Reality

There are some things that make life all too real.  The protest of a nation's people is one of them.  I will get to what happened today later in this post but I'm going to cover the lighter side of these past two days first.

Yesterday was a relatively calm but tedious day. On the way to the bus for the New Cairo campus I saw a tourist guard and a police officer trying to move a police car with a dead engine from the street.  While the tourist guard was pushing the back of the car something fell from his belt to the ground with a loud clunk.  It was his gun.....  He scrambled to pick it back up but that didn't stop me and the my I was with from gawking and chuckling a bit.  In my head I thanked god that it didn't somehow go off and thought "Wow, at least it wasn't one of those guns that was half the size of me."

   During orientation (classes don't start until the 30th) I finally got my bus pass settled and tried to get my student visa when the power went off on campus. It came back on after an hour but I ended up just saying forget it and headed back to the buses for the dorms.  On my way back though I was able to snap a photo of one of the paintings in a campus building.

It might actually be painted on an elevator door now that I look at it. One way or another it's absolutely gorgeous.

Back in Zamalek (The region of Cairo that my dorms are in)  I got a sim card for local phone calls then wandered around for two hours with Andrea and Jen trying to find a place to eat called Baraka.  Turns out that Baraka is basically a street stand but at that point we were too hungry to care about quality.  The roach crawling up the wall didn't even dissuade us, especially Andrea who had frequented the food stands of Mexico City in the past.  The Kofta sandwich I got wasn't bad and I didn't get a stomach ache from hell either, but I think that food stands aren't really my style.  Sorry roaches.

Today I had intended to wake up early and take a tour of Old Cairo.  When 6:50 a.m. came though I said forget it.  Due to jet lag I had only slept for 4 hours on Sunday night and didn't get to sleep until 2 a.m. last night.  I ended up in bed until 2 p.m.  and woke up more refreshed than ever.

Shortly after I went to try out the McDonald's with Jamila and Racquel.  I ended up getting this.

It.Was.Good.

And look!  Packaging made in Egypt!  (not China)

Afterwards I went back to my room then took a taxi to Tahrir Square.  I stayed far back, right next to the taxi, but here are some pictures I was able to get of the protests that are still going on as I write this.

Today was a public holiday in honor of the police.  Since the police are basically Mubarak's main force of public suppression you can imagine why the protests were held today. So many Egyptians came to speak out against the government. They were actually organized on facebook.  So many people came out to join and the pictures I snapped were from only one protest in the Cairo area.  People were coming back with bleeding wounds on their head from being hit by the police.  In other areas tear gas was used and students who went on the bus for a trip told me that they saw a body in the street on the way back.  Al-Jazeera calls this the biggest Egyptian protest in 30 years. 

All of those people were at the protest.  They completely filled Tahrir Square.

The sign translates to this:

"-I am not overcome

-I am a person

-I don't want to be insulted

-I want to live in peace

-Isn't it too much men?"

This one says in English "We are all here until Mubarak resigns."

If you can't understand why the protests were so big know that 40 million Egyptians live on less than two U.S. Dollars a day.  I can't even but a decent meal here for that much.  

Reality can sometimes slap you in the face.  It did for me today.  I don't think anything will come of these protests, at least not while I'm here.  What I do know is that if a large percentage of the Egyptian population remain in poverty, out of work, or in jail for speaking their minds Mubarak's police may not be able to hold them back for many more years.