A Strange Situation

I am currently sitting in one of the more upscale cafe deals in Alexandria, Délices, which has free wireless and air conditioning (though at this point the AC is unnecessary. I'm sitting here, watching Europeans walk in and out, speaking a million languages. Apparently it was famous about a century ago, when the city was 60% European, so the tourists just keep streaming in.

So once again the internet in our apartment cut off, but this time for a good reason: we have to pay for the next month. The interesting thing is that we're all going on vacation (the whole program, that is) to Siwa Oasis in Western Egypt (quite far away), so we don't really see the point in paying at the moment.

That sort of goes for other things, like food. We (by which I mean I, because Phil doesn't really do anything) have been lazy about procuring food for the same reason, so these past few days have been a lot of scrounging/cleaning out the refrigerator. When we get back we'll have a lot of shopping to do.

Fortunately and unfortunately, today is Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim equivalent to Christmas. It's hopefully going to be pretty cool, as we have this day off from school before our real vacation. Unfortunately, so does the rest of the city, which means I can't do a great deal of things (deal with out of country mail, set up a bank account, exchange a torn $100 the exchangers won't except, etc...). It's more than a little frustrating.

At the very least classes are going more or less well, other than absolute insanity with Arabic numbers (writing the numbers, like 'four cats' is ridiculously complicated). I'm currently reading Harry Potter, which is inspiring a sort of guilty confidence in my reading ability. I know the story so well from reading the first book many, many times, so it's not difficult to guess the meaning of new words. At the same time, that's very helpful because I'm gradually picking up useful literary words and expressions that I haven't learned in FusHa class. Also Harry Potter makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Ahem. In English I'm reading The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, and so far it's been sort of meh. He may well redeem himself, but there isn't much time left for it.

Alex is amazingly enough starting to cool off (praise be to God!), to the point where I left the apartment in a hoodie. The plan for tonight is hopefully to eat a lot and go to bed early so I don't miss our rendezvous at the college for our trip to Siwa (8:30 AM - criminal). Hope everyone else is well, and will get in touch when I'm back in a week or so.