dinner cruise

After school, I returned to "the harem" (apartment...), and vegged until 10:30, when we met up with Ahmed. Ahmed has lots of connections, and his father is friends with the manager of a classy restaurant on a cruise boat on the Nile (read: free dinner). It was glorious. The boat looked like an old Mississippi steamer--it was wide and flat and went rather slowly (I have know idea how fast the steamers cruise...). The first course was a shrimpy thinggy, and for the second I had fish while the others got beef. We split a bottle of nice red wine (a nice break from Stella and Sakhara--cheap Egyptian beer).

(quick alcohol side note: drinking hard alcohol in Egypt is a bad idea. There have been multiple cases of people switching the real liquor for rubbing alcohol and ethanol, which can cause death or blindness. During our second day or orientation, the director was warning us against this, when a girl asked "how long does the blindness take to set in?" the director repeated her warnings regarding death. The pale girl asked again "yes, but HOW LONG?" Tomader (our director, aka "Tomb Raider") finally got what she was asking, and said "sit down, you're fine." The girl answered "ok, but my eyesight was blurry this morning.")

During dinner there was a belly dancer for entertainment. Belly dancers make me feel uncomfortable. Look! She's got huge knockers. Ooops, careful now! Don't want spillage! Oh, now she's quivering her arse in front of a pious, hijab-clad woman. Here's the move where she's imagining a guy on top of her. Ok, that would be the climax... awkward... Especially in a culture that forbids me to show my seductive shoulder, or provocative knee. True, western hip hop is just as sexual, but it isn't that out of the ordinary from what you might see on the street. Here, I get disapproving looks when I wear my low-cut jeans, yet belly dancers are extolled as talented, legitimate art (which they are).

Yesterday I was lounging in the apartment in a tank top and boxers, when I heard a knock at the door. So, I bounce off the couch, and open the door. It's the guy from the petrol company coming to fix our water heater. Yay! I pointed to the kitchen. He looked at me horrified, and the bawwab (our doorman) tells me to go get dressed. *ooops*


After dinner we went up to the deck. Most of the other passengers were Saudi or Jordanian--recognizable by their red and white checkered handkerchiefs on their heads (Palestinians wear the black and white) and their galabaya (long white tunic).