just_cyd | post-cairo miscellany

four different people (men) asked me if i was Egyptian. all four were surprised to hear that i have no egyptian ancestry. Eastern European (German, Polish, Hungarian), definitely; Egyptian, i highly doubt it. I don't see what about me that they think looks Egyptian. 99% of the Egyptians i met were dark-haired and very dark-complected. while i do tan easily (but not as easily as i did as a kid), my skin has a more pink-ish tone to it, while Egyptians have a more olive tone to their skin. i'm more likely to turn pinker/redder than darker brown. perhaps it's my build ~ i saw very few egyptian women that looked super-thin or petite. most women had a rather stocky build, like i have.

now that i think about it, i think the only egyptian women i spoke to were Widad, the woman in the Duty Free shop, and the woman doing the security at the Cairo airport. I'd nod and smile at women on the street or on the Metro, and schoolgirls would ask us our names, but that was it. strange to me, but probably normal for this part of the world. must learn more...

i don't remember nearly as much as i thought i would, and certainly not as much as i'd have liked. i'm having a really hard time identifying things in a few pictures, and i'm really kicking myself for not taking better notes on the specifics of what we did. of course, it's not like me to make note of or recall detail.

i'm frustrated with myself for my lack of preparation pre-trip (learning about the city, country, customs or language). i'm also frustraed at my seeming inability to figure out how to research or learn more about something like the pyramids, or the Copts, or even just the country in general. It'll be 10 years come June that i quit college ... have i really lost that much??

i was surprised by my desire to want to start speaking German, French, or anything foreign once i got on my flight to Frankfurt. it's like hearing all those Germans kicked my brain into "foreign language" mode, and what little German and French i knew came bubbling to the surface. My first full day in Cairo, I found myself wanting to speak French, not English. i felt awful that i didn't know a single word of Arabic.

that said, i did NOT dream in arabic during this trip. what dreams i had were in English, not that those dreams had a lot of dialogue. i was both upset and relieved by that. I found it very unnerving to dream in three languages while in Germany 15 years ago, but at the same time, it was cool because i understood everything in those dreams.

i didn't notice this til i got home, but the lack of humidity affected my hair. while it wasn't jet-straight during my trip, it most definitely was a mass of springy corkscrew curls like it is today, a humid and rainy day. i wonder if a long-term visit to such a climate would rid me of my curls forever??

getting to see a country and culture and general way-of-life so very different from my own has been good for me. i've been much to stagnant lately ~ i needed to be shook-up a bit.

Just Cyd.