Eccentric Exciting Euphoric Egyptian Escape

Egyptian Escape pt 1

2006-12-02T01:44:00.000+08:00

Finally after long silent, the whole naked truth is out.

Basically, this is a small little extraction of the total portion. Somethings are best to be forgotten but the highlights are here. Enjoy reading it!

"Concerning Egypt I will now speak at length, because nowhere are there so many marvellous things, nor in the world besides are there to be seen so many things of unspeakable greatness...." - Herodotus

Masr, or more popularly known as Egypt, kingdom of the pharaohs, is a land of pitiless deserts and cool oases, glorious richness of history and exotic cultures, where extraordinary wealth and sophistication exist side by side with their decidedly primitive lifestyles, and its monument on earth. It is a diverse place located in northern Africa but is thought by many to be located in the Middle East. I was the lucky ones among 65 others who successfully participated in a student exchange program organized by AntaraBudaya Malaysia (AFS-American Field Service) out of hundreds of application submitted. I am certainly proud to be one of the first two Malaysians to be in the first batch to travel to Egypt on a student exchange programme. We were like the little ambassadors of Malaysia to Egypt, and what fun we had fulfilling our roles!

One thing I can say however is that it was surprisingly chilly. I would never have expected the weather to be so terribly cold at night. Before that day, had someone mentioned the name "Egypt", I would envision magnificent pyramids (little did I know then how understated the word magnificent could be!) and small ancient houses amidly dry and humid weather. Amazingly, for a such secluded place with desert conditions, there are 4 seasons in Egypt. I was surprised to glimpse so many cubical apartment buildings all over the city and was admittedly shocked at the huge numbers of cars honking constantly due to severe traffic congestions (yes believe it or not, it is worse than it is here!) Believe it or not, crossing the road was a matter of life and death because Cairo is inhabited by almost 17 million people.

We were told that men and women stuck faithfully to the rule of limited physical contact between the different genders, which is only greeting others by the conservative and respectable medium of hand-shaking during out culture exposure orientation. We were also briefed about the several other things in preparation of us receiving a bit of cultural shock. I was very amazed the way Egyptian greetings could differ in various ways. For example, it is an Egyptian tradition that guys and girls only shake hands in greeting upon meeting each pther, whereas pecks on the cheeks (muah! muah!) are acceptable among close relations or friends of the same gender. Frankly, I found it all very odd and different at first, but like I did for everything else, I soon adapted and got used to this unique way of meet-and-greet when U received a peck on the cheek from Tony, a close friend from school.

To be continued...

More to come!

Host family
More of family
Fattening food
Language barrier
Name confusion
and many more to go!

Stay tuned and thank you for reading it!

Credits to
-Catherine Chan for editing it
-Nigel Aw for re-editing it
-Wendell Tan for being such a lousy editor and future YES participant + flight mate

2006-06-16T18:39:00.000+08:00

miriam, amira and mohamed

2006-06-16T01:22:00.000+08:00

Tony and a bunch of other strangers from school.

2006-06-16T00:59:00.000+08:00

yehia nad monica

2006-06-16T00:42:00.000+08:00

edzel from the philipine, hadeel and christine

2006-06-10T17:51:00.000+08:00

good friend, sysy from emirates and ali

2006-06-10T03:37:00.000+08:00

more and more

2006-06-10T02:44:00.000+08:00

more goose!

2006-06-10T02:33:00.000+08:00

Protect the chicks!
Note: This happened in Dream Park and no animal was harmed!

2006-06-09T20:19:00.000+08:00

A really cool teacher, Ms Sarah El Masry a.k.a. Ms Saral el Misery

2006-06-08T23:20:00.000+08:00

the girls, Miriam, Hadeel, Sherin and Monica

2006-06-08T22:29:00.000+08:00

me and bunch of school people(not my friends)

2006-06-08T00:54:00.000+08:00

the girls' bus

Dream Park trip

2006-06-08T00:41:00.000+08:00

On my third day, I follow the school trip to Dream Park, a theme park located in 6th October City, an new city out of no where and in desert area(well everywhere places are desert filled with low-rise apartment buildings). Guys and girls are seperated into different buses. Students asked the driver to tune on some arabic songs loud and they started to dance and clap and dance!

2006-06-07T01:50:00.000+08:00

2006-06-07T00:06:00.000+08:00

eat big!
one fish per person!

2006-06-06T23:45:00.000+08:00

my mama and her brown rice. brown rice are eaten with fish only
and she's wearing a batik nightrobe i gave her. and she loves it she has been wearing it as much as she could!

2006-06-06T18:37:00.000+08:00

Sharifah, Dalia and me

2006-06-06T17:59:00.000+08:00

mama.. my host mother, Hayam Helmi

2006-06-06T17:52:00.000+08:00

advertising. i believe its "flat for rent"

2006-06-06T17:37:00.000+08:00

sight-seeing on first day. these are several international hotels along Nile

2006-06-06T17:25:00.000+08:00

pre-depature orientation

2006-06-05T18:34:00.000+08:00

Arrival in Cairo Airport

2006-06-05T18:21:00.000+08:00

Leaving Dubai Intl. Airport

2006-06-05T18:13:00.000+08:00

5000ft above the sky

2006-06-05T17:55:00.000+08:00

Emirates Airline in Dubai. Waiting for my flight to Cairo

my host family

2006-05-31T20:32:00.000+08:00

Here we have my host family;
from left Khaled(brother), me, Hayam(mama),
Mohamed(baba), Dina(sister) and Sharifah(fellow AFS Malaysia)

My First Post

2006-05-31T20:05:00.000+08:00