uh-oh

I ran into some trouble again. I don't know if it was my fault, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was on my way downtown to meet my friends for a late dinner. I was dressed nicely and waited outside for a taxi, which for some reason took a lot longer than I expected. Anyway, while I was waiting at the intersection in front of my apartment, a jeep did a u-turn. It was no big deal until the car stopped in front of me and they guys started haggling me and asking me if I wanted a ride and if I wanted to hang out with them. Of course this annoyed me, but I just walked further up the street to wait for the taxi. Finally one came and the taxi driver was very nice and I was able to speak to him in Arabic. He took me to the metro station, and as I was getting out of the taxi...guess what I noticed? The jeep!! ugh and it was in an area where I had to walk in front of it and deal with more haggling. I just thought to myself, I'll get into the metro station and everything will be ok. After I bought a ticket, something caught my attention and so I turned around and to my dismay saw one of the guys from the jeep buying a ticket! oh crap. So I started walking as fast as I could to the women's section hoping there would be an old lady or guard there to chew him out if he caused me problems. Well he caught up to me and started talking to me. I did a really good job of ignoring him ( you should be proud of me Rose!) but I couldn't take it any longer so I turned around and said "I don't want to talk to you so please leave me alone!" yeah that didn't work. Then I started getting scared....but he finally left 5 minutes later. ugh what am I supposed to do! I am way to stubborn to stay in my apartment all weekend because some guys in Egypt are horrible. And it wasn't that late! like 8 pm!! And I can't depend on people coming all the way to Maadi...I could move to be closer to my friends but I really like Maadi because it isn't crowded like the rest of Cairo and I finally got everything to work in my apartment lol I'll figure something out.

But the problem is that my roomate is also having problems, and she viels herself!
One day a week she has a late class that ends at 10 pm. One night as she was waiting for a taxi home, a car stopped in front of her. The old man inside kept ushering her to get in....and he wasn't a taxi driver. He even stopped traffic! But Egyptian drivers have no patience so soon they were all honking their horns. Then the old man pulled off to the side of the road and continued to pester her....as if she was a prostitute!! Its so distgusting and now some of my friends are missing their classes or on their life because they don't want to deal with the guys.

I'm not saying that Egypt is full of bad people...its really not, but unfortunately I've met a lot of the bad ones. But distusting people live all over the world. I just received and email from my mom that one guy (I used to know him!) was arrested for indecent exposures, and some men are trying again to lure little kids out of parks, and one man became so upset that he completely destroyed a car by smashing it and setting it on fire!

Whatever happened to discipline and whenever did it become ok for people to act this way? I'm so frustrated because I don't know how to solve this problem. To me, this is terrorism because it happens everyday, and disrupts normal routines.

sorry this was depressing...the next one will be a lot better I promise!!:)