Alexandria and Anafora

So, Thursday was October 6th, which in Egypt is a holiday! October 6th in Egypt is Armed Forces day, which is the day in 1973 that the Egyptians celebrate the crossing of the Suez Canal during the October War, also known as the Yom Kippur War. So as a result we have off classes, and I'm sure Cairo was crazy. But I wasn't there! October 6th, in all it's crazyness, ISA scheduled a trip to Alexandria and Anafora that lasted until early Friday evening. Despite the fact that many of us were tired beyond relief and couldn't wait to go to the hotel and sleep and have food, it was well worth waking up at 5:45 am for!

That being said, I woke up at 5:45 and we left Zamalek at around 6:30 in the morning, the bus departed at 7:00 (thank you, Egyptian time...). We were in for a very, very long bus ride up to the Delta on a strip of road called the Cairo-Alexandria desert road, because for most of the ride, both sides of the freeway is just... desert. Nothing but it. The closer you get to the delta of the Nile and Alexandria, however, the greener and cleaner it gets!

Outside of the library

Main reading room, which is six floors

The first place we went to, of course, is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina! Of course, the Bibliotheca isn't the original Library of Alexandria (curse you, old Library!), but it is constructed near the original site of the library which was built during the reign of Ptolyms, which now is underwater (most people are told it's constructed on the original site, but it's not!). The reading room is huge, and the library itself has tons of online fun things (online books that are out of copyright, timelines, etc.) and also four museums and tons of art exhibitions (Hey, Alex!). Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the entire outside of the building, but I do have pictures of the walls outside! The walls outside have letters and numbers from hundreds of languages, both dead and current. They don't mean anything, they're just a large symbol of how wisdom and knowledge are internationally connected.

Part of an art exhibit in the reading room.

The library's planetarium (for Laura!)

We spent a good two hours in the library, primarily because we had an extra tour after our tour guide called us "naughty". What?! Excuse us, lady, but I personally paid attention to you the entire time and thought you were nice and informative. Honestly, I could pinpoint who was disrespectful. Some of the IPL's (International Peer Leaders) who had made the bus ride extremely uncomfortable (singing at 7 AM on a three hour bus ride, and squishing me in the back row behind a chair that was broken and not giving me even a foot of leg room) had been talking during her tour, thinking that it was okay. Also some of us wandered off, but that was because there were interesting things she was talking about around us! ISA went over to the tour group leaders place and told them, and they opened up a nine screen interactive Culturama that is only open on certain days for us because of the inconvenience. It wasn't nice of the tour guide, and it wasn't nice of the IPL's, honestly.

Qaitbay Citadel

From the Alexandria library we headed to lunch, and from lunch we headed to Qaitbay's Citadel. The Qaitbay Citadel was built in 1480 by Sultan Qaitbay on the previous site of the oldest lighthouse - the Pharos Lighthouse, which had been used to protect the city of Alexandria from crusaders attacking from the sea. Qaitbay Citadel was huge, and we were able to go and climb up inside of it. There was also an awesome view of the sea! There's going to be a huge string of photos for those of you who don't feel like sifting through all of the photos on facebook next. But in the mean time, more about Qaitbay. We sort of wandered up to the top - see those two big windows in the picture that are right below the flag pole? On the other side, we managed to find them and climb up a large, large, large step to see out to the great Mediterranean. It was fantastic!

From there we headed to the hotel for check in and then we went to El Montaza Palace where we just drove by it because it's not open to the public anymore. We drove through the gardens and then stopped at a waterfront walkway sort of place to watch the sunset. It was my first real time ever watching the sunset; I had never seen a real one before and it was amazing! Especially over the Mediterranean!

After a good while watching the sunset and just walking around, we finally headed back towards the hotel after a LONG bus ride of dropping people off where they wanted to go to dinner and what not. I had not been feeling too well - I had a headache and my contacts were bothering me, so I went to me and Cat's hotel room (which was really spiffy!) showered and then tried to read for a while but ended up just conking out and going to bed around nine.

We woke up at 7:30 for the wake up call and to get breakfast on the sixth floor of the hotel (via the really old elevators that have the wooden doors and weights and pulleys!) where you could see the sea from your table. First time I had cereal with milk in almost two months! I was so happy! And the crepes and croissants were good too! Stocked up for breakfast and then it was off to Kom El Shokafa, which I had no idea what it was until our tour guide explained on the bus.

We were going to the Catacombs! I had thought, since I didn't see "Catacombs" written on the itinerary, that we weren't going. But turns out that's what Kom El Shokafa was! We walked down into the main burial tomb, which was really cool and made me wish I hadn't forgotten my fedora at home in Zamalek! I kind of wandered off and explored a bit in the catacombs, finding soda cans inside sarcophagi (which made me really, really sad about the state of cleanliness at Egyptian tourist sites), and a display case of horse bones! We weren't allowed to take pictures, but it was really neat to see how the Ancient Greeks blended their culture and language with the Ancient Egyptians, as evident in the Catacombs. Here is a link about the Catacombs!

Then we hit up the Roman theatre! The Roman theater is called Kom El-Dikka and was built around the second century. It's an ampitheater with 13 semicircular tiers made of white and grey marble, and seating for 800! There's also some pretty nifty mosaic flooring (which is roped off). There's also one particular spot if you stand on it, and say something decently loud, you can hear a strange echo in your head of your voice, but if you step off that spot and off to the side, you can't hear the echo anymore! Weird!

Me in front of the ampitheater

Looking sad because I can't enter the excavation site.

From Kom El-Dikka we drove an hour and headed to a Coptic retreat center called Anafora, where we had a nice chat with Bishop Thomas who created the entire retreat center and all of the programs! His lecture he gave us was more of a Q&A session, but he told us about how they have seminars for women empowerment, which is a big issue in the Egyptian society because as Bishop Thomas explained, it's a hierarchy oriented, male oriented society, where women do not get treated the way they should be - especially in poorer villages and living situations. He also told us a story about how he had kept a girl for a week in the guest house connecting to the church, and kept her away from her family because she had come to Bishop Thomas after hearing her mother and grandmother talking about when they were going to circumcise her. Of course, without her consent... She sought Anafora as a refuge, and that's exactly what it is. It's a place to be lifted up, disconnected for a while to find yourself, and then go back into society as a better person. And it's beautiful. There's really not much electricity, just the bare essentials run by a generator. They also have a church shop where everything inside is made at Anafora organically. They stressed organic stuff a lot.

The church itself is absolutely beautiful. Everything has meaning, and it's not a typical church. There's no electricity, just candlelight. The colorful carpet you'll see on the pictures below represents everyone from all different corners of the world and all the colors of the world coming together to make the white cross in the center. They take communion off a tree stump, which symbolizes the tree of life. The first thing you see when you walk in is a huge window in the shape of an eye, which is supposed to be God's eye. You bow a little before you enter, showing that you are humble before God, which is something that they stressed a lot. You don't sit on chairs (unless you are physically unable to do anything but), but kneel on colorful pillows, and place a little stool between your calves and butt. It's actually really comfortable, and with the breeze blowing, I felt like I could've stayed there forever. There is an egg hanging in front of God's eye, symbolizing life.

After the visit to the church, we had dinner, and then booked it back to Zamalek and Cairo by 6:30. Overall, the trip was fantastic. It had a bit of a down moment or two (second down moment was losing my water bottle on the bus. D: I officially hate buses now!) but it was a nice get away from Cairo. Plus, you could actually tell the sky was blue in Alexandria and Anafora! There wasn't any smog!

Until next time, Insha'allah (God willing) I will have something interesting to write about!