Sunday, 25 November 2012

tahrir-craziness


It has been quite a long time since I’ve written.  I’m sitting in ‘Costa Coffee’ which some will recognize as a European franchise similar to starbucks.  Its close to where Luther is tutoring so I’m killing some time here before heading home.  He put a whole chicken out to thaw but at 7:30-8 when I get home theres no WAY I’m cooking that entire thing lol.

I felt compelled to write even though things have been quite busy.  Things in Ciaro (specifically, tahrir square) have gotten kind of crazy.  So just so everyone knows, most locals don’t venture near  tahrir square on protest days because everyone knows that it is the extremists who cause the trouble for everyone.  So unless you feel like getting into a fight for no reason, people just carry on with their lives outside of the square. Luther and I have no reason to go down there and its about a 40 minute drive from where we live.  Normally we pass through when going to tutor in Dokki but we have been going around it lately just to be safe.  On Wednesday I took a cab through it and it was kind of cool to see.  Lots of burning flags and yelling but most people were grabbing koshari and shawarma (awesome Egyptian fast food) Clearly, one cannot protest on an empty belly!  My cab driver was explaining to me that its harmless right now because the people who are peaceful choose to protest early in the evening and the extremists come out at night.

Nothing out of the ordinary has happened. On thursday, a few kids were absent but it was more because of the traffic that protest days cause (most main streets in cairo run through tahrir)- the kids would end up being an hour or more late for school.

Today the entire faculty was called down and reminded about safety/seclusion procedures and evacuation instructions.  The returning teachers tell me its nothing to worry about and just make sure you have some water and canned stuff just in case.  They also said its not uncommon to cancel school on days because the commute could be another 2 hours longer than it has to.  So that being said, school is cancelled on tuesday afternoon! :) 

Luther and i are going to go to egyptian wal-mart tomorrow (carrefour) and stock up on stuff...plus we have no groceries and having been living on OTLOB for a few days now (some of the things we have ordered...indian...korean...japanese...subway...hardees...- its a terrible addiction! but an incredibly convenient and cost effective addiction!)
hmm...what else...

OH- there was 2 flaming cars on the cornishe (road that runs along the nile) on the bus ride home on thursday.  That’s it.  I don’t even know if it had to do with the protests or if it was just…crazy cairo traffic lol

p.s. that reminds me…on Thursday- our bus HIT someone. He was OK..but not such a pleasant sound to hear..

No comments:

Post a Comment