Well, it has officially reached that point in the academic semester where all those brief moments of mediocrity accumulate into massive moments of anxiety. It seems midterm exams wreak the same havoc on both sides of the atlantic…luckily, the end of Ramadan brings with it the end of the Islamic calendar and a much appreciated opportunity to makes some “new years” resolutions. Returning from a lovely 8-day vacation will be like turning a whole new page. Highlights include:

A re-discovered ambition to actually engage myself in my classes and coursework at AUC.

Last week our Arabic professor gave this long shpeal about how silly it was to study Arabic unless you wanted to master the language, not just talk showyya showyya. After he finished, I realized the same idea could go for all my classes: It seems that if my academic life is a baseball game, I’ve gotten four balls at bat and walked. I now have the choice to run for home or get tagged out. Home base, baby. Unfortunately two all-nighters, a paper, two midterms, and a realllllllllllly poorly-timed quiz are between me and this hopeful dash. Which means the remainder of this post will be short and lacking in any real wit or style, heh.

Sasha and I’s strategically-improved hunt for a new apartment...

Yes, shari3 abdel 7amid said has been lovely. But we are relocating in search of something far more ideal, slightly less invasive, and overall more structurally sound. AlHamdulila. I will wish the shisha-smoking, job-lacking, patriarchial-yet-respectful men that basically live outside our apartment goodbye with light-hearted enthusiasm. The toothless and eternally grateful bowab will be genuinely missed. Unfortunately, the comedy of errors blossomed into full and total chaos as our house is literally falling apart. We have decided to be exquisitely picky about our new abode: We’re looking for a gorgeous old European-style building and spacious balcony. We will have fully-functioning appliances and light fixtures that are securely fixed to the wall. A landlord that has some appreciation for written monthly bills rather than ball-parked estimates about the water and gas. We will remain in noisy-polluted-sketchy wistr alBalady (downtown) because the ease of rolling out of bed twenty minutes before class and not being late is too good to pass up, and the local falafel and ful shops are priceless. We’re also hoping to find another place up high in the building since our air is relatively fresh up there… but maybe this time around we will find something with a fire escape, hah. I am excited to wish the tempestuous bitch of a washing machine we have and the burden of handwashing our clothes ma3salama, too.

‘Eid and the mental-emotional feast that will come with it!

I’ll be heading to Marsa 3lam for the week to enjoy the Red Sea, daily diving, and the sweet company of Sameh and the other diving folks. Sameh (who may very easily be my divine complement) has become an inexhaustible source of joy to me! He might be a 6-year old boy trapped in the body of a grown man, but he also has some moments of insight that make me doubt any perceived childishness. The best part is when we hang out we frolic in our imagination; we’ve plotted the most amazing two-year world trek from San Fransisco to Sydney that deserves an entire post of its own. Eitherway, i splurged at the AUC bookstore for a colloquial egyptian text book, really fascinating Islamic gender thoery book called "Gender Jihad" and travel guide to Morrocco (hem, hem: chere Melyn in February!), so ‘Eid will be a week of sunshine and salt water, diving both into books and under the sea, punctuated by naps, good food, and whatever else finds me.

Some photos and my best wishes to anyone who reads this.

Not exactlty sure why, but this image to me sums up what walking around downtown at night feels like.

The aforementioned team sokar&shai, imagination-syle globetrotting extrodinaires.






Ali, Amanda' flatemate, who continues to impress me everyday with her mad organizational skills and passion for STAR Women's Classes and the amazing women we are teaching from Sudan, Ethiopia, Morrocco, and Iraq. Photos of them to come soon, momkin!









The Citadel from the corniche at Alexandria. Mmmmm.










This is my flatemate Sasha. If you see her, tell her to come home, I miss her. She has made aquaintance with a sweet-talking Palestinian-Jordanian guy who holds her hostage in his company mansion in Masr Gedidah. He will be her escort to Lebanon and Jordan while I am enjoying the serenity of the Red Sea. Which is more appealing: Touring war-torn Levantine countries versus sunsets and scuba diving...why is this decision so much harder than it sounds?

I am sitting in a Chili’s in Alexandria studying for the second of a long line of mid-term exams but instead decided to take this opportunity to enlighten my beloved blog-enthusiasts. Life as of late has been overwhelming but blissful. Last week Moodi tried to express to me that two key factors to the Egyptian psyche are high emotions and religiousity. Both of have which are growing more and more apparent as Ramadan reaches is height and a intimate friendships blossom with the fabulous Egyptians I’ve met.

Ben asked me to explain to him what it is like to be in a city where people are hungrary all day, and this is my attempt to describe the idiosyncracies of Ramadan and the month-long fast that comes with it. I’ve felt weird about writing about it, as if it had to finish before I could truly start to digest it, but here’s a first stab at it, if nothing else…

[ coming soon ]

This is Moodi. He works at the hostel Sasha stayed at when she arrived and has proved to be our local life-saver, see post about the shaming of the local grochery boy. He is from a village in the Nile Delta called Mufriyya, or something similar that I can't accurately pronounce, and it is where most of the Egyptian politicans come from. He invited me to his village last week for Iftar and I met his mother, who cooked for me the most amazing food! I think I liked meeting his youngest cousin best... I forgot his name, but his dad used to smoke his water pipe allllllll the time and would have him get the coals for him, so the poor little boy has been given the life-long nickname Shisha. Adorable, no? Check out my other blog for video clips of driving thru his village. I literally just held my camera out the window, so they are very poor quality and depict nothing in particular, but you can play "Only-in-Egypt 'I Spy'" with them... bonus points if you can accurately count the coffee/shisha places or spot the horse-drawn wagons amongst city buses and taksis.

Our lovely Amanda celebrated her 21st birthday on Greg's pimp rooftop apartment last week, too. The gathering was a soooooo nice, even though I was only there for a few minutes. It was cool to see the different clusters of people we know in the same spot at once: AUC graduate students, Aladin, Walid, Ramy and the rest of the Imbaba gang, our CairoUniversity boys, several of the SCUBAdivers, and even a tolken British guy (Greg's landlords extremely attractive son) to make the event truley cosmopolitian. Perhaps the happiest moment was the two seconds after we sang "Happy Birthday" to Amanda when the Egyptians began singing it in Arabic..."Sana helwa, ya gameela, sana helwa ya gameela...". Please note, Amanda is terrifically picky and in place of a proper cake, Ali is holding a tray of peanut-buttered apples with candles in the photo.

This is a verrrrrrrry blurry picture of Karim, Osama's buddy, and his Bulgarian ladyfriend and her beautiful daughter. I'm posting this photo just because Cafe Pasqua, Osama's local favorite and where this pic was taken, makes me feel like I am back in the Davenport back at AU... They play jazzy music and have chess boards and books lying around. There's also live Arabic music at night, to ensure I am indeed still inCairo.



It's getting chilly in Cairo!! In fact, at 4am when this photo was taken, I was actually COLD! When we were learning weather-related words in Arabic this week and I responded to a question about DC weather right now with words like HOT and HUMID I realized I was forgetting that time is passing back home too... It's deep into autumn there. I'm curious if depressing DC wintertime will be missed?





These are photos of the church I teach at on Monday nights... I still trip on how beautiful and odd Coptic Cairo is everytime I go there. I repeat what I said about florescent lighting and its intricate connection to all things religious here in Egypt.... Funny phrases from my classes this past week.

"Miss Aminah - I have a problem. When you speak, you're Ds sound like Ss, your Ls sound like Rs, and I do not hear your Rs at all. Bishwaaaaaysh, min fadlik!"

Student: "So, you mean it's a modifcation of the verb" Me: "uh...I guess so?" to be continued....

My messy room was kind of getting out of control. So when I got home last I proceeded to tidy-up like it was my sole mission in life. After starting the massive pile of laundry and sweeping under the bed I realized I had uncovered a few less tangible things that were kind of out of control. The past week or so has been decorated with subtle frustrations and blatant comments about how bad my Arabic is. I mean, the people who tell me this are my friends, of course – shop keepers and taksi drivers continue to insist I “bitakallam kwayyis”….but the people who know me and care about me and know how long I’ve been hear assure me, I suck at Arabic and supremely suck at Egyptian colloquial. but! I’ve figured out why picking up Arabic has been so difficult… Beyond the fact, fus-ha (modern standard) is USELESS outside of the classroom. The problem is, I am not thinking in Arabic. French was easy to learn because I was able to think in the language... I have yet to grasp an Arab mentality or psyche for myself. But in the last 24 hours I have committed myself to aquirering one, and things are already looking hopeful. I've forced myself to ask how to identify everything in the room if I am with a native speaker (and so my room and our apartment will become labeled like a lifesize picture dictionary, heh) and I forbid myself to complete simple tasks with English.

On a more exciting note, tonite was my first night teaching with STAR, an AUC organization that teaches Sudanese refugees... and it was really exciting. One of the women invited me to her home in Dokki for Iftar on Friday! On verra.

MashaAllah! My first day teaching at LAMB was the best teaching experience I’ve ever had! Things went smoother than a satin dress against a bottle of Greygoose… I got a photocopy of a text book last week and absolutely no preparation and training and I was the one teacher assigned to a class without a tutor or an assistant, so I was mildly nervous… the anxiety peaked when my supervisor told me my class was supposed to start at the same time as tonite’s Iftar and that it “would probably be ok” that I was wearing hijab and am not Christian, but “to be prepared for some resistance. Or at least a few attempts to convert me” lol. He also told me my nose piercing, chicly tied back scarf, and quirky personality would probably win them over. All of which did, but I thank God, FLY, and the intimidating kids of Garfield Elementary for such amazing classroom grace, rather than the nose ring, heh… it was magical! I tell people that I feel most alive and most ‘me’ when I teach, but I now know it’s entirely true. Happily, this is the one thing I am kind of good at, and I am just excited something I love has overlapped with an ability to do it well and help people in the process…alHamdulila! I am teaching two blocks and the first one is outstanding – their English is impressive and they are willing to engage in my pseudo-cheesy teaching style. The second class is older and it’s tricky for them to take someone younger than them seriously, but luckily their English isn’t strong enough for them to rebel…yet!

Coptic Cairo is really fascinating too. The school is inside a big Coptic church and when I was leaving it was dark out and the whole place glowed like some medieval castle. Only in the Middle East do blue and green florescent lighting go so well with religion! I’m going to try to take photos next week. Mar Girgis, where the church/school is, is very quiet and very interesting. I broke fast right before my class in the metro station and it was so nice: a little boy ran up and gave me a date and so I split my candy bar with him, another man gave me a packaged date-brownie (I guess the modern day, on-the-go adapatation to dates, heh) and it was just very comforting. Jon Hill, my supervisor was telling me how Cairo is not a city of diversity and it surprised me. I was attracted to Egypt because of its beautiful cultural pluralism, but I’m realizing the Christians are much more of a marginalized minority than I thought. It was awkward to hear the call of the muzzeins echo into the walls of the church, as if even the sounds of the majority religion could be escaped. Then again, there was a certain tinge of un-sacredness to the place too, as my supervisor continued smoking and cursing while entering the church yard. Sometimes I find Muslims hypocritical for altering their behavior SO drastically within holy places or during holy times, but I guess a distinction is still better than a complete disregard? Eitherway, I am very glad I decided to work in Coptic Cairo and am looking forward to spending Christmas and New Year’s with my students’ families and friends… Here's to another new adventure.

<-- The kitchen-aftermath of a very well-enjoyed home-cooked Iftar. Belisa, who is this crazy interesting Brazillian girl that Sasha met at her hostel when she arrived, was living with us for the past week and has just left for London. Side note, she is getting her master’s degree in poliSci with this really cool program that requires you to live in 3-4 different countries over a period of 14 months. We had Iftar together last week as our final meal and wound up talking politics, and religion, and academia, and men, and languages, and life generally for a few hours. I’m bummed she’s gone because she was giving me hope of learning some decent colloquial Arabic – en fin! - but also because I’ve been thinking about how transient our lives are sometimes. Yesterday someone said, I wish I could live in the US for six months, and then a different country for six months, and then a different country for six months… And I was just thinking about how amazing that would be, but how unforgiving time would be. Life would pass by so quickly. I know study abroad is hyped up to be this time of infinite self-discovery, but lately I’ve just felt kind of numb. It’s like life is a sort of anesthesia that just won’t kick in – I get very happy, but I don’t go under, yet I still can’t really function like normal either. I don’t mind that I haven’t actually made my bed in weeks and that books, stray piasters, empty cartons, and clothes are tangled between the sheets. All I know is that I am happy for the time being to exist in a state of shrunken ambitions because I am still optimistic about the possibilities.

Eitherway, it’s getting cooler in Cairo. I rarely sleep with my window open and I find myself turning off my ceiling fan from chill. It’s October and I’ve never flirted with an Autumn as pleasurably mild. Some of my travel plans are finally coming together, since ma chere Melyn will be in Morrocco next semester and Emily Hyatt invited me to Israel after the Jewish holidays in October…

This past weekend I disappeared to Hurghada again and it was blissful. The weekend was entirely different – the crowd was nearly comatose in comparison to last week’s quirky chill bunch and fasting put a different spin on the trip, too– but the advanced diving course was exciting and the tranquility and sweet company were very appreciated. I basically spent the entire week with Sameh and Sawaan, but tried to snap a few pics of everyone else too. The night dive, deep dive, and wreck dive were absolutely pimp. I’ve forbidden myself to go out of town again anytime too soon, but I am plotting some plans for Dahab or Marsa Alam during the Eid alFitr break… on verra.

1. Osama's binat getting out of the water.
2. Underwater group shot, last weekend.
3. Greg is the resident pirate.
4. Osama, Sawwan, me, and Sameh.
5. the advanced course taking the Zodiac out for our drift dive.
6. team chai&sokar
7,8,9,10. a little chill time on the upper deck.

I am very glad I packed:
1. my rap/hip-hop/ghettoPop-filled iPod. Few things inspire nostalgia for the states more than some thug-worthy rap. Music that I pseudo-liked in the US now finds a very warm place in my heart and eardrums, aparently Egyptians aren't Poppin' Their Collars, Big Pimpin', or Leanin' wit it, Rockin' wit it. In fact, they aren't even Bringing Sexyback yet.
2. a tremendous sense of humor. In Amsterdam, an Egyptian immigrant told me I couldn't enjoy Egypt if I took anything too seriously. He said: If you worry about terrorism, you'll drive yourself crazy. If you worry about feminism, you'll be cranky all the time. If you expect anything on time, you're very mislead. Whether its punctionality, air pollution, or . Instead of getting my panties in a twist I've just been able to laugh my frustrations away.
3. a sewing kit. This seems like an obvious one, but I was unaware of how agressive license plates on parked cars could be to pants and skirts before living here. It's only a matter of time before my wardrobe looks like a kleenex kid... explaination of this phrase is needless if you've walked the streets here, and explaining it would just make me feel elitist.

I wish I had packed:
1. ducktape. This amenity would make our showerhead, which remains sub-par and the household joke, somewhat functional, among other things.
2. a thousand AA batteries. I have recently dicovered "everReady" batteries, convienetly available everywhere in Cairo, have enough power to let me take ONE picture before my camera alerts me that my battery is exausted, again.
3. a normal sized - no, a king-sized! - bath towel. I had some serious towel-envy this weekend on the boat as I dried myselves with my washcloth sized Egyptian towel with ugly embroidry...*grumble* hah.
4. all of my class notes from sophomore year. my academic loads seems like a mirror image of last years classes, except with less SAT words and no copy-right laws.

I am feening for:
1. pleasure readers. People talk about reading like it was some bad habit they gave up shortly after highschool.
2. my sense of academic ambition and career-driven priorities. for the first time in my life I am complacent to the possibility my life might be spent in aimless pursuit of something to pass the time, help people, and reassure me i am not a waste of human potential instead of some solid career. at this point even grad. school seems like an option among others rather than the next thing on the list. this might be bad, but this might also be the liberation my life plan was in need of.
3. standard, sophisticated English. I sound fobbier and fobbier every day. Even my French is suffering from some serious Arabic infusion. I sound like a North African with no solid or grammatically correct grasp on any language. Articles and adverb agreement are fading into conversational

Suprisingly, I do not even slightly miss:
1. my treo or the internet/email addiction that came with it.
2. PrinceCafe and its absurdly over-priced shisha.
3. intimacy. its almost enjoyable to have returned to a state of prude innocence, hah. the lack of sexual intention makes interactions so much more pleasant and gives any slightly lustful exchange of glances so much more refreshing.

This weekend was a nearly hedonistic.

On Thursday night we piled on to this overcrowded little bus for a 6 hour drive to Hurghada. At 2am we found an absolutely gorgeous safari boat awaiting our arrival. The weekend, all of which was spent drifting the Red Sea, was literally a page out of some luxury paradise brocure, the crew cooked outstanding Middle Eastern food fresh at every meal and third-story deck provided a bed beneath a blanket of black sky and thousands of stars…. Life was literally: Wake up. Eat. Dive. Nap. Dive. Eat. Chill. Eat. Nap. Eat. Dive. Eat. Dive. Chill….for 48 hours. I’m attracted to SCUBA in a purely practical way: eff the fish and the reef - I feel like I am invading their habitat and I get stressed out thinking I am going to knock some poor creature’s entire life of growing into coral dust with one kick of my fin… The simple sensation of being underwater, not having to worry about floating or breathing, is what captures me. It’s fascinating to watch how people behave underwater, too. I’m interested in taking the rescue diver course, but that would require me to take the advanced diving course first… then again ship wrecks and night dives might be too tempting to pass up. This may become my new addiction.

also, Ramadan has begun and the city is entirely different. The streets are quiet, shops are closed... during iftar the untrained eye would think the city was abandoned... but inside resteraunts and houses people are breaking fast with sweet dates, tea, and course upon course of food. Before I left my mum asked me what I was most excited for and I told her this month, so inshaAllah it will be as sweet and generous as expected. Ramadan kareem.

First and foremost, a grand apology for not posting. Upon arrival to AUC, study abroad students were informed that during our "acculturalation" process, we would encounter a frustrating dip in our emotions. Luckily I have yet to encounter a dip of any sort, but this week has definitely been the least pleasant among a month of outstanding ones.

For example, this week provided me with the most cultural awkward day I've yet had in Cairo....

Everything started out normal: I rolled out of bed, went to the neighborhood falafel place to pick up lunch for sasha and I, passed by one of the dozen corner kiosks for sweets and a phonecard, and then bravely ventured into the neighborhood grocery store for a big box of water. Please note that Greg, who had been living with us for the past week or so had previously be charged with this responsibility and sash and I would normally have just trekked to Zamalek to shop in the confort of an uber-westernized English-speaking environment. Greg had prepared me for the experience, explaining that a little grocery boy would carry the box to our apartment and two pounds would suffice as payment. So, indeed Hussein, a 14 year old Egyptian boy, and I waded down the narrow streets of our neighborhood until sharia' abdel hamid said where every twenty seconds I assured him I could take the box from here…I am American. My attempts were thwarted and we wound up in the elevator where everything went down hill. The typical "Are you married?" dance elevated into total mess… eventually leading to a thwarted kiss, a shouting match of broken Arabic, and sasha and I pushing with all our weight against our door.

We were not going to be typical Americans in this situation. We were going to be Egyptian women. And in case you don't know, Egyptian woman have an astute faculty for bitchiness. Our goal was to march down to the market, clad in our most modest clothing, and explain to the manager what had happen and insist that the boy be reprimanded. Unfortunately we don't speak Arabic. So, Moodi, like always, came to our rescue and preceded to march down to the market to perform the aforementioned shaming of the local grocery boy. I think everyone within in a three 10 foot radius peeked into the grocery shop to watch the ordeal unroll. Envision: A circle of gossip-hungry Egyptian men and women encircling Moodi, shadowed by me and sasha feigning looks of seriousness and the shop keeper, shadowed by a teenage fuckwit feigning innocence, characterized by sweeping arm gestures and sharp sounding Arabic phrases.

At the end of the day, Sasha and I had shamed the neighborhood grocery boy, and received a dirty, bug-infested gift of pots and pans from our endearing yet odd bowab. I'm still not sure how the pots came into the situation…

Nevertheless, laterns are popping up on every storefront and the conversation seems to buzz with one word: Ramadan. The last month of the Islamic year is begining... very, very cool. I"m just writing from the library before heading out to Hurgada for the a weekend to get my SCUBA certification. More updates soon.

Classes are outstanding, unfortunately the city and Egypt generally is far too enticing for them to become the sole priority. people keep sending me notes with phrases like, “hope you are having the time of your life” and initially I thought these phrases were a bit superfluous or at least exaggerated, but this week, Thursday morning at 3a to be exact, i realized they are neither. Sasha looked at me and said, “this has been the most exciting month of my life”. It’s true. The past three weeks have definitely been unparallel, if not in excitement than at least in some other quality of experience. Twenty minutes before this nostalgic little moment of ours, we were galloping through the Sahara desert with the pyramids in the distance.

The moment a horse transitions from a clumsy trot into a sweeping gallop is one of the most exhilarating feelings I’ve ever experienced. On the way back to Giza, Mohammed said, “Ya Aminah, you’re a good rider, you’ll enjoy this…” and so I followed him. Perhaps a mistake, but one made gladly. After a few minutes of genuine fear and doubt in my safety, I found myself unable to keep the sound of exhilaration inside my body. A breathy haa, haa, haa emanated from, my soul - I think, with every gallop while Mohammed cried “yallah!” and we distanced ourselves from the others: just twilight, a cold breeze, hooves upon sand, deep breathing, and the deafening silence of the desert. This was just one of some many moments here that I am acutely aware and extremely happy that I am alive.