Bottled water here comes from the Siwa Oasis?? wow.May 3, 2008
|
|
| I’ve noticed several things in the past couple of days since being here. Most of the time men are the only people you see on the street; sure there are definitely women roaming around but definitely not as many as men. Shoe stores is another thing; there is a huge abundance of them here; the woman who taught our survival Arabic class today said it’s because that’s the only real thing that woman can go extravagant with because every other part of their body is virtually covered, so in a sense that’s their form of self expression/identity via fashion. Another thing that our Arabic teacher informed us off today was how veils aren’t considered elite here, which was contrary to what I had thought. I thought when we walked down the streets not wearing veils it was considered trashy/low class of us, but rather she explained how she wears a veil and is often treated disrespectfully in Cairo just because the way she dresses shows she’s of the lowly class. I asked her if people here try to pretend that they are of higher class and not wear the veils, just as people in America wear fake designer brands to try to put on a façade of higher class, and she said yes but it’s obvious that it’s fake because the true high class speak at least French as their second language, while the low class Muslims only speak Arabic. That’s one thing she definitely mentioned, which was that language schools is an immediate sign of class. Interesting fact: women can’t go out with wet hair. Our Arabic teacher, which is by the way named Sayonara (Japanese “goodbye”?! apparently her parents liked the sound of it…) said that the waiters here fore example are paid on average 250 pounds a month!! That equals out to about 50 bucks…it’s pretty crazy. And that is supposed to supply them to pay for their family, schooling for children and housing. It’s ridiculous. Another thing she said was how everyone here gets second education but because the economy is bad people can’t get jobs so it’s very common for taxi drivers to have for example an engineering degree. And many kids give up going to school because they know it won’t do any good; like for example the kids in Giza said they weren’t in school because they knew they would end up in the “camel industry” anyway. Interesting fact: Cinnabon is considered a “semi-elite” restaurant. There are police on every street corner; and apparently (unbeknownst to me) there has been a police escort service that has been following behind us everywhere we have gone as a group in Cairo. I don’t know if that’s because of keeping our safety or watching us to make sure we don’t do anything. Apparently tomorrow is President Mubarak’s birthday, so we aren’t allowed to go into downtown Cairo. We went to the mosques and Hebrew temples today, but I plan to write a separate blog just on that tomorrow. |
Advertisement 
|
