and im back again striving to keep up the daily bloggingness.

so i just found out auc offers scuba diving. how frickin amazing would that be. and we'd do field trips and stuff... my life is so sweet. i must have been really good in a past life. or slipped god a few piasters in the waiting room.

i bought fresh flowers today with my roommate for our dining room table. they are gorgeous. and they cost $3, significantly adding to their appeal. the flower guy was really cute too in a sort of scared way - i think michelle (roommate. tall. thin. gorgeous. i seem to collect them) and i made him really nervous. but he gave us each a free rose which is cute, if unoriginal, so he's on my good list. we think we mightl go back there every week. fresh flowers... i am so domestic. mumkin my soccer mom future shining through? ha. right.

aanyway so guess what i did tonight. no nevermind you will never guess. unless you are like my older sister who read my aim away msg, completely ruining the surprise. very inconsiderate of her. i went to my very first...wait for it...BOY BAND CONCERT. yesss. think n-sync then subtract the dancing, add in decent music and then make them arab. presto! you have WAMA. each letter stands for one of their names. isnt that adorable? just smile and nod.

so the concert was in the cairo opera house and to get their we took the metro. which, by the way, i did not know existed. but not only does it exist, its actually really clean and relatively sketch-free. relatively because, i mean, there are men there. but they have a women's only car so we didnt have to find out whether the good, muslim men would be able to resist us scandelous american girls in close quarters. and the opera house itself was soo nice. very riyadh-esk. lots of lighting. concrete. fountains. although there were a few ancient-egyptian statues that would have been unexpected in saudi arabia. when we first go there we were actually worried we were at the wrong place bc it gave off a classy-sort of feeling, and ive never really associated n-sync with a classy atmosphere. fortunately, however, we were wrong. we paid all of $4 to get in. i heart egypt.

i guess the most interesting aspect of this concert was the fact that there was pretty much an even mix of girls and boys there. the pop music in the united states tends to target only one gender. in fact, pop musicians tend to really only attract the stereotypical screaming, pre-pubescent girls to their concerts (with the possible exception of a certain friend of mine (coughtherussiancough) who kept going far past that age.) the guys that actually listen to pop music tend to lock themselves in their closets, turn down the volume, and jump at small noises. i have a friend who made a mix where r kelly's remix to ignition was the first song, and some backstreet boys song was the second. we'd be driving along blasting the r kelly with the windows down, and then when the backstreet boy song came on he'd roll up the windows and turn down the volume. a guilty pleasure. but the guys at this concert, who were all between the ages of about 13 up to 25, were totally unashamedly worshiping WAMA. the whole stadium ended up standing on top of their chairs, and the guys were up there right along with the girls, screaming, jumping up and down, almost killing themselves, no big deal. i think its because homosexuality is so off the radar here just because it is SO taboo, that guys dont have to worry about the stigma that might come with listening to pop music in the states. you go egyptian boys! you be proud of liking that pop music. and i wont ask what goes on at the after-parties.

so today we had an all-day on-campus orientation in preparation for our 3 day off campus orientation which starts tonight at 1:30am. we're going to the red sea. raise your hand if your school has ever had its orientation at the red sea. yeah. i win. it was a kind of funny experience. first of all, it was the first sort-of success that auc has had with organization. clap. clap. clap. what was REALLY amusing though was the attitude taken by the administration. the woman in charge has been the woman registering auc kids for classes. (oh sry for those of you not middle east-obsessed auc = american university of cairo) and the ONLY thing i have heard about her - i havent registered yet - is how much of a total bitch she has been to all of the students. very unaccomadating, very into public humiliation. basically what ive gotten from ppl is that she's generally not a very nice person who probably deserves to burn in hell for all eternity but will probably end up with the requisite 79 virgins instead. her attitude mutated for this orientation though and she talked for a really long time about how she loves the students and she hopes we'll come to her with any problems and how she has chocolates on her desk and her lobby is air conditioned and do we want to sit on her lap? (that last bit was my own addition. come on. honestly. that would just be weird.) but there is no way in hell this woman thinks any of the students have any feelings for her beyond the natural hatred they feel after she crushed their dreams when she denied them the classes they wanted. devil woman. so my conclusion is that no one is that oblivious and therefore she must have a really ironic sense of humor. maybe i like her anyway? ill hold off judgement until monday when i find out that the only class left with any opennings is basket weaving. basket weaving at auc. hey, its a story.

and i also have a story about the "beverages" we are and are not allowed to bring on this orientation trip and the pre-gaming we actually did for the bus ride (yes we are lame i know. but we have fun so shut up) but that all will have to wait until after i get back from this awesome spend-all-day-getting-skin-cancer-hopefully-wont-get-blown-up-by-terrorists orientation trip. will update on when i get back my dears!