The Longest Day I've Ever Lived (Part 1)

I'm finally 21 in both the U.S. and Egypt! It has been the longest day of my life. It is almost 10 p.m. and I have only taken two substantial naps (approx. 4 hours) in the past two or three days. (Honestly, I couldn't tell you exactly how long it has been since I left; like I said earlier, my time table is all messed up.) But who's complaining? We've been making some token statements like, "When in Egypt" and "You Only Visit Egypt Once" a.k.a. Y.O.V.E.O. (for those of you that love to say Y.O.L.O.)

To recap our long adventure to the country, we started with a 10 p.m. flight out of Chicago O'hare. The flight was about 10.5 hours and it was a pretty great experience. We all had our own individual touchscreens on the head rest in front of us. We could watch movies, t.v. shows, play games, and music. We could also watch and track the flight. Nobody went hungry; we were fed dinner after takeoff (so about midnight..) and I forced myself to wake up for that. Then supposedly we were given a snack and breakfast, but I slept through both of those meals. They also gave us pouches with socks, eye masks, lip balm, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and ear plugs. I used the socks because my feet were FREEZING! We got to Istanbul, Turkey around 5 p.m. (in Turkey time). The group I was with sat down for a meal; I got a Mediterranean Sandwich which I am super upset that I forgot to take a picture because it was delicious! After breakfast lunch? "dinner" we wandered the airport because we had 7 hours to kill. We stumbled on a Starbucks and a hotel lobby (connected to the airport) where we sat and waited for the time to go by. The flight from Istanbul to Cairo was just as awesome. It was only about 2.5 hours and we still got fed a meal (which was in the middle of the "night" again). I met an Egyptian friend who spoke very little English so we had a fun time trying to figure out what each other was saying. We had a very nice conversation, and he was the first to wish me a happy birthday!

We arrived in Cairo and did have some people with missing luggage. After waiting for a bit we took the bus to our hotel. The drive was pretty long, but our driver took us through the city instead of around it. Our professor, Dr. Hamad, says that Cairo is magical at night because during the day it is full of people and at night most people clear our of the city. Alex and I gawked out the windows, taking notes of all the interesting things we saw.

Some things we noticed..
-The apartments, schools, company buildings, roads, etc. were all smashed together, condensed into such tight areas. There was definitely no room for green grassy yards or anything.
-The first true democratic presidential election is next week so there were a ton of billboards along the highway with faces of all the men running.
-Things stacked as high as possible on cars.. one car at the airport had suitcases packed so high, and a truck on the highway had cardboard boxes packed in its truck bed so high they were at eye level with us in our tour bus!
-People driving with no headlights.. someone said they did that because they didn't want to cause an irritation to people driving at them with the lights being so bright.. then he said they were just stupid
-Lots of half-built buildings. This is due to credit problems since the revolution.
-The shapes of the buildings
-Lots of English words on signs and buildings which I wasn't expecting 

Luggage stacked high on taxi

This is super blurry, but just an example of some of the buildings we saw! A lot of dome shapes and very extravagant!  Many of the housing/apartment areas had big arch entrances.

We arrived at the hotel, which is beautiful! I showed some pictures on my last post, but I will probably add more in the next 4 days. I'm going to stop here because I am only half way through.. (hence "The Longest Day I've Ever Lived Part 1") I apologize if this was super lengthy! But ahh I'm in Egypt! It's still pretty surreal.

We were pretty stoked that our hotel room had a balcony! 

Oh, and we can see some pyramids from one of the windows in our Club Lounge!.. you'll see in Part 2.