Wrapping Up: Small Pyramids and the English Language

I am writing this entry on December 10th. At this exact minute twelve days from now, I am scheduled to be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean a little over half of the way home. Not that I am counting down or anything! Honestly, though, I cannot believe that I have less than two weeks left in Cairo. In some ways it feels like I have been living here forever. In other ways, it feels like I just arrived yesterday. I will say more about that in a final post, but for right now I'll just say that at this point, although I think this has been the greatest experience of my life, I am ready to be at home with my family, and for Christmas no less. Doing Christmas related things in Egypt, such as listening to Christmas songs, just doesn't feel right. On a related note, listening to an Arabic Christmas song set to the tune of "Jingle Bells" today in my colloquial class just felt weird! I think the feeling is mutual among most of the American students here. There are several ways we are counting down our time (and also several ways we are planning to sabatoge the trips of the lucky few who are leaving as early as December 16th or 17th, but I won't get into those). I can (and believe me, I have been) count(ing) it down by the number of papers I have left to turn in: 3 (1 is done; 1 is outlined, and 1 isn't started); the number of finals I have to take: 4 and the number of presentations I have to give: 1. This seems like a lot and it is; AUC being AUC operates in a way where most classes do next to nothing all semester and then have enormous amounts of work in the last week or so. Honestly, it's one of the most efficient systems I have ever seen. (That's sarcasm, sarcasm to the extreme). It is going to be hard to focus on studying; it is always difficult to study for finals after the semester ends (which AUC's semester ends after classes on Monday), but I think it will be even more so in Cairo. Hopefully, I'll be able to focus long enough to do well with all my assignments.

And finally, my favorite way to count down has to be mentioned: the number of bus rides I have to take to and from AUC: 9 (including the one I will depart on when I am finished with this entry)! The fact that this number has dropped to the single digits makes me happier than almost everything I have experienced in the past four months!

Another sign that we are coming close to the end of our time here was the last English class I taught on Monday night. It was a short class because we only administered the final exam that we had created, but I think it went very well. We reviewed right before the exam and tailored the review almost exactly to questions on the exam because we felt that it was unfair to expect the students to take a test after not having had class for two weeks (the previous week was the break week and the week before that the transportation to the center for us did not arrive at AUC to pick us up, forcing us to cancel class). Only six students came to the exam, which consisted of reading, grammar, and listening comprehension sections. I am proud to say that all six students did well. Out of 25 points, the most points lost were 5. One student, Fatima, received a 100%! I know that the exam was easy and that we did not teach all the material in our teaching packet, but I hope that the results on the test can be taken to mean that we at least taught the students something. As I have said, they really, really want to learn. Almost immediately after the test, they were asking when they would receive their results and when they would begin classes again. (We e-mailed the test results to the director as well as our recommendations about which students should progress to the next level, becuase not all students took the exam, and the director is supposed to be calling the students with their results and giving them information about when their next classes will start, which should be in February or early March). A few students also asked about attending the graduation ceremony for the Level 5B students (our students were Level 4B; if they continue to progress, they should be graduating a year from now). This shows how excited they are that their turn to graduate will be so soon. I wish them all the best of luck in the future.

Teaching, although it was difficult, so much so that I know I could never do it, was very rewarding. The STAR program is something I am very glad I was a part of. I learned a lot, not only from a 'teaching English' standpoint, but about the struggles faced by refugees and their desire to improve their situatuions. I have an immense amount of respect for all of my students. They are truly an inspiration. Shaking their hands and having them thank me was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

A Monday night spent teaching English would not be complete without a hilarious tale from the train, and this Monday definitely did not disappoint. There were three of us on the train; all girls so we were in the women's car. About half way through the train ride, a woman came up to us and told us she was so glad to see us. We did not know what she meant, but she asked us where we were from and we told her America. She told us she had an Aunt in Chicago, and then apologized that her English was not very good. We told her it was fine and they she was doing very well. She then told us she wanted to talk with us in the future, and had us put our cell phone numbers in her phone (which had as its background Jesus's face...she was clearly Coptic) and write down our e-mail addresses. As writing while standing on the train is difficult, this whole exchange took us almost the whole rest of the ride. She has yet to contact any of us, and I am not sure that she will, but the whole situation was not only funny but also surprising to us. It was complimented by a situation one of our fellow teachers then described to us from her class that day. Apparently one of her students who is going home to Sudan over Christmas break, mistook her questions about his trip to mean that she wanted to accompany him and spent quite some time telling her where she would cross the border and where his family would be to pick her up! She thinks that by the time she left the situation had been sorted out and he is no longer expecting her!

These situations are funny but they are also telling. They are funny to us because the concept of wanting to make any kind of contact possible to allow for your immigration to another country is so foreign to us. Here, in Egypt and in the greater Middle East and around the world, there is a cultural standard set that there is better out there and people try desperately to achieve this. Moving from one country to another is not thought of as such a monumental thing, as American would consider it, because it is thought to be somewhat of a common goal. Americans have no idea what it is like not only to want to leave their country but to want to leave it to create a new and better life. It was interesting to make this realization. It made me feel grateful for the fact that I am American and because of this, there are some things such as immigration, that are common to so many people worldwide, that I will never have to consider. I am thankful that my experience in Egypt has revealed to me things like this that I never would have considered had I never left the US.

And, on a lighter note, speaking of funny situations, I would not like to describe our trip, taken last weekend, to the Djoser Step Pyramid at Saqqara (which is the oldest pyramid in the world) and the Red and Bent Pyramids at Dahshur. These are some of Egypt's smaller pyramids. (There are 19 standing pyramids in Egypt).

Deciding a visit to these pyramids would be a good trip to make on one of our two unscheduled days off (AUC extended our holiday break for two class days, four days total, due to fears of swine flu), we researched a little about the sites and found that they were only about 45 minutes from Cairo. It was unclear whether we should take a tour or go on our own, and after looking around a bit, we decided to just jump in a taxi and make the visits acting as our own tour guides. We were a little concerned about having a taxi as our mode of transportation, but it turns out it is fairly common for taxis to stay with you all day when you request to be driven to Saqqara. So, without even really trying, we acquired our own personal driver for the day! (I wish we could say we were traveling in style, but considering our taxi broke down almost every time the driver put the car in park, which resulted in a quick repair at the Dahshur Pyramids where we watched him open the hood and literally bang some thing around in there before airing out the engine a bit, I certainly would not say we were living the life of luxary. We made it through the desert though, which was more than we expected because as we were going down a hill at one point all of us were looking at each other with looks that said, 'you know we are pushing this taxi back up this hill if we ever want to get back to Cairo, right.' Fortunately, we miraculously made it back up the hill, due, no doubt to the airing out of the engine that I just mentioned.)

The ride out to Saqqara was a nice one. It's very jungle like in the area where these pyramids are. There was a lot of grass, trees, and water. Those are not things you see often in Egypt, especially in Cairo. The Step Pyramid was very interesting and we spent about an hour there taking pictures and reminding ourselves why site seeing among European tourists is something we vowed to never do again!

We then made the quick trip over to Dahshur. At Dahshur, we could climb up part of the Red Pyramid and then descend down into it. Although the insides of pyramids are not all that interesting, we figured we might as well make the trip down. This was probably a bad call on our part. To go down into the pyramids, you need to almost slide down a steep wooden plank with metal steps built into it. It's not easy to do and this climb was definitely the steepest and longest we have ever done at a pyramid. It also did not help that the lights on the plank and inside the entire pyramid had gone out. (Our guess is that the fumes we smelled in the pyramid, which we are not really sure exactly what these were except that they were probably dangerous, may have cracked the lightbulbs.) So, it was pitch black, the air was thick with dangerous vapors, and we were climbing down a steep plank. As if all this wasn't bad enough, we were doing it with European tourists who were making things ten times more difficult. At some point, we basically decided to act as if we were the only ones in the pyramid and turned ourselves into what you could call a huge show. We routinely took out our (useless) cell phones in attempts at creating light and even took a few pictures (even though it is 'strictly prohibited' in pyramids, hoping the light from the flash could help us get our bearings. We called out to each other several times. One of my friends shook his water bottle and told us to follow that sound so we would know where he was. At one point when we were at the bottom of the plank, I became a little lost and disoriented and said, 'Guys, I don't know where I am. Guys, can you hear me. I don't know where I am. I'm in the middle of a room I think. I'm touching a...man...' And indeed I was, a German tourist, I presume. My friends came over and grabbed me and we spent about five minutes in the room we had climbed down to before heading back up. It was definitely an experience.

After the Red Pyramid, we made a quick stop at the Bent Pyramid, which really does have a bent shape. It's really cool. Thankfully, we could not go into this pyramid. We climbed up to a platform and took some pictures, and then decided to call it a trip and return back to the dorms at Zamalek. Overall, it was a very fun and relaxing trip and a great thing to do to wind down our time in Cairo. I think it will be our last site seeing excursion. To think that our site seeing has finally ended in Cairo is somewhat daunting. I remember arriving here and thinking it was impossible that I would ever see all that I needed and wanted to see here. This proved to be somewhat true, but my friends and I agree that we think we have seen a ton and are pretty happy with all the incredible sights that we have managed to see in only four months!

And I'll finish this entry by saying this: bus ride 'T-9 Bus Rides,' commence!