book fair et cetera

I feel like I'm somehow caught in a trap of writing blog posts that sound disinterested and unenthusiastic and melancholy even though that's totally not the mood I'm trying to convey. Sorry about that. In case I haven't said it enough: I'm in Cairo! It's super exciting! I'm in a big city instead of a college town! I'm in Arabia instead of Amurrica! There's great food and great people and really what more can you ask for in life? So yeah. Things are busy and awesome and yay. Case in point:

So apparently there's this crazy book fair that happens in Cairo each year. Yesterday after class, me and some of the Egyptian students whom I had met earlier went to that. It was pretty far from Dokki, and huuuuuge, so we ended up wandering around there for hours. I mean, you know how I am with bookstores, haha, and this was about a million of them put together. It was really exciting. My research mentor back home (for whom I'm technically supposed to be doing 8-10 hours of work a week right now ... oops ... will get on that) wants to do a project on representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic children's books. Fascinating, right? So I bought a ton of قصص نبوية to look over and read, and inshallah there'll be some interesting visual themes that emerge. That's the goal, at least.

There were lots of other books too, of course, and of course I wanted to buy them all, but I was short on cash and settled for a book of Darwish's poetry rather than translations of Harry Potter and Tintin, which I also desperately wanted to buy. Maybe I can go back sometime. Not sure when it ends. Should figure that out.

But yeah, it was a fun day :) Photos:

Us.

Requisite photo of Michelle Obama, I guess.












Tents and tents of books.
Which is to say: Paradise.

Again with the puppets!
Why do they seem to be this
semester's recurring theme?

Stacks of used American textbooks.
3 LE apiece.
Remember those math and lit books, anyone?!



Anyway, after that, we headed back to Amideast for movie night, and watched The Yacoubian Building. It's in Arabic (with English subtitles), based on a novel by an Egyptian author/dentist who apparently lives near one of our program directors. Anyway, it was a realllly good movie. I mean, a little traumatizing. One of the more depressing statements on the human condition that I've recently encountered. But I really want to see it again, soon. Hm. You should too!

Okay that's it for now. Later!