So. I haven't been able to blog about Egypt because so much happened over the span of those three days and I didn't know where to start. Honestly, I still don't but I figure if I start at the top and work my way down then I'll be able to cover everything. I have A LOT to say so please go get a snack, a blankie, throw your feet up and get comfortable as I take you on a magic carpet ride to the motherland.

(Sidenote: My jewish roomie gets so frustrated when instead of saying Egypt I say I went to Africa or the Motherland. I suppose because we weren't Sub-Saharan she thinks it doesn't count as a genuine African experience? But last time I checked Egypt is located on the continent of Africa and I feel like the impact of saying Africa is way more striking than just saying Egypt. Pray that I get to visit the Sub-Saharan before I leave so she can stop throwing shade! lol)



Touching down was so exciting. Our group of eleven could not contain ourselves and we were gushing throughout the entire descent "We're going to Africa!" "I can't believe we're actually doing this!" "We're making history!" "I hope there's a welcome party at the gate with drums and dancers..." Lol, yeah we were corny but it felt so surreal. We decided to go and booked our tickets in less than two days without much consideration of the magnitude of what we were doing and without doing any research into what we'd be doing when we got there. This was both a blessing and a curse but I'll explain that later.

We didn't land at the terminal so we had to deboard the plane by going down steps and after Tone and I made it down we were like Waittt! We need a picture! So we had to wait for the entire plane to exit and then we ran back up so someone could snap shots of our first steps into Africa. One of the flight attendants jokingly said to Tone, "Welcome Mr. President!" and our friends were making fun of us asking if we thought we were celebrities but c'mon son! Everybody needs a pic like that at some point in their life. I gotta get it off my roomies camera so I can share it with you guys. Anywho, we get into the airport, stood on the line for customs for like 10minutes and I guess security smelled the oblivious American scent on us and told us we had to purchase Visas in order to pass through customs. The Visa was only $15 but I was blown that I had to pay toll to get into Egypt. Like if I entered the country with lint in my pockets and had intentions of winging it the entire time I was there, would they have excused me from the Visa purchase process? Or would they shipped me back to my place of origin free of charge? This was the first of many unavoidable hidden fees to come.

The hostel we booked had arranged for free airport pick-up and our escort Ah'mad looked quite nice in comparison to all the other old men standing outside holding up name tags. He had on a nicely tailored shiny gray suit with black patent leather shoes and his S-curl was fresh too! And our mini-bus was super cute. The exterior was orange and yellow and the headrests all said "Welcome to Egypt" in the same font that Disney used for Aladdin. Between Ah'mad's Diddy suit and the cute bus I was convinced that our hostel was going to be even CUTER. And that was precisely the gaffle. The ride to the hostel was so misleading! The buildings we rode past along the way were beautifully designed. The Mosques were huge and we passed by one where a wedding was taking place, which we thought was super strange because it was 11pm but Ah'mad said that late weddings are commonplace within the Muslim community. Unlike Cyprus, at 11pm the main road was jam packed with traffic, all the stores were open with and the sidewalks were crowded with people. Similar to how busy Times Square is minus the bright lights. Wait, lets talk about traffic before I tell you about the hostel.

Egyptians have absolutely NO REGARD for traffic laws. I actually think people there are ticketed when they do follow the rules. A 4 lane highway is treated like a 7 lane on a regular basis. The lines mean nothing and if there's space for a car to fit then the driver will maneuver their way in at all costs. I saw no signs with the speed limit and when the highway was clear people would pull off at 120 kpm which is 75mph. And the craziest part for me was that children are not required to be in car seats. I saw so many people with infants chillin' in the passenger seats or toddlers standing up in the back of the car holding onto head rests. I even saw a child riding in the trunk of a car. Not a hatchback or a truck but the REAL trunk!! The American in me that was so angry at first "Oh my gosh, these people don't care about their kids! How could they be so reckless?" blah blah blah but then I realized that the children must not be getting injured at an alarming rate if the government allowed people to continue driving without 'proper' seats for children. I'm sorry I don't have pics of all this but my camera isn't that good and the ones I tried to take came out too dark and blurry.

Okay so back to the beautiful drive. Amidst all the beauty and obviously modern architecture there were also long stretches of ruin. Crumbling buildings of Islamic architecture that looked straight out of Aladdin (you must forgive all my references to Aladdin but that's REALLY what it looked like and i'm sure my comparisons are accurate because i watched Aladdin on YouTube the might before we left!) Imagine the United Nations being across the street from a row of burnt down brownstones. Yes, it was that drastic. But yeah so we are cruising and Ah'mad is telling us how we're going ot be doing all these WONDERFUL activities. Visiting Alexandria, taking the train to Luxor, sleeping in the desert, having dinner on the Nile, going to the mueseum, hitting the clubs etc. etc. And i'm like "Wow! That sounds great! How much does it cost?" And he goes "We'll discuss that when we arrive at the hostel." Red Flag. Why can't he tell me how much it costs right now? Does the price change from the van to the hostel? Whatever! I decide not to push the issue and go back to sight seeing. The driver made two right turns and all of a sudden its all ruin and no modern anything in sight. Which is fine, it's always good to see a city in its entirety. You can't say you've seen it all unless you've been to the hood. But we kept driving deeper and deeper in. Things got a little quiter in the van and Tone says to me "I'm so happy we got to see this part of the city, I feel like this is the real Cairo," and I swear to Jesus Mary and Joseph that no sooner than he said this did our van come to a stop. -_____- So in my best optimistic voice I asked "Are we stopping here to pick something up?" And Ah'mad replied with the biggest grin on his face "No silly! Welcome to Arabian Nights!"

So after twenty deep breaths and a woo-sah I convinced myself to get out of the car and go inside. The owner of the hostel, a lovely older Egyptian man named Abraham, was waiting in the lobby to greet us and brief us on what events/sites they had lined up for us to visit. Ah'mad was under the impression that we were staying longer than three days so almost half of the things he mentioned to us in the van were actually impossible within our short stay. According to Abraham we would only be able to see the Pyramids, have dinner on the Nile, and spend a night in the desert. The group grew frustrated with this set-up because Abraham made it seem like we didn't have any other options. The main issue was sleeping in the desert, we all weren't to keen on the idea because it was going to take Saturday entirely and half of Sunday. We opted to pay for Friday's events first and then see how we were feeling on Friday evening before we finalized the move to sleep in the desert. The trip to the pyramids plus dinner on the Nile was 240 Egyptian pounds which is only $44. Sweet deal, right?

While we were lolly-gagging in the lobby I overheard my roommate Lauren say in conversation "...Oh you mean the black girl over there?" Seeing as I was the only person she could possibly be referring to my ears instantly perked up and I jokingly replied "Why I gotta be the black girl, though?" Realistically, she could have identified me two dozen other ways. I had on an orange scarf, a green jacket, I had on my glasses, I was holding a zebra suitcase but I wasn't offended by her choice. Abraham on the other hand got defensive immediately. "Why did you call her black like it was a bad thing? You don't like black people?" I didn't want there to be a problem so I jumped in to clear it up and tried to explain to Abraham that everything was okay but he put up his hand gesturing for me to stop and explained to Lauren that his father is a black man and he loves people of all races but he has a special place in his heart for all black people and she is not to refer to me like that ever again. Then he told me to come sit by him and started telling me how I'm such a lovely brown girl and we ended up talking for quite some time about his family and how he got into the hostel business.

Having Abraham be so adamant to defend my brown skin left me bewildered. In a good way. It felt great to know that my skin was appreciated and valued enough for him to admonish her on the spot. Don't get me wrong, I KNOW and APPRECIATE my brown skin. I've just never been in a racially charged situation where someone felt the need to defend it for me. I don't think she deserved admonishing but Abraham has experienced his share of racism so he felt it necessary to put Lauren in her place. And just for the record, we've been home for two weeks and she has yet to call me "the black girl," since Abraham's talk.

Now as much as I enjoyed Abraham and Ah'mad, I was still highly disturbed by the hostel and its location. It was down a dark alley one block away from the main road and there had to be thirty stray cats in the surrounding area. I couldn't see all of 'em but I could smell and hear 'em. I shared a three bedroom with three other people and when we got upstairs I immediately went into princess mode. It was involuntary I swear but likeeeeeee on the way up the stairs we bumped into mad sketchy folks who looked like they were too old to be staying in hostels and too comfortable to look like it was a short stay. I'm talking about half naked old men in bedroom slippers carrying newspapers on the way to the bathroom. Then when we made it upstairs the room just looked frowsy. Maybe it was the dim/crackhead lighting but it just did not feel fresh. And then the bathroom?! Lawd God. It was about 6x10 ft and there was no shower stall. There was just a shower head protruding from the wall and then a 5in. wide hole in the floor which served as a drain. Seriously, all my issues with my Cyprus shower conditions went out the flippin window. A proper bathroom that only has running water 3 days a week is nothing in comparison to the primitiveness I was dealing with. When I showered the entire bathroom floor got soaked and the dirt from under my shower shoes made it muddy. It was such a mess. God blessed the feet of my friends who forgot to bring flip-flops and they managed to make it home without any fungus.

Forgive me for not taking pictures but I was traumatized/in disbelief because the pictures on the internet looked SO NICE in comparison to what was in front of my face. I'm actually kind of happy I opted not to take pictures because I wouldn't want to post anything that would hinder Abraham from bringing in new customers. His staff is really amazing and their good spirits plus hospitality totally made up for the living conditions. Secretly though, I kept wishing that one of my girls had been on the trip with me because I knew they would of had the exact same sentiments and we would have been hopping in a cab and splitting the cost of a hotel for the rest of the stay. Shoo playa, if I was a splurger I would have went ahead and got the hotel by myself but $500 for a night at the Hilton was just a bit ridiculous in comparison to my $11 a night at Arabian Nights.

A big part of why we opted to go with Arabian Nights was the pictures of the rooftop we found online. We ran up there after we checked the room out and once again we were disappointed because what we saw on-line was definitely not what we got. It looked JUST like where Aladdin and Jasmine hung out for the first time. Same view and everything. Directly behind the hostel was an empty lot full of garbage and some kids who decided the friendly thing to do was give us the finger as my friends were taking pictures of the lovely scenery. You can imagine I was less than thrilled. Everyone stayed on the roof to smoke shisha, a flavored tobacco that you smoke out of a hookah, but I went to bed early. I couldn't deal. I probably only slept for one solid hour. Between the cats and dogs fighting outside the window directly above my bed, combined with my general paranoia, I was up for a greater part of the night. At 5am I was brutally awoken out of one of my cat naps by the first of the Muslim's daily prayers, Salat-ul-Fajr, being broadcasted on a loudspeaker for the entire Islamic district to hear. There is no way you can neglect to say your morning prayers if you live within earshot of the mosque with the loud speaker.

I'll stop here because this entry is already quite lengthy and it's only the FIRST night. I'll break the trip down into three entries to make it easier for the readers. Stay tuned for more of Tracy's Travels!

P.S. For the record, at the end of the trip I was really happy that I decided to stick it through and stay at Arabian Nights. I strongly recommend that hostel to anyone traveling to Egypt but that is based SOLELY on the staff. The environment of the hostel was extremely family oriented and the staff will bend over backwards to make you feel at home. If you can look past the bathroom and the less than scenic surroundings you will totally enjoy your stay. I promise.

How You Livin' Tracy Storm?

"In mansions and Benzs! Sendin' pics to my friends and it feels stupendous!"

Lol, Okay I'm exaggerating with the mansions and Benzs bit but it really is nice out here!

I live in the city of Nicosia and my neighborhood is pronounced Mah-kay-don-nit-tissa. It's a really cute college town. There are little apartment buildings all over; some are newer than others . For instance, I live in the Intercollege Building. It looks worse than it really is and we have a lovely view of the Turkish occupied mountains as I mentioned in my last entry. The space is tight but the roomies and I make it work. I'll tell you about them and put pics of the apartment in another entry.

There are only three quirky things about living here and the issues are consistent for everyone on the island so I can't take it personal.

Quirks of Cypriot Living

1. Due to a prehistoric sewage system, toilet paper cannot be placed in the toilet. Yes, you did read that right, and now I'm sure your wondering where on earth do we put our rubbish after we've done our business. Fear not, I purchased a tiny garbage can for the bathroom and I call it the 'Doo Doo Rag Can.' We take turns removing it daily and we clean it with Lysol after every bag change. It's not as gross as one would imagine but it was definitely an unforseen obstacle.

2. Due to 4 consecutive years of drought Cyprus has developed a Water Conservation plan that regulates the distribution of Water to the neighborhoods. Sounds like a good plan, right? Maybe the U.S.A should think about doing their part in saving the world and enact a similar conservation plan for it's citizens? (All my environmentally readers should be nodding their heads right now, let's see how they feel when I tell them how it works.) In order to save water, neighborhoods only have running water for 12 hours every other day. Mackedonitissa receives running water on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays we have to use water that is stored on our roof. Each apartment has their own tank and if somehow you run out of water before it's time for a refill then tough cookies! Environmentally conscience friends are you still interested? It's actually not that bad but that might because most of my roomies only shower once a day. I'll let you know if I ever run out of water.

3. Since the Cypriots work so hard to conserve water, it's only right that they save energy as well. Rather than run water heaters all day, each apartment has a switch that allows them to turn their water heater on. It takes approximately 30-40 minutes to warm up so if you need to shower it is important to factor the warm up time in as well. For instance, last night I drank an entire bottle of water before bed in hopes that I would wake up a while before my alarm to use the bathroom. Just like clock work, I woke up at 6:45am (1 hr before my alarm) and turned on the water heater so that when I really woke up, all I had to do was jump in. Will I be able to pull that off every morning? Doubt it! But i have long breaks between most of my classes so afternoon showers will have to suffice.

If you can look past the aforementioned quality of life issues then you too could survive on the beautiful island of Cyprus.

As far as convenience, I'm located central to everything I might need. And I do mean everything.

All of my classes are 5min away walking. I can actually see my school buildings from my balcony. Theres a 24hr Kiosk across the street from me which is the equivalent to a 7/11. Its stocked with snacks, school supplies, greeting cards etc. You name it and they either have it or know where to send you to get it. The staff speaks minimal English but they pick up on key words and I always thank them profusely in Greek.

(Thank you = Efharisto)


There is also a decent sized mall across the street as well. It's called the Mall of Engomi and they have a Macy's like department store called Debenhams, a clothing store called Oviesse with awesome prices but not so great merchandise in my opinion, a giant Supermarket called Carrefour which is like a super Wal-Mart (groceries on the bottom, electronics on the top) and lastly a Super Home Center which is like a small scale Ikea. All of the things I need to survive are two minutes away from my house. I'm thinking about staying. This beats being across the street from Save-A-Lot BY FAR! Kidding... I think.


Entertainment wise, theres a club called Galelea around the corner that charges 5 euros ($7) for ladies on Saturday nights and it's open bar. I went my first weekend here and it was similar to the club scene in America. Everyone was dressed to the tee and everyone was wearing black. Meanwhile, my touristy self was in there in a cardigan and jeans looking out of the loop. I swore it was an "All Black Everything" themed party but when I walked past this weekend, all the party go-ers looked exactly the same. The meditteranean music was amazing! Seriously, anyone who enjoys belly dancing would have had a blast because people were literally on the bar belly dancing and it wasn't even a big deal.

For the days when I just want to have a drink and enjoy good conversation, I can walk to Brickyard Bar which also happens to be extremely close to my apartment. Friday nights they have Karaoke (I was Beyonce and every rapper on Rapper's Delight my first night in) and on Saturday nights its Old School night (the DJ surprised me and did a 20min reggae set! Yardies get love EVERYWHERE!). They also have a pool table in the back. I plan to be skilled shooter when I get back. For now, the natives let me cheat =).



I definitely have more to share but I'll save that for another entry. Can't give you all the juice one time! Wish me safe travels to Egypt and I promise to have yummy stories for you when I get back. Literally!

Kalinikta =)