/Aswan, trying to see as much as possible while I am in the country. On the other hand, it feels SO great to be in a place more than two days and NOT have to pack my suitcase to move on to the next place. It is not like I am having a problem staying busy in Cairo. Between dance classes, shows, wandering around, and shopping, I am having a hard time getting more than 6 hours a sleep a night and I am never in the hostel. When I am here, I am typically on the internet (when I can get it) or eating. Despite the inner debate, I think I am here for the next week. Travel is a pain in the butt and no fun particularly if you are doing it alone and without a tour guide. Besides, I am seriously considering trying to come back for the Ahlan Wa Sahlan Dance Festival in June. I need to check out trial schedule at work and then start saving both money and vacation time!
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At around 5 pm, two other hostel residents (Geri (Minnesota) & Keith (Canada)) and I hopped into a black and white taxi to try to catch a sunset felucca ride. Feluccas are ancient broad-sail boats that can be seen everywhere on the Nile. Unfortunately for us, daylight savings time was a couple of weeks ago, meaning that sunset is early. By the time we reached the area with the felucca captains we had missed sunset, but still had a really relaxing boat ride watching night fall and the moon rise. Our captain was a sweet older man who was desperately trying to be our tour guide...in Arabic...and it was funny to hear him shout the words louder and louder as it was clear that we were not understanding him. While we were out there, our boat crossed paths with what can only be described as an Egyptian party boat. It was adorned with neon green lights and completely enveloped in a bubble of thumping arabic pop music and the loud laughing and talking of the 400+ passengers.
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We got back to shore at around 7:30 and wandered through the streets near Talaat Harb trying to find dinner. We finally settled on the Egyptian version of Shoney's that both Geri and Keith had eaten at the night before. Gad is a "fast food" restaurant in which the booths hold about 10 people, you are added to what booth has enough space for your group. Throughout the course of the meal we kept having to get up and down to let the people near the window on the inside and out.
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I stuffed my face and got a thirty minute nap in before the next activity of the day...a dance class on "Cairo Time": Let me explain Cairo time - I assure you that it is quite differen from US time, and I am not sure whether the standard egyptian generally takes more naps, sleeps later, or just needs less sleep that then average American, but everything here operates much much much later than anything in Winston-Salem. I suspect that Cairo would even give NYC a run for its money on being a 24-hour city. During the night downtown, the streets are clogged with people until at least midnight, and the stores are open until at least 11. In Giza I saw a few boutique that were still open at 2:00 am, but who they catered to I have no idea. I only describe this because my dance lesson with Mohamed Shahin tonight was at 10 pm and lasted until after midnight. Ahh...Cairo time.
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Mohamed (www.mohamedshahin.com) is a native Egyptian who was recommended to me by Karim Nagi (www.turbotabla.com). He is everything that Karim promised he would be: honest, personable, well-spoken, and an excellent dancer of both folkloric and classical styles. I asked him to teach me technique in the context of teaching me a choreography and for the last two sessions we have been working on an oriental/saidi choreography to Raks Bedaya (dancers - this song is on one of the BDSS CDs). My technique is terrible, I am nervous when I dance alone, and I am very glad to be working through it slowly enough to try and correct small things like hand-positions, balance, and positioning. I think we will finish this choreography on Sunday afternoon and then start working on Saidi and Khaleegi next week.
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I got back to the hotel after 12:30 and forched myself to go to bed (it wasn't hard) in order to be ready for the technique class with Raqia Hassan tomorrow morning.
1 comment:
Wow, wow.
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