"Row, Row, Row Your Boat..."

Hye Won's the one in the middle. This was taken at that falafel place.
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Hi there once again!

So, classes have been in session for about a week now.  So far they seem okay.  I have one class that seems pretty intense, but the others are fairly relaxed.  I'm still getting to know Cairo.  I still have yet to take the Metro.  Apparently the Metro in Cairo is really great, both clean and efficient.  They even have separate cars that are women only, which will be a pleasant break from the "friendliness" of Egyptian men, aka: constant cat calls.  So far I think only one of the other Katie's (nicknamed from here on in as "Sas") has taken it though.  Unfortunately, her experience wasn't so smooth.  Moral of her experience, one should never assume that technology in other countries functions in the same way as it does at home.  You know how on skytrain if the doors shut on you, they pop back open?  Not so in Egypt.  Fortunately, several Egyptian men ran to her rescue and manage to pry her out of the doors before the train gained considerable speed.

This was the camel that I rode when we went out to the Pyramids that day. His name was Mickey Mouse (they name everything after cartoon characters).
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My rowing skills are slowly developing.  Unfortunately, practice yesterday morning was a complete gongshow.  It was freezing cold and really windy.  We spent the first half-hour of practice trying to get all of our forms handed in (which meant one guy trying to translate them into Arabic) and money paid (for which they didn't have change and therefore we will have to try paying again on Friday).  None of us had any change to warm up before we got into the boat.  On the plus side, due to our fantastic recruiting we now have several more members.  Downside-- not a single one with any experience.  This made practice interesting as our boat was made up of a bunch of newbies, the most experienced being Sas and I, who have been on the water for a whopping 2 days.  Further compromising our efforts were several pesky motorboats that created our own version of "the perfect storm" on the Nile.  I honestly thought that we were going to capsize at one point.  Our coach was like "keep rowing," which is difficult when the oars won't even touch the water.  Just as a little sidenote-- Sas stands for "semester at sea".  She was on that boat that nearly sunk a year ago for any of you that remember that news story.  Needless to say, she has experienced waves.

Sas and me when we were at the library in Alexandria.
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Yet another funny tale involving practice: One of our new recruits is Hye Won.  She spent most of our time in the boat just sitting and watching the rest of us make fools out of ourselves.  At one point though, our coach put Hye Won in charge of steering.  I have no clue of his reasoning behind this decision.  Quite possibly because our usual "steerer" wasn't on the boat and our coach obviously had his hands too full with our little newbie team to do it himself.  Anyways, whatever the reason, lets just say it was probably a bad idea.  Poor Hye Won had no clue what to do.  I wasn't really paying attention at the time (too busy concentrating I guess).  All of a sudden I hear all this commotion coming from the back of our boat.  Our coach is freaking out and running up the boat.  In short, we had somehow managed to beach ourselves on the banks of the Nile.  Even worse, when we hit the bottom, the boat jerked, which knocked our coach off balance.  He ended up falling on Sas and barely avoided falling overboard.  Let's just say that it was an interesting practice...

Here's our entire international group on the steps of the Roman Amplitheatre in Alexandria. It's like a Where's Waldo. Try to find me. (Hint: close to the centre, but just off to the right).
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That's about all the updates for now.  I'll post something again soon.  I haven't taken any pictures recently, so the ones on this entry are just some random ones.  I've included pictures of Sas and Hye Won so you can put faces with the names.

Katie