Time for a Break

Again, I've been scant on the updates lately, but I have excellent, school-related reasons--I swear!

Somehow my schedule has worked out that I have had one midterm each week for the last month, which is kind of a mixed blessing.  On the plus side, they're spaced out enough I can study for them properly and get everything done, but on the down side I've been constantly busy working on midterm stuff.

Arabic is (still) Hilarious and Difficult
This week was the week of my Arabic midterm, in which we were asked to make a video using the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures we learned over six chapters of material.  As my schedule with work and everything is so crazy I opted to not work with the group and just grab a couple of Egyptian friends to well...be Egyptian have conversations with me in Arabic in my video.  Over dinner we came up with a story line bizarre enough to encompass all of the chapters, the vocabulary (never mind all the grammar) topics of which were:

• Around the house
• Items for the house
• Items from Khan al Khalili
• At the Doctor or the Pharmacy
• On the street, finding directions
• Daily routine

We rejected (sadly) a story line involving plays to get guys from a female version of the "men's playbook" concept, which personally I thought would have been hysterical but the guys thought might not be appropriate for class because of excessive, suggestive, Sarah-Palin-Style winking.  The story line we did agree on is as follows:  I  am some normal girl out shopping for household stuff, pondering over what I should buy.  I remember I want to buy a blanket and ram into some guy standing behind me.  He starts flirting with me, and follows me out of the store where another guy comes up and tries to defend me, when the first guy punches him in the face and runs away.  The second guy wakes up, and we take a taxi to his house, where I make tea and we discuss his flat a bit.  I then leave and hold a conversation with myself in my head about how cute the guy is and how I should cook him something while waiting for the elevator before heading to the Pharmacy to get something for his eye.  I talk to the Pharmacist and then leave to go to a grocery store to get food.  I go to the grocery, buy the food, head back and cook while talking to him about another flat he has in the building he wants to rent.  Then I sit down and begin to apply the medicine when the door bangs open and his fiancée shows up!

The funny part is that all the guys, except the main guy who was played by Jimmy, are played by one person.  My friend Sherif agreed to being a pharmacist, a taxi driver, some flirty jerk, and a grocer all in one day, and all the women are played by me. Yes, that means I not only talk to myself in my head, but also when the fiance and the main girl are yelling at each other.  It's pretty hilarious to watch the final product, especially since Sherif doesn't even change his outfit in between being the guy that beat up Jimmy and the taxi driver.

The exam was not so funny, being over 7 pages of questions and exercises and took over an hour and a half!  We all survived somehow and everyone is now heading out tomorrow for Spring Break!

Spring Break

The funny thing is that with all our midterms going on, no one really had time to do good planning for Spring Break besides roughly sketching out where to go.  People walked around for weeks going, "yeah I'm going to Syria and Lebanon" or "definitely the Dahab and Sharm!" but we had been putting off doing hotel and flight bookings forever out of laziness and the feeling that Spring Break would never come.  At the last minute yesterday my room mate changed her plans and is now heading home to New York for the break, while our other friend was intending to do the Jordan, Syria, Lebanon jaunt and is now heading to Hurghada instead.  I don't know how I feel about the student-life style of travel, because it's supposed to be less stressful and less trouble but half the time ends up being twice as much so.  Trying to get hotel reservations at the last minute when there's only one decent, cheap place to stay in town is a bit frustrating!

My own plan finally came together just this last week, so tomorrow night I'm off on an overnight train to Luxor!  I'll stay there a couple days, head to Aswan for a couple days, and cap it all off with a night in Abu Simbel before heading home to Cairo!  I will hopefully be able to update mid-trip as my hotel in Aswan is supposed to have wi-fi, so expect pictures at least when I return to Cairo, if not halfway through my travels.

Cairo Sights
This seems to be turning into my "touristy" part of my stay in Egypt, as I finally did get around to visiting The Egyptian Museum last weekend with a friend of my father's who is in town with a sizable tour group.  It was amazing!  It's not frilly or anything particularly well-explained or documented, so it's very valuable to go with a good guide.  The treasures inside are amazing though, particularly the King Tut exhibits which show the magnitude of prestige Pharaohs had in ancient Egypt, even in death. An amazing amount of items are on display there from his tomb, but I found the two first golden sarcophagi and the solid gold burial mask to be the most striking.

Everything in the museum is special and amazing though, and riveting in different ways.  The royal mummies were an eerie sight, so well-preserved they still have eyelashes and hair that was last combed or styled thousands of years ago.  They aren't describable in words I feel, you would have to go see them yourself which the extra ticket price (60LE for students, 100LE for adults, something less for kids) is well worth at least once.

The ground floor of the museum is like a huge warehouse of towering ancient statues, thick stone outer sarcophagi, and various other boats, pottery, etc.  We didn't have enough time to spend in there, but I think I could have spent ages wandering through staring at every little hieroglyphic on every surface.  It's fascinating to see these amazing things produced by such an ancient culture.  One interesting thing to definitely take a look at on the ground floor is the copy of the Rosetta Stone gifted to Egypt by Britain which is just inside the main entrance.

Clearly I should be trying to play the tourist a bit more often, although it was pretty cute that the security guards were shocked to see me speak Arabic!

Khan Al Khalili Pictures

Sorry to be MIA again, everyone!  It's midterm time and I've been writing on various subjects, as well as my other blog, and Gilded Serpent, so I haven't had much time to update here.  To tide you over, here's some pictures from Khan Al Khalili a couple weeks back that I've been meaning to post:

Classroom Dynamics

I just finished another round of my bi-weekly accounting class, and as usual I'm finding my blood pressure up and my shoulders tense.  Why?  The dynamics of this classroom infuriate me--it's not the subject material, the professor, or even the workload, it's my fellow students.

Even though it's a Managerial Accounting class I feel that the ratio of younger students (freshmen or sophomores) is much higher in the class, so initially I wasn't surprised by a bit more giggling and carrying on.  However, it got worse.  Students speak over the doctor, raise their voices instead of their hands, hold side conversations, ask each other questions that the professor is currently answering because someone else just asked it....the list goes on.  For a college professor, I imagine this is what they wanted to avoid when they decided to teach at the university level!  Yelling over students, tapping pens on tables to be heard and to get the students to settle--is this really what should go on in a college classroom?

In my syllabi in my US college there were usually small sections on "air time" or respecting others when talking, etc.  This is perhaps the only class I have been in at college where this section was necessary, because I always sort of tuned out when we went over that part on the first day of whatever course.  It's one of those "well DUH" things where we are trained in the US to respect the professor absolutely as well as others when speaking.

Being the lone American in this class is a bit strange, because I feel like I'm out of the dynamics in many ways because of these habits we're taught.  This class is all Egyptians, and predominantly they are loud or at least do not properly listen to the professor and then waste class time asking questions that have already been answered.  Here's the strange thing: they seem so rude when class is in session but then they are perfectly polite on an individual basis and when approaching the professor after class--a huge difference in behavior.

I think this all goes back to something about the training we give American students versus Egyptians.
Americans have the discipline and are taught to focus on themselves.  Instead of holding a side conversation with a friend for clarification on some point, we are taught to analyze within our personal level, decide what we personally do or do not understand, and then speak up to ask a question at the appropriate time.  We focus on our individual understanding, tuning out other students unless they ask a question we may need to know the answer to.  Here, Egyptian students seem to be taught (until the American-style system untrains them, which looks like it happens around the Junior year here but probably depends on how harsh a professor is) a hierarchical system in which they should rely on their peers for answers rather than the professor.  Asking a professor violates this hierarchy of co-dependence, and ends up (I would argue) coming across as individualistic. You think your understanding is important enough to ask the professor directly rather than a peer.  I also suspect the idea here is to not disrupt the professor, which actually has the opposite effect: the classroom is overwhelmed by side conversations.

This is a dilemma IR people are pretty familiar with too, as a side note: disaster of the commons.  Ignoring the disaster of the commons is something I've seen a lot here in Egypt, interestingly.   The good of all in the long run is ignored by the immediate needs/desires of the individual.  It's the same thing that makes people think throwing one piece of garbage on the street is not going to contribute at all substantially to environmental degradation.  There are millions of individuals in Cairo, and millions of pieces of trash on the street. Let's face it, as much as I love Cairo it is not a "clean" city.  I'm not sure if this is just a focus on convenience, an ignorance of long-term ramifications, or blind uncaring, but it's the same dynamic that leads to students thinking "oh if I just whisper this question to my friend it won't disturb the class" when in fact 40 people thinking that does cause a significant problem.

This is all just food for thought and observations of course.  I was bored in the 5 minutes during which the professor was forced to explain 3 different times why he combined two line items on an income statement so I had some free time to ponder.

Pictures from the Citadel

Here are some pictures from The Citadel last weekend, can you spot the one of me in hijab?

Writing and Being Touristy

The title should tell you what I've been up to lately, actually.  School is keeping me fairly busy, as is my social life and work.  Hallah and I have new costume designs we've been casually photographing to get up online and hopefully sell, so I will be posting those pictures up when I get home from AUC this evening or perhaps tomorrow, as well as pictures from the gorgeous Citadel which I finally got around to seeing in the day time!  Unfortunantely it was a very hot day as we're having a small hot snap and the tempuratures are getting up to 80+ during the day.

In the mean time I wanted to share some excerpts from an article I'm working on for Gilded Serpent right now.  I wanted to share with the belly dance community what life is like just living and hanging out here, experiencing Egypt at the human level rather than at a grand tourist scheme of things, so I decided to talk about what I at night over the course of a week.  Here are some excerpts from the unedited piece so far:

I often get asked what life is like in Cairo by everyone from friends to family to strangers who have stumbled across my blog. In a way the blog readers are the luckiest because they can read through various accounts of what I've been up to just on a day to day basis. The beauty of Cairo is often in the every day things, the small things that we wouldn't consider so worthwhile but in fact make up the real substance of what it's like to live here. I don't go to museums or monuments or see famous belly dancers every day, but I am here in Cairo every day and that is special in and of itself.
..............

Arabic class lends itself to group homeworking activities with our Egyptian friends included, so we dove into putting together the Khan al Khalili movie assignment as soon as Jon arrived. Our British friend Dave dropped by after work and we made the executive desicion to hit up an excellent Chinese restaurant around the corner from my house. I love that place to death, because it looks like a tiny, sketchy, hole-in-the-wall place that you would walk right by but in fact has some of the best Chinese food I've ever had. Plus, with the serious lack of truly good Chinese food in Cairo, it has become a hotspot for my group of friends so one of us is usually there every other night. In fact, shortly after we arrived my good friend who is German/Egyptian (she speaks English, Arabic, and German fluently--I am so jealous) showed up with a couple people in tow and we managed to take over the entire four-table restaurant.

I have lots of great memories of fooling around at that place, mostly because a lot of Egyptians have only experienced Chinese food through the lens of Egyptian chefs before. I remember a Chinese-themed buffet got to experience in Hurghada that was just horrible--the spring roll wrappers were basically made from puff-pastry! Finding a good, inexpensive, Chinese restaurant in Cairo around the corner from my house was like finding the Holy Grail. After a lot of dragging their feet I have gotten most of my Egyptian friends to go there, and now they all love it. They agree pretty much unanimously on hating the tea, which I admit is far too weak and subtle by Egyptian standards, but adore the food. To the extent that we are having a very hard time teaching them to learn how to use chopsticks because they give up in the face of hunger and delicious Kung Pao Chicken. I can't blame them though.

........

Wednesday:
I don't get back from the American University in Cairo where I go to school until 9pm on Wednesdays, due to a late seminar and the somewhat sporadic bus schedule. However, I was determined to meet up with my language partner and do some exchange and just hang out, so I grabbed a very fast dinner at home and then ran out the door to grab a taxi to the Metro, Cairo's subway/train system. It's about a 5LE (90 cents) cab ride to the Metro, then you can ride anywhere along the Metro for 1LE (18 cents). The Metro is great as it's fairly clean and runs fast so you never end up stuck in Cairo traffic--the only downside is that it can get pretty crowded at rush hour.

.......
The 'ahwa is such a staple of my life here that it's important to me to talk about what these street cafes are, but unfortunantely it's uncomfortable to get good photos as to label oneself as a tourist or foreigner in an 'ahwa is sort of asking for trouble. Your typical street cafe is compromised of plastic lawn chairs crammed in close together at the edge of the road proper, around parked cars and various other obstacles, with tiny spindly tables rising up in between to prop up games of chess or backgammon and glasses of tea. Shishas are ubiquitous, and clouds of smoke waft up to the palm trees above heads bent in conversation, with laughter punctuating the general dull roar of the crowd. The floor is the street, dirty and trash-strewn with bottle caps that have been flattened by cars and feet into a mosiac of American branding in Arabic, and the walls are of whatever buildings are nearby, painted with various pictures, including ones depicting the kaaba to honor those going on Hajj to Mecca. Wild dogs run around out in the street, fighting only half-seriously over scraps, and street cats of all colors slink underfoot in search of food. The air smells of fruity tobacco and cigarettes, and that special dirty-sandy-polluted-but-pleasant smell of Cairo that feels like home. It's not exotic, it just IS.

We met up with a friend of Mohamed Ali's, a Chinese boy named Josh who is staying with an Egyptian family as part of an International study program. He was there with two Egyptian guys, soft-spoken tall and skinny types one of whom speaks English enthusiastically and is eager to chat with a new foreigner, and the other of whom was a bit more shy and reserved. They were both fluent in English though, yet again reminding me that my Arabic is still embarassingly underdeveloped. Mohamed greeted everyone like old friends, before laughingly admitting that he had just met the 3 guys in this cafe a few days once before. We chatted quite a bit about Egypt as Josh has only been in town for a few weeks, which is as good as being almost brand-new here, so he still has lots to talk about and remark on and that brings out in me some of the same. At some point Mohamed Ali and I headed around the corner to buy some grilled kofta off a small stall restaurant where the man grabbed the skewer straight off the coals, removed the steaming meat into some flatbread, wrapped it in paper and forked the huge sandwich over, dripping and delicious. I indulged in some Ruz Bilaban (rice pudding) too, my possibly my favorite Egyptian dessert.

Sherif, the enthusiastic guy, revealed that he lived in Indonesia for three years, and is fluent in Indonesian, so then we started in on an extensive 3-way comparison of Egypt, the US, and Indonesia just as my friends Alex and Ibrahim arrived. Alex is Malaysian but lives in America so he and Sherif immediately started in on a language comparison and began to chit-chat in various combinations of languages. Mohamed Ali and I gave up at that point and began to drill my Arabic vocabulary for class on Thursday; finally getting down to business around 11pm. He's also learning Spanish from a Mexican family living in Cairo so the group began to have a Tower of Babel moment when the various languages are shooting around--it didn't help that at some point Sherif and Alex switched to German, which Alex can only swear in rather than anything useful.

As the night wore on people stopped complaining about being tired in a joking way and started talking earnest about going home, so we all set down the shisha hoses, grabbed our bags and snagged one of the guys running around with trays of tea to pay and get out. Trudging down the back streets downtown at midnight conversation was no less animated, but showing the strain of the day. Alex and I joke that we're always tired in Cairo because once you get out for the evening you can't stop until the night is done or you can't move--even if you do have class the next day!

Slice of Fashion

As the news is traveling around the world, some readers may have heard that my favorite designer Alexander McQueen died a few days ago.  I was so saddened to hear of this loss to the fashion community and to the global community in general.  I loved McQueen’s work because it was outside the box, unusual, challenging, and made the fashion world just that bit more interesting and special.  I remember watching his Spring 2010 line on the label website, curious to see more of the weird shoes that were cropping up all over the internet and hear the original debut of Lady Gag’s “Bad Romance” single.  I thought it would be interesting or maybe amusing to see more.  As the show unfolded I found myself completely sucked in.  The dresses, the setting, the creepy music had me from a minute in and I think I became an instant McQueen fan.  Those CLOTHES–I couldn’t look away.  Go find it on the internet if you can, it used to be streaming from the McQueen site which is now on hold in light of what has happened.

I bring up fashion because of Alexander McQueen, and because it has been on my mind here in Egypt as the seasons are starting to change.  Cairo has an uncanny problem of seasons tending to smack right up against each other, for example it was about mid-60s last week, and the last few days have been in the 80s and people are beginning to get worried that it’s going to get hot again.  Grab the kids, run for cover, get out of the way, because the distant rumbles of summer are starting to appear!

Clothes are a bit of a constant ex-pat problem here in my mind.  When I was packing to come back from the US this second time I found myself kind of at a loss.  I need to have clubbing clothes which should be just the right amount of sexy, school clothes which look okay next to the AUC kids’ designer outfits, but aren’t so nice that I feel bad about ruining them running around Cairo, bikinis for the Red Sea, but also thin sweaters to cover my arms, heels for going out dancing, but flats to run around in every day that I am ok with throwing away in a month because they will be trashed.  Not only that but washers here have a tendency to eat clothes, or just chew them up and spit them back out bedraggled and faded, so you need tougher clothes that you are ok with fading a bit and sweating copiously in when things get hot (which they will!). Phew, talk about a wardrobe issue.  Somehow I’ve managed to compromise by having not enough clothes–instead of too much I seem to have brought too little, which brings us to the next problem:  shopping in Cairo.

Everyone thinks shopping in Cairo is going to be awesome, because things are supposed to be cheaper in the 3rd world.  I have news for you all, cheaper prices also means cheaper make here.  We’re not talking an American lower-quality thing where you can wear it and make it work without that much difficulty–I’m talking about lower quality everything, from the strength and weave of denim to the surface stitching on  a blouse.  Things that make a garment have a much shorter life, which means running out shopping every few weeks and feeling like your clothes are always falling apart, which means spending more money.  To get good-quality clothes here means they are either imported–thus ridiculously expensive–or sold in a more affluent part of town and therefore are also ridiculously expensive.

Add to that the strangeness of Cairene women’s fashion and suddenly I’m not in a very good position if I don’t want to go around nude. I don’t really understand why everything has to be a strange color with trim in a different color that completely grates on the eye while simultaneously fitting in a matronly way and incorporating a gross usage of sewn-on plastic jewelery.  Somehow the Egyptian girls pull it off–I cannot.  Can a poor American girl just get a long-sleeve cotton shirt?  Apparently not.

Clothes may seem like a very superficial thing to be blogging about, but this gives you a snapshot of daily Cairo life.  Not everything is grandiose revelations about life, beautiful tombs, and magical moments in Egypt.  Sometimes life is just trying to put together an outfit in the morning.

 X-Posted to NicoleInCairo.WordPress.com

Dancing Pics

Here's all of us at the Nile Maxim out salsa dancing since people were asking, enjoy!