Obama is coming....

....And Egypt is faking its cleanliness. This is the first time that I have seen clean streets in Cairo! It was a nice change too. In order to prepare for Obama, the Egyptian government is cleaning the streets (ie: finally picking up the trash, and using the street cleaner trucks), repainting roads, adding gardens to the Cairo University, and replacing old gates. This is all really great but its also funny because they are only cleaning and painting the areas that Obama will see. Meaning: only some sections of streets are repainted and only the front of the University is remodeled. We (Egyptians and Americans) are joking that once Obama leaves the government will dump all the trash back onto the streets, take away the paint, and undo all the gardens lol. We shall see.

I'm also curious as to how crowded Cairo will be since a lot of streets will be blocked off and a lot of people (microbus drivers and Ahwa owners (the cheap coffeehouses with plastic chairs that are located on the streets) aren't allowed to go to work today).

Someone sent an email and stated:

Hi,

Thought of sharing this cute link http://www.america.gov/sms.html This is to register to get txt msgs about speech form the state Dept.

I'm just frustrated, one person can come and just block the whole city(Capital has 20Mil), I'm travelling to Alex tonight just to run from Cairo!
Frustrating things: Lanes are painted until a certain point and they don't finish the whole street!! :s He is going to visit all around! Streets are blocked (i.e. airport road from 8am-10am) and so on (read http://www.masrawy.com/News/Egypt/Politics/2009/june/3/traffic.aspx use google translator or google webpage translator, it talks when will be streets blocked. I just hope he wont decide to come visit korba!
To be honest the same happened (BUT no street were cleaned or painted because they are already clean and painted and have lanes!) in Dubai, UAE, for Bush's visit, streets were blocked as well and it was for the first time in the Dubai raining that heavily for 3 days! and the country is not ready for rains at all.

Anyway, lets (Us Arabs and the Muslim world) wait and see what he has to tell us.



Despite all the jokes and negative connotations, I'm really excited that Obama is coming. Today, I will be closer to him than I would be in America! Too bad I'm just a lowly student with no pull,....it would have been awesome to see his speech in person! But no such luck, so my roommates and I will just go somewhere with a tv and watch him. Hope he does a good job...I need to be able to walk home! lol