"Cover your mouth or the devil will make a toilet in your mouth"

This saying was told to me when I open-mouth yawned on the metro. Later, Alissa asked our buddy if he believed in the evil eye, the answer is "of course not!" But when asked,"do you believe that if you don't cover your mouth the devil will make a toilet in it?" "Yes of course! I must! Its true! My mother told me." Greatest saying ever.

So Eunice left, my new roommate Rebecca came, and my friend Erin from back home in Cali is in Egypt for two weeks with her brother. This is exciting. I miss Eunice. I want to make Becca and Erin and Sean feel comfortable and welcomed and not overwhelmed too much.

Its strange how being here with tourists my whole perception of this city shifts again to see it through their eyes. I was walking along the Nile this afternoon with my IPOD, right around 5 PM, the sun is sinking but not setting, the leaves are rustling, not so many people out because its Friday in the afternoon, time for families and praying, walking downtown to meet my driver friend to go to the airport. All of a sudden I just felt so perfect here. Its the weekend, this is my home, this is how life is. And then I had these tourists here. I was so excited to see them. My driver friend was making fun of me for being so excited. And then we took them to their hotel and walked around and walked downtown for dinner. I was all of a sudden so conscious of what was around me, like I had to make it perfect and like it was strange and new again and I was just passing through.

Also, prayers for my old host family from two years ago would be appreciated. Their cousin died and death and grief seem to plague this family excessively, despite them being some of the most amazing, hilarious, generous, genuine people I have ever met.

This brings me back to my current train of thought. Do people get what they deserve in life? We read a story about this in a lot of my classes and I've been talking with students and friends and anyone I can about if this kind of Karma exists. Do people get paid back for their rights and wrongs during this life or the next or somewhere else? Does anyone really have rights and wrongs? Does anyone truly get what they deserve for that reason or is it just consequences and coincidences? I certainly feel like I've gotten way more than I deserve in this life, as I said in my last post. And that brings up the question, how do we know what is the best for us or what we deserve? How do other people know? Ahh! kifeya! (enough)

So last night, my buddy Mohamed and I walked around and sat around Cairo for a good 5 hours where I got some much needed wisdom and encouragement. We discussed how life is unfair, how you always want what you can't have (especially who you can't have), how Egyptians respect foreigners more than themselves, how certain people you just understand, and people who are openly less than perfect are always more pleasant than those who pretend to be perfect, about mistakes in life and guilt and honesty and karma and love and friendship and protectiveness (how it is a beautiful but crippling thing, particularly for Egyptian girls) and telling secrets. I almost cried to hear him say that I should be proud of myself for being different from other foreigners and he was proud to know me, because I cared about what was right and I fight for it and how I am living is a "certificate" of this (his English is best in the banking field where he works, haha).

Since I have been feeling so frustrated about being asked/ demanded to "bend the truth" constantly in work, and to stop being honest with my students because that's not what Egyptians want, since I have been tired because I am just another idealistic college grad, trying to find the intersection between my ideals and reality, since I have been thinking that maybe I never had really good enough reasons to uproot my entire life, leave the people I love and come to the middle east in the first place, these words meant the world to me.

I said, "but I worry that I will either keep fighting and it will be difficult my whole life, or I will give up and it will be easy." This Muslim man says (almost straight out of the Bible), with a little giggle, "don't give up fighting until you have the Championship!" (ok maybe not straight out of the Bible, but pretty darn close). And the clincher.... "you have a very good mind... for a girl." Haha, I laughed quite a lot about this one, and he really didn't understand what was so funny...