Oh my God, they just cut that sheep's throat

Okay, so I haven't bought any books this semester which means that I saved a bunch of money because university books have a way of sucking dry your money try, but, the big but, is that I have sold my soul to the library. I spend many hours there, yesterday was six. The good news is that I got the homework for one of my classes done for the whole week plus, the good news, that class is canceled for all of next week. Superfantastic.

Anyway, after doing that I zonked out of school mode and being valentines day was looking to meet some chicks. This being Egypt I went to the 'ahwa with...some dudes. Not all bad but I think it is kind of hard to meet girls at an 'ahwa or on the street for that matter, though at AUC your prospects improve. So while at the 'ahwa the other guys drinking beer and me soda, a group of about 10 girls show up, the American variety. We end up hanging with them for a little bit and it was nice to get to acutally talk to some girls. As I said before so far my guy-girl interactions have been limited so its really nice to get to talk with some of them.

The cafe that we go to is very popular for everything. It is popular with the students because it is close to campus and has 8 pound beers, it is popular with the chess players, it is hopping on thursday nights. When we were there last night there was not a seat in the house. People drink lot of beer and smoke a lot of cigarettes. A real den of iniquity, and I am part of it, except for the drinking and smoking at this juncture.

Valentine's day is popular here. I wasn't expecting that. And actually Egyptians have two Valentine's Days. February 14th and sometime in November. The 14th is the international one and the November one is the Egyptian one. I tried to get my suitemate to explain the tradition behind it but he didn't understand quite perfectly and told me what they did on that day which is the same things as the 14th, so he did answer but not the answer I wanted. And yes there are even the stores that pop up just selling everything pink pretty and chocolatey. I considered going up to some random girl in the street and ask her to be my Valentine but I chickened out. Probably for the best anyway.

Today was a good day. I tell you, I love Fridays here more than I did back home. One because we are off and two because it is quiet and three I can listen to prayers through the loud speakers on the street. There is nothing greater than walking down the street and having it be empty of cars and almost empty of people. For Cairo it happens every Friday morning. It is also cool because you usually end up doing nothing because everything opens late or not at all. Its real chill here on Fridays.

My Friday was spent at the Ibn Tulun Mosque which is actually near my campus. It is a famous mosque and is the oldest mosque in cairo still existing in its original form. It is huge. We walked up to the door and just looked up, the walls are that imposing. I went with my architecture class and it really helped me appreciate it more because I knew the terms for the different parts of the mosque and its construction. Knowing what went into it made it that much more awesomer. This mosque only took three years to make, if I could convey that to you through the pictures on Flickr I would but I can't. It is mind blowing. My favorite parts were of the rosette's carved in the spandrels of the arches. Check out that lingo. (If its the right terms). Many of them are carved differntly and I took a bunch of pictures. Our professor said that no two windows on a wall repeat themselves, but that there is a repeating band linking all of the windows together. She kept using the phrase unity withing variety, with revernce and rightly so. It is a masterpiece of architecture. It was designed so that you can stand looking down the row and see every column of that row. I wish you could see it because the architect was a genius. It was also so quiet. It reminded me of church at home. Just the quiet and the serenity.

Okay so now some random stuff. For all you clean freaks out there, you know who you are. I have been wearing the same outfit for a week (I think) and my pants for mayber 1.5 ish. Its fantastic. I couldn't be happier and I don't smell.

Anytime you go into the market near our hotel you see something interesting. My suitemate saw a fight in the bakery of a man who got chased out and was beaten with the pans (he was okay). And today that same suitemate and I were ordering dinner at a fiteer place (a pancake like seller) and next to it was a butcher. In front of the butcher was a man with a living sheep. While we were waiting for door, which incidentally happened to be some sort of meat in a pancake, we had the opportunity to see the sheep get its throat cut. I was shocked and a little sick to my stomach as I have never seen anything killed before. It was crazy and I don't think that I will be able to get that image out of my head. I get a stomach writing this. And yes, I did eat the sandwhich, but I think I will be vegetarian for a while.

Be home soon. Tim