احب مصر

Last week Sophie and Alex found their apartment for next semester! They (....we) got to start moving in on the first, and we've been having a blast there. First of all... the American dollar goes sooo beautifully far here, hamdullila!! My dear Eskander and Sophia are living in fully furnished flat with three bedrooms (5 beds), two bath, two living rooms, kitchen, three balconies, deep freezer, television, radios and internet, for less then a two room studio apartment in downtown Bakersfield. Seriously. And it's in a great area!! The part of town is called Doqqi, it's a 5-10 minute ride to Zamelek (the neighborhood we spend the most time in) and two metro stops away from downtown. And it's family oriented, not touristic at all, annnnnd the whole building is Coptic. It's so perfect, I'm sooo proud of them for finding such a perfect place!

Their first night there we had a delicious home-cooked meal, it was so perfect. Then on monday night we spent the night there after celebrating Margaux's birthday at a restaurant called Crave and returning for the most delicious cake ever, purchased by Papa Eskander.

Sitting room number 2

Mama cookin' a delicious meal!

Coptic decorations, wooh!

Happy Birsday to you!!

The next day we went to the citadel, Sultan Hassan Mosque and the Cairo Museum!
It was an awesome full and fun day, and now I feel like I've seen every big tourist spot I need to see in Cairo.

The Citadel is gorgeous! It's a huge complex which has been rebuilt under a few different sultans and caliphs, but it was originally the palace of Sultan Saladin. Today, it's mainly a tourist stop but the mosque is still used. There is also a military compound. And it has the most incredible view of the city.

The Citadel from the street

Citadel plus cute children =)

The courtyard 

The grounds around it. That tree has been trimmed into the word "Allah!!"

Inside the Mosque

The view from the West side of the grounds,
Can you see the pyramids?!?!!

Classic team TINA: Margaux being silly, Alex photo-
bombing and Sophie taking a thousand pictures <3

<3

We walked around the grounds and then headed over to a mosque called the Sultan Hassan Mosque. It's one of the most beautiful ones I have seen, I really loved it.

Sultan Hassan Mosque from down the street

Marg and I inside

Inside the mosque and part of the courtyard

Cairo Museum front entrance

After the mosque we met up with my Egyptology class and toured the Cairo Museum!!!
Let's just say: dream come true. I mean, history right in front of you. It was the best thing ever. The museum is not really well organized and most of the artifacts are not being properly preserved, people were touching statuary, there aren't many plaques describing the pieces... but if you go with an Egyptologist, it's awesome.
We weren't aloud to take cameras inside otherwise this blog post would be very very long. But it was incredible!! I FINALLY saw all the King Tut stuff!!! He's so beautiful!! You know, his mask is worth more than the crown jewels of England? It's huge and intricate and solllllid gold. And his sarcophagi are SO cool. And his jewelry is gorgeous. Ah, I loved it so much.
It made me really mourn the fact that all the other royal tombs were robbed so early on because they must have been filled with even more beautiful things than Tut's he ruled less than 10 years, and doesn't have any monuments even!

We also saw 3,992,193,249,3943,923thousand pieces of art and statuary that we'd learned about in school, which was so awesome.
We saw the Narmer Palate!! It's a reeeally well preserved palette used for mixing paint or eye make-up and it's dated cerca 3000BC! We talk about it soo much in class because it has all your classic ancient Egyptian art on it, like the king smiting his enemy and captives and then on the other side there is Mesopotamian art. I don't expect anyone else to be excited about this buttttt, other favorites include: statues of Rahotep and his wife Nofret (the perfect example of First Intermediate art), Middle Kingdom funerary models of daily life (aka things I made for art class when I was 8), the only statues ever found of King Kufu, who built the great pyramid (its about three inches tall), statues of the very tired and hard working Senusret III and his sphinxes, the tomb inscription of Weni (which is a wonderful story about a pigmy from Nubia brought to entertain king Teti when he was little. We read the whole thing in class) and jewelry from princess' tombs from the first dynasties up until the Greeks. And most most most important and coolest thing ever: a piece of the Polermo Stone (the whole things is in Polermo, Italy. But the Polermo Stone is one of the most important artifacts of Ancient Egypt because it is a list of all the kings from the first to the fifth dynasty in order, their mothers and the Nile inundation levels. SO cool! <3)
So. I am really truly the happiest girl ever on the planet. I love this place soo much, I'm going to miss it way too much, but I'm also feeling really lucky to be going home in two weeks! I'm getting excited =)
Seeee you soooon Bakoland!!