Egyptian Stories

I completely forgot to write about this... until just now, obviously. My dear friend Chelsea is studying in Egypt this semester. She says she is hesitant to post some of her adventures because she's afraid her family will worry about her more than they already are. However, Chelsea has relayed many a story to me via skype. I told her these stories are too good not to be told to a wider audience so I agreed to taking on the task of telling a few. I will tell you two now. Please excuse my liberty with some of the facts as these are now all second-hand stories.

According to Chelsea it is quite common for Egyptian men to propose marriage to American women within 30 seconds of meeting them. I'm not kidding. They want green cards that badly. So this one time Chelsea and her friend are riding in a cab and the cabbie says something to them and Chelsea, thinking he said something different, says "yes" in Arabic. Her friend leans over and asks, "did you know you just agreed to marry him." Of course, Chelsea, being a smart woman, hastily tries to remedy her mistake by practically screaming "NO!" many times in Arabic. I like to imagine this scenario in my head: a toothless cabbie proposing to my friend and for a moment she accepts. Can you imagine the elation this man felt for those few short seconds until Chelsea began forcibly screaming "NO!" in his ear? Not only did he think he'd scored a green card but his new wife was quite attractive as well. Poor Egyptian cabbie.

This might be my favorite story so far. So Chelsea and a friend of hers were in a part of Cairo where foreigners don't normally frequent. They're strolling along minding their own business and trying to blend in as much as possible. Well, I guess a mob of angry Egyptians with sticks come out of nowhere and start running at Chelsea and her friend. Let us pause here and imagine the horror, confusion and complete panic of their faces when they see this angry mob running at them. Sadly, this scenario makes me laugh... very hard. So Chelsea and her friend sprint for the nearest store to hide. Fortunately, the mob was not after Chelsea or her friend. I guess over the past weeks (maybe months) there has been a bread shortage in Egypt and the mob was after the bakers instead.

Perhaps it is only because I know Chelsea that I find these stories extremely amusing. I hope you enjoyed them half as much as I did because then you'll get at least a small giggle out of it.