Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Sky is Falling!!!

This past Friday, Lindsey and I were over at the Knapps' house for a post-church lunch when suddenly Eric Knapp says, "Quick, if you look out the window you'll see something that only happens once per year." So I looked out the window and at first I thought that the sky was falling. The brown color that I usually associate with the sky and that normally hovers over all the buildings and hills was suddenly descending on the streets of Maadi. I thought, "Maybe a sandstorm?"

"It's raining," said Eric.

Rain! I jumped up from my place at the table and ran out to the balcony to see what rain was like in Cairo. Big surprise: it's dirty. When it rains, it makes all of the pollution fall out of the sky. It was like a fine, fine dust that swirled around, and it whipped into my eyes and mouth. Not to be outdone, the dust from the streets and building tops were also disturbed by the fallen droplets, and swirled upward to meet the falling smog. There was something playful yet foul about it.

I held my hands over the balcony to feel some of the drops and got pelted by the random pattern of rain then dirt, rain then dirt.

Like other experiences here, this whole rain thing left me saying, "Only in Egypt."


Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Pretty in Pink

"I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."
-Maya Angelou

I put a lot of stock in Maya Angelou's criteria for testing one's character. Finding the humor or absurdity in a given situation can make the difference between living a life where all things living and otherwise are 'out to get us,' and a life where it's funny that little things like Christmas lights and luggage can get the better of us. I'd like to think that I try to live my life with the latter attitude.

I recently came to one of those crossroads--a moment where I saw two distinct options for how I would react. While I initially thought about getting horrified, I couldn't help but see the hopeless humor in it. I hadn't done my laundry in a few weeks (I know, I know) and I was running out of clean clothes to wear. My quick-fix for this was to throw 2/3 of all the clothing that I brought with me to Cairo into our little washing machine that really wasn't meant to hold more than 1/2 a normal load of laundry.

In following what I thought would be a time-efficient way of washing my clothes, I had neglected to set the water temperature to 'cold.' I had also forgotten to separate darks from whites. I had also forgotten that I had not yet put a certain maroon skirt through the laundry yet. Result? When I went to move my laundry from the washer to the drying rack, I pulled one shirt out and held it up thinking, "Whose shirt is this?" My eyes narrowed and I pulled another shirt out of the wet pile of clothes.
"Oh. Oh, no," I said to myself, my eyes widening.
2/3 of my clothing that I brought with me to Cairo is now some shade of pink, purple, or puce. In fact, my clothing now comes in so many unusual shades that I had to learn new color-names: I have a mauve taupe undertone to my blue jeans, a few carnation pink shirts, a thermal shirt that is now light thulian pink, and various other articles of clothing that are, as I have been informed, cherry blossom pink.

I had to laugh for a while. I think I might have only owned a single pink shirt before this. On the bright (pink) side, almost all of my clothes now match. And luckily, most of the shirts were dyed evenly. And those that weren't, look sort of retro-tie-dyed-ish.

Don't forget to have fun with life, folks! In one textile mishap you can either count most of your clothing for lost or inherit a whole "new" wardrobe. It's all how you frame it.


Best to you all,
Caitlin, pretty in pink




Saturday, October 25, 2008

Egypt: Where "Upper" = South

EID BREAK
At the conclusion of Ramadan is a holiday break called Eid al-Fitr. Most AUC students use this week long break for travel around the region. My roommates, for example, went to Greece for a few days. I decided that I wanted to see more of Egypt and joined a group of 6 other students headed to Upper Egypt. Be not deceived, though. Upper Egypt is actually due south of Cairo, but since the Nile flows northward, Egyptians refer to "Southern Egypt" as "Upper Egypt." Now you know.

Anyhow, I was initially a little nervous about going on this trip, since I didn't actually know the other students very well, or at all (I know, Mom, I know: what was I thinking...). But that turned out not to be an issue at all. By the end of the trip we were all quite good friends.

Here is the entry in my travel journal from the first night of our trip:

"9/30/08
So yesterday might have been the last night of Ramadan. I think it was, but someone has to officially decide based on the moon phase, I think. And yesterday night I also set out on an adventure myself. I am currently on a train on my way to Aswan. We boarded a train at about 10 o'clock last night in downtown Cairo at the Ramses train station. Now it's about 9:09 am and we're still some 4 hours from Aswan. I'm sort of just glad to have made it through last night.

So the break down is this:
  • I am now on a 6 day trip with a group of AUC students who I don't really know.
  • I payed 1,100LE (Egyptian pounds) for said adventure, which may make it worth it if only so I can say that I paid only 1,100LE for a week-long vacation.
  • BUT I will admit that this trip makes me a bit nervous. There. I said it. But knowing me, I'm usually nervous before I get to do something awesome. Please, please let this trip be awesome."
The next entry: WARNING, This contains some insight as to the propensity for college students to revert to 7-year-old potty humor. If words like "poo" offend your sensibilities, then you should read a different posting. As a disclaimer, this was written when we all had cabin fever and were beginning to get loopy for lack of food and water. There. You've been warned.


"Oct 1, 2008


"...On our way (Nisreen and I) to the train's restroom facility, Nisreen looked down and there was a sizable hunk of human feces on her shoe. Her cute ballet flat with a silver buckle.

"Firstly, we were all generally curious as to how that was even possible -- had there been a hunk of poo on the wall that happened to flick to the floor just as Nisreen's foot passed below it? There were no further signs of poo anywhere on the floors, walls, or ceilings, so we were all sort of amused at how this particular bit of poo ended up on top of and not under her shoe. Plus, we'd been on the train for about 15 hours at that point and we were bored of every other topic and activity. We had a drum circle, briefly, before it failed for shyness and the realization that some of our car-mates were asleep. By this point I had moved into the other car with the other 6 of our group--the two students from Duke got off at Luxor [I had spent the first 12 hours of the trip sitting in a compartment with Britney and Tosen until they got off the train, and I didn't want to be by myself for the rest of the trip].

"Our trip ended up taking over 19 hours. Nine. Teen. Evidently the train ahead of us kept having troubles, and at around 4pm these "troubles" stopped our train dead on the tracks. We couldn't go anywhere with that stupid other train in the way. And then the A/C and lights went out. It was one of those 'Noooooo!!!' moments. Stuck out in the desert without any food and only 1/2 a bottle of water, images of death by dehydration or train robbery flashed through my head. So I decided to calm my nerves by moving into the hallway and looking out the window. Not long after, a man with a chainsaw slung over his shoulder walked by. No joking. I called the others out to look but he was already making his way around the corner of a wall. But they saw him.

"When we finally reached Aswan we were all ravenous. We took our luggage to the hotel and then we went to the most quaint little restaurant by the Nile. And by "quaint" I mean that there were fingernails in my lentil soup. I shall include now the observations/new names that we gave to our orders: fingernail soup - ash hummus (tasted like ash paste)- pretzel babaganough (tasted surprisingly though not necessarily disappointingly like a twisty pretzel). And a quote from Yousef: 'When chicken looks like steak, that's not a good sign...'"

So that was the first day of our trip, and seemingly one of the longest days of my life.

American University in Cairo: In Progress

THE GENERAL GRIEVANCES
With any trip there are bound to be unmet expectations. Maybe the continental breakfast that a hotel boasted about in brochures consists of nothing but bagels and bananas. Or perhaps the whale watching trip you were so excited to go on in Mexico only yields one unexciting photo of a tail splash some 200 yards away. Yes, there are minor disappointments in every trip. I coming to Egypt I expected a slower lifestyle. I expected it to be smoggy and hot. I expected to face a certain amount of sexual harassment. What I did not expect was for the new AUC campus to be left unfinished.

The Fall 2008 semester is AUC's first semester on its new campus. Aside from the fact that this new campus lies 20 minutes from the nearest--anything, it was heralded as an amazing feat of modern architecture, technologies, and amenities. When we went to the International Student Orientation on the new campus, we spent our time at the campus' Greek theater, where we enjoyed live music, dancing, and some pretty good Egyptian food. We hadn't set foot on the main campus. On the first day of classes, it became clear that there was something amiss; namely, the campus wasn't finished. The buildings themselves looked impressive, but for the first week of school I had 3 out of 5 professors not show up for class, there were piles of rubble lying around, a lot of fenced off areas, no cafeteria/food commons, no air conditioning in most classrooms (more than a small problem in 110F degree weather), no offices set up yet, uninhabitable dorms, and desks that randomly (and I'll admit: sometimes comically) collapse in the middle of class.


WHERE'S THE FOOD?
I think everyone was shocked. There are scores of students who were supposed to live in university housing, but since the dormitories were not and still are not completed the university sent them to live in military hotels around Cairo. That was one disaster that I was able to avoid. But the food issue made things more tricky. For the first month of school, it wasn't as big of a deal since it was Ramadan and many students were fasting every day. But once Ramadan was over it quickly became evident that the student body needed food on campus. The only food choices on campus for a while were 1) a bagel shop, 2) Cinnabon, 3) a coffee shop. And with the new location of the university, the nearest food source off campus is at least a 15 minute drive away. Since facing mobs of angry letters and phone calls, the university has now added an impromptu food stand that sells pizza and sandwiches, and a little snack bar that sells hamburgers and chips and cookies, etc. These places are run by an AUC contracted company called Delicious, Inc. I think people would have been more excited about these places if the prices weren't outlandishly high (a hamburger from a fast food joint would cost 4 EGP while these stands are charging 14 EGP).

Interestingly, the Student Union (student government) recently set up a competing food stand to meet the demand of hungry students. And the Foreign Student Assembly set up a food stand, too. Capitalism went to work, and as Delicious, Inc. faced competition from student groups selling products at far better prices they freaked out. They went to the administration and demanded that the student stands be shut down. Admin said that they would not. The next day, the pizza stand was giving out free pizza slices in an attempt to lure people over. It was funny.

DO YOU HAVE YOUR BUS PASS?
There is an Egyptian learning curve. In the first week of class my roommates and I got to the bus stop 5 minutes before our bus was supposed to arrive. Evidently, however, the bus had already come and gone 10 minutes before. Usually everything is late in Egypt, but as our host mom Dorothy continues to remind us, "Don't ever think." We thought the bus would be late, we thought we'd be safe getting there a few minutes early, and thinking got us nowhere. We had to sit on the curb for a hour waiting for the next bus.

A secondary issue arose when the university informed us at the last minute that we would have to pay $300 for a semester bus pass. I went online by the payment deadline and purchased my bus pass, thinking that certainly I would need it. Don't ever think. Three hundred dollars later, no one has ever been asked to show a bus pass. They only issued the physical passes to us two weeks ago. The angel on my right shoulder has informed me that it is good that I was honest and bought the pass, per the instruction of the university. The more convincing little devil on the left shoulder keeps making fun of me for buying a buss pass.


A COMEDY OF ERRORS
Going to AUC is like living in a comedy of errors. For the last weeks of summer in the scorching heat we had no air conditioning. Now that it is cooling down in Cairo, someone somewhere somehow figured out how to make the air conditioning function, but managed to configure a system in which the on/off switch in the corner of the room does nothing. We sit shivering in some classes or open the windows and waste mass amounts of energy while the A/C blasts like it's run by a converted jet engine.

Someone else decided to have a laugh and order a couple thousand of the most ill-thought-out desks you'd ever be likely to see. They are trapezoidal. They are on wheels. They are easily collapsible. On the one hand, it's highly amusing to watch people try to decide how to set up the room, as the desks are a nightmare of a shape to fit next to one another. Also it can be a good wake up call during class when you lean on your desk only to have the whole thing flip over, sending your books, pens, and whatever else sliding across the room. On the other hand it has proved less funny when some people's laptops have crashed to the tile floor.

Then there's the fact that for the first few weeks of school there was no A/C, lots of classrooms with no glass in the windows, no food, many times no electricity, and the consistent occurrence of the fire alarm going off a couple of times each day, BUT God bless them, there were guys all around campus polishing the floors.

And the campus was constructed such that the main source of shade on campus is in this one relatively narrow corridor. This attracted the attention of a group that AUCians sarcastically refer to as "Gucci Corner," since they used to all hang out together in a certain corner of the old campus. Well the Gucci Corner kids choose to pull the large wicker chairs that dot the campus into this walkway where they sit and smoke and talk while hundreds of other students and faculty are forced to move in cattle-like formation through a now even smaller gap between the buildings. Despite the constant back up of traffic in this walkway, the Gucci Corner kids will NOT move. I can't imagine that they don't see how insanely crowed it gets as a result of their settlement in this bottleneck. One student suggested to me that those kids want to escape the heat, but more importantly to be seen by everyone else.

And lastly, a phenomenon I was not expecting: many Egyptian students bring nothing with them to school. No backpack, no notebook, no pen, no anything. In my political science courses there are students who literally just sit there and listen to the professor, send the occasional text message under the desk, and then leave once class is over. So either they have minds like steel traps, or their approach to learning is far different from anything that I understand.

I am gaining most of my education here outside of the classroom. At this point I've sort of shrugged my shoulders in resignation at the complete lack of infrastructure at AUC and have most of my fun outside of class.

Again, feel free to drop me a line any time: mduncan@usc.edu