Day 167

July 5^th

Today started off with a trip to the gym. Nothing really special there except for that it is really quite in the morning. I went out to outside basketball courts in order to do some pull-ups and ab workouts and was followed out by this six year old girl. I don’t know what it is with kids, but they just don’t seem to understand that I don’t really speak their language. My Arabic is able to get me around and make basic small talk. When it comes to a subject other than that, I get confused especially when its in little kid language. However, she just kept talking to me as if I knew exactly what she was saying. I eventually picked something about a ball and maybe she wanted to play, but I couldn’t tell. Since she didn’t ever use body language it was pretty difficult to pick up what she wanted. Anyways, after going back to the gym, since I was the only one in there, I would help Hossan, the gym manager with pronouncing English words or definitions as he was working on his English.

After finishing my workout I had a strange encounter as I waited for the elevator. I waiting in the lobby, albeit kind of sweaty, but not that bad, and finally the elevator came. The doorman was waiting next to me, and as I was about to get in, I heard a group of people coming who asked the doorman to hold the elevator. So he did, and it turned out it was a family from the Arabian peninsula somewhere and the mom had the nigab. Now as soon as they saw I was in the elevator they decided they didn’t want it anymore. However, since they made me wait, I knew that if I wasn’t a white foreigner they would have loaded in with me. It didn’t really bother me that much, as they were clearly a conservative family and maybe it is just unorthodox to ride with someone like me. I don’t really know.

Anyways, after getting cleaned up, I mulled around the apartment a bit, doing some laundry and some reading. Finally the time came for ultimate, so I walked down to the metro station at Sadat. Here I ran into two of my ultimate friends who were also taking the metro down to Maadi. This was mighty convenient as I didn’t know exactly how to get to Victoria College once I got to Maadi.

Ultimate itself was fun, although I didn’t play very well. My throws were way off, and I dropped some easy passes. Oh well, I am still getting used to the game anyways. Andy, my potential roommate that didn’t work out, showed up this time and we caught up on how our summer’s had been going. Afterwards a bunch of us went to Lucille’s for dinner and that was awesome, because Lucille’s is like a little America. I rode the metro back and then took a cab to Zamalak. Normally I don’t take them, but since I was so tired. He tried to charge me double, jerk. Didn’t let me get away with it though.