A Rooftop Oasis

It’s Friday, which means that I have just finished up the second week of summer classes. It’s also 1:00 PM here, which means that I am currently writing this post in the midst of the single calmest hour of the week. Friday prayers usually start around noon and run for one or two hours, and during that time everything else in the city comes to a halt. Cairo’s streets, which are normally home to all sorts of dowsha (an Egyptian Arabic word that can be loosely translated as “an inordinately large amount of general noise”) and zahma (another Egyptian Arabic word, which means “congestion”), are nearly empty and devoid of sound.

For the rest of the week, the dowsha and zahma continue unceasingly. Whether riding in a car or walking on the side of the road, car horns, vendors hawking their wares, the chatter of the street, and more car horns are simply a fact of daily life. Sidewalks, which should ideally provide at least some shelter from various noise and congestion on the street, are effectively impassable because of various obstacles and the pervasive risk of falling victim to an “Egyptian shower” (as a result of water dripping from a leaky air conditioner or someone dumping water out of their window). This daily dose of dowsha and zahma used to irk me, especially if I was in a bad mood or in a hurry to get somewhere. At this point, however, I don’t think about it too much on a daily basis.

That being said, maintaining my personal sanity for the year hinges upon finding places that are removed from the constant clatter of daily life. Luckily, our new apartment is on the top floor of our building, which means that the dowsha that floats up to my window from the street is quite muted. The best part about having the top floor apartment, however, is that we have access to the roof. The roof of our building at 40 Mesaha Street in Doqqi, Cairo, is a true urban oasis. As the pictures shows, we have a view of the Nile and downtown Cairo. While it’s hard to spend time on the roof during the day because of the lack of shade, it is perfect for dusk and nighttime relaxation.

I was exhausted last night from a long week of class, and so my roommates and I decided to stay in and take the night off. I dusted off an old chair that was up on the roof and spent a few hours reading up there, surrounded by a beautiful, panoramic view of Cairo at night. The dowsha and zahma on Cairo’s streets remain just as bad at night, but the roof is completely insulated from all of it. As a matter of fact, the muffled sounds of car horns and other aspects of city life at night were almost mildly pleasing.

Not Your Average First Day of School...

Ever since I started pre-school, my mom always took photos of me in front of our house as I prepared to go to the first day of school. Usually I posed for these photos complacently, although there were a few years in high school when I had a distinct scowl on my face (clearly too cool for school). I was always in front of the house, and, while I looked a little different in each one (taller, new clothes, new hairdo, etc.), there was not much to distinguish one year from another. When school began last Tuesday, however, I decided to carry on this tradition, albeit in a slightly different setting.



I am standing in Tahrir Square, in front of one of the walls of the American University in Cairo, and the Arabic writing behind me reads "Live the Revolution."

While I often feel like this country is pretty much the same as the Egypt that I experienced in 2010, there are times when the magnitude of what happened between January 25 (the start of the protests) and February 11 (Mubarak's ouster) really hits home. Every morning on the taxi ride to school, we drive past the burned out headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Ironically, that shell of a building sits right next to the Ritz-Carlton, which is also a shell of a building because it is in the midst of a giant renovation. Walking around downtown Cairo, nearly every available wall facing the street has turned into a a space for public art commemorating the revolution, calling for national unity, and urging Egyptians to take pride in their country. In class this week, the revolution came up in nearly every discussion. And every day dozens of people gather around newsstands in the morning to read the latest headlines about political and economic developments.

Anybody who claims to know how all of this political, social, and economic upheaval will play out is simply lying. But while there is a great deal of uncertainty about this country's future, there is also a distinct sense of accomplishment and optimism that the forces that led to Mubarak's downfall can be channeled to build the new Egypt, too.

A Trip to Fantasyland

Yesterday was my first and only “true” day of summer. The sun was shining, I swam a few laps in a pristine, Olympic-sized pool, and spent the rest of the day reading and lounging poolside with a few friends. All in all, a very pleasant experience.

Step back for a second. I am in Egypt right now, a developing country in which the provision of clean water to the citizenry is still a major issue. I would venture to guess that less than one percent of the population has ever seen a swimming pool, much less swam in one. While I technically was still in Egypt yesterday, I spent the day in “New Cairo,” a sheltered, phantasmagorical development on the outskirts of Cairo that resembles an upscale suburb of Los Angeles. New Cairo is home, appropriately, to the American University of Cairo’s “New Campus.” AUC’s new home is beautiful. The campus is spacious, the buildings are built in a modern Islamic style that is reminiscent of both the alleyways of Damascus and adobe brick buildings in the American Southwest, and the campus has just about every resource that an American college student is used to (a huge library, beautiful sports complex, WiFi-equipped classrooms, etc.)

The fact that this beautiful campus is in Egypt, though, is decidedly weird. That is not to say that Egypt is not worthy of such a place. Indeed, I’m sure that any Egyptian student would be happy to attend AUC over other Egyptian universities (which tend to lack even the most basic facilities and services and are often just as corrupt as other institutions in the country were under Mubarak). But AUC in general is not composed of Egyptians from all walks of life. It has a reputation for being an exclusive, country-club like university for the children of Egypt’s elite. Classes are primarily in English, there is an “Americana” food court, and it costs $4 just to ride the bus from the center of Cairo to the new campus (a significant fee for all but the richest in this society).

Indeed, the new AUC campus and its surroundings are emblematic of the huge chasm between Egypt’s ultra-rich and the rest of the population. Although Mubarak’s economic and social policies wreaked havoc on the poor during his 30 years in power, the economic liberalization that he oversaw allowed for the formation of a privileged upper-class. The new AUC Campus (and New Cairo in general) are manifestations of the chasm between Egypt’s ultra-rich and the rest of the population. Whereas the average Egyptian living in an urban area resides in a cramped apartment building, takes public transportation, and buys his food from street vendors, the average resident of New Cairo resides in a villa-like house, has one or more cars, and shops at the local mall.

Many Egyptians will certainly tell you that they aspire to live in a place like New Cairo. The residents of New Cairo all enjoy the amenities of life that we in the West could not dream of living without, and which the international community has focused on promoting in the developing world. But New Cairo, in my opinion, does not represent “development” in any meaningful sense of the word. It is easy to forget the hardships of daily life in Egypt while lounging at the AUC pool. There is a fine line, however, between simply living and working in an wealthy, calm area away from the bustle of the city and isolating yourself to the point where you lose all perspective of the way that the other 99% of the society lives.

House Hunting in Cairo

Unlike my first trip to Egypt in January, 2010, I am not dealing with too much culture shock this time around. I know the city of Cairo pretty well, I can speak the local dialect, I know how much to pay for basic goods and services, and I am used to the idiosyncrasies of daily life here.

Despite all of that, my first few days here have not been a walk in the park. During my semester abroad, we arrived with housing waiting for us. This time, all of us on the program are tasked with finding apartments on our own. Over the past two and a half days, my two future housemates and I visited approximately 15 apartments looking for the perfect match. Some were too big, some were too small, some didn’t allow visitors of the opposite sex, etc…We finally settled, however, on a top-floor apartment with a rooftop view of the Nile that is located about 10 minutes walk from Tahrir Square. It’s currently under renovation, but we should be able to move there in about a week. Phew! It’s good to be able to check that one off the to-do list.

The apartment search, however, did have some upsides. Going from building to building asking the doormen whether there were any available apartments gave us the opportunity to brush up on our Egyptian dialect. We also learned several new words, such as mafroosh (furnished) – it turns out that nearly all apartments for rent come with a complete set of furniture, beds, and household appliances. When you take into account the fact that our apartment is completely furnished with three big bedrooms, a nice kitchen, and a large sitting room, paying $200 a month for rent and utilities seems like nothing!

We also had a chance to do some bargaining with the Egyptian landlords that we met. Haggling over prices is, of course, a facet of daily life here, but it was very interesting to take note of the other topics that came up as we discussed the possibility of living in various apartments. One of the most prominent of those topics was the issue of having visitors of the opposite sex into the apartment. Perhaps unfairly (or perhaps not), young Americans have a reputation here as licentious and disrespectful of cultural norms when it comes to their interactions with each other or with Egyptians.

Whether we actually engage in more “culturally inappropriate” behavior than your average young Egyptian is up for debate (the subject for another blog post). Nevertheless every landlord we spoke to was extremely apprehensive when we asked him or her a question about having friends over. We were careful to phrase the question in as neutral a way as possible, emphasizing that we wanted to have friends over for dinner or to study. About half the landlords that we asked, however, flatly refused. For us, that question was a “make or break” one. We wanted to be able to host friends at our house, and more importantly we didn’t want to have a landlord who was implicitly suspicious of our motives or character.

Luckily, our landlady-to-be was fine with our have friends of both sexes over to our apartment (provided that we not make too much noise). That was fine with us. Having found an apartment, we are now enjoying a relaxing Friday. Noon prayers just ended, and as I was finishing this post a cacophony of sound broke out on the street. As we are currently staying near Tahrir Square, I initially thought that it might be some sort of protest. After Friday prayers, of course, was the prime time for protests during the Egyptian uprising. As I looked down from our balcony, however, I realized that all that noise was actually from a group of food vendors hoping to take advantage of the hundreds of people pouring out of the mosque, drivers honking to get the vendors out of their way, and the multitude of other random noises that characterize daily life on Cairo’s streets. Ah Egypt, it’s good to be back!

Back in Egypt!

Over the past two years, I have alternately used this blog for Arabic class assignments and dispatches from my semester abroad in Egypt. It's been just over a year since I finished my junior spring semester in Alexandria, and I am happy to announce that I will be back in Egypt starting on Monday! This time around, I will be there on a fellowship with the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), a yearlong program affiliated with the University of Texas and American University in Cairo.

Egypt is in the midst of a historic political and social transition, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to watch this transition unfold firsthand. As I did during my semester abroad, I will fill this blog with my observations of daily life in Egypt, stories of my adventures in Cairo, and analysis of political developments throughout the year. Please feel free to share this blog with anyone that you think might be interested!

More to come soon. Now, it's off to pack and eat one last meal in San Francisco.

سيرتي الذاتية

٧ سبتيمبر ٢٠١٠


ولدت في مدينة سان فرانسيسكو في سنة ١٩٨٩ وأنشأت في نفس المدينة وبعد سنتين أمي أنجبت أختي وهي اسمها كارولين. خلال طفولتي كان عندي اهتمامين وهما كرة القاعدة والتشييد ولكن بالاضافة إلى كرة القاعدة كنت أحب كثير من الرياضات مثل كرة السلة وكرة القدم الامريكي. وإنّ كنت أقضي وقت كثير طفولتياً لاعباً كرة القاعدة مع صديقي في الشارع أمام بيتي وكنا متخيلين أنّ كنا أحسن لاعبين في أشهر فرق في العالم وكنت ألعب في فرق كثيرة وحقيقية أيضاً واستمرت في تلك الرياضة حتى السنة الثانية في الجامعة وأكيد ما زلت أستمتع بمشاهدة كرة القاعدة في التليفيزيون.

وبالنسبة للتشييد أحببته بشكل شديد خلال طفولتي وكنت أذهب إلى اماكن التشييد مع والداي تقريبا كل يوم عندما كان عندي ٥ سنة من عمري حتى كان عندي ١٠ سنة من عمري وحتى الآن أنا مهتم بالتشييد وأحب أن أقرأ مقالات في الجرائد عن تنمية البنية التحتية في امريكا والعالم بصفة عامة.

بدأت أن أسافر في المدرسة الثانوية إلى بلاد كثيرة وفرص السفر تلك سببتني أن أتخصص في العلاقات الدولية في الجامعة لأنني أدركت أنّ أهتم بثقافات أخرى والعلاقات بينها وامريكا. فإنّ زرت دول كثيرة في افريقيا وآسياء وأوروبا وأتذكر تلك التجارب حتى اليوم وفي الصيفين الماضيين اشتغلت في كينيا وأيضا زرت غانا مع مجموعة من جامعة توفتس في السنة الثانية. لا أشعر بالغربة لما أنا في دولة أجنبية لأنني متعود جدا على الحياة هناك وأيضا تحسنت بالنسبة لمهاراتي للعلاقات وللفهم بيني والناس الذين أنا أتعرف على في هذه الدول فعندي أصحاب كثيرون من كينيا ومصر ونتواصل بعضنا البعض حتى الآن.

وأخيراً هناك جزء كبير من دراستي في الجامعة وهي اللغة العربية وفي رآي شخصي هذه اللغة جميلة ومعقدة جدا (ولكن معقدة بشكل جيد) ودرست اللغة العربية لمدة ثلاث سنوات ومن هذه السنوات قضيت سنتين ونصف أدرس داخل الجامعة في مدينة بوستون وأربع شهور أدرس في الاسكندرية في مصر ولكن تعلمت في تلك الفترة في الاسكندرية أكثر من كل الصفوف في جامعة توفتس لأننا تكلمنا العربي كل يوم في كل وضع وكان عندنا مجموعة رائعة تتكون من امريكيين ومصريين وبالاضافة إلى الصفوف تعلمت كثير في الاحداث الثقافية المتنوعة التي حضرناها مثلاً مسرحيات وأفلام وفرح.

فأنا متحمس جدا لانني سأواصل دراسة اللغة العربية في هذه السنة الأخيرة في جامعة توفتس وأتمنى أنّه سيكون عندي فرصة ثانية للسفر إلى الشرق الأوسط في أي أستطيع أن أتحسن بقدرتي على الكلام والكتابة بالعربي إن شاء الله.

Back in My Day...

Some of the most memorable conversations I have had in Alexandria have been with taxi drivers. At times this city (and Cairo) feels like New York because of the ubiquity of taxis – a fact that has its benefits (easy to get from place to place) and its drawbacks (congestion, congestion, more congestion). Driving a taxi is a job that is readily available and doesn't require much skill other than knowing how to work a stick shift. In a sign of the economic reality in Egypt, however, many of the taxi drivers actually have college degrees but are unable to find work in the fields they specialize in. I have been driven around by Agricultural Engineers, Philosophy Majors, and a man who used to work in the oilfields of Iraq. Some of them are quite uninterested in their passengers and simply drive us from point A to point B, but others want to hear our entire life stories (or tell us their life stories), discuss politics with us, or try to convert us to Islam. While taxis are somewhat of a luxury for your average Egyptian – most people in the lower and middle classes prefer to take the cheaper, but slower, public microbuses – we Americans love being able to get almost anywhere in the city for just about $1. I average between 2 and 3 separate taxi rides per day, so you can imagine the variety of drivers that I have met.

Today, I had two unique experiences with taxi drivers. I usually try to strike up a conversation with the driver, and we almost always go through the basics of where I am from (America), why I am here (to study Arabic and learn about Egyptian culture), what my opinion is of Egypt and Alexandria (حلوة (hell-wa) which literally means “sweet” in Arabic but is used in everyday speech to mean “nice” or “cool”). After that, I generally ask the driver about his background and the conversation goes from there. This driver was from Alexandria, born in a working-class neighborhood in which I have spent some time exploring and found to be full of color and life. So I asked him one of my go-to questions: “How has life changed in Alexandria from your childhood until now?” His answer was a classic “back-in-my-day” response: “Life is so much worse now than it was before. The biggest change is all of the congestion on the streets, which didn't exist when I was younger. On top of that, nobody respects anyone anymore. On the streets everyone drives like an animal, and the veneration that the younger generation used to have for the older generation is gone. In the old days, when a student saw his teacher in the street he would cover his face and look the other way out of respect for him (an odd way of showing respect, if you ask me), but nowadays the students have no morals and they make fun of their teachers when they seem them in the street. No one has any morals.” I had heard versions of these gripes before, almost all of them from older taxi drivers, and my next question always revolves around the causes of these changes. In the driver's opinion, “The root of the problem is that there has been no change in peoples' salaries for a really long time, but the cost of life has continued to rise. The population keeps on growing, but there is no corresponding economic improvement. Furthermore, this society has moved away from Allah, no one is a true Muslim anymore.” I then asked him who he blamed for the mess “الرئيس (al-raees) – the president!” So I then asked him how he viewed his current situation, and his response: “الحمد لله (hamdullah) – Praise be to God, I'm doing fine because I have stayed close to God.” “So what is your opinion on the solution to this problem? How can Egypt improve itself?” “The people have to find God again. Allah is the solution.”

That was the end of our conversation, as we had reached the dorms. The driver's answers, however, are representative of the views of a sizable portion of the population here (or at least those I have come into contact with). Everyone acknowledges that Egypt has problems, they identify President Mubarak or the government in general as a source of the problems, but the biggest issue, in their eyes, is that people have strayed from religion (which is the true solution). What is odd about this answer is that Egypt has become a much more overtly religious society over the past 30 years. Despite a secular government, the tide of a “tightening” up of the country's interpretation of Islam is manifested in the hijabs that almost every woman wears, the niqabs that some of them wear, the usage of religious phrases in everyday speech (which, to be sure, is a natural part of the Arabic language but one that in many instances has been taken to the extreme), and, to cite an example from taxis themselves, the fact that about 75% of the taxis that I ride have their radios turned to 90.1, the “all Quran, all the time” station. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am very interested in the contrast between Egypt's move toward a more outwardly evident form of Islam, but at the same time an decrease in the quality of life and a more self-focused, consumerist view of life. Make no mistake, Egypt has found a way to balance religiosity with consumerism. In many instances the hijab appears to be more of a fashion statement than an indication of modesty, and I know many people in the dorms here who pray five times a day and can also reel off more lines from famous American movies than I can. Of course it is prudent to realize that these generalizations about Egyptian culture are not fully sufficient to explain the current situation in the country. There are dozens of exceptions, and I can think of many people who don't fit my previous characterization of the country in the slightest. But the question that I am left with at the end is “where is this country headed?” In all honesty, I haven't the slightest idea.

In other news, I had one of my odder interactions later today with another driver who asked my friend and I whether we were Muslim or Christian. Of course when we answered that we were Jewish we readied ourselves for the inevitable debate about Israel and Palestine, but both of us were completely taken off guard when the driver let out a laugh of joy and told us that he thought that the Jews were the best people in the world. My friend and I exchanged perplexed looks, and then listened to him continue to tell us that he hated the Palestinians and thought they were bad people because of their use of suicide bombers. He then added that the Jews had an absolute right to Israel because the land was originally Moses' land. After the first moments of confusion, we tried to to take the middle ground, pointing out that it was incorrect to characterize all Jews as great and all Palestinians as terrible. There are good and bad people on both sides, we said. But the driver was determined not to deviate from his initial assertion, and he dropped us off at our destination with a hearty good-bye, and we were left shaking our heads in disbelief as he drove away. The lesson to take away: in an Egyptian taxi, anything is possible.

The Egypt Syndrome

It's hard to believe that we will finish the program here in Egypt exactly one week from today. The semester has flown by! I have fallen a bit behind on the blogging front, mostly because I've been quite busy with school, teaching, and also trips to Cairo and various other spots in Egypt over the past few weekends. Two weekends ago in Cairo, we visited most of the major spots in Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo, and also managed to work in a trip to a camel market that was one of the craziest experiences I have had in Egypt to date (more about that later).

But first, I want to talk about something I have decided to call the "Egypt Syndrome." Having been here now for four months and having visited most of the major tourist sites in the country, I have developed a very skewed perception of time as it relates to history. In the US, just about the oldest buildings you'll find were built in the 19th century and a few still exist from the 18th century (in Boston, for example). In Egypt, however, I have now come to feel normal when I walk into a building or a mosque that was built over 1,000 years ago. It goes without saying, of course, that the Pyramids trump everything else in this country in terms of grandeur in relation to age. I cannot even begin to comprehend that those majestics structures were built over 4,000 years ago. Seriously. The Pyramids aside, however, Cairo is littered with ancient buildings that are still being used today. We visited the Hanging Church in Coptic Cairo, built sometime around the 4th Century (!) AD, and early in the day we walked around inside the Ibn Tulun mosque, the oldest in Cairo, that was built in 876 AD. Less than 300 years after the death of Mohammed!

After becoming used to seeing those ancient sites all over the place, buildings built in the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Period, or the Ottoman Period just don't seem that old. Don't get me wrong, I still love to visit them, but I enjoy them more for their architectural intricacies or stories about past events that happened there. Whereas a building built the 14th century in the US would probably be known primarily for its age, the 700 year old Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo is famous because of its role as the focal point of Islamic study in Egypt. People know that the mosque has been around for ages, but that fact is simply mentioned in passing rather than emphasized.

I have heard many people here in Egypt (and in Syria and Lebanon) refer to the country as "Um al-Dunia" (mother of the world), and I can say with certainty that Egypt definitely deserves that title. Everything here is extremely old, but the grandeur and architectural genius of those old structures have preserved them very well. Therefore, when you walk around the Pyramids or climb the minaret of Ibn Tulun Mosque to get a panoramic view of the city, you might try to get your head around how long of a period 1,300 years(in the case of Ibn Tulun) really is, but ultimately you will find yourself simply unable to comprehend it.

For anyone wanting a funny description of what happened on our trip to the Camel Market outside of Cairo, take a look at this post on my friend Emily's blog (we shared the unique experience.)http://emilyisinegypt.blogspot.com/2010/05/hit-and-run.html

Carpets for Sale in the Alleys

I arrived at the language center where I teach English early today, so I decided to use the rare bit of free time that I had to sit down and type up a post about my trip to Syria and Lebanon. Just as I was about to start, however, I heard shouts echoing through the alley outside the building. I stepped outside of the classroom and onto the balcony, and looked down into the street to see a group of four men strolling through the alley with giant carpets balanced on their shoulders. They were repeating a chant which I at first couldn't understand, but I soon realized that it was their way of getting the residents of the alley to come out to their balconies and take a look at the carpets. I don't have a precise translation of the chant, but it was something along the lines of "Carpets for sale! High quality! Cheaper than you'll find in stores!"

The sellers' strategy soon became clear as I noticed how densely populated the alley was. There were high rise apartment buildings on both sides up and down the street, each building generally consisting of six or seven floors with two apartments on each floor. Assuming that at least one or two people would be home in each apartment (the time being 5:30 or so in the afternoon), the sellers figured that they would have at least several dozen prospective buyers who would at least take a look at the carpets. When the sellers reached the middle of the alley, they stopped, unloaded the carpets off their back, and continued their calls to the residents of the alley to come out to their balconies and take a look.

As people slowly began to emerge on their balconies, the sellers then unfurled their carpets in the middle of the street! They then proceeded to try to convince a few of the residents that seemed genuinely interested, but unfortunately today was not their lucky day. From an aesthetic perspective, however, I loved the contrast between the colorful carpets and the street and the general oddity of seeing a carpet unfurled on the street (although, in fact, there are carpets rolled out on the street every Friday for the spillover from Friday prayers). Yet another unique image of Alexandria. Furthermore, when I peeled my eyes away from the sellers themselves, I stepped back to take in the sweeping views from the street to the sky: starting with the colors of the carpets, up to the colorful clothing and other laundry hanging from each floor of the high rises, and finally to the slim sliver of sky that was just visible above the buildings. A lot of times I feel like Egypt lacks color, which seems to be primarily a consequence of not washing buildings that are covered in a thick layer of dust, but the laundry hanging throughout every alley in the city, and especially this alley in particular, provides evidence to the contrary.

After rolling up their carpets once again and loading them up on their shoulders, the sellers continued their walk down the street. Certainly not an easy job, but I imagine that it has to be somewhat lucrative because at least a few of the hundreds of the alley residents that come out to view the carpets each day might decide to make a quick and easy buy.

Riding the Train to Class

After spending a wonderful week and a half in Lebanon and Syria (a post about the trip is in the works), I returned to Egypt last Saturday. As usual, we wasted no time yesterday getting right back into the swing of the things at Alexandria University. In addition to my classes, however, I also taught my first English class. A friend of mine on the program had spent a month teaching English classes at a private study program in Alexandria, and he handed the reins over to me for my last month in the city. This is my first experience teaching English as a second language, and because the students are still at a pretty basic level I'm speaking Arabic just as much as English with them. Of course I am trying to get them to speak in English as much as possible, and I feel like a broken record after repeating to them over and over that I would rather hear them make mistakes in English than speak correctly in Arabic. After talking about some general goals for the class, we worked on using the phrase "at the same time" to describe two different actions in the same sentence. I am going to be teaching for two hours each Sunday and Tuesday for the next 4 weeks, and I am looking forward not only to my first chance to teach English as a foreign language but also to the chance to improve my Arabic because of all the explanations I have to give them about English grammar or the meanings of English words.

The one drawback about the program is that the language center is located far away from the dorms, so I have to take a thirty minute train ride there and back. The train is a true Egyptian train - it works, but it certainly is a little bit rough around the edges as evidenced by the doors that do not close and the cacophony of screeches as it hurtles (or sometimes crawls) down the the tracks. On the train, there is a mix of all types of people from every different level of society: businessmen riding home in their three piece suits, mothers weighed down with huge bags of groceries, children playing around in the aisles, and beggars, too. The train also presents a significant business opportunity to a number of vendors hawking little candies or gizmos and gadgets throughout the ride. I was inspired to write this post because of the odd, but also effective, method that the vendors use to sell their goods. Most of them will walk down the aisle calling out what they have to sell and at what price, and in addition to that they will actually intentionally drop their ware into your lap and walk right past you. The first time I had this happen to me I was obviously quite confused - I didn't ask for the chew candy that the vendor had just dropped into my lap, but at the same time he just kept on walking down the aisle without even making eye contact with me. Watching the vendor continue to hand out his candy to the rest of the people on the train, I soon realized that his plan was to walk up and down the train car handing out candy to everyone, and then retrace his steps collecting the candy back from those who didn't want it or collecting money from those who did. The astuteness of this strategy became clear when I saw a number of kids imploring their parents to buy the candy that they were now holding in their hands. So as the vendor came ambling back down the car to collect his candy once again, he managed to make about five sales to parents with young children or adults enticed by the candy that they had been holding in their hand and staring at for the past few minutes.

Being a train vendor is by no means a ticket to earning a comfortable living, but I love the unique style that the vendors employ as they hawk their goods. It's much harder to say no to a piece of candy or give it back after holding it in your hand for a few minutes and imagining the sweet taste and the enjoyment you will get out of eating it.