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Some of us 20something American chicks didn’t go to New York City to be broke and uncertain about our lives. We didn’t go to private East Coast universities and study English.

Sometimes I really wish this city and it’s geographically fascist hipster inhabitants would get over themselves.

America has other towns and demographics who have equally hilarious quips, belly fat and awkwardness (and shoes, should you like your ladies mid-30s and with a magazine column. Again with the English majors, eh? Must not be any engineers or stockbrokers in NYC. Er, wait…)

Which one is he, again?

If you don’t speak Arabic and are a relative newcomer to Egytptian politics – basically, if you’re me – this is a great bullet-pointed guide to help remind you of who is who in the zoo of presidential politics.

Worth bookmarking.

Really, U.S. Government?

So I’m filling out paperwork for a part-time gig at a government office.

And I come across this:

I wonder whose job it would be to visually identify me.

Authenticity and Belly Dancing

It’s my understanding that around the 1950s or so, certain streets of Cairo were famous for their belly dancers. Individual dancers would acquire local fame and popularity.

But now the country is becoming ever more conservative, and belly dancing in public – for pay – is thought of as a kind of prostitution.

Which is why the belly dancers at this desert outpost I visited in Marsa Alam don’t hail from Egypt. Or even the Middle East. I’m told (but can’t confirm) they’re from places like Russia, Ukraine and Great Britain.

Begs the question: Is seeing these foreign belly dancers really an authentic experience? Despite the cheese factor, I’d say it is. The fact that these women are here is a strong statement/reflection of the increasingly conservative nature of Egyptian people. And the fact that there is enough demand on the part of tourists to see belly dancing is an indication that at one time, Egypt really was known as a home of the craft.

Funny enough, the experience of going to this “Bedouin camp” to see dancers most reminded me of attending a luau in Hawaii – minus the tropical liquors, natch.

Light Up My Life, Marsa Alam

Two items have been hanging around my shopping wish list lately: Bedouin-style lamps and a better camera!

Here are a few iPhone snaps from the InterContinental The Palace Port Ghalib Resort in Marsa Alam. I arrived in the evening and was pleasantly surprised to realize this might be the best time for a first impression of this Red Sea Resort. The lighting is a cozy delight, as you can see.

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The meme’s on you

A few weeks ago, my cousin posted this American Internet meme on his Facebook page. I thought it was hilarious and gave it the thumbs-up:

And then I moved to Cairo, half a world away from where my cousin lives and studies in Ohio.

As part of my effort to gain any insights into MENA/Levantine culture, I began following a Facebook page for Lebanese memes. I found out about it via Twitter. While I don’t yet understand a lot of the humor (partially due to being new to the region, partially due to the language barrier) I did understand this meme:

Wasta (meaning influence) is definently among the first few hundred words I’ve learned in Arabic, thanks to a professor from George Washington University who gave my husband and I some background lectures before we moved to Egypt.

Both memes are funny (to me, anyway) and particularly because they depict the same photo, as a set they also serve as a simple reminder (to me, anyway) that what’s circulating within one online community might be different from what’s circulating in another.

I also wonder how many people are in a position online to have seen and understood both memes. I’m not sure if I believe it to be many (lots of people have mixed cultural/linguistic backgrounds, after all) or few (who happens to care about both American memes and MENA memes?).

Can you share any more dual memes with me??