Sept 27

Sept 27 Wednesday, woke up early in order to finish up the homework I wasn't able to last night from the power outage. Got the majority of my sentences written before class with Faris. Right now, I'm really not that pleased with my class with Faris. Basically it consists of me listing off new words from whatever we are reading, and him asking me which words I don't know, and explaining them in Arabic. However it still isn't 100% clear so I still have to look the words p in a dictionary after class before I can write sentences. So basically I can do the exact same thing on my own, without him. I'm thinking about switching teachers, or seeing if we can work something better out. I'm not sure yet. After class I went back to the house to do my work for Ismail before dinner, and did some other reading up on the mafraj. Today in class Matt asked about traditional Ramadan foods and what we should order, since I was told that you never eat fish during Ramadan it is very strange. So he had a whole list of foods to try and we went to the Palestine Restaurant near Tahrir, he listed off a few of the things, which they had, and they brought out more things in addition to it. We had a ton of food to eat. There was Shafout, which is a sort of wet spicy bread (which sounds really gross, but is pretty good), along Fatih Tamar (maybe) which is this cake like food made from dates, but it isn't sweet like a dessert, along with lamb, rice, bread, and more, complete with dessert too. I was really stuffed after this meal, and we couldn't even finish everything they had given us, it only ended up being $5 per person, which is really expensive here but we had a ton of food. After that we thought about tea, but decided it just wasn't possible after that meal and headed back to the house. Again I went off to Ismail's, they offered me desserts again, but I said it wasn't possible after that meal, but they still brought them... I only ate one though, there was no way I was going to eat two. Then a friend of Ismail's came over from another school CALES, who is also a teacher, and they were talking about CALES and SIAL. I guess 6 teachers have left SIAL recently for CALES because they are unhappy with the administration there. I haven't run into any problems, but it is a 'family' business and he doesn't exactly employ the best people for the job, just his cousins or other relatives. The teachers are good though, it's just the rest of the staff that's a little 'slow'. We got into out normal delayed start after his friendleft and after he prayed and watched a little TV. Lessons were good. I headed off, and once again, Ahmed was waiting for me in Tahrir square. He is beginning to drive me crazy. I was pretty tired too because I didn't sleep as long as normal, so I only talked to him briefly, told him I was tired, but I needed to use an internet cafe first. Then he insisted he knew a faster and better internet cafe, so I went along with him and he used a computer too. I tried to call my mom using Skype there but it was so loud from the street outside that I could hardly hear, and I think it was cutting out a little bit too for my Mom. So I just signed out and went back to the normal cafe. Of course he came along with me, but didn't use the computer, he just sat in a chair nearby and waited while I Skyped my Mom for about 20 minutes. Very strange. So I left and then headed back home, finally saying goodbye to Ahmed, and him basically planning to have us see each other again on Friday, so I just agreed. Despite being so tired, I wasn't really able to sleep very well, and ended up just staying up really late playing Spider Solitaire on my laptop.