Pictures

To the left is our lovely bathrooms (the washer destroys clothes so I plan to wash mine in a bucket). To the right is the room I share with Habiba. It's pretty comfortable and a nice size. Below is the view from my window.

Some things that I forgot to mention in my post yesterday...

First of all, I forgot to mention the constant supervision that as females we are under here in the dorms. The formal rules for Egyptian female students living here are that they are not allowed to leave the dorms after 7 pm any night of the week, and if they are already outside of the dorms at that time, must return by 10 pm at the latest any night of the week (I've heard horror stories of people being locked out and having to sleep outside, which seems somewhat counterproductive to me...). As Americans, we have a curfew of 11 pm on weeknights and 1 pm on weekends, although they won't give us (much) trouble if we come back late in a large group, especially if we are accompanied by males. Additionally, the "Supervisor" has a roster with all of our names in it, and checks off that we return each night. The other night, I checked in when I got back around 9:30 pm, but there must have been some mix-up and I wasn't marked off because the Supervisor herself actually called our floor at 10 pm to make sure that I was there. My roommate Habiba describes it as feeling like "chickens in a cage." I'm not a huge fan, but I appreciate the fact that we are given more freedom as Americans. I would be so frustrated if I were in her position (the only added bonus is that if our Egyptian roommates are out with us, they are subject to our curfew instead of theirs).

Last night we watched the Egypt versus Cameroon match in Halwiyaat Misr ("Sweets of Egypt," a dessert place) which was very entertaining. Egypt won, so of course there was celebration on the streets afterward. Everyone is eagerly anticipating the match between Egypt and Algeria which will take place this Friday.