Cairo day 15

WTF is up with taxi drivers here?? The morning's ride from dokki to ili usually costs 6 or 7 pounds with me, karoline and Anglea (we all 'taxipull') Today, Angela was a no show and the traffic was super light so it should have been even less expensive. So we gave him 5 pounds. He came out of his car after us. Demanding that we give him more. Prick. Taxis suck.

So yesterday I tried out Formal Arabic level three for an hour. I was having trouble with the grammar in level four. Turns out that level three is really for beginners; they were learning how to say "my favorite hobby is... " and the grammar stuff was all stuff that I already know.

So I'm back in level four, where, today was mostly vocab based so it wasn't too difficult for me. Anca, from level three also came up with me to level four. The grammar wasn't too difficult today either. I think I will manage.

This evening was very fun. I met Chris at Ramese square. We got sweets at a bakery place. The theme of this evening: Mona's birthday. This meant we got to go to Mona's place in Nasser city and she was allowed to make us dinner :-) hehehe, good but very filling. I sadly could not finish my plate. We sat on the balcony for a while and talked/learned Arabic. I had them do some of my colloquial class homework which consisted of asking Egyptians about a few different words relating to Ramadan. So that I didn't feel too horrible, I made them explain these words to me in Arabic.
Tonight's main noteworthiness lay in the fact that I kept on bombarding them with questions on Arabic. Mainly vocab, partially swear words. People were also very interested in my small vocab journal. They seemed to get a kick out of the very simple words and my meticulous and voweled handwriting. And also felt free to make correction/additions wherever they felt needed. I, was not too happy about this as I think they replaced much of my formal words with colloquial ones.
All of this was done around about 7 hookahs. There ended up being about 3 westerners and 10 egyptians. Oh I was named Mursi. This is my new arabic name. I shall change my name tag in class tomorrow :-)

Oh, the landlord came by to fix the washing machine/show us how it works. About time as my clothes had been in there last night and the machine would not drain its water at the end of the cycle. I also learned that there is a slot for detergent. I hope the fact that I simply put the detergent in with my clothes didn't ruin them...

My main preoccupation right now is with Alitalia and their bloody bankruptcy quandary.

tata y'all