The Friday Market

We had an interesting day today. Picture this: streets packed with men, hardly a women to be seen, and none of them white. Picture a table filled with remote controls, another filled with used cell phone batteries, and other tables full of junk - top halves of barbie dolls, old microphones, and things with no apparant use.

Picture a dog breeding area where bid on other dogs to breed with their dog, tanks of fish, dozens of cages of canaries, pigeons and even falcons. Picture hundreds of rabits, small crocodiles, and a small fox.

All for sale, and all at the Friday Market. This doesn't even cover everything that was there. Basically if you can't find it in the market(legal or illegal), it's not in Egypt. We even heard rumours of a gun and sword section, but we didn't find it. All in all it was pretty crazy and a little out of my league (being one of the very few women, and only white one!) Brian really enjoyed it and might have spent his whole day there if it wasn't for me.

I should maybe comment a bit on the conditions of Egypt for foreign women. Walking down the street, I am really a spectacle. I haven't really figured out why, but that's the way it is here. Men of all ages just blatantly stare. Even if you meet their gaze, they don't look away; if anything they wink, say something in arabic, or just keep staring. It makes me feel pretty degraded. I don't really understand the status of women in this society, but I have the impression that they are generally not valued. It's been an experience to say the least.

Brian and I enjoyed another great meal at our favourite new cheap pasta restaurant tonight. We actually met another Canadian there who is in Egypt studying pharmacology. He's Egyptian but lives in Toronto with his family. He told us that university tuition here costs the equivalent of $120 Canadian per year. It's understandable why he'd want to study here!

After dinner Brian and I took a falucca (sailboat) ride on the Nile. Captain Nasr guided us through the waters of downtown Cairo and was very eagre to point out the very obvious sites (such as the Grand Hyatt, or the huge fountain in the middle of the water). I guess he figures he has to earn his baksheesh (his tip). It was a really nice ride, and almost seemed to take you away from the busyness of the city here. It gets very cool here at night (down to about 12 C) so our ride was a bit chilly.

We're still having a great time here. It's been busy during the day, but we often have lots of time to relax in the evenings. We're here for another day and then heading down to Luxor to see a few more anciet Egyptian things. We then take a bit of a hiatus from Egypt, well actually Africa, and we're flying to Kuwait for a few days to visit with the Sheane's. We're looking forward to that too.

I should probably mention I heard my first Christmas music today; Silent Night in Arabic. The Canadian-Egyptian guy had it playing in his car. That's my first reminder of Christmas and probably my last while we're in this part of the world.