Back from spring break with one month to go

I was afriad that I was going to be let down coming back into Egypt. A lot of people who have traveled get depressed and start focusing on all the dirt, poverty, low quality of ... all sorts of stuff, and inefficiency here, because the places they've been like Turkey or Israel aren't like that. I went through border control with my friend Sam and some other AUC students. As we were leaving Israel, the Israeli guards asked us questions, "Where are you going? What will you do there? What did you do here?" and generally questions I expected (and got) on the way in to Israel. Two of the other AUC students we met in line and wound up traveling back to Cairo with were Muslim, one of whom wore hijab, and she got asked about her religion and if she knew people in Israel, which seem kind of irrelevant if you don't ask follow up questions like, "How does your religion impact your feelings toward Jewish people?" or "Are those people you know is Israel terrorists?" Anyway, I've never been questioned while I was in the exit line for a country. You'd think the Egyptians would be asking us questions since we're entering their country. But when we got to the Egyptian side, the guard there said hi, glanced at our passports, and when he saw the girl in hijab, he laughed. We didn't know what he said, but he was clearly sympathizing with her, "You just came through there and you dress like that? I know they gave you a hard time." And that made all of us smile, because in Egypt, people joke around a lot, like as a nation, and when they encounter people who are suffering or just got hasseled, they know how to laugh about it. We were glad to be back.

So I'm in Cairo and feeling pretty positive about the last few weeks here. No bittersweet--I'm glad for the time I've been here and will be here, and I'm excited for this summer, which is kind of hard to picture because it's going to be so different from here. Spring break was obviously a really enriching couple weeks, and now I know for sure that I've got a job, a grant, and an apartment for this summer, so I'm very blessed. We went out to an "American" restaurant last night, kind of to celebrate things falling into place for me and kind of just to go out. I got waffles.

Briefly, since I'm thinking of it, I'll just jot down a couple things that I've explained to people about the US. As I've been here longer and gotten to know people better, they've asked me questions about things that are different. (The first couple days back in January, I got a lot of, "So how do you think Egypt is different from America?" which is an impossibly huge question to answer, particularly when you've had no time to reflect on it and get exposed to more Egypt.) It's a lot harder than I thought to elicit what the "rules" are in the US, but they're definitely there. Here are some things that people have asked me about.

• In America, men who are friends can't kiss each other in public, or anywhere, really.
• In America, you have to have friends outside of your family--if not, even your family will think that you have a problem. Further, if you don't see your friends outside of just school or work, people will think that there's something wrong with you.
• In America, Christians are the majority. They form many small denominations. Historically, these groups were significantly different from each other, but today they are similar in many regards. Christian fundamentalism has been growing in the States for many decades, and I don't know the answer to "Why?"
• In America, before you get engaged to be married, you date. You have a relationship with that person and are "more than friends," optimally for years before you get engaged. If you do not, everyone will think it's fishy and that you're making a terrible decision. There is no word in Egyptian Arabic for dating, or for boyfriend/girlfriend--only "friend" and "fiance".
• In America, male children and female children are supposed to inherit the same amount when their parents die. One son or daughter may get more than another because the parent chose to give them somethind special, but this is on an individual basis, not a gender basis. It does not matter if the parent who died was male or female. And really, not perfectly in all regards but in quite a lot, men and women are equal under the law.

Yerushalayim!

My homestay added a whole new level of poverty to my vision of Egypt. The family had their own apartment, with 6 beds for 8 people, and could feed their 6 children well. The three oldest all worked, and the three youngest were in grammer and middle school. One of the older boys is an engineer, the other in school to be a family councelor but drives a small, 3-wheeled taxi called a tuktuk, and the older daughter works as a translator and secretary--so by any country's standards, they're doing well. But each of the family members has about 2 outfits that they wear outside the house. Now, those outfits range from neat to nice-looking, but imagine having only two changes of clothes. Once they get back to the house, the women change into galabeyas (loose dresses). Getting a big bottle of Sprite to share after dinner was a treat, and we would share bowls at dinner, though not forks, since they were concerned with cleanliness. They were sad that I was leaving them for Jerusalem, but as soon as I get a chance I'll go back to visit, because they're just such a wonderful family.

The first thing that struck my sleep deprived brain after the 15 hour trek from Cairo to the Holy City was boys with earrings and women looking pretty and not feeling bad about it. Israel is so not Egypt. It's not as if you've taken something out of Europe and dropped it in the Mid East, but it is a Western country. And the tacky souveniers here--much nicer and more tasteful than their counterparts in Egypt. The buildings only a couple stories, which creates a much different look than Cairo's predominant apartment towers. And that white stone they use everywhere here...cement can't possibly compete as a building material. It's just lovely here--I'm thinking of extending my stay. I should probably be doing the good little anthropological thing and describing more details, but I want to tell stories about my adventures.

Saturday was day two in J'lem, but my first full day here. While I was eating the YMCA's continental breakfast and reading the Bible, I noticed an old man at the next table looking over at me. I was super nervous, but I took a chance and went over to his table and said hello. He didn't seem surprised or confused at why I was speaking to him, and we wound up talking for over an hour about a lot of things--my education (hooray, someone who believes in liberal arts and studying abroad simply to make yourself a better, more educated person!), religion (I think he'd been looking over because I'd been reading, and he's an atheist and wondered what was going through my mind), ourselves (I described the AUC jaunt and he described coming as a baby from Austria to Israel). It was really great, and I felt very blessed to have gotten to talk to him. After this, I thought I'd go find an internet cafe in the Old City and email my advisor. I found one, though to get into the Old City I had to flash my American passport and tell the police that I was just trying to get to my hostel (when I'm actually at the Y outside the old city) but I naively thought that I'd go say Hi to my AUC friends who were planning on staking out a space in Holy Sepulchre for the service of the Holy Fire. I should have realized that there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people trying to get into Holy Sepulchre at for that same service. That was the reason there was a police barrier. But I started going toward the church, and then I got swept up in the crowds, and then suddenly I was in the church, and I didn't know what to do or where to go look for them. But I knew I was in a desirable place, so I sat down against a wall for a while, staking my claim on a little floorspace. But then the police/Israeli army decided that the hall I was in was not allowed to have people in it, at least not yet, so they forced everyone down some stairs into a chamber without any other exit. They were pushing very roughly, including all the old ladies and being scary. I later found that we had been sent down into the Armenian chapel. There were maybe 300-400 people down there; it wasn't crowded, and it wasn't as hot as upstairs, but I was stuck. Between the soldiers and the pilgrims crowding the stairs, there was no way I wasn't going to be staying for the service. I didn't really know what it involved, and everyone around me was Orthodox, meaning mostly from countries where they don't speak English. So I napped a little, did a little homework. After 2 or 3 hours of waiting, there were noises of excitement from upstairs, and all of down in that room crowded toward the stairs, people holding their bundles of 33 candles in the air, ready to receive the Holy Fire. And then we waited for maybe another hour, with moments of noise from upstairs getting people all exicted down stairs. But finally there was cheering from upstairs, and a bell started ringing. From mass this semester, I've learned that chimes indicate the miracle of transsubstantiation, and I knew that the bell meant that the priest had come out of the tomb with the miraculous fire sent by God. I was so excited along with the other pilgrims, and when the fire finally made it down to us, I was crying and laughing because it was so beautiful and wonderful.

People passed the fire around, and then passed their hands through it, for blessings I guess, and then put out the candles. I didn't have any candles, but some people let me put my hands over their flames. People said it wasn't as hot as regular fire; maybe. God was very present in that moment, as He has been for me since the beginning of this trip. When we made it out of the church, I went and bought some candles to light later. The size of the flame from all the candles bundled together was very big, and when people had been carrying it around, it made my think of God's flame in my heart, and how seeing a fire that I could imagine sitting in my chest and burning was very inspiring.

I found a felafel place and had lunch, with my third Turkish coffee here finally being the most like they have in Egypt. Now I'm worried I won't be able to find it in the US--I don't want espresso or something that tastes like regular black coffee grounds sitting unfiltered in the bottom of my cup. Anyway, I got a little work done there, and as I was setting out once again to find that internet cafe, who comes down the street by my friends from AUC. So I went off with them as they got lunch at an Arab restaurant, and then we went back to Holy Sepulchre, where the Orthodox kids explained some things to the Protestant kids. So we touched the annointed stone where Christ's body was laid before he was put in the tomb, and we prayed, and saw the rock that the cross stood on. While we were at the cross rock, a priest was fixing a chandelier with oil lamps, and he moved his ladder too quickly and one of the lamps fell to the floor and smashed. So since Al, who's like non-denominational/Protestant, and I were in the mood of venerating objects in holy places and being open to signs, we went and picked up a piece of the lamp and put our fingers in the oil. It wasn't super meaningful, but it couldn't hurt.

Also, people were lined up to go in the Sepulchre itself and ligth their candles from the Holy Fire. We didn't go in, but I got my candles lit from someone who had just walked out of the tomb with the fire, before he put his out in this little cone next to the exit. I feel like I'm forgetting something else that happened, but we visited the chapels next to Holy Sepulchre--the one on the right was Ethiopian, very solemn.

We spent a little time in the hostel where my friends are staying and then, 12 hours after I had originally set off looking for an Internet cafe, I finally landed in one and was able to get some work done. I had carried my laptop around the entire day--my headphone and microphone had unsurprisingly broken at some point. It's hard that God is not interested in my deadlines and the things I feel obligated to do--when there is a spiritual experience for me to have, God never looks at my calendar to make sure it's convenient for me. Actually, the hard part about that is saying, "No, today I'm going to stay away from people or places who I feel God is drawing me to, because I have a paper due tomorrow and I'm going to make that a priority." But hopefully I'm answering a larger calling by investing in my education, even if the immediacy of a spriritual experience beckons more forcefully than meeting a deadline I've committed to. I think that if I strike a balance between the two, I'll be good. I certainly feel the need to justify fulfilling my obligations when the alternative is Jerusalem out there waiting for me.

Observations and updates

I know it's been over a week since I've written, but the internet has been down and I've waited until it was less frustrating to try to get online. The problem isn't totally fixed now, but things are going faster.

I've had my first week of classes, and I've eaten more Egyptian food (kufta is amazing! And Tony, I’m looking for better shawarma, but so far it’s been eclipsed by the koshari, fiteer, and falafel sandwiches). I think I was one of several American students who didn't quite connect the dots that this would be like a regular school semester...so I didn't really bring a backpack or a cell phone. In Grinnell, I could get by without using my phone much. Here, in the big city, not so much. So I bought the cheapest phone possible, and I’ve been like a sketchy old man, going around to everyone who I’ve barely met and asking “nimrit telefoonik kam?” (نمرة تلفونك كام؟) I must describe my phone for you, because I love it. It has Arabic and English letters printed on the keys for texting, and it’s not a color phone but it has a color background, which I’m pretty sure is a color transparency in between the light source and the layer that the text appears on, and it looks like a tropical Caribbean isle with a sail boat in the foreground.

Every time something goes wrong here, I’ve been told, “Welcome to Egypt,” which is a phrase I’m getting sick of hearing for multiple reasons. One is that I’d just like to register for classes, please. Another reason is that it’s mostly ex-pats who say this, even students in my own program who’ve only been here as long as I have, and I’m not cool with the idea that people get jaded and decide that the defining characteristic of Egypt is that things don’t work here. I would much rather just be told to have patience. One exception to hearing “Welcome to Egypt” from old, white men is when people will shout it out on the street when they see obvious foreigners, when I'm assuming that's the one phrase they know in English. The other exception I've heard was the response I got when I asked two Egyptian students why trash cans on campus are usually found in pairs, one white and one green, and if the green one was for recycling. It was a mystery to them too.

School stuff
Campus is beautiful, like most of the things I encounter here, and classes have been good so far. There are a couple “campuses” separated by 1-2 blocks from each other. The “Greek” campus (no idea where the name comes from) houses the social sciences buildings and the library, as well as a big quad (bricked, grass isn’t big here) with lots of tables and chairs surrounded by the fortress of the academic buildings and completely divided from the street. This is the major hangout spot. People fill that space all day long, sometimes making it difficult for others to get through the throng of socializers to their social sciences classes. I like the library, although it is devoid of cushy chairs, and all three of us Grinnellians who are here this semester found each other in the library a couple days ago and made sure the others were doing well.

Me-stuff
The nearest Christian church is Catholic, so I’ve been there twice—once for a weekly service and once for Ash Wednesday. I really enjoyed it, and I already feel less ignorant about Catholicism. There’s a big contingent here from Notre Dame (one of whom is named John-Paul, who’s been here a semester already and shows us around sometimes) and so I go to church with them. They keep me straight and tell me when it’s okay to participate as a non-Catholic (e.g. receiving the ashes) and when it’s not (e.g. communion). And you thought my only new religious exposures would be to Islam!

I know I said that I wasn’t going to spend much time with Americans here, but I’ve met some Americans who are really great people and who I already hope to keep in contact with once I get back to the States. I guess you would say that it’s a “self-selecting pool” of study-abroad students because as the president of AUC told us at an orientation address, only 1% of American college students study abroad, and only 1% of those who do will go to the Middle East. And I think he said most of that 1% is at AUC. Additionally, I don’t want to spend time with a certain group of people because of an objectifying characteristic, like, “They’re Egyptian.” I’m getting to know study-abroads and full-time students alike, and I’m enjoying the company of people on both sides. My social strategy remains to force myself upon new people of all persuasions, and it has met with wild success. For example, I met an Egyptian girl in my Architecture class because she made the mistake of making eye contact with me and smiling, so down I sat next to her and by the end of class she was introducing me to her friends.

Arabic stuff
Last week I took a week-long intensive called “Survival Arabic,” which was really helpful. Things like how to order food or talk to cabbies. I’m really glad I took it, and I’m enrolled in an Egyptian Spoken Arabic class for this semester, which is going well too. I really enjoy the dumb language jokes that people learning the basics will make, and the pretend-sketchy conversations we have in class when all we learned on the first day was how to ask someone was if they were married and which floor they live on. You can get by a lot of the time in English. All the students here have to be fluent in English, and some of them know like three other languages in addition to English and Arabic, no exaggeration. Classes are all in English, and many vendors speak English. They like when you speak Arabic, though many don't understand the "universal" formal Arabic that is taught in American college classes. It took me about ten minutes to order flat bread with fig jelly on it the other day, because of the language barrier, but oh, was it worth it. The last day of Survival Arabic, my class of five walked through the streets with our teacher and talked to vendors in Arabic, just asking dumb stuff like, "How much is this?" and "What is the name of this?" Some of the vendors really got into it when they realized that we were learning Arabic, and they would quiz us on the names or colors of the things they were selling.

Egypt stuff
A couple Americans here have commented that the biggest culture shock is the McDonalds, and I think that the presence of stores and products that we can get in the US makes it seem deceptively Western here. Firstly, places that I think of as American or Western, I have heard described here as “international,” which belies a different orientation. Secondly, these restaurants and stores exist in a different context, and mean something culturally different here than they do back home. McDonalds is not a restaurant for rich people in the US, and their target audience may even be the lower economic classes. But in Egypt, if you buy American or “international” food, you pay international prices. I can get 2 falafel sandwiches on the street for 1.75-2LE (Egyptian Pounds), but I pay 20LE, 10 times more, for a McDonalds sandwich, which comes to about four American dollars. Now, given the price of the falafel, how much money do you think the falafel maker is making? He certainly doesn’t waste that money eating at McDonalds. I still feel confused by the mixture things here—there’s so much that I know I don’t understand.

I cover my hair sometimes, if I wake up feeling modest. I’ve heard that people here expect Americans to dress differently from themselves, and maybe not to be as nicely dressed as Egyptians would be at, say, a nice restaurant. Dressing up all the time is a strain for me, but Mom and I limited my wardrobe here to only decent looking clothes. When I cover my hair, I do it bandana-style; I never wrap my scarf under my chin or try to make it look like hijab (called hee-gab here, like “HE has the gift of GAB”) because I don’t want people to wonder if I’m Muslim. I’m not Muslim, and I’m not Egyptian, and that’s obvious because of my skin color and the style of clothes I wear and the way I carry myself. However, while I do my best to be respectful of culture and norms, I have no interest in assimilating. I’m an American in Egypt, and I don’t want to pretend to be otherwise. I’m interested in learning about everything here, and participating as much as possible, but I want people to know that I’m a foreigner, in every possible sense of the word.

Anyway, the variety in how people dress probably makes any style of scarf-tying that I employ ambiguously religious, even if my hair is sticking out. In a place like this where over 50% of women veil, variation is okay, and women will cover their hair in all sorts of different ways. Most of those covered will wrap hijab-style (under the chin, with one corner of the scarf hanging down the back), but even among that group, there are different ways of wrapping a hijab and different cloth and pin accessories that go along. Women in this country are pretty intense about their accessories, and a ton of women have this amazing, creative sense of color. A lot of the American girls feel like they’re dressing like schmucks, particularly on campus where most of our classmates come from very wealthy families. Unlike in Grinnell, there’s no “shabby chic” mentality, unless you count pre-ripped and –faded jeans. I don’t tell kids I meet here about my love for thrift stores; I’m afraid they’ll think I need their aid to stop wearing second-hand clothes. It’s been a little warmer this week, or I’m just acclimatized, but I’ve stopped wearing my long johns…. I do still wear a hoodie at night.

I think it’s true what they say about Egyptian hospitality. I met a girl here named Dena on Wednesday, and she said to let her know whenever I was free and that we would hang out. So on Friday (which is the Sabbath here, remember, and the work week starts on Sunday) we went to “City Stars,” (that’s what they call it in Arabic too, سيتي ستارز) the big mall here, and two American girls I know from the dorms came too. Dena steered us to the food court, and then as soon as I finished ordering, jumped in front of me and said, “Laura, go sit down.” I put up a small argument, but she was not to be deterred from paying for my food. She did the same for the other two, even strong-arming one of them into ordering at all. She was great at hosting us at the mall, and we all just walked around and looked at things.

My roommate moved in finally! She was spending time with her mom, but now she’s here and she’s great. Her name is Enas (sounds a little like Ines) and she’s from Egypt but she grew up in Kuwait. She’s really nice and friendly and we went to dinner (lunch for her) at 4:30 on Thursday on campus. I’ve heard three other Americans talking about bad situations with their non-American roommates, like the person talks too much or too little or is standoffish or asks if they can borrow/have all of the American girl’s stuff, and I have zero complaints about mine and a lot of good to say. Even though she doesn’t go to mosque, she says she’ll take me one of these weeks so I can see and experience Friday prayers. How generous!

Other stuff
Please notice the change in email. Since my AUC email is hosted in Egypt, it’s just easier to access than my Grinnell mail. You can email me for my cell phone number here, if you’d like to call me on your international calling card, since I get free incoming. I’m still trying to figure out an inexpensive way to call the US, because a five minute call will eat most of my minutes on the pay-as-you-go phone (or “mobile” in Egyptian English) that I bought.

Mom has told me to write more tactile descriptions, and I think I’ll try to work on that in my next post, which will be full of pictures. Also, I have a couple small adventures to descibe, including one at the pyramids! Hopefully, as the semester goes on, I'll be able to write more focused (and shorter) entries, but I'm still inundated with new sights and observations, and I think that's what you all are interested in reading at this point as well.

Also for those of you wondering, Chris and I have been together for a year today. I'm smiling.