HAPPY VALENTINES DAY =)

So Happy Valentine's Day first and foremost to all you lovebirds out there. Unfortunately I'm missing it in the US but luckily Chris brought it to me, having a dozen red roses and a teddy bear delivered to my dorm. :) So that's how my day started, not too shabby I must say LOL. That was around 11 AM for me and then I kind of just bummed around my dorm not really doing much. This afternoon Deb, Mae, and I went to the old campus to play intramural volleyball which turned out to be amazing but a little harassing. It was a lot of fun to run around and actually get some exercise after so long but some of the girls who were playing were beasts. They were really good and knew it therefore trying to dominate the court. Next week will be a different story though. The team is just intramural so it's not too rough on requirements thankfully. Guys and girls both play, but today we just played against girls. We stayed for about 2 hours more or less and then came back to Zamalek.

Tonight to celebrate Valentine's Day we're all going to go out to eat at a restaurant and we also did Secret Valentine (Think Secret Santa just a different holiday) but we can't exchange gifts because some of the girls aren't here due to a desert trip, so we'll probably exchange them tomorrow or Monday.

Sooooo I finally got some roommates! I'm happy about this and sad at the same time. Happy because I finally have some people to talk to (and both are really nice and CLEAN, not like the first time around), but at the same time it's a loss of privacy too. But one of the girls who came the day before yesterday is from Tunisia. Her name is Wafa and her dad works as an ambassador for Tunisia (cool, huh?). The other girl I actually met already when I first came to Egypt. We came in on the same day at the airport and I briefly met her that day but we were on different campuses so we never really spoke. Her name is Kaitlen (dunno if that's the right spelling though) and she's really nice as well. She's going to come with us to dinner tonight so that she can meet some of the other girls and get to see a little bit of who we are.

I still don't know where we're going tonight for dinner, but the food here is so delicious that it doesn't even really matter where we go. We frequent this one place called Cafe Vivant where they absolutely LOVE us. They tell us that we light up the place and the other day we went there when it was packed and the guys took seats from a bunch of tables and gave us a nice spot right by the window. They're always really nice with us and Kaitlin (not my new roommate but a.k.a Shakira) taught them a new handshake that we always do with them now.

Yesterday we all went to City Stars, the hugest mall in the country and has just about every store you could possibly imagine, even some of the same ones in America too. They even have a supermarket/Wal-Mart type store at the bottom of the mall! They have a Cinnabon, Chilis, H & M, and various other stores there. It's very popular and packed every single time we go so we don't really shop there that much, plus it's a little on the pricey side. We went yesterday to go to Chilis which was AMAZING by the way and it was so nice to not eat falafel or kushery for one day. Afterwards we just came back and was going to watch a movie but apparantly there's something wrong with the DVD player in our lobby so we just watched TV instead which was very entertaining. There was a show on almost like "America's Funniest Home Videos" and we saw the funnnniest skits! It was definitely a good way to end out night.

The day before yesterday a couple of us went to eat at Vivant and then Kerry, Deb, Mae and I went to go play some pool which was SOOOOO much fun. We won every single game by default which was really retarded of us. Mae and I were on teams and Deb and Kerry played together. They were terrible and knew it so they stooped down to the lowest level ever by taunting us into making bad choices. We still had a great time together and hopefully will go again soon so that we can beat them and show them how REAL pool players win. The place that we went to is right down the block from our dorms and was filled with guys so I'm guessing that pool isn't really too popular among women down here. No one really paid us any attention which was highly welcomed and a great change from the normal catcalling from men on the street.

I know this post is a little backwards and incoherent but I hope everyone can understand the events that happened. Class starts again tomorrow but thankfully I only have one class. And I found a place on campus that serves Euro Deli sandwiches which I'm really excited about because I don't want to have to eat refried beans for lunch every day!