Adventures with Abigail

I did a two week study abroad in Egypt back in 2018-2019. This is my story.

Well, as best as I can remember it. This was my first international country, my 2nd plane trip, and my first time traveling alone. It’s hard to forget the intense feelings of the travel portion of this trip. My first plane trip was with a college boyfriend and his family from Texas to Florida for Disney 3 years before this, so for all intents and purposes, this is my first plane travel experience.

I still thought you HAD to browse flights with an incognito window or you’d pay more, and I booked my tickets through Expedia. It’s funny to think that’s where I started. My flight was at 8 or 9am, and I was so anxious about it that I scheduled my shuttle but to arrive at the airport at 4am. I brought a full size suitcase and the check in desk didn’t even open until 7am. I had a direct flight across the ocean from Houston, with a layover in Germany. I remember loving the food. I remember thinking “why is everyone always complaining about airplane food? This is great!” My only reference was that Seinfeld bit about “What’s the deal with airline food?”

I remember the layover in Germany. It was 4 hours. I seriously considered going into Frankfurt. I’m glad I didn’t because I def wouldn’t have had time. This is the point when I met up with some of my classmates. We had met briefly at the 2 study abroad informationals and set up a group chat. We met at McDonalds in the airport and then all boarded the plane to Egypt together. The whole class wasn’t on this flight, but maybe half?

We landed in Egypt in the evening, maybe 6pm? But it’s December, so it’s already dark. I followed my classmates through customs to enter the country. This part was pretty easy; I just had to say “Study Abroad” and they stamped my passport. I was really wanting them to stamp the first page. I was really hung up on all the stamps being in order and I was disappointed that it wasn’t on the first page. I remember I had to have $60 to pay for the visa in person.

I decided to exchange a small amount of money at the airport and then found my professors. Once the last of the students arrived we all walked a long way to the charter bus. Due to traffic, we arrived in Alexandria at midnight.

Tragedies among tragedies, all of my good photos I took on this trip are lost to time. I think they must have been saved to my college email account. Ironically I was a student photography ambassador for this trip. There were two of us, and the other guy had a fancy camera. The pictures I have are from Instagram, and it turns out that First-Time-Traveling-Abigail did not make very good captions in her posts. I did find my diary style notes from my old iCloud account, so at least I’ll be able to contextualize those Instagram posts. I also revived my old snapchat account and found some photos and videos in the style of those days of snapchat. Let’s see what we can put together with this information. My sincere apologies for the quality of the media content that I’m about to include.

So day 1 on the ground my notes say I traveled for 28 hours. I have a video at the airport after I met up with the professors that’s timestamped at 6:20pm.

On the way to Alexandria, we stopped for gas. My notes say it’s about 10:45pm. Lots of us needed to use the bathroom. I don’t blame the store attendants for seeing a flock of American kids hurdling their way and decided to make some money. I got the bathroom first before the lady attendant got in there and took all the toilet paper out of the stalls. She did position herself and ask for payment. I have noted “Anything, just pay anything,” and I gave her 5 Egyptian Pounds. My notes say that was roughly 30 cents. I know others hadn’t exchanged any money, but for some reason had USD cash and had to pay $20 for some toilet paper and paper towels. I was a little freaked out at the time, but I’ve experienced similar things to this pretty much everywhere I’ve been since.

There was also a McDonalds at the pit stop and I made sure to note that I did not buy any, but did not judge my classmates who did. For some reason I thought it was poor form to eat American food while traveling. I know now that it’s totally okay if you need a comfort meal, and you can learn a lot about a culture by what their version of your food looks like.

Once we made it to Alexandria, it took about an hour to receive our room assignments in the dorms. The boys were on the 3rd floor and the girls were on the 2nd floor. They had a guard between the floors to make sure no one of the opposite sex went to the wrong floor.

The next day (day two) we had a class meeting in the atrium of the dorm to talk about what happened the day before. In Cairo at the pyramid of Giza a tour bus was bombed. It was the first terrorism act in Egypt in 4 years. We had to decide individually if we wanted to stay on the trip or go home, and if we wanted to stay, then the president of the engineering department needed to sign off on the trip continuing. No one decided to leave, and we did get approval to keep the trip going.

We had some time to explore before we were given a tour. I found a little food truck sized restaurant called American Way that sold burgers and poutine. They gave us a tour later in the afternoon. I was apparently really impressed with the landscaping.

We went out for dinner that night at Tivoli Dome, which my notes say just opened a few months prior. I want to say (and am embarrassed to say) this was my first real experience with hummus. We were taken to a grocery store that had little shops inside. I got dessert that looks like some sort of donut thing.

Day 3 was the first day of class! I have no notes about the class. I do remember class was in the morning and finished right in time to go to lunch. We would usually then leave campus via charter bus and be taken somewhere educational.

We were taken to the Royal Jewelry Museum after lunch. I noted a trophy one of the Kings of Egypt won for Best Tourism Propaganda from 1932. What’s wild is that we then went to an old castle. I have no notes on it, but I do have plenty of photos/videos.

That evening we went to the much lauded “Fish Market”. It was very nice, and I did make not that the toilet paper was nice and the bathroom did not have an attendant. The small group I was socializing with played card games in the lounge after dinner.

Day 4, Sunday. I assume we had class, but I did not note this. I do know the school decided to follow the cultural weekend so we wouldn’t be having class on Fridays or Saturdays going forward. We were taken to a mall because they (the Egyptian tourism concierge lady) really wanted us to know that Egypt was just as developed at the US. This is where I found a bookstore and bought Catching Fire in arabic. We had dinner at the mall, and I had Pigeon.

Day 5, Monday, it was New Years Eve. We stayed at a hotel on the coast in Alexandria. A friend and I explored the hotel and we all just hung out on the beach at the hotel. There was a Santa Clause roving around with a big bag of goodies. I got a Cd case that I still have in a box somewhere. The hotel’s NYE party didn’t start until 10pm and the dinner food didn’t arrive until 11! And the music was very very loud. The kind of loud that when you leave your ears ring. I wasn’t impressed with the food, and anything to drink cost money, which I didn’t have at the time. There was a belly dancer, though.

Day 6, Tuesday, I went for a walk with a small group around the hotel. It was near The Mantaza Palace, so we just walked around the grounds since that’s not one we could visit. This was classified as a free day since we didn’t have any planned classes or excursion. We did a have a paper due during the trip (as well as one before and after), so I worked on this between hanging out with people. The only other note I have for this day is that I tried shawarma for the first time. And I quote, “it was alright. Basically a good sandwich.” I will say that I do love shawarma now, but I get extra sauce on it.

Day 7, Wednesday, they took us to a sport club. It was basically a country club. I worked on my essay again and then played minecraft while other played sports (that’s all my notes say, “sports,”).

Day 8, Thursday, we had an exam during class and my group had our presentation. Afterwards, we had a tour of the planetarium on campus

Day 9, Friday, we left the campus early in the morning to go to Cairo. The bus broke down on the way and delayed us by 2 hours, but later that day I saw the pyramids for the first time! I didn’t realize until this moment that they were different sizes. It was 3 generations of men, and each one made their pyramid smaller than the others out of respect. We got to go inside the middle one. I highly recommend not doing this if you are even a little claustrophobic. There was a small steep tunnel at the start, but it does open up a little where you can walk beside someone standing fully upright when you aren’t changing levels. There’s a big room at the end of the tunnel. It was pretty stifling inside the room, but the tunnel/hallway had decent airflow due to hidden ventilation shafts. We rode camels out into the desert to get good photos with the pyramids. The camels were like silly horses. The knees bent in unexpected ways and they wobbled around. I was in a line with 2 other women from my class, but my friend got taken off by himself. He had to pay 200 Egyptian pounds to get back on his camel. He did get to drive his camel, though, sooooo… Another set of male classmates were taken off by a small child. They said he was like 4, but I doubt he was that young. He did a similar thing and ended up pocketing $20 plus 100 Egyptian pounds from them. I don’t think they got to drive their camels, so they just got held up by a small child.

Another thing the professors warned us about was not to stop and talk to anyone or buy anything because we didn’t have time and they were taking us to a better place to buy things later. About 10 boys didn’t listen and all ended up finding themselves wearing the exact same hat as each other.

Next on this same day, we went to a papyrus factory and saw how the paper is made. I bought a nice picture that I liked. I was told the story, but I didn’t get a chance to write it down fast enough to remember it.

Next on the same day we had lunch on the Nile! I was super excited about this because A)it’s the longest river in the world and B)it flows South to North. I have no idea why that second point made me so excited, but it did. Lunch was a relative term here since it was at 4pm. The boat was also anchored in the same spot so it wasn’t really a cruise even though that’s what they called it. My notes say I really enjoyed the food.

We checked into our hotel next, and had some down time. Later that day we went to the bazaar in Cairo. It was a cool experience, but the professors told the women before hand to be on guard because men might be a little inappropriate if we went without any guys. One of my girl friends and I teamed up with two of our male friends and didn’t not have any problems. The other women took the advice and all stuck around our male classmates. I bought some stuff, but didn’t enjoy the haggling process. My notes say we went there at night at around 10pm, but I don’t remember that.

The next day, Day 10, Saturday, we had to be up early to go tour some mosques. I was annoyed because they didn’t tell us before leaving Alexandria that we’d be touring mosques and I didn’t have any scarves with me to cover my hair. The mosques were beautiful, though, and primarily used for tourism (so no one was angry at the exposed hair).

Next we went to the Egyptian Museum. This museum ruined all other European museums for me. Any time I’m at another museum in Europe I can’t help but think, “Yeah, I’ve seen this in Cairo, and they had a better quantity. Also, You stole that.” I will say, I remember this museum was sooo crowded with stuff. It was not nicely organized by any means.

On the way back to Alexandria we stopped at another mall for lunch and short shopping. I have specifically noted that I had and loved “Shish Tawook.” This mall was much more in the classic American style than the first one. It really just shows the great wealth disparity in Egypt.

Day 11, Sunday, it was raining, so they called an audible and took those of us who wanted to leave the campus to a cafe in a little isle nearby. I ended up playing a little Pokemon Go from a friend’s hotspot. We walked around a little and when we went to go back to the cafe two men with big guns stopped us and tried to direct us away. Once we communicated that we were with the class they let us through. I didn’t realize it at the time, but just now writing this and reading my notes I’m realizing that they were part of the security force keeping us safe the entire time.

Day 12, Monday, we went to a “beach house” which was really more of a fallen down shack along the beach in this area. It was owned by the family of one of our student ambassadors. It was fun hanging out there. There was some ruins down the beach that I explored with a few friends. Apparently we broke containment because some security guards found us and escorted us back to the beach. We saw other people who started exploring after us being escorted back, too, not having been as far as we went.

I spent some time playing dominos with one of the professors and his daughter before it started to rain pretty hard. Half of the group left to go to a hotel down the road and the other half crammed into the small shack to hang out and play games on the PS4 that one of the student ambassadors brought. Most of this group had joined together to order alcohol through an app since that’s how you have to do it in Egypt. Alcohol isn’t illegal, but it’s really frowned upon. It was basically Doordash for alcohol. I have no idea how they carded or if they even did card people. I just had some sprite that the professors brought since I had no extra money. It was a fun time, though.

Tuesday, Day 13 we went to a colosseum and The Library of Alexandria (the new one). The colosseum was cool. It was a lot of old ruins. I was blown away by the Library. I studied one of my classmates presentation so I could say, “I’ve studied at the Library of Alexandria.” After the library we went to an old outdoor theatre. It was a lot of what I called marble at the time. I have no idea if it was actually marble. We went to dinner next nearby that I have noted that I enjoyed. It was served family style, and this was the first (and only?) Egyptian restaurant we went to.

Side note: I think now is a good time to mention the breakfast and lunch that was provided by the campus pretty much every day. Breakfast was usually some kind of bread (bagel or otherwise). I don’t really remember anything else about it. Lunch, though. Lunch always had french fries. I remember speculating if they served fries to comfort the Americans. I’m fairly confident now that that’s not the case. Every place I’ve been to since has had french fries. The rest of the lunch was hit or miss for me. Some days I didn’t enjoy it and filled up on the fries, but other days I did really like it.

Wednesday, Day 15, they campus people gave us a tour of their maritime transportation simulator and we met the college’s president. I never did meet my own university’s president, though.
Next we were dropped off in downtown Alexandria for some free time to shop and explore. About half the class got away before the security stepped in and held the rest of the class together. The professors were a little annoyed at the security because they had initially agreed to let the student explore downtown without supervision, but they changed their mind. If you got caught with the big group then security didn’t let you leave it. I think they just went down one street shop to shop until time ran out. My small group didn’t know about this until we got back at the meeting place at the meeting time. I bought some sunglasses from a street vendor and some perfume oil from a fancy store. We got some coffee and just hung out until the rest of the class came back.

Thursday, Day 16, we had our final exams. After that I hung out with some people at American Way and played cards in the beautiful weather. We had one more late beach day. Some of the guys brought their swim trunks and security let them swim.

Friday, Day 17, was a free day. The staff served breakfast later so we didn’t have to wake up early for it. Lunch was Chicken Kabobs and fries. Apparently I was so excited about this that I felt it deserved to be noted. We had a nice dinner before being taken to the airport.

It took us a while to make it to the airport. It was late evening when we arrived, and it was very difficult to get through airport security. The agents were grilling us on our flight details so much that one of our professors stepped in and told him to back off. That worked and at least the group that was with him (including myself) didn’t have any more issues. I was on the same flight as a few other classmates, so we stuck together at the airport until our flight was ready. It was a few hours later. I had two layover on the way back, it was exhausting. I have since broken that record for longest travel day, but it was rough.

All in all, interesting and fun and wild first international trip. I definitely wouldn’t do Egypt without a large group and local guides coordinating everything.