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")
