Egypt: Day 3 (Orientation, Cairo Museum, Walking Around Cairo and a Home Hosted Dinner)

Day 3 in Cairo was a fairly low key day but after summarizing it, it seemed that we did a lot!

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After a nice breakfast, we went to our "orientation" and then walked around the hotel again.

Marriott Zamalek
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We went to the Cairo Museum and saw a lot of old stuff! Our program director, Fawzy (goes by his last name), did a great job of showing us everything. Most items in the museum were not documented so it was good Fawzy showed us around.

Unfortunately, we could not take pictures inside of the museum. I think the oldest thing we saw was 4500 years old. We also saw mummified crocodiles, perch, pet dog and a baboon. A highlight was seeing some of the treasure's from King Tut's tomb including a 11kg gold death mask.

Outside of the Cairo Museum.

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After the Cairo Museum, we walked around the area by our hotel along River Nile (so much more fun to say "River Nile" instead of "Nile River"). It was an interesting experience because I got a lot of stares and noises made at me.

River Nile.

Public transportation was always packed with people.

Cairo traffic is CRAZY!! This isn't that great of picture - hopefully there are better pictures later. Fawzy said it's "crazy" and "organized chaos". There's constant honking! There's no traffic lights or lines in the road. At intersections, there is a traffic guy directing traffic for who goes though. It seemed that all of the cars have
scratches on the side of them. People just go...and it works for them!

Read above picture caption for this one to make sense. Crossing the street looked dangerous to me (no cross-walks) but the Egyptians do it with ease. When we crossed the street, I pretty much screamed and ran but they are so calm, cool and collective about it.
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The home hosted meal was a great experience! Six Egyptian families hosted our tour group. The family of Osman Osman hosted about 20 of us, including the Benson's! The host family was really nice to us. The father was still working and the mom did not speak much English but was genuinely nice. The son, Omar, spoke good English and really enjoyed films.

Group of us walking to dinner.

Our program director said the family lived in an upscale neighborhood. It turns out the family business was to package many small items such as packets of salt, pepper, sugar, etc which can be used on airplanes. Also, the mom's father was the CEO of Shell Company in Egypt. She showed us pictures of her dad with 2 former Egyptian presidents, President Nasser and President Sadat. I would say they were okay financially...

The Egyptian food was great - chicken broth soup, deep fried chicken ball, zucchini with herbs, eggplant and beef mixture. Jello and apple dish for dessert (umm...Americanized?). Of course these are not the real names of the dishes, I just don't know what they are called.

Hubby eating Egyptian food and enjoying it. This was probably one of my favorite meals on the trip.

During and after dinner, Omar talked about his life and Egyptian culture. He said prior to coming to the U.S., half joking, he thought the American lifestyle was "easy" - you could wink and a woman would come to you. I'm pretty confident that movies create horrible stereotypes of Americans and our culture...Also, we learned the mom's favorite show is Oprah.

The Benson's! with the hosts, mom and son. Thanks for a great meal and conversation!