Looking Back

DONE! No more classes for 6 months! (7 actually, but who's counting?) We had our final exam Friday morning in the LongChamps hotel. Not used to taking an exam in a hotel restaurant, but I guess there's a first for everything, especially in Egypt. Unreal that we took that class in 16 or 17 days or whatever it was, but it certainly made the trip fly by.

It really has gone by way too fast; there's much more that I want to do, but we're leaving on Monday morning. We've done so much in these five weeks, all with the same people, it's going to be a little strange not waking up and eating the same breakfast with the same people everyday, being in class for 4 hours a day instead of just 1, and venturing off to the pyramids and other incredible places that I was never sure I would actually see, especially not this early in life.

There's been good days, bad days, and great days; hot days, very hot days, extremely hot days, and 5 minutes of rain one night. All of it though, has made this trip the amazing 5 weeks it has been. I've made friends I didn't have before coming here, and have been able to experience all of this with some good friends that I already had.

The most memorable part of this trip though, may just be experiencing a different culture for such a long period of time. Sometimes it makes me miss some things at home (Red Sox games, steak and potatoes, the beach, good movies, Boston) but more so has made me realize how much we take things for granted in America, be it materialistic things like the ones I just mentioned or not. We complain about only making $30,000 a year, as these people are busting their asses and some living off only sixty or seventy cents a day. I also realized how much we take for granted the freedoms we're so lucky to have at home: of speech, religion, press or whatever; and no one really cares whether or not you're black, white, purple, green, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, or (like me) not religious. (Well, I don't know if this is quite true, but we're getting there). Being in Egypt for 5 weeks has made me see how this "unaliable rights" are not quite that in many other parts of the world.

Speaking of that, this trip has also renewed my interest in government and politics (the former more than the latter). Thinking about these things, and reading Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, is mainly what has provoked this. I've always been very intrigued by the government of America, ever since learning about the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin (thanks Mr. Fedge). But somewhere in between worrying about which college to go to and learning Thermodynamics, I lost this appreciation. We get so busy doing the things we're doing, we forget to to also do the things we love and spend time with the people we want to. If nothing else, I'll be much more aware of how good we all have it in America.

Driving around yesterday morning going to the Khan al Khalili, I also realized how much I'm going to miss this place. The constant buzz of Cairo, the unrequested friendliness and acceptance of many of the locals, the awesome breakfasts at the Flamenco Hotel, all of the Egyptian guys that we've recently got to know and haven't had enough time to spend with, bartering with people in the shops, and lots of other stuff. Things are very very different here. But the weird nuances that at first aren't too appealing start to grow on you. If it weren't for the insane pollution, this would actually be a place I would mind spending some time in. But, it doesn't look like the government or anyone else is too worried about fixing that pollution problem any time soon, so I think I'll just stick to 5 weeks.

Some notable memories of the trip: me and pete almost getting run over by a taxi, camel riding to the pyramids (seriously? we did this?), the train rides to and from Luxor/Aswain, the club car in the train, the guy from Arkansas we met in the Frankfurt airport, the cabs in Cairo, Waa Waa Waa, the Habibi song, the unbelievably good pastries, a sea side view hotel room for 15 pounds a night, riding in a police convoy, the "party" van, Pete's 21st, Pub 28, calls to prayer at 4am, Sequoia, football with the Egyptians, the crazy girls at the sports complex, Abdu and his family, tours with Dr. Hartwig, bartering in the Bazaars, cards in the AUC quad, Starbucks in a 9 story mall, getting lost in the Khan, Ahli!, "How many camels do you have?", 28 July, Egypt vs. Congo, the Arab League, Falluccas, cops with AK's, Licher, me and Sean's maid, Lebanese, continuous honking, BEST Mango Juice.

I honesty wasn't too sure what to expect coming into Egypt. I had never been to a foreign country. I'd heard a lot about Egypt, some things better than others. I was anxious to get here though, mainly because I wanted to see how things would go being in a different country for over a month. Now that it's over, I really am glad I came on this trip. I've always wanted to see the pyramids and all that stuff, but there are hundreds of other memories that I will never forget. Thanks to Dr. Denis, Cynthia, Jeff, Mo and Abdu for all their help and advice, and thanks to everyone else who was part of this trip.

I guess that's it. Back to Boston tomorrow!

Maa Salaama!

The Last Week in Egypt

This past week was the last week of the trip. It's hard to believe that I'm already going home...it seems like I just got here. It was an eventful week though...I haven't yet had a chance to write about it so I'll be catching up with this post.

Last Sunday night, after going back to Stabl Antar to finish our service learning work, we met up with some of our Egyptian friends and went to the World Cup qualifying soccer match between the national teams from Egypt and Congo. I wish soccer was this popular in America! It was a ton of fun... Cairo International Stadium was huge and almost packed with fans. Not you're typical fans like in America, these people eat, breath, and bleed for the Egptian football team. When Congo scored first it was like we were at a funeral, everyone sat down and wasn't very happy. Congo seemed to be the more skilled team and played better, but Egypt came back with 2 goals within the last 20 minutes to make it a hell of a game to watch! Safe to say the fans were a little more pleased with that result.

After class on Monday and Tuesday morning, we met up again with the Egyptians and went to a sporting club to try to play some soccer. This was an experience in itself. We got there and walked around the place, and it was PACKED with hundreds and hundreds of little kids. This was weird at first, since it was around 11pm by the time we got in there, but these kids didn't care, they just wanted to play some football. It get's better though. We tried to go on one of the fields and it was as if we were the Brazilian national team or something. All these kids swarmed around us and wanted to play with us, which was kind of cool at first but got pretty annoying. But it was awesome to talk to some of them and kick the ball around. Once all the kid left, we finally got to play some real soccer. Makes me realize how much I miss playing...definately a little rusty at first, but started to get a little touch back as the night went on. Kareem and Adam were definately two of the better Egyptian players, so it was fun to play with them. We ended up staying until about 1 or 1:30, even though we had to get back after to finish up homework. Hey, you're not in Egypt too often, right?

Wendsday and Thursday was mostly class and homework...and getting ready for our Fluids Final on Friday. It'll be nice to get home on Monday, but I'm not really ready to leave yet either.

Pics

Plenty of new pictures up....make sure to check 'em out!

Back to Stabl Antar

Yesterday (Sunday) we all went back to each of the three places where we helped out for our service learning project. We built a website for each of the three places, the glass blowing, sewing, and carpeting shops. Going back to these areas was a sort of bittersweet experience. Obviously, presenting our work to the Charlie Bros. and everyone else is very rewarding, seeing the happiness that only a couple week's work brought to their faces. Driving in and out of Stabl Antar brings about much different emotions, however.

The ear to ear grins of the dozens of kids in the village speaks of their innocence to the bitter feelings and resentment of Westerners (mainly Americans) that is seen just as clearly on the faces of most of the adults. I'm told often how relations between America and Egypt are good. This seems to be true for the most part; case in point with all of the local Egyptian students we've met that have been extremely friendly and welcoming. But going to places like Stabl Antar clearly shows the other side of this story, showing the ignorance that the government displays toward the overwhelmingly large poor population that exists in many parts of Egypt, the majority of this population being uneducated.

Obviously, there are many things that need to change if Egypt wants to progress and become a world leader and a more developed state, but this will never happen if such a huge part of their population is ignored. Also, this un-education (which is certainly evident in America as well) only adds to the unintended misconceptions that often take place about each culture.

Even though I couldn't help but thinking these things on the drive home, it was still great to present our work and be able to help out these people who have so little. Honestly, I wish we could have done more, but at least something is better than nothing.

Alexandria!

My first trip to the Mediterranean Sea!! It certainly is a site to see and you should all see it sometime if you haven't already. We left early Friday morning to take the vans up to Alexandria, the second largest city in Egypt (behind Cairo, of course). This place is unbelievable, and if I come back to Egypt I think I will come here. When we got there, we found a place to stay. This was interesting...the hotels were wayyy to expensive, so we found this little hole in the wall motel place that had amazing views of the Sea. Granted, it was old and run down, but you wouldn't believe that it only cost 15 POUNDS A NIGHT!! That's 3 American dollars. Are you kidding me?? I could come here for a week and have a blast and probably spend about 100 bucks. Unbelievable.

After we got everything squared away, we visited the Qaitbay an old fort built by Sultan Qaitbay in the 15th century. This was an important fort, given its protected location with the Sea guarding the rest of the city. This was also the cite of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. It was crucial to navigation and trading at the time, built in the 3rd Century. It is obviously not in existence anymore. The fort was an incredible structure though. A building that seemingly went on forever, there were three or four floors of the main building with great views looking out into the Sea, and was surrounded by a large outer wall.

After this, we visited the Catacombs, an area of underground tombs from the Pharaonic Era. The engineering was unbelievable here, spiral staircase running deep underground into a huge cave with a number of tombs in it. The walls had carvings on them, but these were a little different because the carvings came out of the wall, meaning they must have carved them underground out of the already existing rock. Amazing. To add a little humor to the story, apparently this area was found when a donkey fell through a hole and into the cave...not sure how true that is though, haha.

Later in the day we took a tour of the recently renovated Alexandria Library....a huuuge library that cost $220 to make! It's in the same location as the ancient library that was so influential to civilization during the Greek and Roman era, containing thousands of scrolls and manuscrips and was the center point of the educational world at the time (this was way back in the 1st century, I believe). This was burned down though by Julius Cesar during the Alexandrian wars though, and wasn't rebuilt until recently. It was really cool, 7 stories tall, a capacity for millions of books (literaly) and digital archives with practically unlimited storage (I think somewhere along the lines of 1.5 E 15 bits, if you even know what those mean, haha)

After this we had dinner at a great restaraunt and then went back and hung out around our hotel (if you can call it a hotel). The next day we spent the whole morning at the beach! Nice and relaxing...got to swim in the Mediterranean, even though it was a little murky. After we headed back to Cairo. Really wanted to stay there longer, but it was awesome to have a couple days off anyway!

Recap on the Week

Monday May 26th: Class this morning from 9am-1pm as usual. After class we came back to the hotel, hung out for a bit and started some work. Around 5, we walked down to the Long Chomps hotel (where some kids in the group are staying) to talk about some stuff and then celebrated Pete's, Chris', and April's birthdays with delicious cake.

We then went back to the Fulbright center for our second dialogue meeting with the local Egyptian students. It went pretty well, not as long or involved as last week's talk though. After that we all went up to the roof of the building and had dinner...great great food. Lot's of vegetables, bread, bean dishes, grape leaves, etc.

Most of the group met up with some of the Egyptian students and we all took a Fallucca ride (these never really get old). Most of our group, and Ziko, Kareem, Mustafa, Shady, Omar and others all went. It was the best one yet! (maybe b/c there weren't any adults there, oops just kidding) The guys brought a drum and were singing and dancing and it was a great time. It was pretty obvious how shy and less outgoing Americans are in general, kind of interesting. I think I would have hit my head on the roof if I danced, so I just chilled in my seat, haha. It was lots of fun though, and great to get out and really get to know some of the Egyptian kids. They are all very friendly and welcoming and have definitely made this trip a better one. I got home and had to stay up until about 1:30 to finish my homeowork....oh well, it was worth it.

Tues May 27/Wed May 28/Thurs May 29:

The middle of the week wasn't anything spectacular...class each day. Homework due Tuesday and Wednesday (that's three days in a row! pretty intense) and we had our second exam on Thursday. Haven't gotten that back yet, but I think it went well.

Off to Alexandria tomorrow!

Arabic Phrase of the Day: "Mafish Mushkula"--No Problem

It's the Weekend Already?

So, it's been a while since my last post (again), so I'll be catching up on the last 5 or 6 days in these next couple posts.

Monday May 19th: Monday night we had a dialogue session with a number of Fulbright Scholarship students from Egypt. This was probably one of the best things we've done so far. We split up into groups and talked for a couple hours on whatever subject anyone was curious about. It was really interesting to talk with people our age about a number of topics and misconceptions between our two cultures. It was a good opportunity to learn more about their lifestyles and beliefs, and also to see what they thought of America. We both agreed that Bush sucks, which I think a lot of them were surprised about. We also talked about government, the media and how its corrupted, politics, government, women's rights, etc. I was surprised that, from what they were saying, women's rights is not really an issue at all here. I think the fact that many women here cover themselves with a veil or other piece of clothing is commonly viewed as female oppression, but in fact it is simply their choice according to their religious beliefs. There were three or four Egyptian women in the group, and every one of them said it was their choice whether or not to do this. They even made it seem like women had more rights here than men do. But I'm not sure how valid this is...I would like to hear the opinions of a larger and more diverse group before I believe this (most of these students were clearly upper class). We'll be doing this again, and I'm pretty excited to talk with them some more. If anyone has any questions they are wondering, let me know and I'll ask.

Arabic Phrase of the Day (forgot about this): "Masalaama"-- (Good Bye)


Tuesday May 20th: First of all, Happy Birthday Dad! Hope it was a good one. So we had our first Fluids exam on Tuesday. Wasn't terrible, could have been better, could have been worse. Then we had 3 hours of lecture after that, so it was a looongg class. Usually at home, we have an exam and then leave. But nothing is usual here in Egypt, so right we when were done with the test we continued with new material for almost three hours.

Arabic Phrase of the Day: "Ahlan"-- (Hello)


Wednesday May 21st: Class as usual in the morning. After class we walked around the parts of the city near the AUC. Most of the shops all sell the same, crappy stuff that I don't think anyone would really want to buy, but they must being making some money. We did find some cool stores selling cheap football (soccer) jerseys. They weren't the real thing, but were better than most others I've found.
After walking around we watched the movie of the Yacoubian Building. Compared to the book, it was actually decent...it didn't do too much to try to "outplay" the book a lot of movies do. There were definitely some corny parts (and very weird parts) but that was true with the book as well, so it was expected. Overall, it wasn't the greatest book or movie in the world, but is an interesting read. It is popular in Egyptian literature because it was one of the first to speak out against the many problems that exist in Egyptian culture. These problems seemingly do exist, but the book does not do anything to show the other sides of these problems, which indeed exist as well. But I think in order for the author to get his points across, he needed to be direct in the statements of his writing.
At night, we met up with Ahmed ( a kid from the Dialogue discussion) and a bunch of us went to the Versailles Palace cafe to watch the UEFA Champions League final. Man, I wish soccer was as popular in America as it was everyone else in the world. I'm sure ESPN barely even mentioned the game, so I'll have to explain it a little bit for all you at home. The match was between Manchester United and Chelsea, two clubs from the English Premier League, and was played in Moscow. This has nothing to do with Egypt, but you couldn't tell that. They compare this match to equal that of the World Cup final, and I'd believe it. The cafe was packed...we got there a little late and had to go to this small room with a tiny t.v. in the back. But it was the most fun I've ever had watching a soccer match. Everyone was screaming and yelling, and it went into overtime and then penalty kicks, and Man. U ended up winning. I can't even imagine what it was like in the pubs and bars in England!! CNN reported that the Manchester police decided it was too dangerous to hold a parade because there would be way too many people and too many riots. That kind of puts it into perspective. This really made me want to play soccer again too.

Arabic Phrase of the Day: "Ciphrah"--Zero


Thursday May 22nd: Happy Birthday Matt!! (there seem to be a lot of birthday's in May)
4 more hours of Fluids in the morning. The most boring class we've had yet. 4 hours of derivations, pretty much all calculus and no examples. Made for a long morning, especially since staying up till 1am to watch the match. After class we went over to the Pottery Cafe for lunch and hung out for a bit. We met up with the group to go to the U.S. Embassy. It sure was nice to see an American flag for once. Although it was nice to visit the embassy and talk to some Americans, I was pretty disappointed. There wasn't much to do there...we heard from a few people who worked there about what they do and what the role of the embassy is. There are two embassies in Cairo, and I think the other would have been more fun to visit. This was mainly a library used to educate Egyptians about America and the English language. They present the information from different points of view to avoid being biased, which was good to hear especially with the current administration's reputation. It is free to access as long as you have a photo I.D. Joyce brought up a good point though on the ride home...these photo I.D.'s are very hard to come by around here, and usually the only ones who have them are those who have money. This kind of defeats the purpose, since those who need to be educated the most are those who don't have money. Someone asked who usually visits the library and the answer was international students that are going to study in America. I'm sure if they can afford to do this than they already have access to something like this library. They meant well, but need to figure out a way to allow more people to use these resources.

After this, we hung out at the Hilton Nile hotel and grabbed some food and relaxed until we headed out to visit the Arab League headquarters. This was a once in a lifetime experience for sure. I figured we'd just be getting a tour, but we did much more. We had a two hour long discussion with the Secretary General of the Arab League, Ambassador Hisham Youssef. He clearly an extremely intelligent man, and very gracious in welcoming us. He talked for a few minutes about the League and how it was established. After World War II when the United Nations was set up, a number of regional sub-groups were also established to handle the international relations between the countries in the region. The League of Arab States was one of these. It now has 22 member-states and deals with a number of issues amongst the Arab world. He quickly opened the discussion up to us and answered the many questions we had about a number of issues....the recent crisis in Lebanon, the Arab-Israeli conflict, women's rights in the Arab world, the economy, even the upcoming election in America. Someone asked "who do you want to win the election" and he answered to us something like, "It's not up to me, who do you all think will win?" I think he was surprised when the majority of the group raised their hand for Barack Obama. It was really a great discussion...and I felt lucky to be able to have such a discussion with someone of this importance. I think it also has intrigued me to educate myself more about current foreign affairs in the world. After the discussion, we got to go into the League chambers, where all the representatives gather to hold their meetings and hearings and whatnot. It was a magnificent room, similar to the US Congress chambers or the UN chamber. This will definitely be a part of the trip that sticks out in my mind once it is over.

Arabic Phrase of the Day: "Wahead"--One (the number)


Friday May 23rd: This was a great day...it was Pete's 21st birthday, so Sonja, Joyce, me and him went to the City Stars mall in downtown Cairo in the morning. This is apparently the biggest mall in the Middle East! 9 floors tall and endless hallways filled with shops that were mostly way out of my budget. I did get a nice soccer jersey in the Puma store for a pretty good price...it's for the local club "Al Ahli" that plays here in Cairo. And they had a Starbucks too...I don't go there too often but I got a great coffee there. After the mall we took a cab to the Khan al Khalili...a huge bazarre in downtown Cairo that was similar to the one's we went to in Luxor and Aswan, but wayyy bigger. At first it wasn't very busy, but once Friday prayer ended, the place was packed. Later that night we all went to the Hard Rock Cafe down by the Nile for dinner to celebrate with Pete. That place really knows how to throw a party! The food was terrific and they were dancing and singing all night (even though Pete was too shy to get up and dance with all the girls, haha) They had some sweet guitars and other stuff from tons of bands and artists, as they usually do in Hardrock Cafe's. And it wasn't so bad that it was happy hour either!

Arabic Phrase of the Day: "Itnane"--Two