Phewf

That's not really a word, but it's how I'm feeling. Cairo is overwhelming.

Being here is like every video you've ever seen on a spy show, but raised to the power of ten. All the individual sights are what you've seen on TV, women in headscarves, bright lights, people along the Nile, crazy streets. But of course, it's so different being here, people are always, always, always, ALWAYS hustling you. They will get you any service you like, they assure you, for only a nominal fee. My first foray out, I only got caught by one, and there went ten Egyptian pounds right there. Good news, that's about two dollars. Bad news, I am at the end of my trip and very broke, and couldn't really spare it at all. Sigh. So it goes. I should be happy I avoided it all but once. (I'm not kidding or exaggerating here. Every single minute, someone is demanding something of you. It is NUTS.)

I shouldn't be stressed here, but I am. The engagement ring helps (I am coming up with all these elaborate lies about Imaginary Fiance Will. Backstory, relationship history, personality, career plans, wedding date... I'm such a bad liar; I get paranoid really really quickly and start coming up with all these contingencies) but I get so flustered ignoring people on the street all the time. I know, I know, I'm from Berkeley, that's fairly ridiculous. But still, I don't know, I feel like I'm being so rude, when in actual fact it is self defense and being broke.

Anyway. Tomorrow I promise to calm down and see the pyramids. Meanwhile, news from Athens. I can't get this computer to recognize my flash drive, so no pictures for a couple of days. (Once I get home, I'll just post pictures all the time, from the whole trip, just for the hell of it.)

But! In Athens. The Temple of the Olympian Zeus, which is sort of like the Circus Maximus in Rome, in that the site is huge, so you realize the building must have been incredibly impressive. But there's so little left of it (in the case of the Circus, there's essentially a track; Zeus does better with 15 pillars standing; which sounds impressive until you realize that that's basically one corner of the structure) that it's hard to really appreciate. The Acropolis was more impressive -- there are actually several temples there, including the one with the Caryatids (which I just spelled wrong). But I found out! That's supposedly on the site where Athena and Poseidon had their contest, right, for who gets the city, and Poseidon made a spring well up from the rock and everyone was all impressed, except he's the god of the OCEAN, so when they tasted it it was all salty and gross, and then they weren't impressed anymore, and then Athena planted an olive tree, because she ROCKS, and the Greeks figured out that they could smoosh the olives and make olive oil, and sell it to the rest of Europe for really expensive prices, and then Athena got the city because her gift was more useful and that's why it's Athens and not Poseidons, although ironically, it occurs to me now, they probably had to cure the olives in Poseidon's salt water, so the gifts were actually sort of equally useful, and the city should really be called Atheidons.

Yes, of course I was like that for the whole tour, explaining things and pissing people off. Duh. I haven't changed at all. Plus, it's Athens!

Oh, and it just gets better. I mentioned yesterday the old Dionysian theater (ROCK ROCK ROCK ROCK) and ALSO I saw the Ancient Marketplace, meaning I walked on the same dirt as SOCRATES. I KNOW. IT WAS SO COOL!

Yes, all those caps were necessary. Sigh. No one understands me.

And, we went to this hill, right near the Acropolis, where supposedly Ares was put on trial for sleeping with/raping Poseidon's daughter. I don't know why all the gods were so big on pissing off Poseidon; it seems like such a stupid idea. Although possibly he couldn't ever really take it out on them because Ares would have kicked his ass, and Athena has Zeus sort of perpetually backing her up, so he had to just sort of fume, and so then when Odysseus pissed him off, he really went nuts because Athena was only supporting him sort of off and on, and so Zeus didn't really get involved...

Yeah, I'm taking my weird notions off to sleep now, because I have the same feeling that I get when I say something and everyone looks at me funny and blinks.