More people I know in Cairo

Same old routine in Cairo. I've been spending a lot of time at the university trying to stay ahead of my students. I've also been downtown quite a bit, and out with my friends Justin, Nate, Casey, Scott.

The Italian girls are back in Italy. Justin and I had a great time with them, but boy! were they bad for our productivity. Justin & I would go work all day at the university, and then the girls would tell us they just ate lunch at about 5PM, and could we meet for dinner at 9:30PM? Italians! So we would end up dragging back to Maadi at 2AM and have to teach the next day. I'm not sure we could have kept that schedule going much longer, but we sure had a great time. The girls were a lot of fun and just really relaxing and nice to be with. They surprised us one evening by picking us up and taking us out on one of those tourist boats in the Nile that serves dinner and  has a belly dancer and a sufi dancer. Of course, the boat left the dock at 10PM, so we got in at 2AM, and poor Justin had 3 classes the next day--but it was worth it. And I think we have excellent tour guides available to us in Italy this summer, en shallah.

I asked two of my students if I could take a picture of them for my blog:

The students are Kristian and Dina. They were in my International Finance class last semester and for some crazy reason signed on for me again this semester are are in my portfolio analysis class. They are both terrific students and I like having them in class.
Kristian is from Sweden and is doing an exchange program here. I think he will return to Sweden after this semester. He is an engineering major (Industrial? Environmental? I don't remember) and I think the business courses are just extra for him. He lived in Maadi last semester, so I used to see him on the bus too, but I think he moved to Zamalak this semester, because Maadi is mostly for us old folks.
Dina's family is from Egypt, but she grew up in France. So she speaks English, French and Arabic fluently. I'm not sure what Dina's plans are after she graduates. She is a finance major, but I don't know if she is going back to France, staying in Egypt, or something else.
I also got a picture this week, at the bus stop, of my friends Varga and Lori:

Varga is a student at AUC working on Middle Eastern studies (I think). Lori is a professor in the linguistics department. They met in Atlanta while Lori was a graduate student at Emory or Georgia Tech. They also spent some time in one of the "stans," Kazakastan, maybe? and learned to speak the language there. Varga is originally from Iran, but his family belongs to one of the minority religions there (B'hai, I think) and things were very difficult for them after the Islamic revolution in the 1970's. So he left Iran (he had to sneak into Turkey) and most of his family has left too. They are a beautiful couple and I always enjoy talking to them.

That's all the pictures I have for now. Now I'm off to meet some friends for dinner downtown, at Sangria, where I have never been but it sounds great. After dinner, there is a housewarming party at a professor's new flat in Zamalak. It should be a nice evening.