The pyramids!

Everyone from my flat went to Cairo this weekend. A lot of the time we were hanging out with Rachel's fiancé Ahmed and his friends, and some friends of Sara's. It was very nice, and especially when we visited the pyramids it proved good to have some Egyptian guys with us to keep the tourist touts at bay. That way we could focus on actually enjoying the sight instead of spending all our energy on turning down the services which were so vehemently offered to us.

This weekend I think I ticked a lot of the boxes on the checklist for "The ultimate Egyptian experience":

Seeing the pyramids in Giza: check
Crawling inside one of the pyramids, feeling like an awesome explorer even though there's pretty much nothing to see in there: check
Doing camel riding: check
Seeing the Great Sphinx of Giza, which has an oddly small head and enormous feet: check
Regretting that I didn't bring sun lotion with me in December: check
Doing Christmas shopping at Egypt's biggest mall, City Stars, instead of at Cairo's old souq Khan al-Khalili due to protests: check
Getting lost in City Stars: check
Getting lost in City Stars: check
Getting lost in City Stars: check
Getting sick of City Stars: check
Constantly being offered "great deals" by people I met 2 minutes before due to the strong and sincere friendship they feel for me: check
Drinking sugar cane juice: check
Being miiiiiildly freaked out by walking right in front of tanks while everyone else is treating it as the most natural thing in the world: check

Most of the pictures shouldn't need any further explanation this time!

City Stars

While some Egyptians are more bothersome than your average Norwegian or English person, others are way more helpful than what I'm used to. For instance, the guys we were hanging out with would carry my bags after I bought ten thousand Christmas presents, and when I tried moving my suitcase full of the aforementioned ten thousand presents on or off the train on our way home, someone would instantly rush over to help me. By contrast, when I left London last year carrying 50 kilos worth of luggage divided between two big suitcases and a big bag, no one would as much as move out of the way for me (in the end a man on crutches helped me getting all my luggage off the train - not even then did anyone else think to offer their help). Anyway, I guess there are two sides to the coin.

I get childisly excited about Christmas, and now that it is December I can finally let all my enthusiasm loose! I made a Christmas calendar for my whole flat - are you proud of me, mum? And today was the first Sunday of Advent, so I lit the first Advent candle! I think all I talk about nowadays is Christmas. Well, the countdown has officially begun!

My (attempt at a) Christmas calendar: one bag for each day, each containing four little packages with sweets!