but i still want to see HSM3

It rained this weekend! It was on Friday morning so obvs I was asleep, but still: rain! I have not seen rain in four months, which is really weird to think about sometimes. Of course, there is no drainage system whatsoever in this country, so all the rain creates giant puddles/lakes in all the streets and tons of cars stall out after driving directly through them. At one point we passed streets with, like, post-Katrina New Orleans levels of flooding. From like one hour of rain. It's just that bad.

The rest of the weekend was good. I went to City Stars for a movie and Mexican food with N and S3 (S3 is the Egyptian friend who lives in Alexandria where I stayed last month). I seriously miss Mexican food. Whether it's one of the really good places near 26th and Cal where I went with Team Thomas, or Tacos del Lago in Evanston, or even Chipotle (don't judge me!), good Mexican food is just lacking in Cairo. So we ate at On The Border instead. (Again: don't judge me!) And then we saw Burn After Reading, which I thought was funny. I was pushing for High School Musical 3, but was outvoted. No worries, I'll get 'em next time.

On Saturday night I went to a little gathering for the Jews in Cairo, which we started talking about doing on Yom Kippur. There ended up being like maybe 25-ish people there, which was pretty nice turnout I think. We had Goldstar (!), Israeli wine (!!), kosher food (read: vegetarian), and plenty of nice Jews from America, Canada and Israel. Some of us are working in Cairo, others are students at AUC or elsewhere, others have grants or fellowships, or are just learning Arabic, so we made for a pretty varied group I think. We had a good time and exchanged many numbers, so I am hopeful that we will do something like that again.

The entire evening made me want to sing that old camp standby, "Wherever You Go (There's Always Someone Jewish)" and you can watch adorable children singing it here.

Also, the absentee ballot mystery was solved. It turns out that it went to my home in America instead of coming to Egypt, still not entirely sure why -- my best guess is that I did not format my address correctly, or the international zip code was not recognized or was incomplete, or some other small detail. Who knows for sure. But in any case, my parents were nice enough to ship it express, I filled it out, and it is back en route to NJ right now. Great success!