Egypt (Part 1) - There's No Place Like Home...or Egypt!

Well, I can definitely say there is no place I have been quite like Cairo. From the moment we walked out of the airport, got in our driver's car, and then realized we were stuck because a truck parked behind us and didn't leave his car in neutral so we could move it...and this was normal...I knew this was a new experience for me. As we sat in the car I laughed at the cars all around us laying on their horns, while Hannah described it as "music to her ears." We were very thankful for an easy and uneventful travel day getting to Cairo and Amy's house, Hannah's old youth pastor. We arrived and spent the rest of the night catching up with her. It was great hearing from her about not only the changes in her life, but the changes in Cairo since the revolution.

Our first full day here we took some time and walked around Hannah's old neighborhood. I got to see CAC (where Hannah went to high school), two different apartment buildings she lived in, Kimo (the famous grocery store I've heard so much about), and many other stores that had memories for her! It was a lot of fun being in Maadi with her. After that, we met up with some family friends. It was great to meet so many people who I've heard about and Hannah loved catching up with people whom she hadn't seen in 6 or more years. It's crazy how fast times goes by. After our time with friends, we went to MCC, the church Hannah went to when she lived in Maadi. Again, it was amazing seeing a place that I've been hearing about for years. We loved worshipping with people from so many different cultures in Hannah's old home church.

Saturday was a very full day! We started the day by walking part of Road 9. Road 9 is a very popular road is Maadi that has a lot of cafes, shops and restaurants that Hannah used to go to. It is sort of like a Main Street. After walking down that for awhile, we hopped in a taxi and attempted to communicate that we wanted to go to The Citadel (a huge mosque in Cairo that is open to tourists). Long story short, after way too long of a taxi ride and going in a few circles and him asking for directions multiple times and Hannah repeating herself over and over again, we finallllly got there!

Asking for directions here is another unique experience. Here is a little picture - we are speeding down a 3-lane bridge with 5 lanes of cars flying down around us. Our taxi driver pulls alongside another car, blows his horn, and motions for the car to come closer. About when the sideview mirrors are an inch apart, our driver yells to the other driver and asks what/where is The Citadel. The other driver gives directions in the quickest possible sentence before the cars behind him rear-end him or start blowing horns so loud that the two drivers can't even hear each other.

The Citadel was pretty cool though, the only mosque I will go in so definitely worth the trouble. The building was really old but the inside was really beautiful. After being photographed and video-ed by random locals, we left the inside of the mosque (I guess with tourism struggling they don't see many foreigners anymore). From The Citadel, we also got an amazing view of the city...well, a grayish view of the city. If it hadn't been for the pollution, it would have been an amazing view.



After The Citadel, we went to Khan el Khalili, a huge marketplace. We got one of Hannah's favorite Egyptian meals, Egyptian pancakes or "fetir." They were sweet so Hannah definitely liked them more than I did. After lunch, we walked around the marketplace for a few hours. Everyone wanted us to come in their shops. We would hear, "Special price for you", or "Just give me a chance to sell you something", or "Now it's my turn". Our favorite was "I want to start my business well with you today." We heard that up until about 7 PM. I was so thankful that Hannah spoke Arabic because she was able to negotiate prices and that gave us much more credibility. The marketplace definitely got busier as the day got later. And shop owners would remember us (especially Hannah because there aren't many blonde girls walking around Cairo) and give us a very hard time about seeing us walk by multiple times throughout the day without buying something.

One story we need to tell is about trying to find an ATM. We got directions from one of the street vendors for the nearest ATM - he wanted to exchange money for us but we told him that we needed a machine because we had a card. So we get to the ATM and three guys are sitting in front of it and they say it's broken, but there is one down just around the corner. We say ok and go down around the corner, in search of another. While there is an ATM, it is also broken. Bummer, we wanted to pull out more money to buy more things in the market...that's a good thing, right? So we are walking away from the ATM and we see this young guy who earlier tried to sell us perfume bottles for 300 LE (as a side note, this is an outrageous price and by the time we walked away, he was all the way down to 35 LE). We didn't buy them the first time so he thought we were back to buy them. We told him our problem and he brought us back to the other "broken" ATM. One of the guys who was sitting in front of the ATM before comes up to us and says that it is working now. Hannah starts laughing (because things don't get fixed in Cairo) and says, "oh NOW it's working". A man is using the ATM and while I watch him pull out money, he turns around and tells me that the ATM is broken. I say ok and just look at him. He repeats himself but I just watched it work so I want to try myself. I guess I won the staring contest because eventually they said I could try and see if it works for me. All of the sellers around us were giving us a hard time because they knew we had money so we got out of there and went shopping elsewhere with our new money! It was a fun experience.

Sunday we headed downtown to Tahrir Square. This is where the majority of the fighting took place during the revolution. During the revolution, many protestors were throwing rocks. We learnt that people were tearing up the streets and sidewalks barehanded and using that as ammunition. Some sidewalks are still torn up because protests are still occurring.

We first went to Cairo Museum. This is a very cool and extremely unorganized museum. We saw a ton of mummies, sarcophagi, statues of Egyptian gods and pharaohs, jewelry, broken pots and many other ancient artifacts. We also saw many of King Tut's personal belongings. During the revolution, the museum was looted so it was nice to see that a lot of important pieces still remain in the museum because Egyptians came to protect the museum against people trying to steal artifacts. When we left the museum, we walked out the exit to a burnt building. I am pretty sure that this was the police headquarters. The walls are made out of cement so the fire had to go be started on each floor individually. Pictures will be posted later because they are on Hannah's camera. But it was crazy to see such a real result of the revolution.



After the museum, we headed toward Felfela - one of Hannah's family's favorite restaurants! We ate delicious food - from chicken, lamb, rice, stuffed grapevine leaves, bread, and dip! We also ordered one of the best lemon juices I have ever had...Hannah has been ordering them everywhere so I finally gave in and skipped the coke. Then we topped it off with rice pudding with ice cream - I wasn't a huge fan of the pudding, but the ice cream was great.

After stuffing ourselves, we walked more around Tahrir Square. We saw lots of burned out cars that had been set on fire during the revolution, an incredible wall full of really well-done graffiti, and other remnants of the revolution everywhere. Unfortunately, Hannah couldn't really take pictures because people are really suspicious of journalists in the area misrepresenting them so most of it will just have to stick in our memory. We wished her parents were there though to translate all the slogans and sentences, so that we could have fully understood it all.

We ended our night by attending an Egyptian church service. When the service began, it was maybe half-full, but people kept filing in even halfway through the sermon. By the end, it was packed with people! It was fun to see such a huge crowd and be in an evangelical church in Egypt. They do love to sing though and don't keep track of time at all. After about two hours, we snuck out a bit early. While it was a long service, we are sure it felt longer because we were trying to focus on the translation. One cool thing about the church is that the lobby was used as a safe haven for the wounded during the revolution. The building itself was one of the only buildings not harmed!

After the service we walked through Shepheard's Hotel, another family favorite of the Kuhn's. We were to full to eat but it was great to see the hotel.

That's enough for now. We'll post again in a few days. Sorry about the lack of interesting pictures...not exactly appropriate to pull out the iPad. There are a few in here of us just enjoying the cafe culture though! We love and miss you all!

P.S. We just got Internet on the iPad so Rome was just posted as well. Don't miss it below!