Exploring My New Home

I had today off so I have time to add a sizable entry and catch you guys up a bit.
First some basics about Cairo to keep in mind when you look at my pictures and read my stories in the future. Egypt is a police state and heavily armed "police men" are everywhere and I mean everywhere. As an American that means I am probably much safer wandering Cairo than any city in America (except for the traffic). To take pictures of the police is strictly prohibited as is taking pictures of the inside of most government buildings so don't expect to see them in the pictures here. Egypt is also overwhelmingly muslim with the expection of the coptic christian minority who often accuse Egypt of persecution. I met an Egyptian whose friend's parents were killed in the recent Alexandria bombing. He went on to tell me that what most news media outside of Egypt didn't cover was the response from the islamic community. Human walls of muslims surrounded churches in solidarity during coptic christmas. It is a very interesting time to be in Egypt and I'm glad I'm here. If you want to hear about Egypt's human right's violations, election fraud, or anything else I would love to discuss it when I get home but for now we will leave the topic alone.

More to me specifically, yesterday we were given a list locations to go to and complete tasks. Usually just taking a picture of the location was sufficient. We divided into teams of 3 and left. It was entertaining if stressful to try to explain to taxi drivers where we wanted to go but I already know more arabic to use next time. Here are a few of the pictures I took. I have to admit most aren't very good when it comes to angle, lighting, framing, ect. but we were in a hurry and I don't have much experience with photography. Next entry will show my first trip to the pyramids, inshah'allah (God willing).

The University of Cairo from which many important leaders graduated including Yassir Arafat. Saddam Hussein dropped out. 



Two of my peers posing with a helpful Egyptian that gave us directions in Tahrir Square.

 Ok, so the uploading time has been exceptionally long so I'm going to cheat and just copy and paste the last one from a google image search. My picture looks almost exactly the same anyway.

This is non-descript building is the Arab League world headquarters and next door is a giant Soviet Union style building that serves as the main administration building for all of Egypt. Across the square is a mosque that is used for nearly all of Egypt's official functions requiring a mosque (e.g. funerals). It is a very important square in Egypt.