So I came back to cairo to play with a great musician that I had met the last time I came, a guy named Wa'el al-Fashny. A few nights ago I talked to him on the phone and we met up. He told me that the next night he was playing a gig in Beni Sueif, a town about two hours south of Cairo, with a pretty famous Egyptian pop star named Ramy Sabry. It was funny how laid back the whole thing was. Wa'el told me to meet him at 5, and we'll go. I met him up, and over the next two and half hours the rest of the band showed up, sitting, talking, having tea, and it wasn't until about 8 that we left for the gig. The ride down was lots of fun, with everybody laughing and cracking jokes. I was kind of overwhelmed because I still really can't even hold a conversation in Arabic, and most of the guys didn't speak English except a couple. I was telling Wa'el how I would really like to start a band with him, or at least get together often to jam. Some of the other guys in the band like the bass player Amr Gamal, who I talked to for a long time on the way back, were also interested, and it looks like today we'll be getting together. The band travels with a full team of roadies, sound crew and camera man, and even though it takes a while to get everybody on the bus once we got to the gig the team got set up really fast. There were hundreds of young people at the concert, and some random old guys that I couldn't figure out why they were there. The crowd went nuts for the music, which, although I didn't understand the words, was pretty straight forward pop based on traditional rhythms. After the show, the stage was torn right down and everybody headed back to the bus. 

I started a language school yesterday, and they actually placed in a class that's a little bit too advanced, so I asked to be put in one level lower. Hopefully that will work out better. Days are long here, I wake up early and go to bed really late. But I'm starting to find a group of friends, mostly foreigners, who I can hang out with. I've met a couple other people that live in my building, and they came over last night to have dinner. Now I'm just at home, getting ready to work on some music, doing laundry, gonna clean the house. You know, interesting stuff.