oh my. it's been too long. and i've been avoiding posting about my new year's eve for a lot of reasons. but i've decided it's time. unfortunately there are few pictures of the evening (thank god) but i'll try and paint you a picture with words. new year's eve in cairo eludes most of the population here in terms of the way we normally celebrate it, but the wealthier, more western cairenes know what they're doing. covers for clubs in cairo on NYE run anywhere from 200 LE to 1700 LE ($40-$300) and obviously since we make a little over that last figure in a month, the club scene was not really one we wanted to get into. enter: our friend sherif.
sherif is a recent AUC grad who volunteers with marnie at the desert development center where she works and has since worked his way into our group of friends. he's wonderful. studied at UCLA and Harvard and a pretty westernized guy, but also just lovely and a great host for us. so sherif had some friends that wanted to party and we wanted to party so we combined forces and decided to throw a house party on our terrace. there was booze and drinking games and like 10 of us partying, but it was kind of going slow and by 1am the girls (these 2 american girls sherif brought who sucked) and this other guy wanted to go dancing. by that time, we were all at the point of being easily convinced. so they left and sherif volunteered to drive the rest of us to meet up with them.
we piled 6 of us in a mercedes sedan, uncomfortably at best, and headed out. that in itself was ridiculous, but marnie's cousin was visiting as well and bless his nineteen year old heart decided he had to pee the minute we got onto a bridge and couldn't hold it. to avoid the panic attack that was coming quickly we encouraged him to get out of the car in the middle of the bridge and pee into the nile. he opted for the side of the road and we spent a good ten minutes giggling fiercely as bill ran across traffic and peed behind a tree. ridiculous.
finally, we were informed we weren't going to a club after all, but to the girls apartment in a neighborhood like 10 minutes from where we live. which was obviously ridiculous that we had even left our apts if we were just going to go to someone else's, but whatever. so we get to the girls apartment and proceed to have a raucous dance party on their patio the size of a small bathroom.
at 4am, mama ellyn decided it was time to pull the plug on everyone and we proceeded to get a cab back to zamalek and sing top 40 hits to the cab driver the whole way home. when we arrived at the apt i gave the driver way more money than was necessary and then got into a fight with him in arabic about the price. i will say this, alcohol improves my arabic immensely.
i know that doesn't do nearly enough justice to explain the night and it probably sounds less insane than it was. but believe you me, i spent the ENTIRE next day on my couch in pajamas nursing a whiteny-esque hangover. terrible.
needless to say, i was exhausted this sunday at work and needed another 2 days to fully get the wind back in my sails. i'm not proud of how nutty it was, i'm just kind of impressed that cairo has brought out a party-side of me none of us have ever seen. maybe its the fact that every day is a struggle here and when you get the chance to let loose it kind of over takes you? not sure. but if any of you make it over here, you'll get a first hand lesson in surviving cairo, and then maybe this will make sense.
i love you guys. happy 2011.
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