We hit the ground in style here in Cairo.
We hop in a cap and find our Professor Scott Hibbard's flat in Maadi a small suburb of Cairo. He generously puts us up for a our first week in Cairo and shows us around the town. There are two other DePaul University grads staying with our professor as well.
On our first day we went on a walking tour around Old Cairo and the Citadel. We saw a few different mosques and had a relaxing day.
Through these DePaul friends we met Siad who goes to DePaul but grew up in Egypt. Now Siad has hooked us up hardcore with entertainment and fun. We spent our second day in Cairo out on his boat on the Nile River enjoying the sun.
On our third day in Egypt we drove with Siad and his driver up to Alexandria, and had a fantastic time. We started at the Library at Alexandria - the modern version. The old one is about 700 meters off the coast underwater. Then we took a long tour of the Alexandria Citadel. Then we went and had some amazing sea food at the perfect hole in the wall restaurant. Amazing shrimp pasta and soft shelled crabs. Then we went and stayed at his amazing seven bedroom villa.
The Citadel of Alexandria
The Alexandria Library
We then spent a few low key days getting oriented in our new city where we are going to spend three months learning Arabic. We signed up for language classes at ILI.
The next step was finding a new home. Our professor has been amazing but we couldn't stay there forever. So after viewing a dozen different apartments we finally settled on a quaint two bedroom in Zamalek, an island in the middle of the Nile River, and within walking distance of our new language school.
Our new flat
We spent Christmas Eve at the fancy Semiramas InterContinental Hotel, and treated ourselves to Room service. It was a fantastic decision and made being away from our families tolerable. We checked in to our room at 3 pm and didn't leave the room until 2 pm the next day. As we checked out of the hotel Santa Clause came waltzing through the lobby handing out candy canes. We were even surprised with some massages from Kathy as we checked out which we quickly scheduled and enjoyed thoroughly!
