غرق - to drown

To drown = gharaqa

I feel like I'm drowning, but in a good sense. Sensory overload is easily come by in this city, and daily life ranges between relaxing to happily overwhelming to utterly stressful back to calm and relaxing. Usually in the range of a few hours, and then the cycle repeats. My dad tried to encourage me by saying that immersion language learning should always feel like you're "taking in a little bit too much water." Truf, dadman, truf!

Over the past two weeks, I started work in my internship at a wellness center in Loran (near the bougie San Stefano area), began a direct-enrollment class in the university, and figured out how to buy ARUGULA SMOOTHIES from the amazing juice stand between my apartment and the tram. I also tried the famous melukhia soup (Jew's mellow soup… a great taste and beautiful green color but an odd consistency that's disconcertingly like, well, snot) and "swallow's tongue" soup (really just orzo pasta, butter, lemon and chicken broth, named for the shape of the orzo, but a jarring name, non?).

Direct-enrollment was a trip and, as we were assured by our director, is more cultural experience than academic. I understood little in my class - Cultural Relations between the East and West - and at the end of his swiftly-spoken lecture, when the professor asked me (and ONLY me!) what I understood, in front of all my Egyptian classmates, I said something that must have translated roughly to: "This class was interesting general case of looking at history of political marriages in the times of the history when east and west were not friends, yes." I can only guess it sounded like that, perhaps worse. Hopefully in the future I can string something better together.

Hints of homesickness have crept in for a lot of us, but nothing more than occasionally wanting certain, silly things we can't get here. (Driving, wearing tank tops in green, grassy parks, tofu) I wish at different moments that specific people could experience something with me. Megan, I wish you and I could run along the corniche (the sea coast), and Ashley and Dyl, you would love the famous library. Dane would enjoy the dusty, colorful "yacht" we rode today, and so many others - Brianna, Sara, Michael - would love the organic, cheap, overflowing fruit and veggie markets, in neighborhoods with names like Ibrahimiyeh and Cleopatra.

Today some of us took a trip to Nelson's Island, a small, deserted spot of sand and tufty hills off the coast of Alex. It's still home to tombs of British soldiers and apparently saw some battles in Napoleon's day. It was a strange and fun friday of riding in boats, gettin' sandy and feeling like castaways. Lunch was delivered to us by boat (the typical, but delicious, blackened fish 'n guts, fisherman's rice, tomato/cucumber/onion salad, bread, and tahini) and I still have sand in my ears from the constant wind.

We've also experienced Egyptian bureaucracy in its glorious inefficiency. A couple examples: Our entirely unnecessary crack of dawn trip to a government office to extend our visas brought us face to face with an entire office of people more concerned about breakfast than helping us (and we even had an appointment!) Turns out we had to wait for one specific man to arrive and , well, allahuaalam where he is. Probably also more concerned about breakfast than us. Fair enough. When he did arrive, he didn't do much, and they just called each of our names aloud and then we left. Hmm.

Second example of pointless bureaucracy, and everywhere having a million employees and very little actual help: Bought a new washing machine, after our resident director finally got our less than great landlord to agree to pay for most of it. (We currently have a semi-functioning half-automatic Japanese contraption in our bathroom. Aside from spilling gallons of dirty water on the bathroom floor and not rinsing or spinning any of our clothes, it's not terribly useful, so we're happy to see it replaced. Sorry 1972 Sanyo.) 

At Carrefour (Walmart, French/Egyptian style) when Robert and I decided on a washing machine, an eager attendant typed in our order on one computer, then took us to a cashier, then took us to an after sales desk, then to another desk where we had to wait for "exactly the right man" to come LOOK at our receipt and draw a check mark. Then because someone in that silly chain of events had torn off the top corner of the receipt, along with a couple of allegedly, apparently, important numbers, we had to do it all again, and wait at some different places along the way.

A long process, but entertaining, since while waiting, Robert and I talked about Ghadafi's death and the Ohio animal park fiasco in Arabic, which just made both events sound even more surreal. Surrounded by swarms (QUITE LITERALLY) of Thursday night Carrefour shoppers (Friday is the weekend, Thursday is getreadyforweekend day), and the ubiquitous, fun, way-too-loud Arabic pop music, it was one of those laugh out loud "whoa, I am not in my home" moments.

An entire entry should be devoted to topics like the traffic (Lord save us all), some of the fun and unique food, hilarious signage, revolutionary graffiti, and other shtuff, but perhaps later. It's time to head to my direct-enrollment class and mumble another ridiculous answer to my professor's questions.

The disaster left on the conference table, after our director from D.C. visited and surprised us with Costco bags of Halloween candy. Plus there was pizza. I can't remember why. 

Internship work, tea, and shisha at Rihani café in Camp chezar

The "dar," where we flop around on couches, study, drink nescafé, and avoid speaking in English except at 6 PM when we're always REAL tired.

View from our window of the Kuliat al-adab (college of liberal arts)

Drinking Sport Cola at an adorable seaside café in Abu Qir, waiting for the boat man.

Then he arrived, our barefoot boat driver.

Arrival at Nelson Island

Island of Nelson.

Our grilled fish picnic in the sand. We were pretty ravenously hungry, don't judge.

Some pictures of the homestead. This is the living room. Note the cozy chairs and red walls! Also, one of three balconies. However, also note the absence of a coffee table. The landlord took it and thought we wouldn't notice. We still notice.

View to the right outside my window

View to the left outside my window.

Demonstrations

مظاهرات

muzhaharaat = demonstrations

Today before heading to church, as I ate some cold dinner leftovers out of my new favorite steel bowl, Enas and I heard the beginnings of a demonstration from the street below our seventh-floor balcony. We hear so many of these at the university alone that it's not a terribly unusual sound, but this one seemed huge. And it was; at least several hundred people making their way down shaari3 Port Said shouting "al-sha3b yureed isqaaT almusheer" (The people want the fall of the musheer) The musheer refers to Tantawi, the military leader and default current Egyptian ruler. Some Egyptians, young people especially, believe that the government, under his leadership, is moving too slowly in its planned shift from military control to civilian control. 

Observing the demonstration for a while, Kelsey and I remarked that we were glad it was on a street opposite the direction we head toward to get to church. We head to church, per the usual on Sunday nights, walking in precisely the opposite direction of the Port Said spectacle. After the service, we talked with some folks who had friends or family participating in the peaceful nation-wide Coptic (and Evangelical, Catholic, Protestant, really just Christian) demonstrations. Upon returning home, however, we find Enas glued to Al-Jazeera news and we realize, lilaasif (unfortunately) that the demonstrations had morphed into a situation more violent and more serious than expected. The clashes between the soldiers and the Christian demonstrators had left 12 dead by the time Kelsey and I walked through the apartment door from church, and we watched the number climb to 22, then to 23 over the course of an hour. Without internet in the apartment, we only got our information from Al-Jazeera in Arabic and boy, when you REALLY want information, and your inability to comprehend all the vocabulary is your only barrier between understanding such important info, you focus and learn new words REAL fast.

Here's my current window to the world, in the apartment:

Surreal, to watch such horrifying news with such foreign pictures and realize it's not foreign at all. It's just Cairo, a couple hours away, and we're just blessed that the demonstrations in Alex didn't escalate. I wish I could say that having lived in Egypt for a month, I have some sort of understanding as to why this could happen, but of course I don't. It's pretty dumbfounding. How do peaceful demonstrations turn into catastrophes? Who shot whom first? And worse, between people who profess to follow the same God? 

 Strange, too, to hear slogans chanted on TV and then hear the exact slogan with my own ears, chanted loudly in the street outside my apartment.

This country is bursting at every possible seam with energy. I do understand where some of the anger at injustice and thirst for change is coming from, just having witnessed some of the broken-down bits of the country over these four weeks. Young people want jobs, opportunity, voices, education, stability, progress. Older people want the same but just don't as often take to the streets to demand it. Since the 70's the population has exploded and the Nile Valley, though formidably large, doesn't have the infrastructure (yet) to support the burgeoning population in every necessary way.

Selfishly, I of course don't want to leave Egypt at all right now, so I'm hoping and praying such tragic events don't affect our privilege of studying and living in the country. But it's a transitional place, and I'm realizing that more and more. (And to family and relatives, yes, I'm staying far away from the actual demonstrations! I don't want to see how pissed off my resident director would become were he to discover that we were anywhere close to a demonstration. Nor do I have interest. No need, I can see them from my balcony!)

Istiqrar ~ استقرار

istiqrar - settling down

I've failed, these past two fridays, at providing any sort of blog post. Apologies for those actually paying attention to the blog title. Still no internet in the homestead. Ma'alesh. Both fridays were busybusy with trips to two coastal locales: a-SaHal a-shamaliyah (North Coast) and the town of Rashid the week following. Ghada is my language partner and her family invited me to a seafood lunch at their beach home in the North Coast, which consisted of 3 types of fried fish, two types of grilled, fresh crabs, enormous shrimp, shrimp soup (similar to étouffée), calamari stew, fisherman's rice, bread, salad, juice, tea, coffee, etcetera. I don't know that I've ever eaten that much in one sitting and I KNOW that I've never had fresh fish like that before. They may not have breakfast tacos in this country (WHY? El Chilito was literally in my dreams last night. Embarrassing.) but they have seafood down to an art. 

Rashid is a fishing town on the Eastern edge of the mouth of the Nile, where the fresh water mixes with the Mediterranean Sea. We toured the windmill and Ottoman-era buildings after passing through a Moroccan-ish market (goat carcasses hanging next to unsuspecting live rabbits, bread baking next to platters of half-empty tea cups, shrieking boys leaping over hooka pipes, all swept up in a haze of smoke, dust, sand, and unplaceable, oft-unpleasant smells). We visited the 'ala and enjoyed views of the Nile, before a meal of fish, tahini, salad, fisherman's rice, and pepsi, followed immediately by boat rides on the Nile. In short, a pretty exhilarating day.

I love Egypt this week. I did not love it the first week, nor the second; in fact, I was mostly just confused or exhausted, now that I look back. Jet lag, culture shock, dragging my feet into another year of language classes, all rolled up with the inevitable fatigue drawn from "new Egyptian germs coursing through our veins," footnote (thanks for the phrase, Zack) equalled a ditzier than usual Emily (FRIGHTENING, I know). But my clothes are put away, I've learned how to buy large amounts of vegetables quickly and cheaply, I can navigate the trams, taxis on my own, (not the buses. hell no, not yet, not the buses), I've used enough minutes on my phone to have to recharge it (yessss, I have friends!) and I slipped an Arabic proverb into conversation today. In short, I feel settled, or at least well on the way to settling down. 

In addition to the trips, the past couple weeks entailed lots of class and homework, falling asleep with my kindle, turkish coffee, falafel/egg/eggplant sandwiches (anywhere from 20-50 cents! I kid not!), lots of conversations on the revolution, a lot of Amr Diab, Shireen, and Nancy Ajram, and a couple early morning jogs alongside the corniche (just khali balik to dodge the trash and feral egyptian kitties).

The start of regular classes in the university this Saturday resulted in a big increase in demonstrations we can see and hear from the windowsof  our little air-conditioned American box (AKA the center for teaching Arabic language to foreigners). We have strict instructions from multiple sources to not go close (Emails from the Cairo Embassy basically say "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT"), but I'll get some pictures of what we see every day, eventually. I don't take a ton of pictures when I'm out and about because I already feel like I'm a blinking beacon in crowded places. Today on the tram, one question from the girl next to me ("haDritik min ayn?" "miss, where are you from?") turned into fifteen minutes of question and answer with about 8 of the girls around me. Which is fun and good language practice, but is still ridiculously difficult to get used to. I find myself staring at people just because I forget why they're staring at me. Ghada likened my riding the bus in Alexandria - a blonde, too-pale person wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and shibshib (flip-flops) - to what it would be like if a women dressed in a full abaya strode onto an Austin, Texas capitol Metro bus. It would just be odd enough that people would unwittingly stare.

Everyone's unsatisfied with the political and social changes being made post-revolution, but a lot of people also acknowledge that it's going to take time. The presidential elections are likely to be postponed until 2013, but parlimentary elections, and the subsequent writing of a new constitution, will be a process that starts pretty soon, either the end of this month or in November. 

Fortunately, in our classes, we discuss pre and post-Revolution as well as other hard subjects like the unnavigable bureaucracy the handicapped education system. I'm so grateful for that. I'll never forget that after my first year of French, in middle school, all I could remember was how to say "I like pizza" and "During vacations, I ski with my family." That wasn't even true. I just had no vocabulary. Not so, here, they're actually giving us high quality stuff to read and work through, and so far, I'm impressed with the instruction we're getting. It's hard and I'm annoyed at it, which usually happens when I'm being challenged in all the right ways.

A final part of settling down: There are lots of churches to go to, and I already feel welcomed at one of them, in Ibrahimiyah. There's also a house of prayer with alternating worship in English and in Arabic and other languages too. It was a sweet, sweet place and I hope to return.

Herearesomepictures:

Ghada and I at the North Coast

Ghada and her gentleman of a brother

Foods. Sea foods.

Enas, Amira, Kelsey and I, Ahmed, and Ahmed's buds at Ahmed's graduation from Pharmacy School. Alf mabruk yaa Ahmed.

Handcarved, topsy-turvy woodwork in Rashid

Rashid

Egyptian zabala (trash), an unfortunate, oft-seen problem

The Nile

Racin' boats

Laura, myself, Kelsey, Leila, and Lauren at the end of our Rashid ramblings.

Rashid