feeling breezy

Last night I went to a good-bye dinner for my friend W, who has gone to work in Switzerland. We had dinner at this Korean restaurant, and while I am now familiar with several of the dishes on the menu (thanks to Jaye for that one!), I have to wonder if it's really possible to find authentic Korean food in Cairo. I'm guessing probably not, though it was still good. Afterwards I went over to my friend N's to hang out and watch movies -- have successfully gotten her hooked on V Mars, so obviously this is excellent.

As we were walking over to N's apartment for said movie night, we realized that we were experiencing something all too rare in Cairo summers: a breeze! I mean sure, sometimes I get hit with a blast of delightfully smoggy air when I ride in taxis with all the windows down, but it's hardly the same thing. In Chicago I was a chronic weather-checker (this is most definitely the fault of my mother, who considers the Weather Channel legitimate entertainment. Hi Mommy!), but there is no real point in that when I live in the desert in the summer. Every day is the same: ridiculously hot and very sunny. One morning it was cloudy when I woke up and I almost went into shock, but it was all cleared up by the time I left for work. It is not scheduled to rain until late October, maybe November. Still, last night it was around 85 degrees (that's about 27 Celsius for those keeping track), and with a nice, cool breeze that made it downright comfortable outside. Exciting!

Kind of a lazy weekend, though we all wanted to go out as much as possible in preparation for a month of not going out at all. Even though some places are still open (like the always-awesome, expat-filled British Club), enough people in my extended group of friends are Muslim that we want to be respectful. Plus, who knows if I will ever be in the Middle East again during Ramadan? It will be cool to get the authentic experience. Anyway, we went out Thursday and Friday nights, including my first-ever trip to After 8, this really cool place downtown. It's rather smoky with a small dance floor, and they often have DJs or some variety of live music. It was a lot of fun, though the DJ was kind of weird -- odd combos of techno, hip hop and baladi music.

Baladi is kind of all-purpose adjective to describe something typically Egyptian. Literally, it means "national," (balad = country), but people use it to describe anything. For example, the little grocery stalls all over are "baladi grocery stores," and when I stopped buying Herbal Essences shampoo (so freaking expensive) in favor of the cheap Egyptian brand, I could justify it as "baladi cosmetics." And so on.

Also, Egypt starts daylight savings time early, so we in Cairo have already fallen back one hour. Yes, I did enjoy my extra hour of sleep, thanks! So this means that until you slackers in America catch up, there is a 6-hour time difference instead of a 7-hour one (for the East Coast -- people on Central now have 7 hours instead of 8, etc.). This might make it a bit easier for you to catch me, at least temporarily.