Classes: Week 3

Well, as the title suggests, it’s the end of week 3 of classes here at AUC and my schedule has finally settled down enough that I think there’ll be no more changes (this is a good thing, since drop add ended week one, or at least we were told it did, which may or may not conform to reality). Though I initially planned to be in mostly Arabic classes, it turns out that most of what I’m studying here is political science. The classes, however, are extremely interesting, so I can’t complain. As I’ve finally visited all of them, I’ll try to lay them out for your collective appreciation. Without further ado, here’s my class schedule (in no particular order):

POLS 325: Government and Politics of Egypt: The class is perhaps self-explanatory, as it focuses on the political history of Egypt in the last century. It is taught by one Dr. Hendrik Kraetschmaer, who is a very engaging lecturer and a pretty cool guy. I suspect, however, that some of the girls in my class are more engaged by his European sensibilities and good looks than by the material he’s covering; he’s relatively young, and with his glasses, roguish 5 o’clock shadow and mixed German/British accent, he’s exactly the sort my study abroad compatriots are likely to be drawn to.

POLS 302: History of Political Theory: This class is basically the equivalent of Modern Political Theory back at Swarthmore, covering the main patterns of western thought since the enlightenment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get political theory credit for it back home (which was the initial motivation for taking it). I think, however, I’ll stay in it because it’s the only class that I am in which is made up predominantly by Egyptian students. I think the perspectives in class will be particularly interesting. The class is taught by Professor Lattanzi, who appears to be at least partially Greek by descent. I say this because between his Athenian features, short curly hair, beard and melodic voice, he makes a particularly striking professor of philosophy – a modern day Socrates. The likeness is compounded by his penchant for the subversive – without seeming to do so, he’s spent most of the time in class subtly undermining the theoretical underpinnings of the Egyptian state. I think its fascinating (and he’s a great lecturer) and I look forward to the rest of the semester. By the end of it, we’ll all be a bunch of flaming liberal western looking democrats (Well, I suppose that most of AUC is, from a relative perspective, already).

POLS 422: Twentieth Century Egypt: This seminar, as the name suggests, covers in detail elements of the 20th Century history of Egypt. Professor Mustapha K. Al-Sayyid is very interesting if somewhat disorganized; forgetting one’s discussion notes for seminar isn’t usually the best way to organize discussion, for example. He clearly knows the subject though (and was readily able to wing it for the entire time) and has taught us a lot about the ongoing reforms in Egypt (apparently, there are a bunch of Constitutional Amendments up for review, some positive and some negative in democratic impact).

POLS 354: Political and Social Thought in the Modern Arab World: This class ties very usefully in with my other “modern Egypt” classes, approaching the same material/era from a thought/philosophical direction. Egypt figures prominently because it developed a civil society and at least marginal independence long before the other states – hopefully those other states will be covered in more detail after we pass the World War II era. The professor is interesting but very long winded; she spends a lot of time talking intelligently but somewhat incoherently and very ramblingly on subjects sometimes only marginally related to the primary subject of the course. I have a feeling that whatever notes I manage will be utterly useless, so I can only hope I absorb her discussions more directly – otherwise, the only thing I’m going to be left with is whatever I read for the class.

ALNG 102: Modern Standard Arabic: My Arabic class is definitely my hardest class this semester. I got into it somewhat marginally, since my semester of Arabic over the summer used a different book and covered far less grammar than I was apparently expected to. I’m having to play a fair bit of catch up, especially on the vocabulary, so as to be at all useful in class. The grammar makes a fair bit of sense so far though, so once I get my ass in gear, I shouldn’t have too much trouble. The professor is very nice and doesn’t give me too hard of a time, which I particularly appreciate (though I feel both stupid and guilty whenever I can’t answer her questions).

POLS 430: Authoritarianism and Blocked Political Development: I’m not actually taking this course, but am instead auditing it because I think it is a terribly interesting subject. Professer Maye Kassem seems a bit self-important and over-bearing (she tends to talk very loud, for example, when explaining things, which comes across like she’s trying to blast things into our very dull heads), but on the whole pretty good. She does a very good job of promoting discussion and letting people talk during that discussion, which I particularly like. She’s also good about simultaneously letting me contribute and keeping me from overindulging (given the opportunity, as most of you well know, I tend to go on at length). I feel like I get the best of both worlds in this class – good discussion, and little to no homework.

So, there you have it. Six classes (Five and a half, if you wish), Sunday through Thursday. My schedule is packed, but pretty decently arranged – no classes before noon, for example. I’ve attached a screen shot of my calendar for your collective enjoyment:

As you can see, i've cutely color coded everything (Mom and Dad, this is all your respective faults). Red is for classes, yellow is for extracirriculars, green is for audited courses, blue is for meetings and other irregular activities, and purple is for assignments. There are a few things yet to be added in here, but for the most part the shape of the schedule is complete. UTR (Sunday Tuesday Thursday) are relatively light (they end earlier, anyway), and MW are much more arduous (I don't get home till after 8 or 9 pm). I'm pretty happy with it. Now, I just need to figure out how to do homework here in a timely fashion, and i'll be set!

Pyramids...Not!

When I first started planning this post last night, I thought I would be regaling you all with a long and exciting tale about my expedition to the Pyramids - Pyramids, I should add, which I have been trying to see for almost a month now. That post is going to have to wait, because while I've found a group of people who would like to go with me, we didn't end up making it to Giza. I did, however, have a pretty awesome day, so I'll have to tell you about that instead.

To give you the complete story of my weekend to date, I'll have to start with Thursday (remember, Thursday is the new Friday here in Egypt) evening. If you'll recall last week's admittedly whiney post (I get to take out my frustrations on you all, since you are a captive audience), I mentioned that I met a guy named Mina during my ordeal with the swindlershopkeeper Tariq. As I said there, we hit it off pretty well and talked about meeting up in the future. Those vague plans became concrete when Mina got in touch with me earlier this week; we agreed to meet yesterday at 8 pm in Coptic Cairo to hang out. At first, some other AUCians were going to come with me, but ended up bailing/doing other things instead. So, with some trepidation (I was, after all, going to a foreign part of the city and meeting up with a guy I'd only met once and with whom I share about 1/3rd of a language in common), I hopped on the metro and rode out to Mar Girgis station (at the heart of Coptic Cairo).

I arrived about 10 minutes early, and Mina showed up soon thereafter. We walked over to his part of town, which is (if I had to guess) middle class by Egyptian standards. I don't have a good sense of economic scale, since the wealth structure of society is so stratified; the difference between the richest 1% and the rest in terms of living conditions appears to be quite dramatic. Mina's family's apartment, from what I saw, could fit inside one or (maybe, if I didn't see some rooms) two dorm rooms here in Zamalek. The building is cramped, with a steep, narrow staircase and poor lighting. On the other hand, the streets were regular, clean and relatively wide, and the apartment itself was clearly in good care and boasted a computer with DSL. Mina's parents are very nice and clearly very supportive of Mina and his brother (who I haven't met yet). I can't remember where his dad works, but I remember that he was fortunate to have a good job (unemployment here is very high). Mina himself recently graduated from Cairo University (not AUC, despite the similar name) with a degree in accounting and finance, along with enough english to manage well enough with me. He's also a competent programmer, and he showed me the website he designed for his church (along with introducing me to some of his favorite music and showing me some pictures from his time at the university). My impression is that his family is relatively well to do and generally happy, but suffers from a stort of stagnation that from what I can see is both endemic and specific. I'll try to explain.

Despite Mina's university education, he is currently working for Tariq for 10 egyptian pounds ($1.60) a day doing what essentially amounts to menial/fetch-and-carry labor. His skills go to waste except for where he puts them to use in his own individual capacity (like his church's website) From my limited understanding, Mina is a part of the "intellectual middle class," which has been through university and has graduated with advanced and marketable skills, but is effectively stifled by the current economic and political situation here in Egypt. Most of the jobs for educated people who are not directly employed in a major national scale business are with the government, which while large, is quite unable to hire more promising employees (if anything, they are trying to downsize). Legal, social and economic barriers (hopefully, i'll learn more from my studies) appear to block entrepreneurship and upward mobility for people of all classes. Many men (I say men, because their situation is more apparent than that of women at the street level), young and old, pass their time on the street in coffeeshops and shisha (hookah) bars, with nothing to engage them but conversation. Those with regular work have little to look forward to; people who are waiters or servers will always be waiters or servers, whether they work hard or not. This is what I mean by "endemic" stagnation - everyone seems to be locked in place, with no ability and thus no incentive to try and change their status or station. Mina's problems, specifically, are compounded by the fact that he is a Copt, and is therefore disadvantaged in a preponderately muslim state. Mina has told me that when he goes to do things, from activities to job applications, that fact that his name is Mina (apparently, there's a Saint Mina) or that his brother's name is Peter automatically disqualifies them from what opportunities that do exist. Men with good muslim names like "Mohammed" or "Ahmed" take precedence; Copts need not apply. From what I can gather, this sort of mistreatment is widespread but assymetric - not everyone in Egypt treats the Coptic minority as second class citizenry, but enough do that the community feels that even the government holds them in low regard, and is at least guilty of looking the other way at abuses.

I don't intend this post to be all gloom and doom; Mina's situation isn't horrible, it just lacks the opportunities that someone of his obvious intelligence and skills should have available to him. He isn't being actively oppressed per se, but his opportunities for advancement are repressed by the structure of the society around him. Despite that, he does have a rich social life (I met some of his friends) and a clear devotion to his religion and church (they are building a new one, incidentally, and from what I saw, when it is finished it will be beautiful). We spent a lot of time socializing, both about the social problems in Egypt and his perspective on it, and on more mundane matters like football (soccer, for those Americans who've forgotten) and food. I also learned some new words in arabic (and taught him some things in english) and we hope to teach eachother in a more structured way in the future. Next Thursday, I'm going to try to bring some more people along with me to play football; Mina is going to reserve a field. I'm a horrible player, but I think it will be a lot of fun.

Though I left Coptic Cairo around 11:30, I didn't end up getting back to the dorm until about 4 am, because I met up with a bunch of people in Garden City (an area slightly south of AUC where a bunch of international students - mostly female - live) and hung out. Garden City is a popular hang out because some of the apartments are unrestricted by doormen or behavioral rules. The Zamalek dorms prohibit males from the female section of the building and vice versa, and many of the other AUC residences have strict visiting hours and rules. We end up going to these apartments so that we can associate in mixed company at hours past 10 or 12 pm (since the country doesn't go to sleep until 2 am, this is both more natural and necessary than it is back home in the States). We made a brief stop at a jazz club in the Nile Hilton, but spent most of our time socializing in the Garden City apartments. In addition to a good debate on the Iraq war, I had a particularly good discussion about Consitutional Law with a judicial conservative. I won't bore you with details (and I remember them impressively well considering I had a slight beer induced buzz at the time), but I had a good time. I also slept until 12:15 pm the next day (today), which helps to explain why we didn't end up making it to the pyramids. I, of course, wasn't the only one to sleep in so late, and by the time the group I was going to Giza with had assembled, it was almost 2 pm. When we learned that the Pyramids themselves close to the public at 4 pm from a friend in the lobby, we (now reduced to four) decided to scrap the plan until next week (Giza is not the closest part of Cairo to Zamalek). Instead, spearheaded by my friend Jhale, a Brown student of Pakastani descent, (who incidentally almost went to Swarthmore - for those of you who are Swatties, I think she would have been a great fit), we went out to Garden City, met up with some other girls and went for Indian Cuisine at a place called Asia House. It was expensive, but extremely good. It's the first properly spicy food i've had in a month, and I really enjoyed it.

After Asia House, we wandered over to a pastry shop by campus and bought a lot (literally, 2.5 kilos) of assorted baked and delicious items to use as both dessert and future snack food. My favorite kind is something akin to a Fig Newton, but differs in two important ways: First, the filling is dates, not figs (dates are sweeter and figs are fruitier, in case not everyone is up on the distinction - I certainly wasn't before I came) and second, the pastry itself is orders of magnitude more excellent than the mush they wrap Fig Newtons in. They are is light and flaky and crisp and oh so deliciously good. I've creatively christened them "Date Newtons" for ease of recognition.

After getting dates, we met up with yet another girl (I keep mentioning the people we're "adding" because it will be important later) and went out to the Nile. The highlight of the night came went we rented a boat (called a Felucca for reasons utterly unknown to me - we think it might be italian or something) for an hour long cruise along the Nile. It was dark out by then, and absolutely spectacular. Thanks to Jhale's incredible mad bartering skillz, we also only paid 60 pounds (with a little tip thrown in at the end), which was hot.

The final leg of our trip came when we returned to the Zamalek area and went to a place called Versailles Palace for tea and shisha. At this point, we were a group of four girls: Jhale, Vivette, Shamiss (who's name I'm probably horribly mispelling) and Kate, as well as me. This is important primarily because both Vivette and Shamiss cover their hair, and Jhale is Muslim and fairly dark skinned. Kate and I were the only pasty-white Americans in the group (though I think everyone in the group was an international student). Now, Versailles palace was fairly crowded when we got there, so we waited some 15 minutes before being seated. This wasn't so much of a problem, except for the fact that there was a side room with a bunch of tables that wasn't being used. When we asked a waiter about available seating, however, he told us to wait and not to sit down there. Well, thirty seconds after we sat down, a group of 8-10 obviously western tourists came in, and were immediately seated in this vacant area (still leaving plenty of space for several more groups, incidentally, and Versailles palace so far as I know doesn't bother with reservations). When Jhale confronted the server about this obvious injustice, he basically blew her off. He seemed pretty irritated too, which showed up in his treatment of us. It took us forever to get our drinks, and the shisha pipe Jhale ordered never arrived. We asked about it several times and never had a breakthrough. The server did his best to ignore us, not meet our eyes (people here know when they are being jackasses, and usually won't look you in the eye if they have done something and know you know) and generally fail in his role as a server. Finally, we got frustrated and just asked for the check. No sooner than had we cancelled the shisha order, four shisha pipes were wisked over to the table of the western tourists. After demanding the check several more times (and having the server storm off like a petulant child on the last occasion, without even bothering to respond to the question), we just figured out our total ourselves from the menu, left the money on the table, and left. We had barely made it out the door when our erstwhile server came running up to us, claiming we hadn't paid the entire total. Amazingly, he was both able to move quickly AND produce the check in a timely manner when it was his wallet on the line - you'd almost think he had been, you know, deliberately holding the check and not providing it for us out of spite. It turned out we had understimated the tax slightly and so were short a few pounds. The way he confronted us though was pretty ridiculous, and again targeted at Jhale, who he'd been working to piss off all night. Rather than just go, Jhale blew up at him and basically ripped him a new one right in front of the restaurant. It was really great to watch, because we'd all been in similar situations before and felt we had to let it go because we were trying not to offend the shopkeeper or whoever, and create a bad impression of Americans. In general, Egyptians (and when I say Egyptians, I don't mean all Egyptians, but more specifically a certain class/group of shopkeepers and such) interpret the American's desire not to offend as some combination of weakness, stupidity and ignorance, as if we don't understand that we are being cheated, abused or ridiculed. They seem to figure that if you aren't actively taking umbrage, that they have managed to successfully hoodwink you with their incredible wits and sparkling intelligences.
Well, Jhale, being Muslim and possessing a much stronger command of arabic than most of us (though Vivetta and Shamiss I think are native speakers), refused to just go quietly. She gave him a piece of her mind that probably still has his ears stinging. I thought it was really powerful; she spoke with passion and righteousness that all of us have but most of us most of the time are afraid to tap into. Speaking truth is a scary thing, but beautiful in its own way.

Sorry this post is so long (and sorry for the lag time). I've got another post I'm working on on class descriptions that should hopefully be out soon. I hope all is well back home (and various places abroad!)

Sometimes I'm Really Just Pretty Dumb

Today wasn't exactly one of my better days here in Cairo - in fact, I'd put it down at the bottom. I woke up this morning planning to meet up with Mahmoud, my AUC fencing instructor, to do some extra practice. He teaches on the side at a small school in Maadhi (a suburb of Cairo a relatively small number of stops from Zamalek), which is where I was going to meet him. So I woke up early, showered, got myself together, and went to reach for my jacket and head out, only to realize it wasn't there. A quick search though my relatively small amount of stuff showed that it in fact was not in the room at all. I realized then that I had left it downstairs in the main floor lounge the night before. I should clarify: I left my jacket downstairs in the relatively unsecured, accessible main floor lounge the night before. I hurried downstairs and looked over to where I had been sitting. No jacket. I walked over to the main desk and asked them about missing items. No jacket, but they told me to talk to security across the hall. I went over there and, thankfully, saw my jacket - the officer in the room was looking though it to find some kind of ID (from what I can tell, anyway). I also recovered a bag of school supplies I had purchased and left with the jacket. A quick check of my pockets, however, showed that all was not well after all. The officer had found my ID and a few pencils, but my camera, which had been sitting in the right coat pocket, was quite gone. As far as I can tell, someone pilfered it during the night or early morning, leaving everything else behind.

I feel like an incredible idiot right now just thinking about it - I get so mad (mostly at myself) I'm almost sick. Every other day I've been here I've put my jacket on the back of my chair after getting in the room, and then picked it up again in the morning. I've never had a problem remembering it before, and I always check to make sure I have everything before leaving the room and so on. Even worse, I actually knew I had left the bag of school supplies downstairs the night before, but hadn't bothered to get it because I was lazy and it wasn't anything particularly important. I resolved to grab it in the morning and left it at that. Never once did it occur to me to check and see what else I may have left, nor did the thought that someone might steal something even cross my mind (though in my defense, if I had realized my jacket was also downstairs, I would have gone down for it immediately. The school supplies weren't anything I was going to miss). I feel incredibly naive and generally like a stupid tourist who has no business being in a country he clearly can't handle. Worse still, along with the camera, I lost all of my pictures for this week. About the only "good" thing was that I didn't have more in my jacket - I had put down things like my MP3 player in the room before going out with friends the night before.

The rest of the day kind of felt like adding insult to injury. The fencing practice I was going to, that theoretically started at 11:00, didn't end up starting until 12:30/1:00 pm because Mahmoud slept through his alarm and so thus took a long time getting down to Maadhi. Fencing practice itself was rewarding (a few good saber bouts in particular, which I lost but definitely enjoyed), but that was one of only a few bright spots in the day. Of course, it doesn't help that the entire day kind of feels tainted by my fantastic and utterly idiotic ability to piss hundreds of dollars down the drain (along with one of my favorite christmas presents) due to my own lack of care; I know I wouldn't have been bugged by the late start time otherwise.

After fencing, I met my friends Clark and Michael in Coptic Cairo. Clark had invited us to come to dinner with him and a shopowner named Tariq whom he had met the week before. Tariq was a nice enough guy (though definitely laying it on thick with the praise and whatnot), and we enjoyed a decent lunch/dinner, tea, beer, shisha (water pipes, on of which was filled with "ubbly bubbly" - weed - rather than tobacco - I stayed away from that one) and such for several hours. Though somewhat awkward due to linguistic difficulty (Tariq's english was decent, if broken, while our Arabic is atrocious), it was on the whole a decent experience, up until the point at which we had to buy things. I was expecting to "have" to buy something as it was (Tariq's hospitality, while generous, was definitely also a commercial enterprise), but what I was not expecting was the degree to which he totally screwed us over. Its a little hard to describe here, but he managed to basically place us in a position where we were unable to bargain with him to really any degree at all, nor were we able to in any meaningful way control the transaction taking place before us. We basically got forced into buying crocodile skin belts (which are pretty nice, if not what I'd actually normally spend money on) for 55 US dollars each (which is about 5 times more than we should have paid), and that represented a victory for us, in that we avoided buying "authentic antique" short swords for 140 US dollars each. Basically, I spent 300+ Egyptian Pounds in a day, whereas for the entire first two weeks I spent approximately 500. Neither Michael nor I were particularly pleased with this experience (Clark got off the hook since he bought something the week before, though hadn't bothered to warn us about Tariq's bargaining strategy or the price we were likely to pay). He did make it up to us by buying us some drinks that evening, though. I had a beer and a something or other - orange juice and vodka - a twister(?).

In retrospect, after this particularly painful experience I think I have a much better idea of how to handle bargaining situations in the future. A lot of the storeowners here like to be very friendly and lavish you with their displays of hospitality before getting down to business. In this way, they first force you to buy something (because you feel obligated to reciprocate for their hospitality) and also handicap you in bargaining by co-opting all of the standard approaches to challenging a quoted price. They start by telling you how much they like you and how you are like a sibling to them, and how the price they are giving you is like what they would give to family, and how they know you are a college student and so can't afford to spend a lot (which is why they give you this special, so special price!), and they make you promise not to give the item as a gift but to keep it for yourself, because they like you and want you to have something from them, and so on. These lines, of course, make it much more difficult to counter-bargain, as many of the easiest lines to use have already been pre-empted. You can't very well claim you are a poor college student and deserve a discount if he's already accounted for that in the initial price offering. Of course, I knew that we were being given a raw deal right from the beginning, but couldn't figure out how to turn the tables. I know Michael and I were particularly concerned about coming across as rude or otherwise offending our hosts. Now that I've seen some of the lines and know what to expect, and I think in the future I'll be less susceptible to such worries, as I think most people have thicker skin than they pretend to have in negotiation.

One bright note to our Coptic Cairo trip was that I met a guy named Mina who works at Tariq's shop who is about our age. I think he felt sorry for us since we got railroaded by Tariq, and I know his opinion of his boss is not that great. He was a very nice guy (the first Coptic Christian I've met). He invited us to play football (soccer for those of you still in America) and generally hang out with some of his friends in the future. I think we may take him up on his offer sometime; hanging out with people our age would I think be better than with shop owners, both because they would be our peers and so uncolored by the power imbalance that so obviously permeated the shop, and also because no elaborate unwritten purchase requirements would be invovled.

So, basically, today was a lot of little good things coupled to a few really bad things. I'm still pretty bitter about the camera but when I'm not thinking about it its easier to handle. The lessons learned (beware of shopkeepers with wide smiles, quit being a naive idiot about security and personal property) were good, if a lot more painful than I'd like. Here's hoping I don't have to learn them again.

Fencing and Miscellany

So today we had our first official meeting for fencing, and I have to say it was pretty freaking awesome. As I mentioned before, theres about 10 people in the group, many without much experience. There are, however, a few experienced guys and most importantly, a guy named Mahmoud who has been to international tournaments. I think he's the assistant coach (we apparently have a real coach too, though he just got married and is on his honeymoon. The honeymoon is a month long, by the way - they don't joke around about it around here. I don't think its even possible to come home with the marriage unconsummated after all that.), and he's obviously really good. He put us through our paces, with a really good warm up and stretching, and then other drills designed to tire us out and help us get back in shape (I need all the help I can get), without overstressing us. In case any fencing Swatties are reading this, I think I'll have a few ideas for when I get back. Also, we conducted much more of the practice in french than we do normally, so soon enough I should know all the commands - Randall, I know you can appreciate the coolness of that.

Incidentally, apparently the french command for "extend" is something along the lines of "elongez," or as pronounced by Mahmoud, "lonje." Not entirely sure if that's actually a word, but i'm guessing its cognate in english is elongate. This is relevant because the french for "lunge" is "fondez" or something like that. So when Mahmoud says "lonje," I instinctively lunge, and so i've been having a terrible time of it for that part. Hopefully it sinks in soon enough though or practice is going to be a comedy of errors.

Anyway, partway in to the practice, while the newer folks were doing drills, Mahmoud took me and a few of the other more experienced guys aside and kind of felt out our strengths. We didn't bout or anything, but I kind of got the impression we were being reviewed. I don't know exactly what it is, but Mahmoud is really good at explaining some things. He's already corrected a few of my idiosyncracies in my style, like in my lunge for example. He has a picture perfect image of how it should be in his head and can somehow make me do it too, which a lot of other people have had a lot more trouble doing. I'm going to try to figure it out, because however he's doing it, it'd be nice to be able to replicate it. I'm pleased to report that I acquitted myself well (thanks to Ben, Randall, Fletcher, Manoli and everyone else who helped teach all the disengages and remises and suchlike!). As I have three years of experience, I'm a rare commodity, so I seem to be of particular interest - as far as I can tell, in terms of raw time I outrank all of the other students, which is really a wierd experience. Also, though I'm not entirely sure, I think Mahmoud is grooming me/us few for tournaments here. He invited me and another guy out to MaHdi (other side of the Nile) on Saturday morning for more practice. In the meantime, I'll be doing some more practice on my own, mostly of the getting in shape variety. I've been to the gym a few times, and I've forsworn the use of the elevator from now on. As my room is on the sixth floor (with ground counted as floor 0), its a reasonable hike with a loaded backpack.

Anyway, on the schedule front, i'm still finalizing things, but it looks like I'm going to have a freakin' huge number of Political Science courses. I'm hoping to switch my only AM class to a PM one, and maybe switch another, so you'll have to wait a little longer (tomorrow is the last day of drop add) before I can give you all my final schedule arrangement. I think things will be easier than back at Swat, but i'm not entirely sure since i'm having a hard time working up the energy to do homework so far. I imagine I'll be rudely awakened next week to the realization that I need to stop being a lazy ass and start being useful. Good thing I have a few days left.

Classes

Well, after two weeks of being here, classes have finally started. Actually, today was the second offical day of classes, as the Egyptian weekend is Friday and Saturday; we thus started on Sunday. Interestingly, in Arabic, the days of the week are named to reflect this: Sunday is called الاحد - Il Had - or very loosely, "the first." Similarly, Monday is الاثنين - Il Itneen - or very loosely, "the second." This continues until Friday, which is called الجمعة - Il Gama'a - or, "mosque day." As the holy day in the Islamic tradition is Friday, this nomenclature makes sense. Some of you will have noticed by this point that I've only discussed the pattern for 6 days of the week, which as most second graders and at least some study-abroad arabic students can tell you, is one less than there should be. This is because Saturday, السبت - Il Sabt - means absolutely nothing to me. I only remember it because it very vaguely approximates the first syllable of "Saturday" in english.

Anyway, back to classes. I'm pleased to report that I'm starting to have a schedule worth the name. Its got a lot more Political Science and less Arabic than I'd hoped, but I think it'll be fun nonetheless. I'll definitely learn a lot. The arabic course I am in is a little above my level, so I've got my work cut out for me for the first few weeks. On a related note, I also think I've managed to wheedle Swarthmore's Political Science department into letting me deal with the political theory requirement abroad here (or at least get part of it out of the way). I'll be sure to lay out a full arrangement of my schedule here once i'm confident I know what it is.

Oh, I also went to the first fencing club meeting here. Looks like there's about 10 people, many of whom are beginners. Now, i didn't follow the whole discussion, but its possible that I'm one of the better people there, and that if AUC sends people to tournaments, one of them might be me. So that'd be pretty freaking awesome.

Fireworks!

Last week we were walking across the Nile on our way to Zamalek and were startled by the sound of loud explosions. At first, I thought an engine had backfired, when suddenly the sky lit up with colors. For some reason or another, they (not sure who) were launching fireworks across the river! It was really cool. Here are two shots: One actually in focus, the other kind of artistic (sadly, unintentionally so):

Unfortunately, you can't see it very clearly but that bright white sign on top of one of the lower buildings says "Mobil" on it. We were joking that they were celebrating striking oil. It felt a little like being welcomed to the city.

Recap: Week 1

Well, like with my rather forlorn livejournal account, I seem to be often delinquent in updating this thing. So, over the course of today and possibly tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to get this thing up to speed. I'm guessing one long post about my first week here, and a few posts about the second week. So yeah.

I first landed in Cairo around 11 pm two Sundays ago (that'd be the 21st of January), with absolutely no idea how long I had spent getting there. I left DC around 10 or 11 pm, flew to Heathrow, had a layover of somewhere between 4 and 6 hours, and only then departed for Cairo. Between uncertain flight times and uncertain layover times and uncertain clock adjustments, my transit time comes out to anywhere between 20 and 40 hours. Although I think it was closer to the 20 hour end, I'm not about to be bothered enough to figure it out. At the time, the only part of the calculus that I cared about was that I had actually landed. I did see the pyramids on my way in though, which was really cool.

Fortunately, it didn't take me long to fumble my way through the airport, and I quickly met other international students as well as the AUC guide (AUC = American University in Cairo). We picked up our bags, slogged through customs, clambered onto the buses and were quickly whisked off to the dormitories. "Whisked," incidentally, is used here as a euphemism for "careened through the streets of Cairo at speeds in excess of 70 miles an hour while dodging all manner of cars and generally ignoring what passes for traffic law." More on that later. We did survive the journey, which I suppose is really the only important thing, and before long I was passed out in the dorm room.

Four hours of sleep or so brought me to 7:45, at which point I was scheduled to be waking up to go to morning orientation. That didn't exactly happen as planned. My morning pretty much went to hell in a hand basket (I say this tongue and cheek, because I'm really not unhappy about how things went) right from the start, because my alarm didn't go off loud enough; I had my computer set up to play music at 7:45 am so that I could catch the 8:30 shuttle to campus, but apparently the software I downloaded didn't work as advertised. (I actually did bring a real alarm clock with me to Cairo, but I still can't find it anywhere in my bags/stuff). Adding insult to injury, I actually had awakened at 7:30, but I made the mistake of trying to catch an extra ten minutes of sleep. I didn't come to again until 8:15 or so.

A super fast shower followed by clothes dressing and running down stairs got me to the front of the building (and thus, the bus stop) just after the shuttle left. I learned from the front desk that the next shuttle wouldn't be coming until 9:30, and I theoretically was having an arabic placement exam at 9. I decided therefore to walk, expecting it to take "about a half hour, maybe a little more," as the man at the desk put it. If I was late to the test, oh well, I figured that I would be able to work it out (all this week is sort of hang around/orientation - more on that later). Unfortunately, the map I was given didn't cover the whole route. It had detailed descriptions of the beginning (the dorm) and the end (the campus), but sadly, insufficient information about the middle portion of the journey - you know, the part about getting between one and the other. The man at the desk seemed to indicate that this essential middle portion was fairly straightfoward. Oh how wrong he was. Allow me to explain:

Now, our dorm - Zamalek - is on the island of Zamalek, situated on the Nile river. I assumed, silly me, that when the directions said to find El Tahrir street, that they meant the one on Zamalek Island. No, no they did not. I ended up wandering the island (which is not small) for a goodly long while, before finally crossing on the El Tahrir bridge and stopping in a Hilton (I think it was a Hilton) to ask for directions. It turned out that AUC is/was on the other side of the Nile - the east side - near Tahrir square (you should be noticing a pattern with the Tahrir thing - its kind of a critical nexus for slightly too many things). So, I recrossed the Nile (twice, and again, the Nile, like Zamalek, is not small), and then managed by a process of trial, error and triangulation, to close in on my destination. I ended up walking for almost 3 hours before I got to the campus, but the trip was actually kind of fun. The people here are extremely friendly, and more than put up with my miserably small arabic vocabulary. I met a very nice man who helped me cross the traffic on one of the larger streets, and then took me back to his shop for tea. Of course, he also got me to buy things from him (which I imagine was the entire purpose of his goodwill effort in the first place, but it was worth it for the kind words and the incredibly good tea. I did bargain with him a little too (you should be proud of me), but not too hard, since I was feeling guilty (well, not guilty, but obliged).

The main upshot of my oddyssey through Cairo was that in addition to buying things and drinking tea, I got a good sense of the area around campus and also an excellent opportunity to stretch my legs. I actually got to AUC around 11:30. The campus is broken primarily into two sections, roughly the size of a small city block each. "Main Campus," including administration, science and the International Student Study Office (ISSO), is surrounded by a hedge wall, giving it a lovely bunch of gardens around the main buildings, as well as some security (the gates in are controlled). There's lots shade and places to sit and socialize. Its sister campus, the "Greek Campus" (called greek for reasons utterly unknown to me - as there are no fraterneties and Alexander the Great and his ilk had nothing to do with it), is roughly a block away (diagonally). It is enclosed on all sides by the library, social studies building and other structures, leaving a large terraced courtyard in its heart.

Greek Campus, view from the library entrance into the courtyard

Greek campus seems to be the real center of most socialization on campus, and I imagine I'll be there a lot as history and political science courses happen there. On the whole, however, campus is pretty small and is built directly into the city blocks, so where the one ends and the other begins is not rigorously defined; some of the University's other buildings dot the surrounding area, and students can be found on all of the streets between. I certainly spend more time on the streets than I do in campus, though the courtyards are nice, shaded and relatively quiet retreats from the hustle and bustle of city life.

Well, back to my main story. After finding the ISSO, I quickly found what I needed to do and also determined that I hadn't missed much; orientation was universally described as unhelpful, and the arabic placement exam was described both as "impossible" and as "available tomorrow." I got some informational packets, took a look at some possible courses to register for, and put my name on the advising sheet. This turned out to be the only downside of my lateness; the best time I could get was the following saturday, which was unfortunate because that meant most of campus got advised before me. As a result, I did not get all of the classes I wanted, but I'm working on wheedling my way into them anyway.

After some hanging out and socializing, I went to my Colloquial Arabic crash course class at 3. It was seriously intensive (as well as being four hours long). We learned a lot, but all of us were dying of exhaustion by the end. I grabbed the shuttle (thank god, or I suppose I should say, al-hamdulilleh!) After some socializing at the dorm, I went to the room and then went to bed.

On Tuesday, I got up early and caught the shuttle, getting to campus in time for the arabic placement exam. The exam itself, however, lived up to its description - the "impossible" part, and I gave up after 10 minutes. I've decided to take the accelerated arabic course that covers the first two semesters of normal arabic. Ideally, this will mean that I can continue senior year if I so choose - barring that, I'll at least still be able to add on to what I've already learned so far.
Between the arabic exam and class at 3, I had basically nothing going on. I first figured out my classes situation (I'll tell you more about it once it's confirmed), and then met up with some guys to go get food. We found a great little place that sold shwarema for 4 Egyptian pounds, which is some 60 cents US. So, for under a dollar, I got an entire meal. Thank god for favorable exchange rates! In general, the smaller egyptian establishments are about an order of magnitude cheaper than the more upscale restaurants. The upscale places cater to expatriates, mostly Americans and Europeans who come to Cairo so that they can live like they were in the West. Apparently, there are whole suburbs of them. I think its ridiculous. The cheaper places serve better food, to be honest, and certainly more authentic food. There is probably a slightly higher probability of getting sick from something, but not enough to be a problem. I've learned that if the place has a crowd around it, its a good choice for food. Places without crowds have done something horrible to earn the disfavor of 18 million plus Cairenes!

Arabic class was again stimulating and tiring. I hightailed it back to Zamalek residence, and then met up with some people to go to food. We didn't find any good local places so ended up settling for a more refined place called Cafe Tabasco (basically, we got tired of walking). The food was decent, but not worth the vastly higher (4 or 5 x) price tag and ridiculous amount of smoke. I had to shower off when I got back just so that I could breathe again.

My Wednesday was heavily abbreviated, in that I was unconscious for almost all of it. I stayed up late watching Battlestar Galactica on my laptop (it is by the way incredibly cool to be able to sit in bed and watch shows - I love having a portable computer). Bronwyn, if I didn't love the show so much, I would have to hate you for destroying my ability to do anything of value. Anyway, I went to bed quite late, at which point I discovered how jet lag works. Rather than waking up around noon, which would have probably happened had I done this in the states, I ended up only coming to around 5 pm. This, interestingly, corresponds to a 10 am wake up time in the States (7 hours difference between EST and Cairo time). As you might guess, I missed colloquial arabic, and really did nothing of value at all besides get dinner.

Thursday and Friday passed relatively quickly. As you've probably gathered, week one "orientation" was pretty unscheduled; other than the arabic course, we didn't do a whole lot. Wandering around the city with various groups of people, however, was a blast, so I'm not complaining. On Friday night, we went into so-called "Islamic Cairo," which is an older part of town with a great number of mosques and a huge bazaar/market.

Bizzare Bazzars - well, not really, but it has a nice ring to it.

I resisted the urge to buy anything this time around, but I'm confident that I will in the future.

On Saturday, many people went to Giza to see the Pyramids, but I was sadly unable to join them as I had my advising session. In fact, I'm one of a very few people who hasn't made it out to the Pyramids yet. I'm working on getting out there, but there's not much sense in going alone, so I'll have to convince people. I did, however, get out to the Cairo Museum, which is the home of all things Pharonic - at least, those things that can be physically picked up and moved. Cameras are not allowed inside the museum, so I've only got pictures of the outside. Eventually, they'll be on facebook.

Well, I'm going to wrap this up (finally, I know!), but check back for more posts later this weekend!