On the road

This passenger is actually holding the door of the truck closed as he drives down the highway

Eman

Tonight my house phone rang, which surprised me since I didn’t realize anyone had that number. I assumed I would answer the phone to an Arabic speaker who had dialed the wrong number. Instead, I answered and heard “Hello? Kathren? I am Eman.” It was my sweet landlady. Once I acknowledged that I knew who she was, greeted her and asked how she had been (all in my limited Arabic), she began to laugh and from then on called me “habibti”, a very common term of affection in Arabic that most closely means “dearest”. I couldn’t not smile. She was just calling to check in on me, to make sure I was happy in the apartment, to make sure the boab (doorman of the apartment building) was doing his job properly, to ask if I needed anything, etc. All of this, of course, was done in a broken combination of Arabic and English. She was speaking as much English and I as much Arabic as possible, though I could hear her husband the whole time shouting out English words in the background, trying to help her with the conversation. (I wouldn’t have been surprised if he were sitting there with a dictionary.) I had to laugh at the image of the two of them sitting there trying to figure out how to talk to me.

The whole conversation just made me smile. I am so incredibly thankful to have a landlady who is so sweet, who treats me as her daughter and just wants to make sure I’m happy and safe and comfortable.

Camping in Bahariya

This weekend a couple friends and I decided to go camping near Bahariya, a desert oasis about 4 1/2 hours southwest of Cairo. We met our guide at the busstop in Bahariya and headed out into the desert almost immediately. The views were pretty incredible.
The next section of the desert reminded me almost of how I envision the moon to look. This area is called the white desert and it's full of quartz rocks and formations.We then drove into an area that was different than the open desert we had driven through all day. Here there were enormous (I really do mean huge - each was several stories high!) rock formations all around.
We kept driving out into the desert as the sun set and eventually arrived at the place where we would camp. We arrived just as the sky grew dark, and our driver and his crew started setting up camp and fixing dinner. Before long we had a delicious dinner of rice, stewed vegetables and grilled chicken and then sat around the campfire while the Egyptian guys played traditional music on a double-flute and several drums. As much as I wanted to stay up all night and listen to them play, I was exhausted from work and from travel, so I decided to go to bed fairly early. We slept under the open sky on large rugs with thin cushions and heavy camel blankets. It was surprisingly comfortable and I slept better in the silent desert than I have in a while.

Sunset over the desert
Packing up camp

The next morning we drove around the area where we had camped the night before and it was incredible. It looked like nothing I'd ever seen before, almost as though it had snowed and someone had made sculptures all over the place, but everything was rock."The bunny"

"Chicken and a tree"

Random formations"Eggs"

After a little while we arrived in the Black Desert, where we got out and a couple of us decided to climb a hill, the top of which is the highest point in the Black Desert.
Afterwards we returned to Bahariya, had lunch and then hopped on a bus back to Cairo. It was a long drive, but definitely worth it. It was really nice to get out of Cairo, even if only for a couple days, and see more of Egypt.

"Designer" brands

For some reason, fake designer brands really make me laugh, especially when they mess up the spelling of the famous designers they’re trying to imitate.

"adibas"

"diesle"

On the road

Watermelons for sale