We have been here for just over a month now and I find myself getting comfortable and content with drinking wine and hanging out with the cat on weekends. And to myself I must repeat, “NO CASEY! The Ville is your oyster!! Eat every last bite you can!!!”(..?)

Anyways, I have always been very reluctant to take part in things such as bucket lists and resolutions because they address such broad ideas or goals that I easily forgot about them.  But having a list of things to do RIGHT here forces me to squeeze every inch of awesome out of this town, and I want to experience da heck out of it.

So here goes my Bucket List for Charlottesville.  As I complete these items I shall do a post about them and journal about all of them(a marvelous idea I borrowed from ze genius Kara Haupt).  Please comment with any ideas or suggestions that I am missing!  I will probably add more as they come to me.

ps-this is also an open plea to friends.  (we don’t have friends here). Look at all the fun things you could do if you just come visitt meeeeeeee. 

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Just saw this post about in my drafts, guess I never published it. Run free draft post! You’re a real post now!

Being the cool, hip, down-with-the-youngsters-kinda gal that I am, one of the first things I did when I got to Cairo was join all the “Cairo scene” Facebook groups. Look ma, ima reeegular egyptian!

Anyways, we haven’t gone to any of their events because they all look way too cool for us.  Here is an example from the facebook:

A bar named Buddha? Vivacious Crowds?  Casual MONDAY?  Not this girl.  (although the name DJ Feedo is quite intruiging)  Just when I thought all CAIRO ZOOM hope was lost- we found,…  ze color festivaaaallll!! I believe color festivals started in India for the Holi.  It is now a pretty common weekend activity in Egypt-between Cairo and Alexandria there is pretty much one every weekend.

After much anticipation and being lazy about planning, we finally ended up going to one last weekend!   In an unsure and crazy time for Egypt, the color festival was a protected place within the walls of New Cairo club where people could let go of worries and go crazy. Strangers playfully decorated each other with color guns and gave eachother foam beards.  I tried to protect my camera from the madness for a couple minutes, but eventually submitted to the fun and hoped for the best.

So we made our way in and it the boys ripped into their color packs. One minute I was clean, the next minute I was an avatar dipped in nickelodeon slime.  We played, danced, and globbed colors on ourselves until our faces were niceee n’ chunky-like.

Here is a nice awkward soundless video to make you feel like you were there with earmuffs and seeing everything in fast forward!  Andddd more pictures:

Once our faces had grown 3cm of this color-chunk, we decided it was a good time to go home.  On the way home we stopped by our local grocery store.  The 80-minute drive gave the color a good chance to really soak deep into our skin, making us look extra zombielicius.  I guess the people who work at Saudi Market have never seen swamp monsters before, because they were all about staring. Rude. Eheheh..but yes like the celebrity swamp monsters we are we picked up our food and took pictures with the grocers on their cell phones. I lavvvvv the color festival!! 

Hmm,…fast forward through the part where we found an apartment and moved in two days ago.  I’ll talk about it later? No I won’t.

Anyways, finished up the painting last night. That sucked. Here is the current version of the kitchen/dining room!  What is that you see in the corner? A BANANA TREE.  God we’re cool.

Today was my first day as a stay-at-home Casey while Max went off to work. Started off right, doing dishes and windexing being a good girl.  Gross.  Decided I would make my big comeback to running after I gave the internet some lovin,..I have missed it ever so much the past couple weeks.  So I obviously never went for a run.  But I DID send this to Max.  

In other productive news: I was trying to be cool and shop and Whole Foods and accidentally spent $9.85 on pesto…HOW DO YOU DO THAT.  Dammit, being fancy is expensive.  Expensive aaaaand delicious.  

Hello viewership of 3,

I am sure that you have all missed my words with the fire of a thousand pizza ovens.  BUT HEY I’m back.  Since we last spoke, I have been tweedling away finishing up mah education and finding a job.  Which I’m happy to say I have done!! 

Starting in June I shall be working at a marketing company in Charlottesville.  And living in Charlottesville. And getting to live in freaking Charlottesville.  I AM SO EXCITED TO LIVE IN CHARLOTTESVILLE.

Reasons I am excited(based on judging a book by its cover):

• Awesome craft beer scene
• Friday after 5 Concerts at the Pavillion—I have gathered there is tax deductible beer from a truck.  Can anyone verify this?  Ahhh…you had me at free beer.
• Ballin trail running scene..so many trails and so much nature.  This is a ginorous leap toward my lifelong dream of being Pocahontas.
• Downtown-livin.  This may or may not happen, depending on the fact that Maxo and I are poor.  But if all I have to spend money on is apartment, food, and free beer, then i’m all in.

I feel like Charlottesville will be a fresh start for me.  Between Living in Egypt and returning to school for a final semester of CIS, this past year has been kinda funky.  It has all felt very transitional and I haven’t really gotten a chance to do the super-casey type things I like to do. SO for that reason I think I am going to use moving to Charlottesville as the fresh start I need.  INFACT I think I will to make a list of stuff to do with life when I get to Charlottesville.  Later.

But I DO know I want to blog more.  Because if there is anything I know about the internet, there aren’t enough people talking about themselves. I got you world, don’t worry about it.

Only in Egypt do you see a man bicycling down the street talking on his cell phone whilst balancing a ladder upon his head.  Luckily, I am an artist so I have included my rendering of the event for those who could not be here today.

Highlight of my day? Probably. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

I would have asked, but he was on the phone.

On most days, Max is a nice nice boy. Today was not one of those days.

We spent the day shooting clips for a ‘Day in the Life’ video we are making about living in Cairo.  For the very last clip we set the camera up and got in the (FREAKING-RICKETY-60-YEAR-OLD-SCARY-AS CRAP) elevator to record ourselves coming up to the 3rd floor and entering the flat.  This is when Max got reaal button happy.

He KNOWS the elevator is not that smart and can’t handle when you press all the buttons at once.  HE KNOWS.

I truly believe Max lives for the shining glimmer of discomfort and fear in my eyes when he does things like that. Or maybe it is his dream to fall to a fiery doom at the bottom of an elevator shaft in a big city suburb.  

Whatever the case, BIG SURPRISE—the elevator came to a screeching halt, lights went out, and we were officially locked in the elevator.

We laughed, we cried, we braided eachothers hair (one of these are true).  Luckily, I had my phone so we called my dad, who we had just been in the apartment with 5 minutes prior.  17 calls and no answers later, we called up our driver Ashraf.

“Ashraf! We are stuck in the elevator at the flat!!” “Yesssss.  Very good.” “NO. ASHRAF.  WE.ARE.IN.THE.ELEVATOR. WE CAN’T. GET. OUT.” “………………………hmm…I don’t understand.”  We repeated this conversation back and forth a couple more times before he finally understood. “oh……OHHH NO!!!! “ 

He ended up calling the Hassan, our extremely crazy old boab (doorkeeper). He doesn’t speak a lick of english, and knows we don’t speak arabic, but likes to scream it at our faces anyways.  

Somehow he managed to walk past us knocking and saying we were in the elevator shaft from the first floor on his way up to the second floor.

After about 5 minutes of playing upstairs, Hassan must have realized from the absense of an elevator car that we were indeed not on the second floor.   He called, “inta fen???”(where are you??) “wahid! wahid!”(one) we replied.  To which he angrily answered, “AIWA AIWA AIWAAA” as if to say “YEAH. I get it.”

EXCEPT NO. NO YOU DON’T GET IT. BECAUSE IF YOU GOT IT WE COULD BE MEANDERING ACROSS THE INTERWEB OR COOKING OURSELVES UP A NICE LITTLE MEAL FOR DINNER. NOT SITTING IN THIS TINY ELEVATOR CAR. 

That imaginary past response was kind of harsh.  BUT CMON DUDEE.  Boys can only be in a closed space for so long without fulfilling their natural need to fill it with fart gas.  The breathable-air clock was ticking!

This is when an english-speaking voice spoke to us from the heavens- “Are you stuck? Where are you??” We again, repeated where we were.  He came down, stuck a knife in the door and set us free.  That was easy.

Our savior ended up telling us his name and that he was running for parliament.  Like a political propaganda fairytale-he saved the white kids from the scary Egyptian elevator, told us his name, mentioned he was running for parliament, and with a wink and a poof of fairy dust he was gone.  

We returned home to find Kim sleeping on the couch like a little angel.  Aww.