Jacque and I taught again on Monday night, this time with a third teaching partner named Taylor. She is also an American but she is a freshman and is at AUC as an undergrad. I couldn't imagine coming to AUC for college at the age of 18. I barely made it out to South Bend! But she wants to study Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies so this is a great place for her and I give her a lot of credit.
This week we had three students, only one of whom was in our class the first week. (We have heard that the administration is going to have a meeting to discuss poor attendance at the classes because this is a common problem at every location and at every level). We had one student join our class who we were not sure was competent to be learning at the level we were teaching. When we talked to him about this, he became upset that we were going to make him leave. We told him we were not going to make him leave. We just needed to be sure he was in the appropriate level. At the same time the other two students in the class were asking him in Arabic the same questions about his competence. They told us, in English, that they didn't want him to hold them back. As I said the will and desire of these people to learn is truly unbelievable and something that will make me think twice before I complain again about the burden of school and homework. Education is something too many people take for granted. It something not everyone is lucky enough to have and something for which we should be thankful.
We began the class teaching in the way we had last week, but after a while we partnered off and taught individually. My partner was Umar, who is from Nigeria. He is the only student that has been present in our class both weeks and he is one of the more advanced students. Because we finished the punctuation drills quickly, we spent some time talking. At first I felt guilty about talking with him and not proceeding with the lesson, but then I thought being able to communicate is just as important to learning English, if not more important than, learning the difference between a semi-colon and a colon. Umar is from the North of Nigeria. He has been in Cairo for 4 years (since 2005). His first language is the tribal language of Northern Nigeria. When he came to Cairo, he studied Arabic at Al-Azhar University. Now, he is doing his masters in Arabic at Cairo University. English is his third language. This was truly amazing to me. When I told him I was studying Arabic he asked me to speak to him in classical Arabic, which is the Arabic I have been learning for two years. It was nice to be able to use this Arabic again, as I have been having to use Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which I am not as proficient in nor do I like as much.
He was also very interested in America and what part of the country the three of us (Jacque, Taylor, and I) were from. I pretended the desk was America and answered his questions by pointing things out. I also pointed out where most of the farming in the country was done (the Mid-West and the West). He was also interested in the population of America and was surprised to find out it was not bigger than it was. He thinks of America as a huge nation. This is interesting. I think his idea about the size of America has more to do with the way the US is portrayed abroad and its international leadership than it does with the actual physical size of America.
After our talk, it was time to do some more punctuation drills before beginning the most fun part of our class, reading Matilda. Each level is reading a book, with the first level reading the Cat in the Hat and our level, one of the most advanced, reading Matilda. I love this book and am very excited to get to read it again. We think we are going to try to prepare vocabulary lists as we read. This should be a nice break from grammar. When we first started reading, I read to the class. I then asked one of the students to read a few paragraphs. He did and he did very well. I then asked Umar to read a few paragraphs. He read about 4 pages! It was amazing. He is really very, very intelligent and I hope we help him a lot in this class. As I have said, he truly wants to learn. Even Abdullah, the student we were not sure was in the right level class, managed to read through a page or so. This was encouraging. So was the fact that when we ended class, he talked with us for a little. He is from Saudi Arabia and he has been in Cairo for a year. He does not like Egypt and he had no qualms about telling us that. We didn't go into detail with him (partially because his English was limited and we couldn't) but this was pretty funny. It's nice to know it's not only Americans who can become frustrated with Cairo and Egyptian disorganization in general.
I think all of us, having just finished our second week of classes after the extended break (ironically amid somewhat of an outbreak of flu-like illness and even several cases of swine flu among students and faculty that helped to spread the rumor of a quarantine of the dorms and/or permanent shut down of the University, neither of which I think will actually happen), are coming to that point every study abroad student comes to where the fascination with the country wears off and the culture shock starts to become frustrating and annoying.
We complain and generalize about the Egyptians in our classes far too often and we know this isn't right. The lack of vigor in study, the disorganization, and the inability and/or disregard and/or aversion to the concept of forming a line is simply frustrating to us. As is the cat that seems to live in the dorm cafeteria, fighting with another cat that comes into the dorm from time to time and jumping onto the cafeteria tables at which we eat, as he is doing as I am typing this. As is the fact that the Internet has started to work in the dorms only at certain places and at certain times. As is the Egyptian custom of staying up until 4AM or 5AM every night, eating dinner at 1AM and washing dishes and leaving disgusting messes in the bathroom sinks. (There was actually a girls' dorm meeting about this, which I did not attend because, as I expected it was basically Americans complaining because they didn't quite realize that Egypt would not be exactly like home. This is frustrating too. Everyone is annoyed by certain cultural differences. But we commiserate with each other and suck it up and life goes on. We know that calling out the Egyptians will not change their ways. We also know that complaining to the RA's will do nothing either. The culture of a society cannot be something for which we hold a group of RA's responsible. Most Americans realize these things. Some do not, and this makes the situation even more frustrating)!
So as not to end this blog on a negative note, I think I will say that I have heard that this stage of culture shock is just a phase and we will overcome it in the next few weeks. I certainly hope this is true and I think it will be, though I do not doubt that there will be days when, as is becoming a common phrase with the Americans here, "I want to kill an Egyptian!" I think I need to think about my experience here as a whole, and though not all parts of it are perfect or necessarily enjoyable, they are all integral to making the experience what it is, and down the line I think, as I have said again and again, this will be an experience that I will remember and be thankful for for the rest of my life! (And that statement, to relate back to the title of the post, is one that definitely deserves to be ended with an exclamation point.) :-)
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