So I am still sick.  Black lung, bird flu, common cold, or whatever it may be, I am not letting it ruin the last few days I have in Cairo with Brandon.  Dr. Brandon has been great, and I do think the medicine is helping.  Brandon was kind of sick too, but I think he has developed a robust immune system living here, so he seems to be pretty much better.

At the beginning of the week, we spent a couple of days on the couch doing nothing except coughing, sneezing, and eating take out food, and aside from the persistent cough, I feel a lot better.

On Wednesday, we went to the Khan al-Khalili, Cairo’s biggest souk which dates back to the 14th century!  It was a lot of fun… tons of vendors, people, and LOTS of really cool stuff ranging from beautiful handmade wood furniture to pyramid snow globes.  Perhaps the most memorable moments however, were when… more than once… Brandon was… mistaken for Leonardo di Caprio, hahaha!  One of the times, someone said “Titanic.”  It was pure gold.  After a quick google image search, I’ve decided it has to be the hair and maybe his eyebrows, but otherwise, I’m not convinced.  It was funny.

Thursday was wonderful.  We picked up some fateer from the local fateer place in Maadi and had a picnic on a felucca on the Nile.  Feluccas are big, low sailboats, and apparently, the perfect place for a picnic, and fateer is somewhat like pizza in that it comes in a pizza box.  The dough is flaky, and the toppings are stuffed inside.  We topped things off with dessert… banana fateer which had powdered sugar and creme on top.  It was amazing.  Floating down the Nile was very relaxing, and slowly the noise of honking car horns and traffic (a constant anywhere in the city), faded away into near silence.  It was lovely!

P.S. I also got to experience the great winter storm of ’09 today.  I think I felt two raindrops and Brandon claims to have felt three.  Before it hit, I checked weather.com which said it was 70 degrees and the forecast was “SAND.”  I kid you not.  I never knew sand was a weather phenomenon, but apparently, it counts.  Now it says “widespread dust.”  We went to the store, and it doesn’t feel like a sandstorm… and having lived in Phoenix for nine years, I’ve been in many.  Definitely no haboob today.

My first Corvair spotted in Egypt!

1960 Corvair 500?

Almost.  Actually it is the quintessential Egyptian taxi cab, a 60’s Fiat 1500.  I love these cars.  They look just like a squished up 1960 Corvair, right down to the backwards ball-cap extension over the rear windshield.  Truth be told, the template for Emily’s hottest-item Corvair cookies at last years Portland Corvair club Christmas auction were actually modelled on one of these.  Un-photoshopped versions below.

Unrelated update:  my kitchen window looks across a central air-shaft into the kitchen of my neighbors.  There are only two flats to a floor in my building, but I have yet to actually meet these neighbors.  In fact, I have only ever occasionally seen a single older woman through our kitchen windows, which are raised high enough to only reveal a head.  As I understand it, there are varying degrees in which the Muslim women here keep themselves covered from the prying eyes of the male populace.  The most common of which is their hair.  I am in my kitchen quite often, much to the obvious dismay of my neighbor.  On several occasions I have noticed her over there, and I presume she has noticed me as well, because the next time I look she suddenly has a scarf on her head.  I feel bad knowing that she feels she has to go to this trouble within the comforts and otherwise privacy of her home.  But there is nothing I can do about the design of the building.  Perhaps this has never been a problem before since the kitchen is predominantly the domain of the female here.  I am certain a man lives there too, yet for all my time spent in the kitchen I have not once spotted him across the way.  Anyway, I just went in to check on my dinner and saw that curtains have been conspicuously installed.  Okely dokely, neighborino.  Malish.