This week has been hectic. It is now Wednesday and I am dead tired. The eight o clock classes are killing me as I am only getting a few hours of sleep each night. That will change hopefully tonight. We are still without cooking ware and we are getting tired of eating ful and tamiya and kushari over and over. It is always good but we want to be able to cook food. The fruti helps though. There is nothing like fresh fruit to sweeten up a days worth of sugar and carbohydrates.
I have recently been ingesting fresh juices. So fresh that the pulp of each is still throughly in the glass. You don't get much fresher than fruit to glass than here. It is delicious.
As I may have said before I have started boxing here in Cairo through the school. It is so great to punch someone and get punched and then not get in trouble for it. On our second day of class we started boxing with just jabs. It was very intense.
I have been successful in the continuation of my Aikido Classes I went to a dojo last night. It was at the old police academy in abasia. I can take the metro there for 20 minutes. The class is very big some 30-40 students and there are a bunch of dan ranks there. Our instructor is Sensei Mohammad Said 4th dan. There is also a Japanese instructor Sensei Ono. The class was about two hours long, consisted of a light warm up and then a demonstration of the techniques and then practice. There a few guys who helped me out there for which I am grateful because otherwise it would have been very lonely working out with strangers. We did everything out of yokomenuchi from kokyonage to shihonage to kotegashi. It was good to be back on the mat. And I am happy to discover that at least this dojo aikido is aikido. Even when the instructor was talking in arabic he would say the japanese names and I would understand. It felt good to understand because that is so lacking over here for me.
The classes here seem to be the equivalent of classes back home in terms of reading and difficulty. There are also the same variety of students from the really smart to the ones that you wonder what they are doing here. The professors also seem very good. My hist 356 teacher is the most unusual but not very. When she lectures, she picks a spot on the back wall and stares at it for the whole time. I know this is a very effective speaking tool and I have used it too but when you are sitting in the second row and she does not look around once, except at the wall or her notes it is a little disconcerting.
The one complaint that I can't have is about the weather. Except for the occasional haziness, it is wonderful here. Cool mornings with relative quiet. Warm to hot afternoons where you can sit in the sun and relax and warm to cool maryland like summer evenings (without the humidity). I am sorry to hear that it is really bad back home with cold and sleet and everything but I don't miss that. The weather is just too nice. Though I am sure it will be a different story when I have to ride the subway at the end of May in the sweltering heat. Ohh...painful.
I miss home and you all and I am looking forward to coming back home but only after I finish what I need here. Oh and thank you for reading.
The title refers to this morning when I was almost hit by a bus. I saw the front of the bus and then the side of the bus as it passed within probably a foot or less of my face and body. Don't worry though that doesn't happen often. The biggest threat is the having my kneecap torn off bya crazy cabbie's fender.
The traffic noise at night and for the most part during the day has faded blissfully into the background of white noise. This adjustment is a lifesaver as I would have gone crazy without it.
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2 comments:
My colloquial Arabic (3ammiyah) class is watching "The Yacoubian Building" (3aymara yacoubian). It's set in Talaat Harb, have you spent much time there? Visit "Al-Abd" bakery--it's the best!
Your blog still definitely makes me nostalgic. Have some 3aseer farawla (strawberry) for me.
bint_ibnbattuta-thanks so much for reading. i am glad you are enjoying it. i have been up and down talaat harb many times but have not worked up the courage to go into al-abd. i think i will need an egyptian escort to fight through the mobs, but once i have done it once with an egyptian i usually have no fear and go back on my own. and i will drink some juice for you.
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