excited awwy
i am currently once again sitting in the super air conditioned computer lab here at auc because i have reached a point where getting online is no fun because i know it means i have to go down and then back up six flights of stairs to use the internet at the french cultural center. it's thursday, which is the same as friday here, so it's the first night of the weekend which means i flat out one hundred percent refuse to do homework. tonight we are planning on going to sequoia (this fancyish bar in zamalek) for tim/joseph/khulood's birthdays, so that should be fun, and i feel like after a long week of studying and being way too hot all the time, i need a drink.
that's probably not a good thing.
the amount of harassment on the streets has been getting really taxing, and i don't even get the worst of it. it's just unbelievably frustrating to have to walk outside and have people staring at you and making comments as you're walking down the street. it's like, do they think they're being original? do they think if they yell about how beautiful we are, and welcome!, then we'll turn around say oh god i must have you now? it's not really scary or anything, it's just not very comfortable to always feel like i'm on display as i'm walking down the street just minding my own business. it's strange, because i never thought of myself as a person who was particularly invested in the anonymity of american culture, but turns out the anonymity really plays a big role in feeling comfortable in daily life. i just never feel invisible, never feel like i'm on my own, never feel like i can just mind my own business, because there are always a million people around and million people staring at me. it's just exhausting to live daily life.
in other news, i may have mentioned earlier that katie adopted a cat off the street while i was in alexandria a few weeks ago. and that was all okay, and we have been trying to find a new home for the cat, but now the cat is sick. she can't really walk or hold herself up, and so on tuesday we got home and realized that we absolutely had to take her to the vet. turns out the only vet that was available to see us that day was in maadi, which was about a 20-25 minute cab ride away, which really isn't as bad as i thought it was going to be in cairo traffic around rush hour. so we took her to the vet and turns out she has a calcium deficiency. so that's a little bit of added stress, but hopefully the cat will be okay and we'll be able to pass her on to someone else very soon.
our main topic for this week in my standard arabic class was copts in egypt. my teacher told us this story about how when he was younger, he really liked to read and he wanted to learn more about the stories that were in the quran, so he went a bought a bible (they have a lot of the same stories, but the bible tells them in more detail). so he was sitting in class reading the bible and this big coptic guy came up to him and took the book away and was like "you can't read this, this is our book!" and my teacher looked at him and said, "no, this is my book. i bought it, i paid for it." so he and the coptic guy got into a fistfight and wound up in the principal's office and both got suspended for a week from school for fighting. after giving them their punishment, the principal told the coptic guy he could go, and then said to my teacher, "look, you crazy guy, why were you reading these infidels (for lack of a better translation) book? what do you think you're doing?" the school was totally mixed between muslims and christians but still there was a lot of prejudice an hatred between them. and the principal wound up bringing my teacher's parents in for a meeting to warn them that he was worried that their son was going to convert to christianity, they better be careful with him, etc etc. the thing was that my teacher's mom's best friend was also coptic, and he had grown up kind of between these two households, one muslim and one christian, so his family didn't take the principal's concerns seriously of course, but it's still kind of a crazy story.
or maybe i only think it's interesting because i'm actually here.
other than caring way too much about school, i think this weekend i'm going to try and go to both the egyptian museum and khan al-khalili (which is this big market here in cairo). hopefully. i don't think the homework will be too bad this weekend, but that means i really should spend some time reviewing.
i don't know. in general i'm having a really good time here, but there are a lot of things that just make living here so uncomfortable that i can't help but complain. i'm really excited to come home in august, but i think (i hope) that as soon as i get home i'll want to come back.
that's probably not a good thing.
the amount of harassment on the streets has been getting really taxing, and i don't even get the worst of it. it's just unbelievably frustrating to have to walk outside and have people staring at you and making comments as you're walking down the street. it's like, do they think they're being original? do they think if they yell about how beautiful we are, and welcome!, then we'll turn around say oh god i must have you now? it's not really scary or anything, it's just not very comfortable to always feel like i'm on display as i'm walking down the street just minding my own business. it's strange, because i never thought of myself as a person who was particularly invested in the anonymity of american culture, but turns out the anonymity really plays a big role in feeling comfortable in daily life. i just never feel invisible, never feel like i'm on my own, never feel like i can just mind my own business, because there are always a million people around and million people staring at me. it's just exhausting to live daily life.
in other news, i may have mentioned earlier that katie adopted a cat off the street while i was in alexandria a few weeks ago. and that was all okay, and we have been trying to find a new home for the cat, but now the cat is sick. she can't really walk or hold herself up, and so on tuesday we got home and realized that we absolutely had to take her to the vet. turns out the only vet that was available to see us that day was in maadi, which was about a 20-25 minute cab ride away, which really isn't as bad as i thought it was going to be in cairo traffic around rush hour. so we took her to the vet and turns out she has a calcium deficiency. so that's a little bit of added stress, but hopefully the cat will be okay and we'll be able to pass her on to someone else very soon.
our main topic for this week in my standard arabic class was copts in egypt. my teacher told us this story about how when he was younger, he really liked to read and he wanted to learn more about the stories that were in the quran, so he went a bought a bible (they have a lot of the same stories, but the bible tells them in more detail). so he was sitting in class reading the bible and this big coptic guy came up to him and took the book away and was like "you can't read this, this is our book!" and my teacher looked at him and said, "no, this is my book. i bought it, i paid for it." so he and the coptic guy got into a fistfight and wound up in the principal's office and both got suspended for a week from school for fighting. after giving them their punishment, the principal told the coptic guy he could go, and then said to my teacher, "look, you crazy guy, why were you reading these infidels (for lack of a better translation) book? what do you think you're doing?" the school was totally mixed between muslims and christians but still there was a lot of prejudice an hatred between them. and the principal wound up bringing my teacher's parents in for a meeting to warn them that he was worried that their son was going to convert to christianity, they better be careful with him, etc etc. the thing was that my teacher's mom's best friend was also coptic, and he had grown up kind of between these two households, one muslim and one christian, so his family didn't take the principal's concerns seriously of course, but it's still kind of a crazy story.
or maybe i only think it's interesting because i'm actually here.
other than caring way too much about school, i think this weekend i'm going to try and go to both the egyptian museum and khan al-khalili (which is this big market here in cairo). hopefully. i don't think the homework will be too bad this weekend, but that means i really should spend some time reviewing.
i don't know. in general i'm having a really good time here, but there are a lot of things that just make living here so uncomfortable that i can't help but complain. i'm really excited to come home in august, but i think (i hope) that as soon as i get home i'll want to come back.
posted by Dana at 1:37 PM
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