I Found Cairo!

So yesterday, I finally found Cairo. The real Cairo. The Cairo where people live and aren't ripping off tourists (for the most part). It's behind a famous mosque (Al Azhar), it's a maze of tiny alleys with a ridiculous assortment of shops (shoe store, shirt store, shoe store, fake designer bag store, shoe store, crappy toys store, gross meat store, coffee shop, spice store, papyrus shop, etc.) and it doesn't smell very good, at all. I'd expound upon what I was doing in this area, but it involves some items people are getting when I come home and I don't want to spoil that. Just know that I got to see some artisan work being done firsthand and was taken into some very cool shops that tourists rarely get to see (the places Cairenes shop).

I'm in a bit of a rush, so I'll just say a few things: I'm done with finals and leave tonight for a cruise from Aswan to Luxor (in southern Egypt); it's getting incredibly hot here; it's apparently hotter in Aswan (around 115-130 farenheit); I need to blog more, but probably won't get a chance to while on the cruise; I need to shoot more photos of city life in Cairo.


After studying for and taking finals, my literary sense is a bit shot. However, I'm really looking forward to the boat trip and to getting some good reading in while there (I just bought some Hemingway and Yeats in the campus bookstore) so expect more blogging when I get back from the trip). I hope all are well and please keep the comments and emails coming, I really love getting them, even if I haven't had a ton of time to reply to them all lately.