I Don't Know That I Could Ever Teach, But Shop I Could Do Anywhere, Anytime!

This past week at school was fairly uneventful. Our first Arabic tests were graded and handed back to us, and I took my first Colloquial Arabic test and a midterm in my Intro to Development class. Overall, I think I'm doing OK. The Arabic tests here are harder than they are at home, but I think that's a good thing. This week, I have a midterm in my Comparative Politics of the Middle East class. I'm hoping it won't be too terrible because I also have my next Arabic test on the same day. After getting through this week, I'm pretty much done with tests and assignments until my term papers are due (one is due in mid-November, one is due in December, and one is due on a sort of influx date that no one is really sure about...T.I.E...if you've been reading you know what that means) and my final exams begin (in the second/third week of December. This week I will also be starting the other part of my internship with Nahdet El-Mahrousa, with the CEDO. I will explain more about it on my internship blog after I have my first day on Tuesday. It's going to be a busy week, but it's followed by Halloween (which I may or may not have a morning make-up class on; it would be for the same class that has arbitrary due dates, so it's not something I'm overly stressed about). Halloween is more celebrated here than I would have expected, which is a good thing. There's apparently an American Embassy party and a few other parties going on. I think it will be fun to dress up and have an American holiday. I just have to make it through the week first!

The most challenging part of my week last week, even all tests considered, I think was teaching English for the third time on Monday night. We had nine students this week! It doesn't sound like a lot, but considering we've only ever had three and four before, it was definitely something new. We had been operating on a kind of individual attention sort of basis, which I thought was working well, but it's next to impossible to do that when there's three teachers and nine students. I know it doesn't sound that hard, but it's definitely one of those things that is easier said than done. We decided to start by reading from "Matilda." We figured we could assess everyone's level this way because although they're all technically at the same level, there's differences in their abilities. We read for about an hour, and it seemed like everyone was understanding, at least to some degree. We would stop every once in a while and check to make sure everyone knew what was going on in the story.

It's a fun story to read, but there's parts of it that make it difficult to teach with. Roald Dahl, the author, is British, so there's some British slang in the book, "telly" instead of "television" for example that makes it tough to explain. It's also written in a different way than we, as Americans, are used to speaking. This is not really noticeable when you simply read the book, but when you are trying to teach it or teach through it, you pick up on things like, 'I would have never phrased that that way.' Also, a lot of slang, not necessarily British slang, is used. Annoying children are described as 'scabs,' 'grubs,' and 'blisters.' These words are tough to explain as it is, but to explain them in the context Dahl is using them adds even a more difficult element to teaching.

We were ready to move on after an hour, but one student asked about the meaning of a word that he had underlined in his text. This was a watershed event, as then everyone began to ask about every word that they did not understand. So we spent over a half hour walking around the room defining words for everyone, which looking back on it, was a good thing to do. We hadn't even though that they would have so many questions simply about word meaning. It was a difficult thing to do. Having to define words forces you to think differently, especially when the people you are working with have a somewhat limited vocabulary as it is. It was challenging, but I actually liked doing it. It also led us to the conclusion that we need to approach the story differently. For example, we are going to go through the chapters we're planning to read each week and make vocab lists. A dictionary should be able to define things better than I can, especially thinking on my feet, and I also think this will save a lot of time.

After we finished going over words, we started with the grammar lesson. We were doing prepositional phrases. In and of themselves, they're not difficult, however there was more trouble with them than we anticipated. We started with a list of prepositions. They get prepositions and they can identify them in sentences. It was the phrases that gave them trouble. Describing what a prepositional phrase is is not easy. We said it was a phrase, or a part of a sentence, that began with a preposition and then described something usually ending with a noun. For example, 'the boy went with his mother.' With is the preposition. 'With his mother' is the prepositional phrase because it describes who the boy went with. ('Mother' is a noun.) This took a lot more practice than we anticipated. It was most challenging for them to recognize that the preposition was part of the prepositional phrase. They kept thinking it was just the part after the preposition. I kept saying again and again, 'it BEGINS WITH, it STARTS WITH, it HAS TO HAVE the preposition. Prepositional phrases MUST have prepositions as part of them.' It was frustrating that they couldn't understand this and I didn't know how else to explain it. Slowly, through a lot of practice and some individual attention, I think everyone at least began to get it.

We were supposed to teach the difference between an adjectival prepositional phrase (it describes a noun, for example, 'the boy with his mother is young' has the preposition 'with' and the prepositional phrase 'with his mother.' The prepositional phrase is describing the boy, a noun, so it is adjectival) and an adverbial prepositional phrase (it describes a verb, for example, 'the boy went with him mother' has the preposition 'with' and the prepositional phrase 'with his mother.' The prepositional phrase is adverbial because it describes the way in which or how the boy went, his action). This is very complicated. I even got more than half the examples wrong. Considering how difficult prepositional phrases were we decided not to even go into this topic and I do not know if we will even attempt to go back to it. In my opinion, it's really just a grammar nuance that there's no reason to be hung up on. One student asked about this because he had read ahead before class. He's probably out most advanced student. I explained it to him and we went through a few examples, and I think he understood it for the most part, which was great and really encouraging. We finished class with some more reading. That was an encouraging way to end class because it was a funny section of the story and it seemed that everyone understood that.

I am always exhausted after teaching, and I have a new respect for teachers. I don't think I could ever do it. Teaching adults is especially difficult. I want so much for them to understand, so I speak slowly and I use a lot of hand gestures and I speak in as simple terms as I possibly can. I feel so condescending doing this, and I really hope they don't mind and that it is the right strategy to use. It's also a little stressful this year because for the first time the final exam will count for something (whether a student can move on to the next level) so I feel like I have the responsibility to prepare my students for the test. Thankfully, STAR recognizes that this is a difficult thing, especially given the nature of the classes, so my teaching partners and I will have a lot of say about what exactly our students are tested on. I know this seems like a way to let everyone pass, and maybe it is, but these people deserve to pass. They're really working hard and the environment they have to learn in is not the greatest. They only have class once a week for three hours and it's with college age students, most of whom have never taught before. On top of that I don't know nor do I want to even imagine some of the circumstances some of these people come from. Everyone's just doing the best they can. And like I have said before, the drive of these people to learn is incredible. Several of them have told us they want to have the class more than once a week. I think this would be a great thing. Learning something on a week to week basis is far too difficult. You forget too much. I can't imagine only having Arabic once a week. I'd never learn anything. It's really incredible that these people have come as far as they have with English and I think they should be rewarded for their hard work.

Even though teaching is difficult and stressful, I like that I am involved in it. Even despite having so much going on in class, we always have some interesting cultural discussions. This week a man from Sudan and a woman from Egypt talked with Jacque and I about Egypt. The man said he did not like Egypt. He liked Egyptians, just not Egypt. The woman said she loved Egypt. Jacque tried to explain that it was OK for them to have differing opinions but the woman was convinced that the man didn't like her for having the opinion that Egypt was a wonderful country. We explained that it was possible for a person to like another person, but not to like their opinion and that this should in no way be an affront to the latter person. She had trouble with this concept and seemed offended that he didn't like her opinion. By the end of the conversation, she had agreed that he had his opinion and she had hers and this was fine. It wasn't exactly a resolution, but I think it could be called progress. It was an interesting exchange and I was proud that the woman, the only woman in class, was speaking up, even if what she was saying seemed a bit misguided. It was a nice thing to see.

Another man in the class from Saudi Arabia who also does not like Egypt invited us to have tea with him and his family, saying that was the only way we would learn Arabic. He's apparently been going to some other level classes (these people just want to learn so much) and has also invited some of our friends to tea. A small group of us may go if tea is later in the day after school. At first we were a bit apprehensive, but I think it's just a cultural difference that we would think such a request would be inappropriate. Even if we don't go, I think it's good that we now recognize that things have different meanings in different cultures. You always need to be careful, but as long as you are safe (such as never going anywhere alone), you should be open minded about things.

Though teaching is something I don't know if I will ever do again, both here and in the US, I can and always will be up for a good mall trip anywhere, anytime, which is exactly what we took today. We went to City Stars, which is a mall about halfway between here and school. It's a huge building in the middle of the desert. It has over 600 stores, probably close to 100 restaurants and cafes, two 'amusement parks' which I think are mostly for children, and a movie theater. It's very, very Americanized. It was a nice break for everything today. We didn't buy much. We just walked around and we planned a dinner/movie trip back sometime in the near future. While it was a great day, and just what we all needed, thinking back on it, I'm a little struck by it all. There's so much of a divide in Egypt. There's extreme poverty and not in a very small amount by any means either, yet there's a mall easily ten times the size of my mall at home and countless other construction projects going on. I'm not saying this is wrong. I think it's important for development, but I wish there could also be progress made on the human development front. I don't think building malls and luxury hotels should be denied, I just think it should be accompanied by programs for extending jobs or something like that. It's a tough problem that's discussed again and again in my development classes and I definitely don't have the answer, but I think it's good that I am getting first hand experience with it and at least thinking about it in contexts outside of articles in textbooks and lectures in the classroom.

Taking away this serious commentary on the day, it was a very nice time and a frustration-free day, which is what we need sometimes and is so refreshing to have. If I can have at least one day like that per weekend, I'll be able to make it through week to week, handling anything and everything AUC and Egypt may have in store for me.

Football (of several types).

Last Friday, October 16th, we had the unique opportunity of attending the FIFA U-20 World Cup Final game. The tournament was held in Cairo this year from September 24th until October 16th. I am not sure exactly how it worked. I think it may have been a double elimination tournament because I know the US played twice and I think they lost both of their games. The early rounds of the tournament were played in five different cities relatively close to Cairo. The US was playing in either Port Said or Suez (I can't remember which it was right now). In any case, we were planning to attend at least one of their games, but then it so happened that their games fell while we were on our extended break, so we were unable to attend. By the time we returned from our trip, the US had been eliminated. It would have been nice to see them play. I know that there was at least one player from ND playing of the team. It's a shame we didn't make it to one of their games.

The tournament was not talked about very much in Cairo until the very end. Many AUC students took the opportunity to attend the final between Brazil and Ghana (and also the consolation game held immediately before the game between Costa Rica and Hungary. Hungary won that game in penalty kick's. Overtime was not played before PK's however because the final game between Brazil and Ghana needed to start on schedule. We did not go to the Costa Rica v. Hungary game, but it was apparently a very good game).

We began our adventure into sports in Cairo with a cab ride to Cairo International Stadium. It was about twenty minutes away from our dorms, about half way between the dorms and school. Cairo International Stadium is very nice. I didn't realize it at the time, but when they announced the attendance at the game of over 67,000 people, I realized that it is about the size of (or maybe a little smaller than) Notre Dame's Stadium, which holds about 80,000.

Entering the Stadium was a much different experience than in the US for several reasons. First of all, you need to choose before you enter what side you want to sit on, Brazil or Ghana. We chose Ghana. I'm not sure if this is an Egyptian thing or a soccer thing (because we all know soccer games can get ugly as far as crazy fans are concerned). After passing through some metal detectors we were approached by some Egyptian men seemingly doing some sort of car promotion out of a booth by the stadium entrance. We weren't quite sure what they were doing, but a part of their gimmick was a game where if you kicked a soccer ball though the window of a cardboard car cutout, you won a free hat. (I tried and my kick was a good height, but a little to the left). One of the boys we were with was successful in doing this. You would have thought he had just cured cancer or solved the problem of world hunger. The Egyptians freaked out. They started yelling and passed out hats to all of us, made us put them on, gathered us in a group, and took at least 5 pictures of us (both by ourselves and with them) on all of our cameras and a camera of their own. They took even more pictures when we told them we were rooting for Ghana. That seemed to be the general sentiment in Egypt. African unity, I assume. They made us hold our fists in the air for these pro-Ghana pictures. It was all very exciting!

Finally we entered the Stadium. Seat assignment was not really an issue, at least we don't think, but we probably were supposed to sit in the correct level. However, we didn't understand out tickets, so we sat in the lower level, where tickets should have been more expensive. No one reprimanded us for this. Come to think of it, no one checked our tickets at all. This could have been because the Stadium was not full. The fact that we were American probably had a lot to do with it also. That's something we're still getting used to. You would think it would be flattering, and it is and it also has it's benefits clearly, but it also makes you feel awkward sometimes. It's interesting.

At first we choose to sit in one section of seats. Behind a sort of fence close to these seats, a few thousand men in various neon colored jump suits and identical shoes were seated. This was quite a sight. They stared at us as we came in, and we were clearly staring at them. Not thinking, I took a picture of them, just because all the neon suits together looked cool. This really sent them over the edge and they started calling to us and making kissing faces and noises. After this, we jumped to the conclusion that they were probably prisoners, and we became a little uneasy about our predicament. We ended up moving seats, not far, just over a little so that we were a bit removed from them. Our safety was obviously never in jeopardy. Again, we are American and we were a group of girls and boys. And, here's the really kind of funny part, it turns out that they were the military, not prisoners. It was not smart for us to think that they would be prisoners. First of all, Egypt does not have enough laws to have that many people in prison. (I'm joking...kind of). Secondly, and seriously, I don't know why we thought all these prisoners would be brought to a soccer game and left to sit there, in about an entire quarter of the stadium, unpoliced. Either way, it was relieving to find out that they were military and not prisoners, though it didn't make it any more comfortable that they stared at us the entire game. I think they were confused by a group of American guys and girls sitting in the middle of the Ghana section.

The Ghana section was the right choice as far as the crowd goes. The Brazil section across the way waved a lot of flags, but the Ghana section had some incredible cheers and further down in our section they even had a band of sorts with several drums and instruments. It was a fun to just watch the crowd sometimes.

As for the game itself, it turned out to be amazing. The game itself was a little boring. Everyone was expecting Brazil to win, and it was clear that they were in dominant team within the first ten minutes. Everyone definitely thought it was over for Ghana when, after about the first twenty or so minutes, one of their players was given a red card, meaning he was ejected and Ghana would have to finish the game playing one man down. The player slide tacked from behind. From where we sat, behind the play, I didn't think it warranted any kind of penalty, well, maybe a whistle and free kick/inbounds? (I'm actually not sure of the proper procedure and/or terminology in soccer. In field hockey, a similar infraction would have warranted a free hit at the spot where the infraction on the field occurred). Some of the boys we were with said they saw it as a yellow card-able offense, but everyone agreed the red card was going to far. Though there was not much argument from the Ghana coach. I guess this is because there's a general idea in FIFA that it's wise not to let these games get out of hand. And with such young kids playing, I can see the logic in that.

In any event, this forced Ghana to play a defense only, or definitely a defense first kind of game. They obviously didn't have many scoring opportunities, but they did have a few surprising drives. And Brazil surprisingly didn't have as many drives as might have been expected. The high point of the game was when the Brazil coach, mad about something (I'm not sure if it was officiating or his players or a combination of the two) angrily kicked a cup of water in the direction of the Ghana bench. The Ghana coach took some offense, and the ref keeping time (I know he has a special name, but I don't know what it is) had to come over and make the Brazil coach apologize to the Ghana coach, which he did. I really don't think he meant anything by it. It was pretty funny though. Also, it was interesting that the Egyptian announcers though it was completely appropriate to announce the attendance record (which was confusing in itself because it was a record for the whole tournament, not just that night's game) with about two minutes left in regulation. It was clearly not the time to do something like that, but it was a great reminder that, yes, even though we were having the luxury of being at an internationally run event (where things started on time and had a basic general idea and order to them), we were still in Egypt. We were saying to each other that the FIFA administration is probably giving themselves a HUGE and well deserved pat on the back for having pulled this tournament off in Egypt!

The game went into double overtime. I felt bad for all the players. They were exhausted after 90 minutes. Double overtime was a lot like the game, except slower. All the players were dead. By the end of the overtime period, all their skills and finesse had gone out the window and they were basically just lobbing the ball at each other. So after the overtimes, it went into PK. Each team would take 5 or less than five if that could determine a clear winner. Brazil would go first. After 10 penalty kicks, the score was tied 3-3. There was one point where it seemed like Ghana was done for, but miraculously, Brazil missed and then Ghana made its next kick. So the game went into sudden death PKs. (I think this was what happened. After the attendance record announcement faux pax, the Egyptian announcers either didn't know what was going on (my guess) or decided what was going on was not an important thing to let the crowd know (honestly, they told us about the attendance record, what more could we want?)). Brazil missed and Ghana made their kick! GHANA WON! The Ghana team, tired as they were, went running all over the field and track! It was great to see an underdog victory like that, and it's a great thing for their country. The team and the fans seemed so happy. And it was a great experience watching one of them running with the flag. I've been to one other national sporting event in my life (US v. England Women's Field Hockey) but I have never been to such a high stakes game. It was overwhelming to think that these kids were representing their country. It was a great thing to witness. There was A LOT of high pitched whistling from the fans, which is a very popular form of cheering/crowd noise. The awards ceremony, including Hungary, Brazil and Ghana followed the game, as did fireworks, which were very cool and something we had hoped for earlier in the game but didn't think would be an actual possibility. So that was exciting.

It was great also to be at a sporting event. I miss sports a lot. I was especially missing them on the weekend of the game because that was the weekend that ND played USC at home. I have been waiting for that game since 2005 when I first saw ND play USC. I remember sitting with my family at the end of the game and looking across to the student section and thinking, "in 4 years I want to be sitting over there watching ND finally getting revenge for what just happened." (I'll be honest, I had written off 2007 even then). Not being able to go to the USC game this year was one of my biggest disappointments related to studying abroad. I was especially disappointed because my Mom and Dad were visiting for the game, and I love it when our family is together at ND. I called them while they were tailgating and some of my friends stopped by the tailgate too, which was really nice of them. My parent loved that. It seemed like the atmosphere was great on campus.

We were fortunate enough to watch the game. NBC, for the first time ever, was live-streaming it, and we found a cafe with great internet access. So the five of us and a former ND student who had studied in Cairo in 2005 and who we randomly met because he was back in Zamalek for a few days before finishing up a six month, multi-country research trip in Nigeria and happened to comment on one of our ND t-shirts, watched the game together. (It was great meeting this guy. It was a great affirmation of the ND network that I am so grateful I'll be a part of for the rest of my life). Around the beginning of the fourth quarter, it was starting to get late, we went down by three touchdowns, and our computers ran out of battery, so we headed back to the dorms thinking we had put up a valiant effort but were clearly no match for Southern Cal (they hate it when we call them that). After going up to my room and changing for bed, I got a text message from one of the guys that asked if I had plugged my computer in and was I watching? I said no, why? He called me and said there were four seconds left and we were on the four yard line down by sever points! WHAT? I ran into the hallway and told him to stay on the phone and give me the play by play because Zamalek's boy/girl rules may be even stricter than ND's and I couldn't go watch the end with the rest of the guys. He said, "Ok here's the snap..." then nothing for while, so I said, "What, what?" I was answered by an expletive from several people on the other end of the line. I said, "No, we lost?" They said, "No the internet froze and then disconnected right as the ball was about to be snapped." THANKS EGYPT. So the game ended, or it went into overtime, or we won (we would have never won, no one, not even Charlie Weis, in his right mind would have gone for 2), and we had no idea what happened. So, we did the logical thing and rushed into the dorm computer lab like lunatics in varying degrees of nighttime undress. We effectively terrified the Egyptians in there (who don't sleep, ever it seems) with this move before logging on to ESPN.com to find out that we did in fact lose. On the play we were trying to watch and then another play with one second left on the clock. Oh well. It was a hard fought battle and it was lot of fun to be able to watch (kind of). It's frustrating that we came so close and still lost, but I'll take it. There's always next year and more and more I'm considering Thanksgiving 2010 on the beach in Southern California, if everyone knows what I mean?!

So as the length of this blog shows, I am clearly sports starved! This is compacted by the fact that I am missing the baseball playoffs. As I write this the Phillies are in the World Series and awaiting the winner of the Yankees and Angels, which will hopefully be decided in favor of the Yankees as soon as possible (should have been last night, NY). If possible, and if the Yanks make it (don't want to jinx them by assuming they'll be in), I hope to stay up some night or get up really early one morning to try to catch a game, or at least some of it. There's a good possibility we can find Fox somewhere around here. If not, I guess I'll have to settle for the Egypt v. Algeria World Cup qualifier in mid-November, which we are planning to attend. It's not exactly Fighting Irish football or the fall classic, but it'll be undoubtedly exciting and something I will certainly be able to live with!

Week Two: Punctuation

The first week back to classes was exhausting, but is was good to get it over with and begin to redevelop some sort of routine. As I have said, being so busy is actually making the time pass unbelievably fast.

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.) :-)

My First Internship

I never thought I'd have my first internship in Egypt, but as I mentioned before, an internship at an Egyptian NGO is a requirement for one of my classes, Intro to Development. I will be working with Nahdet El-Mahrousa, and I will be performing two functions. First, I will be doing some research for Ana Masry. Also, I will be working once a week at the Career and Entrepreneurship Office aiding young Egyptians seeking jobs and internships and writing resumes with their communication and language skills.

Part of the class requirement is a blog about out internship experience, so after this I will mostly post on that blog about my work with the NGO. I have met once with Mirahan Farag, the Manager of Operations of Ana Masry. It was mostly an informational and brainstorming meeting. I included a detailed description of it in my first blog post. I also spoke about the functions of NM as an NGO. I will begin to work each Tuesday with CEDO after October 27th (when my Tuesday make-up classes come to an end). I will be posting about my experiences with NM as I encounter them. The name of that Blog is POLS310 NM. I did not make the blog; another student working with the same NGO made it and then added the rest of us who would be working with NM as authors. So, if you read the blog, you will be able to read all of our posts about our experiences with NM; we will all be working with a different part of the NGO and I think each of us will have an interesting experience. I am excited to being my involvement with both Ana Masry and CEDO. The fact that these programs are different but a part of the same NGO I think will teach me a lot about the NGO NM specifically and about the functions of NGOs in general. It is an experience I am looking forward to.

Appositives?

The first day back to classes was an exhausting whirlwind. There was tons of confusion about what had been assigned, what had been done, what was supposed to have been done, and seemingly a million other thing in each and every class. I figured that if, by the end of the week, I had a handle on at least what I needed to have done in the coming two weeks or so, I was in good shape. (Whether or not I met this goal, as our second week back to classes ended today, is still up for debate).

Things were complicated by the fact that on our second day back to classes, Monday, October 5th, I began working with the STAR program. STAR is a program that teaches English to refugees (and anyone else wanting to learn English) living in Cairo. STAR has several locations throughout the city, and it relies on students and other volunteers to teach its varying levels of English. Teachers are in pairs. I am working with my roommate, Jacque. I really owe her a lot of credit for getting me involved with STAR. I had originally missed the deadline to become involved with the program, but as luck would have it, Jacque's teaching partner realized at the last minute that she had a conflict on Monday nights from 6PM to 9PM when the classes she was supposed to be teaching were held. Jacque asked me if I'd be interested in filling in for her, and I said I definitely was. I had missed the orientation, but Jacque had extra materials and she filled me in on the other important details. She said the most interesting thing discussed this year at the orientation was STAR's effort this year to become a legitimate Egyptian NGO. Jacque and I agreed that it was nice to see something in Egypt being taken so seriously and we felt lucky to be a part of it.

Although it is refreshing that STAR seems to be a well-run program, by its nature, it is obviously not without its problems. Most of the classes are rarely full because it is difficult for the students to come all the time and on time. It is also difficult to transport us from AUC to Ain Shams, our teaching location. Both times we have taught so far, we have been almost a half hour late because our bus ride has taken close to an hour and a half in Cairo's rush hour traffic.

Jacque and I are teaching level 4B, which is one of the higher levels. This has its benefits and its downfalls. As far as benefits are concerned, all of our students are at a basic level in English conversation, so Jacque and I need to speak very little, if any at all, Arabic to them. However, the material we need to cover is somewhat more complicated and drier than the material some of our friends are teaching. The first day we started out with review which consisted of functions of the noun, parts of speech, and sentences. I will admit that I only knew most of the things I was teaching (such as what an appositive is: it's a renaming of the subject in a sentence; for example: My father, Gene... in case anyone was particularly interested) because I read their description along with the students. Some grammar concepts are incredibly difficult to convey, especially to students with minimal command of the language. Explaining direct objects involved a lot of gesturing and action on my part!

On the first day of class (we will have 10 classes total between now and early December), four students attended our class, even though there were sixteen listed on our class roster. One was an Egyptian woman in her forties who was there simply because she loved English and wanted to learn the language. There was another younger Egyptian man and two Nigerian men in the class also. In the other levels scheduled at out location during out time slot, some of the students were Sudanese from Darfur. This was the first time for all of us that a human context was given to that conflict, and it was definitely daunting and humbling. Darfur and the refugee situation it has been creating over the years was for the first time for all of us actually REAL. Because of the background of the students, we had been instructed to proceed with caution in what we spoke about. For example, a 'tell us your name, where you're from, and about your family' type introduction was out of the question as such questions have the potential to produce painful answers from refugees from Sudan and Iraq.

Our students were quiet when class first began, but as we did more activities and drills, they opened up considerably. The last conversation we had actually had nothing to do with what we were studying, but about how to appropriately tell time in English (there was confusion about 'quarter after and quarter until.' When Jacque and I explained it and it was not clear, we told them these expressions were not necessary to know, as 15 and 45 were perfectly fine to say. They told us enthusiastically that this was what was important for them to know because they wanted to be able to communicate in and understand common English dialogue, so we spent some time drawing a clock on the board. It was interesting that the most important thing to them was something I don't think we'll ever find in the manuel.

It was great to see the drive these students had to learn English and it was definitely rewarding to see how thankful they were for our help. Many of them, our students and students of other classes, thanked us and shook our hands. The woman in our class asked Jacque and me if there was anything we wanted when she was leaving. These people have such difficult backgrounds, but they are so willing to learn and so thankful for anyone that will teach them. It's definitely a much different part of Egyptian society than the one we see when we are in Zamalek on at AUC, and it is an important one for us to be exposed to. I think teaching English in Egypt is the most worthwhile thing I have done while in Egypt and also the most worthwhile thing I have done in my life. It is an experience I feel truly blessed to have.

But speaking of experiencing different parts of Egyptian society, Ain Shams is definitely not Zamalek or AUC. Jacque and I agreed it was the first time we felt objectified as women. We weren't scared and we didn't feel as if we were in danger, but for the first time we were understanding the harassment we had been warned about before we arrived here. We also experienced another interesting part of Egyptian society when we took the Metro (Egyptian public subway) from the Ain Shams station to the Sadat Station, from where we can take a quick cab ride to the dorms. (Unfortunately, this was not my first experience with Egyptian public transportation, as I have been lucky enough to take an hour long public mini-bus ride. It's a long story which involves a package, customs fees, Ramadan hours, tears, and possibly the nicest man I have ever met in my life and, in my opinion, a prime candidate for FedEx employee of the year, but it is a long and horrific story that I to this day have not re-told in full detail except for once in a long message to my sister immediately after I survived the ordeal). Anyway, there are four of us who will be taking the Metro every Monday, and hopefully we'll get better at it with practice. Our slip-ups included taking the Metro for several stops in the wrong direction and then being confused about which trains ran in what directions and on what tracks. We now have all that sorted out.

Taking the Metro may have been one of the funnier experiences I have had in Cairo as well. The four of us (three girls and a boy) were literally the main attraction on the train. We were THE only Americans and we were considered in the mixed gender car with the highest degree of scrutiny and amusement. Several Egyptians both on the train and in the stations spoke to us in Arabic, and we think they wanted us to speak to their children who were learning English at school. It was interesting that most people that spoke with us (most only spoke about us, laughing with each other), spoke with Logan, the boy we were with. Even the man at Sadat Station who wanted the three girls to speak with his daughter approached and spoke with Logan. That was a interesting picture of social norms in Islamic society, and after the harassment we had experienced in Ain Shams, it was comforting and welcome.

After getting off the train, we needed to take a cab back to the dorms and we did this without any problems (unless you count traffic). Teaching had been exhausting, and I think it will be every week, but it will be an amazing experience and well worth every minute of it.

Back to Reality...Well, Egyptian Reality At Least

Classes began again at AUC on October 4^th not surprisingly amid much, much confusion. The online homework system is not quite up to par and each class faced the first few classes back with questions about what had been assigned, what was due, and what needed to be done. This actually wasn’t a problem for most of us studying abroad because we had largely decided to simply do next to nothing while we were traveling. This ended up working out somewhat in our favor because the confusion caused most assignments to have to be reassigned anyway. Though that didn’t mean that we didn’t have a lot of catching up to do. As I am writing this, on October 14^th, I still am not completely caught up!

There has also been a lot of question about how the lost class time will be made up. The university made a schedule to make up classes on all Tuesdays (when we usually did not have any classes) until November, but each class is sort of deciding for itself how, when, and how much it will make up.

My Arabic class is lengthening the time of class on Mondays and Thursdays to make up the hours. My colloquial Arabic class is meeting several times during the hour lunch break. My Comparative Politics class is proceeding with the syllabus and will determine if we need to have make-up classes as we get further along in the semester. My Development Studies class cannot meet on Tuesdays because of a conflict the professor has (he teaches at another university), so we were supposed to think about a solution, but nothing further has been mentioned. I’m fine with this because the only mentioned solution involved classes on Saturday, which some classes are doing and which I definitely do not want to do. My Intro to Development class met this Tuesday for two hours to catch up and we will have our midterm next Tuesday. So as of now I will only have two Tuesday classes total, which is perfectly fine with me. I was getting used to having Tuesdays off, and it is very, very nice.

Getting back into school-mode has been an adjustment. I don’t know if I was ever in it to begin with. As I said, I am catching up on my work. I have also written several papers and taken two tests, which has forced me into school mode. Just today, at my make-up class did I feel like I was finally back into the routine of school and I liked it. I have also started some other scheduled activities, which I will write about in my next post that have helped me to develop into a routine. I am becoming very busy, but I like it that way. One thing is for sure, my time here is definitely flying by!

The Last Traveling I'll Be Doing for a While

The next morning we were up and out early to catch a 7AM bus from Jerusalem to Eilat. The bus was crowded this time, but we managed to get all of us and all of our luggage onto it (thankfully, we had bought roundtrip tickets when we left from Eilat three days earlier). We also managed to meet up with another guy from AUC who we adopted as our eighth traveling companion. The bus ride went well (we even stopped at a convenience store and for the last in a while time bought food that was not pita and hummas) and was just under five hours, allowing us to quickly cross the border in Eilat and arrive at the border to cross into Taba, Egypt around 12:30PM.

As we should have expected by now, there were of course problems crossing into Egypt. Not serious problems, but “This is Egypt” type problems. We were traveling on a Friday and Friday at noon (Friday noontime prayer) is the holiest time for a Muslim. All the employees at the border were praying when we arrived, effectively shutting down the border for approximately thirty minutes. The religiousness of Egypt as a nation and the Middle East as a region in general is a phenomenon. In some ways it is refreshing to see a culture so dedicated to religious values. In other ways, it can be frightening (it shut a border down). I think it is just foreign to us because we are so used to a separation of Church and state in America. Honestly, I am a little surprised when I hear announcements in the Chicago airport around the holidays about non-denominational services.

After prayer ended, we were ushered through the border without a problem and were successfully back in Egypt. As luck would have it (and yes you do learn to celebrate the small victories, especially at the end of twelve days of traveling), there was a mini-bus waiting to take the eight of us back to Cairo. The driver of the mini-bus was holding a sign that said ‘Victoria Braga’ in a graphic, word-art font (because I had given him my name by e-mail). This was a little embarrassing, and I think the drivers found it a little funny that an American female’s name had been used as the group name, but it was helpful in getting us back to Cairo, and at that point that is all the eight of us really cared about.

The drive from Taba to Cairo is about five hours long. It took us about five and a half because our drivers stopped for dinner. They didn’t tell us we were stopping for dinner. They simply stopped, went into a restaurant, and left us to ‘talk among ourselves’ for about a half hour. This had happened to us before on our trip to Dahab. It’s definitely an interesting customer service feature here. In any event, we arrived back in Cairo just before 7PM. Upon entering the city, we were greeted by the traffic and the pollution, which looks the worst just when the sun is setting. Possibly because we had only entered Cairo one other time and because this was when we first arrived in Egypt after a 12 hour flight, there were things we had not noticed about it. For example, I now know what everyone who has been here meant when they say the entire city is dirty. I was shocked by the layer of dirt on all the buildings. Pollution here is really awful, and coming from Israel, the level of pollution is Cairo was painfully obvious. When we got back to the dorm, we had dinner before unpacking and, for the first time in almost two weeks, taking real showers and sleeping in our own, real beds. We needed a good night’s sleep because the next day, Saturday, October 3^rd, was the final day of what all AUC students, particularly Americans, have taken to calling ‘Swine Break ’09 (or if we’re feeling particularly ambitions, Aid Al-Swine, which literally means Holiday of Swine in Arabic). It had been a long trip, but each moment had been incredible and looking back, I would not have changed a thing about it. It is something I am so glad that I did. It will definitely be a trip I remember for the rest of my life.