al-Rehab

Thursday was a bit interesting as it was the first time I had hung out with Egyptian AUC students. Although the Egyptians students at AUC are polite, they really don't show any interest in befriending the international students. There is a certain amount of segregation between the Egyptian students and the international students at AUC. However the two Egyptian guys I met were interested to learn some of the things I was doing in the gym, and afterward one of them had a kickboxing class in al-Rehab so they invited me along.

We drove to Rehab, which was my first time in the neighborhood. It's a wealthy suburb very close to New Cairo. I had seen many vacancies in Rehab when I was apartment-searching, as it has a reputation as an up-and-coming area. Like New Cairo, the streets are wide and all the buildings are new construction. However everything was clean and relatively quiet, like Maadi. Everyone here was very wealthy by Egyptian standards. We went to the sporting club in Rehab. Sporting clubs in Egypt are the equivalent of country clubs in the US, where wealthy families go to learn and play sports in an exclusive environment. The sporting club was the size of a college campus, with manicured lawns and numerous sporting facilities, and even an on-campus mosque. Marwan took me to his kickboxing class, where the instructors were friendly and helpful.

Afterward, we went to a fateerah shop in Rehab, set up similar to the way a pizza shop is in the US. Fateerah is essentially deep-fried pastry with various toppings; in this case, various meats, vegetables, and cheeses. Marwan and Abbas were heavily influenced by Western culture, and wanted to know everything about life in the US, and wouldn't let me speak Arabic around them. Later we dropped Abbas off in Nasr City, which was also my first time there. Nasr is a suburb sandwiched by Islamic Cairo and Heliopolis. It's not as wealthy as Rehab, Maadi, or Heliopolis, but it was fairly clean and very busy. Nasr is the location of CityStars, which is a giant six-story mall which reputedly rivals some of its American counterparts. Marwan drove me home to Doqqi after.