This week, the 2nd Annual Arab University Games were held, hosted by AUC. 700 student athletes from all over the Middle East, from Morocco to Iraq, came to compete against each other at an intercollegiate event that seemed more like an Arab League Olympics. In the Algeria vs. UAE basketball game I watched, there were the Algeria supporters on one side (a small but vocal minority) and the Egyptians on the other side, who have had bad blood with the Algerians ever since Egypt's devastating failure to beat Algeria's football team and make it to the World Cup last year.
Egyptians take football very, very seriously, and I guess this extends to other sports as well. But I'm sure their rivalry with Algeria is limited to the world of sports.
(Here's a clip of the game.)
I couldn't stay to see who won, but UAE was crushing Algeria when I left.
Grocery shopping in Egypt is always fun, from the imported $10 boxes of Rice Krispies to the stacks of knockoff Nutella jars. After the game my friends and I made Indian food, and the selection of spices was mediocre at best. This makes sense, because here the priority is to decimate your hunger with a veritable Mt. Sinai of carbs rather than to begin the clandestine hijacking of your taste buds by capsaicin. Still, the chicken curry and rice was delicious.
The next day, October 22, Ramesses II's birthday, my class went back to the Egyptian Museum to pick out our objects for our papers. Mine was the Colossus of Senwosret I, a statue of epic proportions and clearly overstated leg muscles.
Professor Ikram, to class: You are young and I am old, so I expect you all to keep up with me.
Us: Ok, sure. (piece of cake.)
And then she took off at top speed to the first object we were studying, weaving through crowds of tourists and Egyptian guides without looking behind to see if we were following. We went up stairs and across balconies and a few times I had to jog to catch up with her line of ducklings. None of us had expected her superhuman speed.
Saturday: Giza!
Everyone knows about the Pyramids. You learn about them in elementary school, see pictures on postcards, or encounter them in the news when a brave young man climbs one in broad daylight and has to be removed by Egyptian military helicopter.
Going there today was a bit anticlimactic. I definitely imagined they'd be bigger.
Still, it was great having Dr. Ikram with us to get into all the sites for free--several temples, the Sphinx, the Solar Boat museum, and two pyramids. Climbing out of a pyramid's claustrophobic and harrowing passages and breathing fresh air once again is an experience that can probably be compared to emerging from the womb, which maybe some of you can identify with.
Masamune smites Alia with his camel-bone mace (yes, he found it fresh on the ground)
Khafre's valley temple: stone masonry like the walls at Machu Picchu
Breast Cancer Walk
This is why our class field trips are awesome.
The Grand Gallery, Khufu's Pyramid
Here we have a hole in Khafre's pyramid. We can most likely blame tomb robbers who tried to make a grand entrance by blasting their way in, but I prefer to blame the Decepticons.
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