A Tale of 2 Shopping Trips

This last week we've been on a few notable shopping excursions. Last Saturday, Kevan, Jess, and I were joined by Shon and Kirsten and a couple of friends from church, and we went to the fabric market in downtown Cairo. What a place! Shop after tiny little shop of nothing but fabric. The narrow streets formed quite a maze (I will neither confirm nor deny that I was the one who led us right out of it, and I will neither confirm nor deny that Kevan had no clue where we were) (I will, however, totally rat out Shon and tell you that he got totally lost, and we had to wait 15 minutes for him to find his way out ;) but we all found some great fabric. In a lot of ways it reminded me of the fabric district in L.A., except dirtier, in that it seemed like the bulk of the fabric for sale was upholstery-type fabric, but truly, we barely scratched the surface; who knows what we would have found if we had delved deeper into the place. We were after fabric to make duvet covers for the girls' room, and found some cute embroidered cotton to use. The man selling it thought Jessica was just the cutest thing. He asked her if she was thirsty, and she told him, "no," but he still went and got her a bottle of cold water, and insisted she take it. He was delighted when she accepted it and started to drink from it. He gave us a pretty good price on the fabric, too. We also got some cute fabric to make Jess a few skirts, and I got to practice my negotiating skills. I had told Kevan that he was supposed to stay by me (what with him speaking the language and me not so much), but he kept getting distracted by, I dunno, shiny things? so I was on my own a few times. I think I did OK though.

When we were waiting by our cab for Shon and Kirsten to make their way out of the market, young boys selling socks kept coming up to us and trying to get us to buy them (as they were all throughout the market). There was also a slightly older boy (maybe 11 or 12) standing at the food cart we were near who was looking at us and who, at one point, asked me the time. After a little while of standing there we realized that this boy had sort of become our protector and was shooing away all the little sock boys and keeping the other vendors away from us. When we were finally leaving, he walked along the side of the car and was blowing kisses at Jessica and Megan (not our Megan, but a friend of Jessie's from church) who were sitting in the back seat. We've been teasing them more than a little bit about that.

This is the only picture we remembered to take. It is at the beginning of the market, but we took it when we were on our way out. My favorite part of it is the guy in blue walking past us. I'm pretty sure his facial expression reads somewhere along the lines of, "Crazy American tourists!"
After we left the market, we went to lunch at the same Lebanese restaurant we went to after our visit to the museum. Jess and I were intrigued by this sign on the street outside it, and are hoping that the fest it is advertising makes a return appearance this year. That is most definitely my kind of fest.
Megan and her mom had the grilled shrimp for lunch, and it was no namby-pamby curled up little shrimp, thank you very much. Those puppers were still in their shells with eyeballs and everything. So, of course, we had some of the obligatory Messing Around with Gross Things. I am only showing you the tamest of the pictures. You are welcome.
Then on Wednesday, Kevan and I took a cab to a local store called Carrefour. I have been once before with some people from church, and it is quite the experience. The first person that told me about it said, "It's kind of like Walmart." And then the person I went with said, "What have you heard about this place? That's it's kind of like Walmart? Because it's nothing like Walmart." As we were wandering through it this time, I realized what it is that it is like. You know how there's Walmart and then there's Super Walmart? And how Super Walmart is bigger, has more stuff, and also food? Well, Carrefour is like a Super All-a-Dollar. Tons of random stuff, no guarantee that it will be the same stuff twice (or in the same place), and also food.

This is a shot of the outside, from our cab:
The building that it's in also has a mall in it, with all the kinds of stores you would expect to find in a mall, but each with a decidedly Arab twist. My favorite part of these stores is the mannequins. Some day I will be brave enough to take some pictures of them for you. It will be worth the wait.

I did manage to snap a couple of shots of come our favorite products that we found inside Carrefour itself.

Holly, I don't care how hard you beg, I am not buying you this for Christmas:
This was really hard not to buy:
These last couple of shots are from the cab on the way home.

We never did see what it was that was pulling this cart:
You can't see it very well, but in that little pick-up truck in front of us, there are about 1o men crammed in the back: