Leaving Cairo

Since I am leaving on Saturday morning to start my Beni Suef adventure...

Things I Will Miss About Cairo:

--riding the women's car on the metro-- safe place for people-watching and being people-watched.

--Otta ("Cat"), my calico BFF at the compound... I was elated to find that there are resident cats at the church compound, especially since our leader Tom forbids us to pet the many feral cats in the streets.  And I mean, they are pretty mangy to be honest.  But Otta is different... slightly bug-eyed, perhaps, but endearing and mostly tame (thanks to Adel the cook, a fellow cat person who very soon caught onto me and started giving me frozen bones for Otta feeding time.  Crazy Cat Woman strikes again.)  Many days I'm disturbed from journaling or reading in my room by the sound of lonesome yowling down the hall.  I answer the call and spend a few minutes of quality time with Otta in my lap.

--Adel the cook.  Started out as a minor character in our Cairo lives, but is now the bodyguard big brother you always wanted to have.  He alternates between beating all our guys at arm wrestling using only 2 fingers, and making us watch his favorite movies, like "Up" or "Spirit, Wild Horse of the Cimarron".  He's taking cooking classes right now and already we've noticed a very appreciable improvement in our meals here.  When he is not cooking or entertaining us with epic stories from his past, he is watching our backs in the streets like Spiderman. A few days ago he clocked a shebab in the back of the head just for looking at me wrong (There are a hundred more shebab where that one came from, but that's the way it is. It was a nice gesture and at least this one guy will think twice next time)

--Amer. Adel's second-in-command in the kitchen, who has a gravelly voice and the best laugh ever.  He is about our age and lives here in the compound with Adel, who summons him from any corner of the building with a booming "ahMEER!!"

--the calls to prayer (sort of).  And I do mean calls, plural, because there are at least 5 that layer over each other in our immediate neighborhood.  Not to be sacrilegious but some are... let's just say... more pleasing to the ear than others.  Every so often an imam who seems to be suffering from a severe cold fills in for the regular, which never ceases to amuse us throughout the entire cycle of croaking phrases, always at top volume.  Of course. 

--my room and roommates at Eman House.  Already our population is dwindling, with Elizabeth gone and Summer already in Jordan for service.  But we 5 had a good run of it, lots of laughs and failed attempts at Cairobics and multi-colored hairballs in the shower (black, dark brown, reddish brown, medium brown, and blonde--never any question whose was whose).

--and of course I will miss all 14 members of the group that I will not be on service with.  Despite coming from an impressive range of majors, social circles, and classes at Goshen, we've gotten along and developed friendships with each other with very little conflict and drama so far in these past 7 weeks.  Most of my group are people I had never had classes or much interaction with before other than Arabic class but now they know me better than most people at Goshen ever will.  It will be fun to see what kind of stories we will come back with from our separate service locations, but still we will have the shared experiences that no other SSTer from Goshen has had so far... Egypt SST group #1.  :)