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Published: September 4th 2006
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The Fishawy
Liz and I at our favorite tea place, smokin' sheesha and sportin' our new $5 sunglasses(Chelsea is behind the scenes directing) As-Salaam wa 3laykum!
So I've been here about ten days, and thus far have had a decent time. At the beginning I mostly just slept, ate really good falafel, and attended my "crash-course in colloquial arabic" class until we went to orientation at the Red Sea. You know how I said I was scared that I had forgotten all my Arabic and wouldn't be able to speak to anyone? Well, the bad part is that yes, I did forget a lot of it, but the good part is that for 3miya (colloquial) everything changed--so it's probably a blessing that I didn't waste my time trying to re-learn Modern Standard Arabic (MSA--which is all they teach at Penn). Someone in my class suggested that the best way to get a handle on the difference is to think of the easiest and laziest way you could possibly say something, but still get your point across---and that's the colloquial dialect. This means most of the minute grammar points I spent obsessing over the last 3 years are now moot points---but I must admit that not really having to conjugate verbs is suiting me very well. The only disappointment is that the Egyptians don't
Resort Pool
slightly different than downtown Cairo... pronounce my two favorite letters (the "j" which is pronounced like the french in "Je".....here they turn it into a good ol' boring hard "g". They also just completely drop the "qaaf".....sorry Annie, you can not longer tell anyone that the weather is rainy as I taught you.....but you are so cute saying it I guess you should continue😊 ). And, of course, all the vocabulary that I DID remember, are the words they decided would be fun to completely change...super.
We haven't done the touristy stuff yet, like see the pyramids, or the Egyptian Museum, or the huge Al-Azhar mosque (though we pass it every time we go to the Khan), but we have explored a little bit, mostly just around campus which is right across the Nile (my dorm is on a very prestigious Island in the middle of the Nile that houses many of the foreign embassies as well as the Cairo Opera house--so there are guards on almost every corner in white suits sitting in little huts---some people thought this was creepy, but it makes it feel like home: Penn, that is). We have been frequenting a very old tea house that is in the
middle of the Khan that is famous for being the muse for the Egyptian poet and novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who, incidently, just passed away last week. We always get mint tea (they just stick the twig of mind in the cup and let you pour the tea over it) and mint sheesha (mostly because mint is my favorite word in arabic and I love to order it, eventhough mint sometimes makes me gag....i'm a weirdo like that). Anyways, though the city may be dirty and gross during the day, at night you are able to get passed all that and it is amazing and beautiful. A lot of official businesses and departments at school close around 2 or 3 pm....but then people are out with their very young children just chilling on the bridges at 3 AM. Since Muslims aren't supposed to drink alcohol they end up congregated at coffee houses late at night, and hence their late bed times.
Off-campus orientation was held in El-Gouna, which is a resort town on the main-land side of the Red Sea. Usually the school takes us to Sharm Al-Sheik, but after the bombings near there this summer they obviously thought it would be better to find another setting. People have been asking if we have been taking any special precautions about travelling: I know AUC has an emergency evacuation plan (because they don't trust the embassy to get their act together to evacuate the 20,000 Americans that are in the country in a timely fashion), but they won't go into detail about it (probably smart). The state department also had us load get on our bus to El-Gouna downtown at 3 am because they didn't like the idea of a bunch of foreign students loading onto 8 huge buses right in front of a dormitory. Other than that we are just all trying to use common sense. Though we inevitebly will always look foreign, most of us have been successful in minimizing the "hey look over here I'm American"-factor by what we wear and by trying to speak arabic when we are comfortable. So many people speak english it is very easy to get around without using arabic, so I'm trying not to slip into that bad habit.
Anyways, the Red Sea was very beautiful, and very blue 😉 Kite surfing is a huge thing out here but it was too expensive, and I knew I wouldn't be successful. For about 300 yards the water was no more then thigh-deep. This made it very interesting watching the 300 kids at orientation slowly walking out into the ocean.....I literally felt like we were experiencing history and we were part of the Exodus from Egypt.....maybe Moses didn't even part the sea, maybe they just walked across it 😉
I was a little disappointed with the group of Study Abroad students....I felt like I was trapped in the OC for the weekend or at summer camp, and am very happy to be back in Cairo, despite the pollution, the crowds, and the poverty---it's so much more real here, at least. I think some people are here because they don't speak another language (or don't want to study in that respective country), but don't want to go to Australia or England, so they come here not knowing anything about the language, culture, or customs. It's one thing to want to go abroad just to have a good time and meet some people, but one big reason I always wanted to study abroad was due to my sense that I desperately needed to act as some sort of cultural ambassador from the US, to help foster understanding between citizens and change the horrible image many middle easterners have of us (notice I didn't say Egyptians, Arabs or Muslims....cuz I don't want to start an identity discussion right now...maybe later). I guess I am just apprehensive about the impressions some of these kids might give, or just simply buttress---like the notoriety for just being drunk, loud Americans that is pervasive in the Universities of Australia and England.
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