Belly Dancing?

Well my latest cultural adventure involves shaking my hips and wobbling my knees, that's right my friends, belly dancing. now we aren't' talking this sort of body roll like a snake in sparkly Madonna inspired tops (that's the singer not THE Madonna gracing walls of Cathedrals) Belly Dancing here is apparently something that every Egyptian woman knows how to do, and actually most middle eastern and African women as well. When I first heard this, I thought, well naturally, all these fully veiled women with their hair and faces covered with downcast eyes would be absolute dancing maniacs, disco queens that love to boogy down. But I tell you no lies! I had my first experience with this phenomenon last Saturday night at my friend Mirvette's flat. (Who by the way lives out in Giza, you may know them as the place where the pyramids are located, but she lives in the REAL Giza, and it was great to see that side of the city) Myself and 12 of her Egyptian friends were sitting around eating Kosheri (a bunch of different pasta noodles, lentils and chick peas with a red sauce) and then all of a sudden they turn on the music from the tape deck and two or three of them start to dance at a time while everyone else happily sits around and enjoys the entertainment and then takes their turn in the center of the floor dancing away. It was Fantastic! Granted, they wanted me to dance too, which was quite a site, because while these women have been "belly" dancing (I put belly in quotes because really I think it is an inaccurate name, I think they should call it slouch dancing, or put your hips forward dancing, or stick out your belly dancing, because the belly itself does very little "dancing" on its own) anyway like I was saying, I had only completed one, one hour class up to this point, so my skills are a little green, but practice makes perfect, and it was WICKED fun!

Another Adventure from that night was that I rode the minibus for the first time, now the bus system in this country is kind of interesting, I'm sure we are all use to big clear numbers on the buses which we are meant to take, well not here my friend, sometimes, on the big buses, they don't' even stop, and during rush hour, you see people hanging out the door of these buses cruising at 45MPH. we took the minibus with one of Mirvette's sisters. So basically, so take a bus anywhere, you have to know the number bus you want, how to figure out the number of the bus, how much to pay and to whom, where to get off and enough Arabic to signal to the driver when he needs to stop, because sometimes, most of the time, people just jump off while the bust keeps on rolling. Needless to say, my preferred form of transportation is Metro and Taxi.