the first few days

After a day and a half of travel, the other students and I finally made it to Alexandria! The flight from JFK to Cairo was over 11 hours long, and then we took a van from Cairo to Alexandria, which was another couple of hours. Needless to say, the journey was long and arduous!

My friend Naureen and I were dropped off first at the dorm for girls in the Al-Shatby region of Alexandria. Here’s the link to Google Maps:  (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=st+mark+alexandria+egypt&ie=UTF8&sll=31.055516,29.824955&sspn=0.483042,0.379584&ei=7lBmSeXlIYWw2AKxrqnzAg&sig2=Fs0HZct8pPXQO_Q0_2xX_g&cd=4&cid=31210723,29917753,4067930359938235133&li=lmd&ll=31.210443,29.916179&spn=0.004148,0.009656&t=k&z=17) The dorm is the building in the center of the map, directly across from the labeled “A”. The building is absolutely huge! Certainly bigger than anything you would find in Vermont, and to top it off, we live on the 6th floor with an elevator that refuses to come when called (unless you bang endlessly on the door). Inside, the dorm is obviously not quite up to par to American standards, but the rooms are quite big and nice. We receive breakfast and dinner in the dorm as part of the room and board and the food is pretty good, but foreign obviously. As an Egyptian custom, we are forced to eat SO much by our “nutritionist” Mama Houdda. The more you refuse more food, the more she piles on! She’s quite the character.

Alexandria is quite a beautiful, and seemingly forgotten, city. Few new buildings exist, instead you see a lot of old and quite beautiful buildings that seem to have been left to age for decades. However, the best part of living in Alexandria definitely has to be the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. Walking along the Corniche, which is the newly built gigantic road alongside the water, is definitely one of the greatest thing to do around here.

the Corniche, a 12-lane road that runs along the beach and is one of the most terrifying things to watch

ahhhh, the ocean. not to elicit any jealousy or anything, but it’s about a 2.5 minute walk down to the beach… :)

Unfortunately, however, the Corniche has also been the place where, as a woman, you get cat calls and semi-stalkers. It’s a part of life here, and it certainly takes some getting used to, but what can you do? However, the view of the ocean makes all of this worth it, because nothing compares to it. One of the first few days here we spent some time at this wonderful cafe with a student from last semester and drank fresh juice, under palm tree unbrellas, at sunset, by the sea…Need I say more?

One of the Khalid’s (our program director) rules is never to cross the Corniche. I first want to mention that driving and traffic in Egypt is absolutely and completely chaotic and totally ridiculous! There are marked “lanes”, but no one abides by them and there are “lights”, and yet again, no one abides by them. Quite the mayhem. To make matters worse, as a pedestrian, you have to cross these streets and it takes some practice so for now, I am simply terrified of crossing them and dread the task every day. The Corniche is a 6-lane road with traffic that moves at more than 50mph, so having the underground tunnels is simply marvelous!

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~ by Dijana on January 8, 2009.