Pharoah, Pharoah?Ohh Baby, Let My People Go.

Goodbye, Egypt! We’re Morocco-bound now.

The day before we left Egypt, I went to the Alexandria mall with Caitlin and Lee. We hired a taxi driver for the day named Ali. It only cost us 100 Egyptian pounds (less than 20 bucks) for him to drive us around wherever we wanted all day, so it was a pretty sweet deal. When we got to the mall, we were excited to see that it also had a movie theater since we’ve been deprived of American entertainment for the past month and a half. There were only 3 English options, though: Shrek 4, The Echelon Conspiracy, and the Last Airbender (I think it was called?). They’d already seen Shrek, so based on the movie posters, we decided to go with the Echelon Conspiracy. It had Shane West in it, so it seemed promising even though none of us had heard of it. As we started watching, though, we realized that the movie probably never even made it into American theaters. I’m not sure what’s happened since Shane West’s A Walk to Remember days…but his acting was awful! Despite the crappy acting, the sub-par plot, and the obnoxious Arabic subtitles that kept covering some of the English subtitles that we needed to read, we had a good time. 

After the movie, we walked around the mall for awhile and did some shopping. It was super hot, so I took off the sweater that was covering my shoulders. It seemed like it was a pretty modern place, and I’d seen some other girls baring skin, so, why not? Between my scandalous shoulders and Caitlin and Lee’s blonde hair, the number of ‘you clearly don’t belong here’ looks that we got was plentiful. I could’ve put my sweater back on…and they could’ve covered their hair like some of the other blondes on the ship had been doing, but hey, we like to live on the edge.

After we’d had enough of the mall, we made our way to Carrefour, which is basically like a super Wal-Mart. It was actually attached to the mall, which was kind of weird, but cool since we didn’t have to go anywhere else. We grabbed a cart, and headed to the station where they put all of your shopping bags in these big sealed bags so you can’t steal anything. It was strange. Then we made our way through the unbelievably crowded a isles. Not counting our time in Morocco, we’ve got 17 total days left at sea…and ship food is getting old. We figured it’d be smart to stock up on food and soda (especially since soda is 2 bucks a can!) When I went to look at snack foods, though, all the stuff I wanted was so expensive! A package of Oreos was 11 bucks! Chips Ahoy were 10. A small bag of off-brand tortilla chips was 9. Off-brand Pringles were 7. It was outrageous! And as much as I wanted them, I couldn’t justify paying that much. So, sadly, I left Carrefour with only soda and a couple candy bars. Looks like I’ll be hitting up the pool deck some more.

After we were done grocery-ish shopping, we headed out and found Ali waiting for us. From there, we went to dinner. We told Ali to take us to a good restaurant...but as we were driving, we spotted a Chili’s so we excitedly waved him in that direction. Who knew they had Chili’s in Egypt? And the food was normal! We got chips, and I had a fajita quesadilla, and life was good. Movies, mall, grocery shopping, and Chili’s…ah, it’s like being home…I mean, if you pretend it’s Halloween, and everybody around you decided to dress up as an Arab. Yep, just like home.

The next morning, we went in search of internet, picked up some souvenirs along the way, and headed back to the ship before all the long trips were scheduled to arrive back. Getting on the ship takes forever on the last day because they are always 100x more intense about checking every single thing you bring on.

We’ve got 6 days at sea until we get to Morocco, which is the longest stretch since our journey across the Atlantic. Tomorrow, instead of classes, we’ve got Sea Olympics, though, so I’m excited! I’ll update on that tomorrow night!