Siwa Oasis

Sorry that it’s been a while. Life goes on in Egypt as usual; we didn’t have much of a weekend last weekend because we had to make up classes. Since Ramadan ended the beginning of October, they have a big feast holiday, so we have a week of no Arabic after a weekend of classes.

This weekend we went to Siwa Oasis, which is on the far west of the country. It was a long drive-about 12 hours, but a really nice trip. Oases (I’m assuming that’s plural), are hard to comprehend. This is in the middle of the Sahara Desert, big old sand dunes everywhere, nothing but dry and hot. Then suddenly there is a fresh water spring coming out of the ground with palm trees all around. We stayed at a nice little place that had a clean pool (rare), and no electricity, just candles and lanterns, which was awesome. The first day (Thursday) we rented bikes for the day and rode throughout the town, there were some cool things to see. One was the Oracle, which is a really old temple that Alexander the Great went to receive some sort of prophecy, no one knows what it was. After that we rode to Cleopatra’s Bath, which is a big deep pool in the middle of an intersection. Some of us had our bathing suits and dove in and had a good time impressing Siwans with our acrobatics-synchronized back flips and the like. Next, off to a salt lake on the edge to watch the sunset. At night we hired a Siwan band to play for us for a couple hours at our hotel (where we were the only guests). They were really fun and sat in a square on some blankets and would dance to their own music and come pull us into the square to dance with them. Soon we were all dancing around the courtyard. The next day we took Jeeps out into the desert and played in the dunes. We went sand boarding and swam in different springs. We spent the night in the desert with the Bedouin. A few of us guys went out into the desert and found some curious jackals and chased them around the desert. I will have to direct you to Joel’s site to see more pictures of all this because he’s telling me he took over 100, while I took maybe 10.

Today I am really excited because at 6:00 I will be meeting my Egyptian Muslim host family.  I will stay with them for the next week.  I’m pumped about learning more Arabic and the informal lessons about culture here-plus make some new friends.  I will update you when I get a chance!