Thursday 8/17

Started out the day with another Arabic lesson -- Honestly Pat and I studied hard last night but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. We did find out why one man looked at us very funny the night before when he asked where we were from and we said "Iowa" -- IWA in Arabic (which sounds very close to Iowa) means "yes" so when we kept answering "yes" to him he kept asking us "Where we were from??"

Had several more meetings today (financial, governmental, business, support, etc). This afternoon Pat and I worked in the HS lab -- getting computers ready. Ran into a bit of a problem which we will need to get worked out at some point in time -- but not right now.

This evening we went to an authentic Egyptian restaurant, "Balboa Galley", right in the heart of Alex. When you walked in, the meat, chicken, etc was on display it was a large colorful establishment. All menus were in Arabic and the employees spoke very little English. We did manage to get our order in OK and when the food came (very quickly this time) -- it was fantastic. All the meat, chicken, etc was cooked over an open grill and was so tasty. We had Egyptian bread, vegetables and a variety of sauces to dip the bread in (it is what they served at the place we went to in East Lansing with Aaron). The servers kept coming back to check to se how we liked everything -- one of them reminded us that he was giving us great service (which he was). By the way there were about 12 of us in the party with enough food to feed twice that many. When it came time to leave a tip -- the head waiter got it so one of the teachers made sure that the server who was giving us "personal" attention got a little something as well -- the custom in Egypt is not to divide up the tip but rather first to it gets it.

The ride back home was again very colorful and exciting. The custom for weddings in Egypt is to decorate the car -- we must have seen at least two or three wedding processions on our way back -- firecrackers, horns, yelling -- all making for a very exciting trip home. The Egyptians are a very vocal people and seem to want to talk louder to get their point across.

Tomorrow we head off for a full day at Cairo. We take the train down -- visit the Pyramids and go shopping in the Kahn before heading back. Should be quite a day.