Bahrain and United Arab Emirates

On December 21, 2007 I travelled to Bahrain to visit my friend Maryam. This is the second time I have visited her in Bahrain. I met her at a leadership conference in Europe in 2004, and have been good friends with her ever since. It was really fun to see her and her family again and speak a little Arabic...even though Bahraini Arabic is much different than Egyptian Arabic. It totally threw me off guard!! Also, Bahrain is beautiful!! There is no pollution and trash in the streets, and everyone lives in huge villas and drive really nice, clean cars! I almost felt at home...except it was very expensive!!! haha oh well, I window shopped at the malls instead...and I think I saw half the population of Saudi Arabia. Many of them had a vacation due to Eid al -Adha. And Bahrain is an easy drive over the King Fahd Causeway from Saudi Arabia. I was watching the news and they reported that the Saudi Arabians spent $15 million dollars in Bahrain in one week!! Talk about wealth!! Even though I had already been to Bahrain, I learned a lot more about it. I visited the public beach, explored some more tasty restaurants, saw the Alumni country club, and the new financial buildings that were under construction when I was there in 2005. I also learned that the island used to be completely covered in palm trees and is considered to be the place of the Garden of Eden. To read more history, check this out: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107313.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain


One week later I flew to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates to visit my roommate (Petra) from Seattle. She is American but her family has worked in hospitals in the Middle East her entire life. And I have to say that Abu Dhabi is amazing!! It is very similar to Bahrain in that everything is clean, quite, and fancy but there is a lot more vegetation....but on the downside, Abu Dhabi uses the most water in the world. oh well, its worth it because it is absolutely gorgeous! I spent my days hanging out with her crazy high school friends, being spoiled in the spas with a Moroccan bath, facial, and body massage, and they put Henna on my hands. What a tough life! hahaha. I was even able to celebrate New Years in one of the coolest cities in the world! It was really great:) Unfortunately I became really sick and slept almost 2 days straight. But I did manage to gather some strength to visit Dubai for 3 hours. The main mall was decorated in the Chronicles of Narnia theme, the skyscrapers were extremely tall, and the burj of Dubai was as awesome of the pictures. I also visited the Dubai cultural center. Its amazing how quickly Dubai has developed! In the 1930's Dubai consisted of Palm tree huts, and now it is one of the most modern and richest cities in the world! It's amazing what technology can do! For more information of Dubai and Abu Dhabi check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Dhabi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai


I loved the two countries and I would definitely return in the future!!

Bahrain and UAE

James's visit

My friend James from my university came and visited me in Egypt. It was great to see him again and show my new life in Cairo. And he definitely had a culture shock! He was scared of the crazy driving, happy the food was cheap and tasty, surprised that people held tradition very seriously and was able to celebrate the Muslim Holiday: Eid al-Adha. Eid al-Adha is a Muslim holiday to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael. The event happened where Allah ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son in order to test his faith. Abraham was very faithful and as he was about to sacrifice his son, Allah supplied a lamb to be sacrificed instead. In Christianity and Judiasm it is believed that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Issac...one of the significant differences between the religions. Anyway, the holiday is very important. It honors an important prophet, brings families together and everyone walks around town showing off their new clothes. The holiday begins on the 10th day of the Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca...that they must complete once in their life). On that day, Muslims are expected to dress their nicest and pray a special prayer in a mosque. Then, those that have the money to do so, slaughter a sheep (or sometimes goat, cow, camel) in a traditional manner and donate a third of it to the poor. Then they celebrate with family gatherings and eat the remaining meat. It was fun to be in Egypt during that time because they take their holiday very seriously (more than other countries in my opinion...well probably not Saudi Arabia:) ) And my friend James (along with my friend Erik...he was in my colloquial class) was able to spend the night at my friend Mahmood's house and witness the slaughter of a cow. yuck! but its a new experience!!:)

James of course was able to visit the pyramids (we rode horses around them!! with my friends Erik, Hesham, and Moustafa), the citadel (where the Mohamed Ali mosque is located) and the famous bazaar. Unfortunately I left him in Egypt to visit my friends in Bahrain and UAE....but my friends took care of him and he also travelled to Alexandria and Aswan, Luxor (where the majority of the famous pharonic temples are located). I hope he had fun...it was nice to see him at least:)

James Visit

Alexandria

I finished finals Dec 13th and was so happy to be done. I really needed a break...even though I just had Thanksgiving vacation. Oh well. I even managed to pull straight A's! To celebrate the end of school I went to Alexandria with a few of my friends. Alexandria was founded as the capital of Egypt by Alexander the great in 332 BC and became one of the greatest cities in the world. It is also believed that it thrived as a Jewish city and Coptic Christianity was founded there. After Alexander's death, Ptolemy took over the city and helped its sophistication flourish. He even founded the great library that held thousands of manuscripts and scrolls from famous scholars of history, philosophy and religion. Unfortunately the library burned down. Alexandria is also known for its lighthouse, catacombs, and recently a new bridge.

Alexandria is a beautiful city and I had a hell of a time getting there. To begin with, I had to meet my friends at the train station. No big deal, except I didn't know exactly where it was and I arrived before my friends. I asked a little girl where the train station was, but she pointed me down an alley and there was no way I was going down there! I tried walking around a little bit, but became lost even more. I finally got the guts to ask some security guards and they pointed me in the right direction:) My friends still hadn't shown up so I decided to buy the train tickets for them...but when I went to buy the 9:30 train tickets the man at the counter told me that the time didn't exist and the next train would come at 11 am. oh no!! It takes about 3 hours to get to Alexandria and we were only going to be there for one day. Once my friends showed up we decided to take a taxi but no one would drive the distance and they wanted way too much money. Anyway we ended up squishing ourselves in the back of a micro-bus. Luckily it was an easy and an uneventful ride. The driver dropped us off in the middle of a street and we had no idea where we were but luckily a man spoke English and helped direct us to the train station and corniche (boardwalk to the water). The walk to the corniche was amazing. The streets were not as crowded as Cairo, there was a clear blue sky and even some rain! The taxis didn't honk their horns, the buildings had European influence, and it was really nice to see something different. And to top it off the view was amazing! And of course the Mediterranean Sea was never ending. My friends and I strolled along the corniche and I even managed to embarrass everyone and fall two times lol. While we were walking we spotted some fishermen pulling in nets. We stopped and watched them only to discover that they were bringing in very small fish. After that we were hungry and decided to walk to a well known Greek restaurant but it was too far away and so we acted as dorky tourists and rode a horse drawn carriage. It was actually fun and worth it because the food at the restaurant was delicious! haha we stayed at the restaurant for 4 or 5 hours and watched the sunset over the water. I have to say it was a wonderful location. To top it off we visited the Alexandria Library...very modern and cool looking. I think I could actually get some homework done there!!:) After that we took the train home and ran into some more problems when we found out that the lady gave us tickets for 2:30 pm even though we asked for 7!! But the crew members were generous and let us stay on the train in the smoking section between the cars. Although we had many troubles getting to Alexandria and back home, it was a great experience. We learned to handle stressful situations and visited one of the greatest cities in Egypt's history!

Enjoy the pics....
Also, for more information on Alexandria check out these websites:
http://www.halexandria.org/dward019.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria

Alexandria