"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"

Hi everyone! Well it's safe to say that I fell a little behind on keeping you all informed towards the end of the semester. BUT there is good news to make up for that! I'M HOME!

My semester ended April 29, eight days after returning to Cairo after the month of travel through the Middle East. During those 8 days in Cairo, we (the students) basically didn't leave our apartment except to find food because were writing our final papers. I think I hit about 35 or so total pages in those 8 days. So then we turned in all those papers (thankfully!) and had our final retreat at a local desert retreat center. I had made the decision to stay in Cairo for a little extra time, and my mom came to visit me! So after bidding farewell to my fellow students, I found my mom in the airport and began a 10-day tour of Cairo with her! We had a great time, and it was really helpful to allow her to EXPERIENCE Cairo rather than trying to EXPLAIN it to her after arriving home! Last Saturday she and I got on a plane and made our really long journey back to the States. We arrived safely, got over jet lag, and started unpacking.

So now that I'm finally back, I have to say that I'm realizing more and more each day how many ways I came to love Cairo. Even the little things - like being able to read street signs, DRIVING my own PERSONAL car, eating non-Egyptian food, greeting people without kissing them, not living with 8 other girls - these little things all remind me of the bigger things that made my life so different in Cairo. Even though I would never have classified myself as a city person before, I'm really missing life in a city that REALLY never sleeps (you thought NYC didn't sleep...go to Cairo!). I miss my fellow American students, living in close quarters in our quirky apartment, my incredible Egyptian friends, and being constantly immersed in a place that taught me something new every day (or every hour, really).

Despite realizing everything that I've left behind, I'm also quickly realizing that it's great to be back! I spent a few days in MD at home with family and friends, and now I'm up in PA on Messiah's campus spending a few days with college friends and hanging out in my old apartment with my old roommates! On Saturday I will walk in my graduation ceremony, which honestly feels a little surreal. How am I old enough to graduate?! Four days after graduation I will be in my car driving to Jonesville, VA where I will begin training for my summer job. At the end of training I will find out my placement for the summer...a TBD county in either VA, WV, KY, or TN. I am working on staff with a Christian non-profit organization called Appalachia Service Project, which is a place I've volunteered with for 5 summers. (Check out their website... asphome.org) That job will take me from May until the beginning of August, and after that my plans are pretty open. I don't yet have a permanent job, but finding one is my task for the summer. Ideally I'd like to take a break after the summer, taking some time to relax and perhaps visit some friends who are scattered around the country now, before diving head first into yet another new endeavor. We will see :-)

So there you have it, my life compressed into one short update! Thank you all for faithfully reading and replying to my somewhat sporadic updates while I was gone! Really, it was such a good feeling to open my email (even as infrequently as I did) and see many replies from the updates I sent out. Thanks for staying in touch with me, asking questions about my experiences, and sharing important moments in your lives too since I wasn't here to experience them alongside you. PLEASE feel free to keep asking me questions because I've learned so much and I would really love to share some of that with those people who are interested in knowing! And now that I'm home, I can MUCH more easily respond to emails with a little more substance than before :-) Thanks again, keep me posted on your lives, and enjoy this transition into summer!!

PICTURES! (Istanbul and some friends from Cairo)

Dahab and Sinai Pictures

Pictures!

Busy, busy life!

Those of you who have been through this program during previous semesters will share my feelings when I say I'm just plain exhausted. This program is fantastic...we do SO much in such limited time, and Cairo has so much to offer during the short periods of free time we have - but that also means sleep is a secondary priority! I keep telling myself I can sleep in May after graduation :-) I'm not sure how my body feels about that vow to not sleep much (my mind says it's a bad idea), but my heart says to ignore schoolwork and sleep, and to enjoy this amazing part of the world as much as I can!

I feel like my posts never come close to doing justice to all that I'm experiencing here. There's just no way to relay everything...like I said, I barely have time to sleep, let alone keep this thing updated very regularly. Just know that I'll be more than willing to share stories with any and all of you, as often as you'd like, when I get home. So remember everything you want to know and be sure to drill me for details! I could talk for days about this place that I have already started calling home...I know I've only been here less than a month, but really, it grows on you so quickly!

My most recent adventure was this past weekend (well, it was a 4 day trip...) when most of our group took a trip to Siwa, which is about a 10 hour bus ride from Cairo. It's all the way across Egypt, almost to Libya (no, we didn't cross the border...no worries!). Being there was like being in a different world...it's SO different from life here in Cairo. Siwa is out in the desert, and it's a Berber culture so life there looks pretty much nothing like Cairo. We stayed at a hostel about 20 minutes outside of Siwa, and it had no electricity - it was great! It totally added to the charm! Siwa is a lot smaller than Cairo - only 20,000ish people. It's very secluded and traditional, and there are very few Western influences, at least when compared with Cairo. Most people speak the local language, though they do teach Arabic in schools and have recently started teaching English as well. Siwa is actually pretty populated with tourists because of the oases nearby, so I actually didn't feel as out of place as I imagined I would. Anyway, some highlights:

-The women in our group met with a handful of Siwan women and we were able to talk about what life in Siwa is like for them. Women there do not leave the home often, and they definitely do not leave Siwa unless it's for medical treatment or something like that. When married women leave their homes, they must be completely covered, with absolutely no skin showing. Women generally marry very early, sometimes even as early as 12 or 13. It was so fascinating to talk with them, through a translator of course (women don't learn much English there), and hear their stories and comments about Siwan life. They were so happy! It's really easy for me to look at women in a village like that and judge the men for being oppressive, or assume the women are unhappy and stuck under the dominating hand of their husbands, but that was not the case. The women went on about how safe they felt and how they enjoyed their lives as women there! I could say a lot more about this, so feel free to ask...

-There are coffee shops everywhere in Egypt, but I think every other storefront in Siwa was a coffee place. I love it!

-I woke up for the sunrise one morning, and desert sunrises are wonderful! Sunsets are great too, but I think of the two the sunrise was more impressive. Cairo has really colorful sunsets (due to all the pollution!) but there was something about the quiet, uninterrupted hour I spent sitting on the roof of the hostel watching the sun...you don't get a quiet hour in Cairo very often!

-We rented bikes one day and rode all around Siwa. Other than a sore butt, it was great! We got to see the neighborhoods and just wander around a little. It really is a cute little town.

-Siwan food = great! Actually, Egyptian food = great, so I guess I'll just say that Siwan food didn't disappoint.

-We took a desert safari into the Sahara...driving jeeps through the sand dunes, sandboarding, hot and cold springs, more duning, more duning, almost flipping our jeep while duning, and a little more duning (lots of pictures to be posted ASAP)...followed by sleeping like a Bedouin in the desert! What a great night! It was freezing at night, but it was fantastic anyway. It was almost a full moon, and without the lights of Cairo the sky was absolutely beautiful! You could walk around without a flashlight because of the moon being so bright, but you could still see the stars too! I don't know much about stars and planets and stuff, but we think we saw a red something...maybe Mars? We'll say it was Mars, because that sounds fun :-) Either way, the desert was great! *Kyle, if you read this, thank you for the advice to sleep in the desert!


So clearly I made it home from Siwa alive, despite all our "life forever moments", as our director would call them (duning, sandboarding, etc.). My next adventure begins tonight, as I leave for a week-long homestay. I will meet my family tonight at 6, and then I leave with them for their home. I will still have classes this week, so I will be commuting from their home to the villa each day...tomorrow's morning commute might be a little interesting :-) So I'll be with my family until Saturday, and then the following Tuesday we leave for a trip to Luxor! I feel like we never have class because we travel so much (not that I'm complaining...travel is great!) but even still, I am learning so much just by experiencing this place...it really is worlds away from the States.

I hope to post pictures soon...I'll do my best to get some more up this week! In the meantime, hope you are all doing well! Keep the update emails coming because I love hearing what's going on at home and elsewhere!

Pictures!

I was finally able to upload some pictures into an album on Facebook, so feel free to take a look at them...hope you enjoy!

I will be off to Alexandria this weekend, and I am anticipating a really good time there. I'll fill you in with more info once I actually experience it and have something to update about :-)

Also, I've been getting to know some Egyptian friends which is making life in Cairo seem more, well, authentic! Instead of always being with my flat-mates (who are amazing, don't get me wrong!) all the time, I now am spending more time with local Egyptians and getting to see more of what Cairo has to offer while feeling less like a tourist! It's been great!

A long overdue update

Ahlan! (Hello!)

Okay, so I know I've already been slacking in providing updates with any substance, so hopefully this [VERY long] post can cure some of your curiosities by giving you a taste of my life in Cairo! I've barely had time to sleep in the past week, so finding time to update the blog or send emails out has proven to be pretty difficult. Being in a new place with SOO many incredible things to do makes checking my email seem like the least important part of my life. I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have to experience everything Cairo has to offer in one day or one week...I do have a few months. BUT, I also don't want to keep saying that and then realize all of the sudden that my semester is quickly coming to an end. So, that balance is hard to find, but I'm doing what I can.

On to the more exciting things... This past week was orientation, so we spent a lot of time going around the city and experiencing things, both with and without staff members. We got to experience the unique art of riding in taxis (at times, your life tends to flash before your eyes...), traveling by metro, ordering food at restaurants, going grocery shopping, exchanging money, and other necessary tasks we will need to know how to do during the semester. Not knowing the language definitely makes all those tasks much more difficult, but it's surprising how much you can communicate knowing only a few phrases in Arabic.

Some of the other things I've done this past week:

-We visited a mosque for Friday prayer, which meant that as a woman, I was required to wear a higab (head covering). Of course this also meant I got to go shopping for a pretty scarf, which was lots of fun. The mosque experience was certainly interesting, and most of the time I just felt awkward for sitting there watching other people engage in their religious rituals while I didn't participate (they asked us not to follow along with the motions, even though we would have probably felt less awkward if we were participating instead of just observing). But it was certainly a learning experience.

-We ordered fast food and took a boat ride on the Nile at sunset. It was a pretty hilarious evening, because there were a bunch of similar boats making their way down the Nile, and every boat was blaring Egyptian pop music. That meant that every time you passed another boat it was twice as loud, and then our boat had 30 college students yelling above the music to have coversations...so, basically it was really loud. But the views were fantastic because the city was all lit up at night. At one point we even saw fireworks off in the distance (not really sure what the occasion was).  

-We went to Garbage City, which is pretty much what the name suggests: it's an area of Cairo where the people collect garbage and essentially sustain themselves on what they find. So you drive through these streets where there are just hundreds of bags of garbage, and hundreds of people picking through and sorting all the bags of trash. It's actually really fascinating how the whole system works: there is no formal trash collection by the city, so individuals collect it and then sell it to people in Garbage City. People in GC then sort it, selling recyclable bottles and cans to factories, and using whatever else they find. So we don't recycle because, strangely enough, it would take away jobs and income for people living in GC.

-While in Garbage City, we visited Sisters of Charity, which is an orphanage that was started out of Mother Theresa's order. That was the first time I had been to an orphanage, and it was pretty heart-breaking. I think I can understand all those stories you hear about people visiting an orphanage and then deciding to adopt a child. Don't worry, I didn't adopt one, but the thought definitely crossed my mind :-) Side note: adoption in Egypt is really difficult because unless declared otherwise, you are considered Muslim when you are born. If you have no parents to declare you legally as a Christian, you automatically become a Muslim. Muslim children may only be adopted by Muslim families...so the whole adoption process becomes very complicated very quickly since they regulate who can adopt an Egyptian child based on religion. This is a foreign concept to most of us coming from an American mindset, but that's just how things work here.

-We had our first service project day. As part of our program here, we're placed at an organization somewhere in Cairo, and then every Tuesday (a day with no classes) we go to our service project all day. My placement, ironically, is the Deaf School of Cairo. Some of you know that I am writing my senior thesis about the deaf community, so this placement was a very welcome surprise for me! I have only gone once so far, but even still my experience there has been so valuable. I am teaching English (and American Sign Language) to the children, and I am also helping in the office with things like explaining complex financial paperwork to the school officials since their English skills are very limited, making filling out English paperwork very difficult. The director of the school is really excited that I'm there, and the children of course LOVE the fact that there is an American at their school. They have a great time trying to pronounce my name (my name is really hard to say if you don't speak English, and it's even more difficult to say when you can't hear it being pronounced in the first place, which is the case with the deaf children...but they try so hard, and they love it. They even gave me my own sign for my name, so now I can introduce myself to them in their own language!) I can't speak much Arabic yet, and the little American Sign Language I know is basically useless because they use Arabic Sign Language here, not American...teaching a room full of students who are both deaf and Arabic-speaking and signing is really difficult when they only language you speak is English! But again, it's amazing how creative you get and how much you can communicate without words...or official signs!) I can't say enough about my time there...I ended up staying almost 9 hours (we're supposed to do 5) just because I was having such a good time!

-We managed to watch Obama's inauguration. It was kind of an interesting process to make it all happen. We thought maybe the American embassy would be offering something, but after many hours on the phone trying to find out more information, the only thing we learned was that they weren't showing it. So then we decided to just watch it at the villa (where our classes are), except we couldn't get the projector to work, of course. We finally just resorted to watching it online on a laptop, and 35 of us crowded around a tiny little laptop screen that kept having to pause so it could stream the video. We were able to catch most of it, except the actual oath of office (though we did hear his speech!). I have a picture of us all watching it...at least it gives a good "where were you when..." story!

-I went to the Citadel with some friends, which had some amazing architecture and some amazing views of Cairo. It was just my luck, though, that my camera battery died about 5 minutes after arriving, and I had switched bags before I left so I didn't have my spare battery with me for the first time since arriving. So I didn't get many pictures. But we also didn't have a lot of time there anyway because we got there soon before it closed, so I was already planning to come back sometime again anyway. I'll bring a fully charged battery with me next time!

-We started Arabic classes! I already feel like I've learned so much Arabic, mostly just from being out and around the city and being surrounded by native speakers at all times. You basically learn it out of necessity...whether you want to or not! I can carry on very limited conversations with people, but I'd like to think I'm doing pretty well for only having been here for a little over a week and only having had two formal classes. We'll have class 4 days a week, and I'm really enjoying it so far. (For those of you who have done MESP before, Mediha is my teacher.) 

Well those are some of the main highlights of the past week of my life. It was a very full week, and I anticipate many busy weeks to come, too! Thank you to those of you who have been keeping me posted on life in the States...I'm sad about all that I've missed already, but I'm glad I at least get to stay in the loop via email. Keep the updates coming, and I'll try to do the same! My last attempt at posting pictures failed and I'm having trouble attaching files to emails that I send, but I'll keep trying...hopefully I'll be successful at some point because I want you all to be able to see what it looks like here! Stay well, and I'll talk to you soon! Maasalama! (Goodbye, pronounced "mah-suh-LAY-muh")