Masr, where people get naked in public Last weekend, Julian and I decided to go to Coptic Cairo. I assumed we would take the metro, so I walked the 15 minute walk to his flat to pick him up, and off we went. But Julian had other ideas, which involved walking all the way. He promised it would only take abpout 40 minutes - over an hour later, we still hadn't got there, my water supply was running out, I was getting hungry, and my feet were beginning to hurt as a r...

Cairo, where the world is very small. I moved into my flat on Saturday. My flatmates are Danielle (a nurse, 27, from Montana) and Jab (a student, 25 or so, from Paris). They both study at Kalimat, like me. The first coincidence was that Jab and I ended up in the same foosha class. (Foosha is Arabic for Standard Arabic. Aamiyya is Arabic for Egyptian Arabic). I then discovered that he spent the whole of last year doing an MA in Durham. Weird. We all get along ver...

Egypt, where no one speaks the language I have spent two years learning... Very little to report so far. I arrived at Cairo International Airport at about 4pm local time (having flown low over the Alps, which was rather exciting), and obtained my visa. This in itself was rather comic in comparison to the Russian visa system - I walked up to a little window with a little man behind it, handed over 85EGP (about £8.50 or £9) and he gave me a little piece of paper...

I think this dates from December some time. Apologies for the delay in typing it up. "Crack-Your-Arse", where we forgot that "plunge" is not generally understood in common parlance, at least not the way the Russians use it. Lucy fell down a manhole. It was Philly's fault really. They were playing with snow, Lucy was running away, and I was hiding at a safe distance. Having felt rather silly walking around manhole covers the whole time we'v...

Early November A trip to the gulag Sillies that we are, Rosie, Anna, Lucy and I agreed to spend last weekend in a gulag. It was actually an English language immersion course, but it was in a "holiday camp" which retained a strong Soviet influence. I would never have imagined that 30 Russians would be so delighted to spend a weekend in a mock-up of a labour camp, simply because there were 4 native English speakers in their midst. Ok I give in, we must be pretty ...