I would never tell the Israeli government this, but I do have another Egyptian friend now (besides my former lab partner, hi Michael!). The business relationship between our driver and us turned personal as he slowly revealed his love life over dinner. This was a secret friendship to begin with where we were often meeting in dark valleys of Cairo, making rendez-vous' relying on blind faith that the other party would show up. But mystery breeds passion, soon enough, we were smoking shisha together, practicing Arabic, followed by tearful goodbyes (ok, I made up the tearful part, but I swear we were much missed).
In the morning, we climbed the pyramid. Pas de probléme if you have money. In fact, here almost everything is pas de probléme if you have money. In the case that you don't have a lot of money, pas de probléme if you can run faster than the guard can catch you.
You are on hands and knees going up to the top. Inside the great pyramid was so heated with no outlet ventilation that a spiritual old lady who was practicing her vocal cords guided us through a sauna meditation.
Some people believe that the pyramids were built by aliens and one can connect with extraterrestrial intelligence beings at the peak. Well, what I saw was that at the top, the pharaohs no longer laid there, a self proclaimed guard who was asking for bribes, a few more people who were also from our hostel and this "spiritual" lady. No strange looking green bodied, 8 eyed alien spotted. ( I feel like I just spoiled the ending of a good movie for you or something...).
Oh yes, the Egyptians LOVE their pyramids.
One might have heard of the feverish soccer match between Egypt and Algeria (the only two African country left to qualify for the 2010 world cup), but we witnessed live news first hand.
Because of our driver, we had the pleasure of "viewing" the game with the "FBI's" of Egypt. The reason I put both of those words in quotation is because:
"Viewing"= every time something happens, people crowd around the not big enough TV. It's impossible to follow what's going on, and at the last minute when Egypt scored, the TV itself called it quits and broke down!! (Sam claimed that the TV must have been manufactured in Algeria)
"FBI's" = men in suits. We realized that we were actually at the hotel where the Algerian players stayed in, the "FBI's" needed to be there for protection, but why were they just hanging out on the terrace, and not in the stadium where the potential violence could occur, were lost in the language barrier between broken frenglish and arabenglish.
Although language can stand in the way, friendship can certainly cross all borders politically, physically, and emotionally. Now, imagining telling the Israeli government that...
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