Well, folks, I've decided to set up a blog so that you can all read (or ignore, if you wish) about my exploits and adventures in Egypt. Both the template and the name of this blog are shamelessly stolen from Annie (thanks!); the first for the reason that its the only available blog format that doesn't look like the twenty-first century puked on it, the second for the reason that I couldn't think of anything better. V Rossij is a transliteration of the Russian for "In Russia." Fiy al-Qāhirah is likewise a transliteration of في القاهرة , arabic for "In Cairo." To be properly conformist, I should actually have called this blog "In Egypt" - Fiy al-Masr. I did not for two reasons. First, as any Cairene will tell you, however, Cairo is Egypt. Many people actually call Cairo "Masr" - Masr, of course, being the transliteration of مصر , or Egypt. With more than 20 million people in the greater metropolitan area, Cairo makes up more than a quarter of the nation's population, so perhaps they are warranted in that assertion. Secondly, and more importantly, al-Qāhirah is much longer and more impressive looking in transliteration, so thus the decision was made.
Rather than fill you all in now about how things are going here in al-Qāhirah, I'm going to plead exhaustion and terminate this post prematurely. I promise more exciting information later!
