Hey everyone-
The last several days in Cairo have be substantially less intense than before. Sunday, we toured a couple of large/important/old mosques. Al-Azhar, one of the mosques that we visited, was the first time we had visited a mosque that was still in popular use. The other mosques we had visited were still used at prayer times, but during the rest of the day were mainly tourist attractions. Al-Azhar, on the other hand, also houses a religious university and since it was final exam time, the mosque was full of students studying and praying for better grades.
Monday morning we went to the Citadel and saw the Muhammad Ali mosque and several smaller mosques. The view from the terrace was amazing and you could see all of Cairo. My professor said that when he was first there 25 years ago, you could clearly see the three pyramids looming on the horizon, but due to the increase in smog we could only make out their faint outlines.
After our lecture about issues in contemporary Egypt, I walked over to the US embassy and met my aunt Karen (who works there) at the door. Her embassy driver took us both back to her apartment in Maadi. My uncle Gamal had invited his 3 brother, 2 sisters, their children, and their children's children over for what was the largest dinner I have ever seen. It was like Egyptian Thanksgiving x4. All the food was very good and Karen made sure that I tried everything. Most of the evening's conversation was in Arabic- simply because most of the family speaks little English- which made keeping up with what was going on a little interesting. Gamal would translate the jist of what was being said every so often, while various family members took turns asking, "So, How you like Egypt?" It was a really fun time regardless of language difficulties.
Tuesday was the first day of presentations- the part of the trip that actually makes it a college class as opposed to glorified tourism. There was an interesting one about Islamic/Arab/Arabic Mathematicians (finding the proper labels is difficult)in the 10th century and their advancements to the field.
Wednesday (yesterday), we tried to go to the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art right next to the Cairo Opera House (see picture below) but it was closed for renovations. Instead we went to this really strange temporary looking museum where they didn't actually have any museum objects, just pictures medieval to modern architecture in Egypt. There were only Arabic captions, but the strangest part was that these pictures, which were blown up to several feet in size, seemed to just have been snapshots. Some pictures had the orange digital date in the corner that some cameras put on your pictures and some of the images were clearly xeroxed out of books with the crease at the spine and edges of the pages showing. It was all very strange. We also went to the Mahmoud Mukhtar museum. He was a famous Egyptian sculptor who did many of the public works that you see around Cairo.
Anyway, there are more presentations this afternoon, including myown, so I need to get to the library and finish up my work. Tonight I am going to Fatima's (my uncle Gamal's sister) for dinner. I have been told by everyone that she is an amazing cook.
adios
