Good news everyone, I made it to Egypt and I
have a place to sleep. So that is fantastic. The next time I board a
plane I will likely be headed back to Oregon where I can shamelessly
eat bacon and drink whiskey at the same time.
My last couple of days in Tunis were fine. I got to walk around the city a ton, often for several hours at a time, I didn't really have anything else to do so I got to explore a lot. Unfortunately, an unforseen consequence of a country not having a government is all of the national museums/parks are closed. For example, today I went to the Bardo Museum to look around the front gate had a ton of razor wire around it and some APCs were parked out front so I walked around back, found an open gate and walked into the compound. I made it all the way to the back entrance, a couple hundred meters, before a soldier saw me and yelled "NO ENTREE" he had an automatic weapon of some sort so I decided not to push it. On my way out a cop saw me, made eye contact and just pointed at the exit without breaking eye contact. That was pretty par for the course around Tunis. All of the interesting places either were obviously closed or they had so much razor wire and army/police around that I decided it probably wasn't worth it to try and get in.
My flight to Cairo was uneventful. As usual the plane out of the airport was about an hour late and I spent the time thinking about how I could have left the hotel so much later. When I checked my bag at the counter the check-in lady paged through my passport and then asked me where my Egypt visa was. I answered that I didn't have one yet and she handed me the passport back like it was no big deal. It turns out it really wasn't something that I needed to be worried about. At the Cairo airport you can walk up to a bank (interestingly that is an Arabic word) in the airport and buy a visa for $15 no questions asked.
In Morocco the accommodations that the school had were broken up by sex. That is the boys had their own place that was far from the girls place. Here in Egypt they either don't care if guys and girls live together or they thought I was a girl because I am the only guy staying in an apartment with four other girls. I did this once before during my sophomore year of college and swore that it wouldn't happen again, so I kind of failed at that. But, it's only a month so I'll probably be fine.
Anyways, its the Eid al-Adha which is a pretty big holy day in the Islamic culture so I don't have any school until Tuesday. That means I should study for my placement exam, but I probably won't.
My last couple of days in Tunis were fine. I got to walk around the city a ton, often for several hours at a time, I didn't really have anything else to do so I got to explore a lot. Unfortunately, an unforseen consequence of a country not having a government is all of the national museums/parks are closed. For example, today I went to the Bardo Museum to look around the front gate had a ton of razor wire around it and some APCs were parked out front so I walked around back, found an open gate and walked into the compound. I made it all the way to the back entrance, a couple hundred meters, before a soldier saw me and yelled "NO ENTREE" he had an automatic weapon of some sort so I decided not to push it. On my way out a cop saw me, made eye contact and just pointed at the exit without breaking eye contact. That was pretty par for the course around Tunis. All of the interesting places either were obviously closed or they had so much razor wire and army/police around that I decided it probably wasn't worth it to try and get in.
My flight to Cairo was uneventful. As usual the plane out of the airport was about an hour late and I spent the time thinking about how I could have left the hotel so much later. When I checked my bag at the counter the check-in lady paged through my passport and then asked me where my Egypt visa was. I answered that I didn't have one yet and she handed me the passport back like it was no big deal. It turns out it really wasn't something that I needed to be worried about. At the Cairo airport you can walk up to a bank (interestingly that is an Arabic word) in the airport and buy a visa for $15 no questions asked.
In Morocco the accommodations that the school had were broken up by sex. That is the boys had their own place that was far from the girls place. Here in Egypt they either don't care if guys and girls live together or they thought I was a girl because I am the only guy staying in an apartment with four other girls. I did this once before during my sophomore year of college and swore that it wouldn't happen again, so I kind of failed at that. But, it's only a month so I'll probably be fine.
Anyways, its the Eid al-Adha which is a pretty big holy day in the Islamic culture so I don't have any school until Tuesday. That means I should study for my placement exam, but I probably won't.
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