Raquy Danziger's Blog

The first week in Egypt has flown by!

This was my first time in Egypt without Rami, and I was a bit apprehensive what it would be like. But it turned out just fine!

First of all its been great for my Arabic, because when I’m with Rami, everyone addresses him because he is an Egyptian looking man. So this time I got to do all the talking, so it’s been great practice!

I found a great apartment in the same building as last year on the market street! It’s the best building – on the second floor are the Sudanese princesses where we do amazing henna parties and on the first floor is the Nubian men's club where we can play pingpong, pool and bang on our drums as loud as we want until the wee hours of the moring! Also on the corner of the street is the best juice in Cairo – the carrot juice tastes like cream!

Rami arrived after a week and its so nice to be with the big baby in Egypt again!

Our wonderful Nubian Boyfriends

We have wonderful Nubian boyfriends and they are beautiful! Conveniently there are four of them and four of us girls. They take us anywhere we want! They take us on falukas on the Nile and to ahawas to smoke shisha and drink tea. They don’t let us pay for anything (not like cheap ass American guys) and when they play pingpong and pool they don’t really try to beat us (although they always end up beating us anyway cause we suck). They have the nicest smiles and the cutest dimples and they love to drum and sing and hang out with us until 6am every night!

Jehan and Hanna

Jehan and Hana are here! They are so much fun – we've been hanging out with them and they’re planning to come to our show in Alex!

Pita incident

We were sitting in an ahawa and we ordered some food. When it came the pile of pitas fell onto the mud street and the guy just picked them up and put them on our table! I actually ate the pita anyway cause it looked like clean mud, but the girls won’t stop making fun of me for doing that.

Lara’s Toe Massage

Lara is here! She got a grant to come to Istanbul and Egypt and she will play with us in our concerts in Egypt!

I must mention that I have a certain spot on my big toe that is soooo intense and I offered Lara 20 Egyptian pounds (about four dollars) to give me a foot massage, and nobody has ever got my spot so well as Lara. At one point she got both big toe spots at the same time! I had multiple toe-gasms!

Hanging w Said El Artist

Even though it won’t work out to do a concert together, we’ve been hanging out a lot with Said. He is so sweet and as charming as ever and it’s really fun at his place – there are tons of drums and fun people. He lets us rehearse in his practice space and take over his whole place as usual. We are planning on making an album and a video together next year called “Erda and Magnun” (Monkey and Crazy) - I’m Erda (he calls me monkey cause I like to repeat back whatever he plays) and he is Magnun cause he’s nuts so he thinks that would be a catchy name for an album.

Natalia in Training

Nataia just got invited back to Columbia to play professional basketball next month so she needs to get some exercise. The problem is – where do you do that in Cairo? There is no chance of running in the streets and she’s having a hell of a time finding a basket ball court – so guess what she does? She runs up and down the stairs of our building for a half hour non stop! The neighbors are all wondering about her.