It was about 1.5/2 hours outside of Alexandria, in a village called Kofr Sheikh (I think). For those of you who don't know, the countryside around the Nile Valley in Egypt is really, really beautiful. It's all rich greens and fields and water buffalo and goats. We drove and drove, and finally realized that once we got there we would be even more of a spectacle than we normally are. We were right! We parked the bus outside the village and walked in, where we were ushered immediately to a seating area to wait for things to get started. (Note: the whole way there we had a police escort, I think at least one car behind us and one in front. I'm used to this, but it was really confusing for some of the students, since we really don't see ourselves as being in any danger).
The bride's mother came out, kissed all of the girls hello, and then we were invited into a patio area where there was a huge long table piled with food, and no chairs. Someone else described the situation as being like one of the feasts at Hogwarts, and it was definitely similar to that. There was a very wide variety of dishes, huge platters of pastas, really tasty things that I don't even know what they were, and pretty good meat. It was just really overwhelming that these people went to such trouble for us!
After eating, we went upstairs in this decrepit-seeming building to discover a perfectly lovely apartment where the family lived (I assume). The toilet had a western-style flusher! We met millions of the bride's family and friends, each of whom immediately selected a few of the visitors to latch on to and befriend for the night. It was very sweet. We sat around for a bit, then of course had a huge dance party crammed into the little apartment (I'm trying to upload a video of that!), since the bride was still at the hairdresser. Finally, word came that she was done, so basically everyone from the village (definitely over a hundred people, maybe two hundred) all walked out to a pavilion in a neighboring field. The whole village, the road to the pavilion, and the whole pavilion itself were completely covered with strings of coloured lights. It was like a carnival!
The situation at the pavilion was very strange to us. There was a stage at front, with a band, professional sound system, a lavish throne-like chair for the bride, a table where a couple men were sitting with a box of money. The rest was all chairs where people were sitting to watch. There were two professional-looking video cameras filming the bride (and TV screens so we could see what they filmed) and everyone who came up to greet her. The bride looked absolutely beautiful; she was in this gorgeous poofy sparkly pink concoction and basically looked like a fairy princess cupcake. In the best possible way.
The whole time there was music, basically the same song non-stop, and a dude with a microphone sing-talking. At first I didn't know what he was saying, and then I thought he was announcing who was up greeting the bride, (which he was at one point I think). But, there were these men with a box of money, and I really didn't understand what they were doing or why they had to do it up on stage with the bride. We finally figured out that people were giving money (I assume for the new couple, or for the party, or something) and the dude was saying their names and stuff about them. Very interesting. It really underscored the whole carnival atmosphere of the thing. We left after not much time, but not before some of the Americans got to go up on stage and have a dance party with the bride. Of course, there was a crowd of boys/men to the side filming the whole thing on their camera phones. We are used to this by now.
One thing that I found interesting was how many men there were strutting around acting important, particularly on the stage. There was really no need, and you (or at least I) would think that the party was supposed to be all about the bride. She just sat there looking pretty and being filmed, and men strode around talking to each other about things and standing in front of her chair looking around importantly, etc. This is just my observation, not saying there was anything wrong with it, and I of course don't really know much about the party or how it was or how it was supposed to be. It just struck me as...interesting.
Fourth of July:
Our Egyptian friends (who keep hooking my friends and I up with everything) invited us late on Saturday night to go out to some beach resort place for some celebrations. So of course we went, got ridiculous, had a rousing and probably terrible rendition of the national anthem, had an obligatory dance party, probably scandalized the locals a bit, came back at like 4am, much to the disappointment of the women at the dorm.
Football!
So, football is, like, a thing here, as I'm sure you are aware. Apparently it is World Cup season or something, so there are qualifier matches? I think? Anyway, Egypt played Rwanda on Sunday, and I guess from what I hear it was important for Egypt to win (maybe teams are put in groups, and Egypt needs to beat everyone in this group?). Our awesome friends drove us to Cairo after class (naturally we left very late and there was traffic upon arrival), and hooked us up with tickets. The game itself was frustrating (and there was less dancing in my section than the last game I went to in Cairo!), since both sides, particularly Egypt, appeared to be unaware of exactly how to score a goal. They had the idea down, they knew where the goal was and that they should get the ball in that direction, but I'm not sure they knew that the ball should go IN the goal and not over or beside it. Very annoying, people do not really think the team is good, but they pulled it together quite well in the end. They scored 3 goals in the last part of the last half, one very close to the end of the game. I was happy. People were going crazy, of course, as if they could will Egypt to win through sheer force of team spirit. I think it worked.
We drove home very late after eating and having a bathroom saga at the stadium (frustrating: no bathroom in our section, difficulties pushing through the crowd to get out and back into another section, our friends didn't really want us doing that because we're American girls, etc, etc). We got home at like 3ish, again. Oh well.
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