Thursday June 6

We went to a few places today: the Asian Studies Center at Cairo University, the "Future Youth Club" and the Cairo Tower.

Cairo University is the one of the oldest universities in Egypt. With King Fouad laid the foundation stone on February 7 in 1928, the building covered a large area. It gives you an academic atmosphere already at the first glance. Especially at this season, in which all students have to prepare for their exams, you see students gathering in groups discussing their school works. Also for this reason, we could not meet the students there. Although we could not make further contact, when we walked on by, the students smiled and greeted us politely. We could already feel the sincerity of scholars in this university.

Nonetheless, we met Prof. Dr. Mohamed Seleam, the Head of the Cente. He is a very educated and thoughtful man. We talked a lot about the political and economical situation around the world. All of us were very eager to ask questions and listen to the professor's viewpoints. We talked about the situation between US and the middle east countries, China and Egypt and the South Pacific Asia Region. Dr. Mohamed Seleam is a very enthusiastic man and he loves his country very much. He gave us many inspiring viewpoints.

Besides meeting with the professor, we also had an interview with people from the Egyptian TV. We were interviewed in groups to share our feeling of Egypt and other things. I did not have opportunity like this before and did not perform really well, but I believe that I can do better next time. They asked Stella and me why we would come to this trip and what we would recommend Egyptian students to do if they come to Hong Kong. They asked Ada and Carrie about their impression and expectation of this trip. They also interviewed our translator Islam, our guide Mr. Ashraf and the two Egyptian girls so as to give a full picture for the audience.

As usual, we went back to the hotel to have lunch and then rested until 6 o'clock before we started the next journey. We visited the Future Youth Club and met a few club members there. After that, we went to the Cairo Tower.

It was not included in our program but we requested to go to this main attraction of Cairo. Somehow it is the landmark of Cairo. Whenever we passed it by, the guide and our companies would point the tower to us. After we went up, we saw lots of people there. Surprisingly, many of them were local people. I think that the tower should be very famous even among Egyptians.
We looked down from the tower and saw the whole Cairo city in a bird's view. The River Nile is magnificent. There are a few bridges across the River and the names are some important dates in history like the 26th of July Bridge and the 6th of October Bridge. There are a few taller buildings near the river but most buildings in Cairo are not very tall and most of them are brown in color. The sky is cloudless as usual but somehow you can see a layer of brownness nearer the ground. Color changes from blue to brown as the sky reaches the ground. I think this should be contributed by the sand from the desert. We stayed there from the late afternoon until the sun had totally set. The night scene of Cairo is less impressive than that in Hong Kong if you are looking for sparkling colors of neon lamps. However, the River Nile gives the scenery a different and special style with its relaxing pace and air. Everything is not the same as the exciting and quick life in Hong Kong, but it is lovely still.

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