To read or not to read.....

Little did I know that my Sunday actually was going to start on Saturday night...

It all started when I decided to go to bed my first night in Alexandria. Before I could sleep I had to take my cousin upstairs to his parents. He's only 3 and fell asleep on the couch where I was staying, seeing as how its his parents old apartment and they moved from it to the one above it. As I opened the door to leave, I found his mom and some random strange people I had never seen before. My aunt saw me and was like oh he fell asleep, put him on the couch I brought some company down. Turns out these people were visiting her upstairs and she decided that downstairs was a better place. I should say all this was going on at midnight. So, I'm running on 3 hours of sleep and had just spent 5 hours on a bus...yes I am not a happy camper at this moment. So, I told her we were going to bed and she said that was alright and walked in. I was like okay. There really was nothing I could do to stop it, seeing as how it was her old apartment I was temporarily living. Thus I had to play hostess. I made tea and coffee and such. Then I sat and listened to the people who I had never met before start to talk about me. My favorite was 'she doesn't speak Arabic so we can say whatever we want about her.' Thats when my aunt asked me where my grandma was and I answered her in flawless Arabic that she was sleeping and wasn't going to wake up till sometime in the morning. hehe..company wasn't happy with me. But I thought it was awesome. Teaches them to make assumptions like that. Anyways, these people then leave after an hour and a half of waiting for my grandma to wake up, which I said wouldn't happen till sometime in the morning. Little did I know that my rudeness and such would come back to haunt me within the next few hours.

I woke up the next morning at around 10 and was told that I was leaving at 11 to go to the library. So very exciting. So I got ready. When I got out of the shower, there standing in the living room waiting for me was one of the ladies that had been over the night before. Turns out she was taking me out for the day and showing me around the library. YIKES!! Not only was she taking me but my cousin who is three, he's adopted, was coming as was one of the first kids my uncle and aunt adopted. So my brother and I were off with the people we didn't know that well and the lady that I mocked the night before. Yes this made for a rather awkward situation. I really didn't want to get in the taxi with them but seeing as how I had no choice really, I went.

The drive to the library wasn't all the bad, just quiet. No one wanted to talk to any one for fear of either being mocked or ridiculed. So silence was the order of the day. I like to think that we were practicing for inside the library.

When we got to the library, we paid. I was shocked by this. You had to pay a fee just to walk into the library. I'm so used to walking into libraries for free that I just expect that to be the way it is no matter where I go. After we paid the entrance fee, we had to give our bags to the people in the next booth because bags are prohibited in the library. i wasn't going to leave my purse with strange people and neither was the lady I was with. So we gave it to my cousin who drove us. I took a few pounds just as a percaution and my camera and then went into the library. Yet, before we could enter, we were stopped. This was because apparently children under 6 weren't allowed in the library. So not only did we give out purses to the cab driver but we also gave the little boy to him to. Once that was done, in we went. Inside we waited for a dude to give us a tour of the place. We waited and waited and waited. Finally there was enough people. Dude spoke to us for 15 minutes and then was like tours done and walked away. The tour consisted of him telling us about the ancient library and how it burnt down. Then he told us that the new library was built on the exact same spot as the old one. Then he explained the concept behind the design which I don't really remember and then he went on to explain that it was 7 floors. With the first floor being under ground. I thought that was snazzy. Once he finished that he left us alone to wonder. As I wondered I didn't look at a single book. This was due to the fact that the library was also a museum and housed so many amazing artifacts. I kept running from one to the next being like ohh and ahh. It was grand fun. I spent 2 hours just looking at all the different things that were in there. There was a section dedicated to Alexandria through the ages and how it has changed over the years. Another was dedicated to a man who flimed a move and left everything to the library when it was built after he passed away (the building happened years after he passed away). There was section dedicated to old books, but I didn't get to see it because it cost money to get into that section. Then I went to the useum that was there. Turns out they found some stuff at the site of the library. So everything that was found at the site was out into a museum in the library once it was done. It was pretty surreal to see it all.

So my day at the library was spent looking at artifacts and not books. I learned there is a call for books for the library. They want to make it rival the old library that was there before. But what makes this call for books funny is that when they told us they wanted books from all over the world and that they hoped we would send it to them, they wouldn't tell us the address to send the books to. So I'm getting the feeling that they don't really want the books. They just want said library to be a museum and not a library as we know it. Which is fine by me. I really enjoyed seeing all the things that they found that may have belonged to the old library.

After spending 2 hours inside we decided it was time to leave. This is where we ran into a bit of a problem. This problem consisted of not having a cell phone. How were we supposed to phone the guy who drove us over and tell him we were ready to be picked up? We couldn't think of an answer to this pressing question. Thus we decided to head into the gift shop and do some shopping. Which was fine by me. Bought a few things, which I knew was overpriced because of the fact that it was a tourist stop. But really it was to hard to resist. After we bought the things we still had the problem of getting home. But really it wasn't as pressing as we thought it would be. So, we decided that we would wonder around outside the library for a bit. We walked around and investigated what was going on outside. Once we finished that we decided that we would walk to the street where we were dropped off just to see what was going on there. After we walked a block, we saw my cousin who wasn't allowed in because he was too young. Then we looked up and there was the dude who drove us. He had decided that he would park the car after driving around for an hour just in case we decided to come out early. So we were saved and went home. Tha was the end of the advnture of how am I supposed to get home. YAY I was saved!!

When we got home, I was bombarded by family that I hadn't seen in 10 years. i was awesome. Some even stayed the night. But yes that was the events of my library day. It was the end of my adventures for that day. Which was nice. we sat and waced the beach, the sun set over the ocean and the people walk along the coast. I must say it was awesome.