"If the police ask, just say you're from Holland."

First of all, here's the link to my pictures of Marsa Matrouh on facebook:
http://tufts.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057340&l=daf50&id=1707686 (remember mom, copy and paste!)

Second of all, sorry I haven't updated in a while...I've been busy, and I'll try to relate some of what I've been doing in this post and others to come.

I'm going to start by talking about what I did two weekends ago, because the story's pretty good. Two weekends ago, I went to a beach about an hour west of Alex with a few of the kids from my program and a group of British students who are also studying at the TAFL Center (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language) at Alexandria University. We rented a minibus for the day that sat 15, and headed to a private beach resort called Marina. Along the way to the beach, we came to a police checkpoint (they occur periodically along the major highways here in Egypt). As we approached the checkpoint, our driver, Mohammed, told us "if the police ask, say you are from Holland." We all kind of looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and as we started to protest, he just said, "just say you are holandeen, from Amsterdam." At that moment, we reached the checkpoint, our driver rolled down the window, and I heard the police ask him how many we were and where we were from - to which he replied, 13 from Holland. Great. We were waved through without further question, and as we sped away, Mohammed explained that had we said we were British and American we would have had to fill out all kinds of unpleasant paperwork and would have been delayed a half an hour. OK, fine, thanks Mohammed for sparing us. When we arrived at the beach, however, it was the same thing - he told us to say we were from Holland. So when two very enthusiastic beach attendants came up to Lauren and I and asked us where we were from, we dutifully answered, Holland! Then came the awkward moment: one of the girls replied to us in Dutch. Lauren and I were extremely confused for a minute, and then just went for the smile and nod. The rest of the day passed without much excitement - the beach was beautiful, and the water warm, and it was a private beach so we could wear our bathing suits without being harassed. I'm still not sure why it would have been such a hassle for us to be American and British versus Dutch...I may never know, Egypt's full of mysteries.

I have more to come from this past weekend's trip to Marsa Matrouh, so check back soon!