On the Way Home

So I'm sitting here using my free hour of wireless at Charles de Gaulle, trying to beat the battery on my computer before it dies. It's been a long night/morning, and will continue to be pretty long for a little bit. Sigh.

Lebanon was definitely an experience. There were some very strange things about being there, some things tending towards the negative, but for the most part I really just ate up being back there. It is....indescribably unique.

At this point, sitting in the airport of a Western country, I'm switching back into my American-raised Western mode...the part where I stop worrying whether the soles of my feet are facing anyone, and when I can start to actually meditate on my varied study abroad experience - mostly in Egypt, but I certainly learned a lot from my stints in Jordan and Lebanon. I can't wait to meditate from my bed, before or after rereading Harry Potter (or the new Terry Brooks novel...well not new, but I've been abroad...). But for now, airport bench suffices.

Holiday wishes to everyone else out there, and hope your enjoying time with family. My family don't really know I'm coming home early, and that my sister is picking me up at the airport to bring me to our house in Western Mass. That should be a pleasant homecoming - assuming I'm conscious (this really has been a traumatic few days for sleep). But I'm feeling happy now. A sort of deep kind of happiness, which is more than I can say about while I was in Egypt. I'm just glad I can get somewhere where I can just relax and not be anything in particular. Thank God.

Jordan: A Different Country Completely

Hello there, anyone who's still bothering to glance at this.

So I'm in Jordan at the moment. It was a bit of a rough start getting here from Sinai, because the ferry was late by about seven hours, and then didn't leave/arrive for another long period - so I wound up in a strange city at 1 AM in holiday season (it's Eid al-Adha here), having to bargain down raised hotel prices and very tired. Eventually we stumbled into a room, went to sleep, and woke up well-rested (or at least I did). Matt (Groh) had gotten sick overnight, so I went out looking for medicine and stuff, exploring the city in the daylight. It was such a lovely change from Egypt. I sat in a park, where there were green things, and benches, and picnic tables, and a playground for kids. Said kids were all running around, playing, laughing. Everyone was well-dressed, clean, quiet. The facilities were the right size for the amount of people using them, which is never the case in Egypt. There was no trash, and the weather was gorgeous. So I wonder how I'm going to feel when I get back to the US. Seriously.

So later that day we took a bus to Petra, where we relaxed for a whole day before visiting the ruins. It was really nice to take a load off, having had a sort of gogogogo mentality since Sinai, and just relax in a warm room, meet backpackers and hear interesting stories. As I've mentioned, I was reading a really geeky romance fantasy book to pass the time. I didn't finish, so I kind of want to go find it at a library in the US and do so.

Petra was phenomenal. It's really hard to understand what buildings carved out of the mountain are like until you see them. Especially the Monastery part of the complex, which is all the way at the top of one of the mountains. But there are other things, like the amphitheatre and some lesser facades. Also, the hiking area was just gorgeous. Pictures to come in the (relatively near!) future.

Yesterday morning we got up at 5:45 to catch a 6:30 bus to Amman, the capital and largest city. It's similar here too: almost no trash, clean shops and people, the food is great. We met up with Anne Wilborn who was in Alex with us, and had dinner at this great artsy restaurant. We did all of the important sights in about two hours because, seriously, the city isn't really that old. It was actually built on the site of older things to make it feel older, I think. But it's amusing for me to think that the biggest problem with Amman is the possibility of boredom after living here for a while. Which is a lot more than I can say about Cairo or even Alex. Because Alex is boring, but also dirty and a lot of other things.

Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in, snag a relaxing lunch with Anne and then head to the airport early and curl up with a book, waiting for my flight. I'm pretty excited to be almost on the return home, but I'm enjoying this part of my abroad experience enough to be patient. But Lebanon should be wonderful, if Jordan is this 'good'.

I hope everything's going well for all of you in other countries (read: Europe), and for those still at Midd celebrating the end of finals/Christmas. Also: Hannah (W), are you going to be around for J-term at all? Cause I should. It'd be cool to see you at Xenia sometime.

I'll try and post something when I get to Beirut. Toodles.

So.

Obviously this is the first in a while from this blog. In not too long I won't be in Egypt (most Egyptians sort of chuckle when you talk about Sinai) - and I'm fine with that.

On the whole it's been a good experience - at the end. But Egypt is wearing for a lot of reasons: ignorant people, lack of services, lack of respect for history (even Islamic, sometimes), and lack of decent food. There are very, very few choices for anything here, which means conformity is the only real option. I was uncomfortable with what I knew about Egyptian culture when I got here, and having been forced to cope with it for three months has strengthened my...awareness that I am not going to miss it.

That said, there are good things in Egypt: the people are incredibly nice (for the most part), very hospitable (almost to a fault) and you almost never have to worry about crime in Egypt. My first impressions were mostly those of someone who barely spoke the language, didn't know what is normal, and really just wanted something to work right (which doesn't happen in Egypt). Granted, my first day in Cairo was certainly far from ideal, but now that I speak well enough to get by I know that there is almost no time you should feel unsafe (at least, as a male) in Egypt's cities. Maybe uncomfortable with the gestures and occasional stares (you're a foreigner), but still safe.

Irregardless of all that, I'm glad to be getting out. Jordan and Lebanon will be a great change, and I promise to take lots of pictures. The return home may be direct or may include a brief stay in Istanbul, Turkey (depending on how eager I feel to just go home). There are options. For now, I'm just glad to be finishing up and getting ready for what I've been actually looking forward to.

Spring Schedule

So, to completely gloss over my recent trip to Upper Egypt, I have an incomplete but for the moment passable Spring schedule, which is as follows:

GIS - TR 8-9:15 AM, W 1:30-4:15 (I have no idea how I'm going to motivate myself for that one)

Intro to the Philosophical Tradition - MW 11:15-12:05, F 10:10-11:00

Identity in French Literature - MWF 9:05-9:55 AM (though I'm going to sit in on FREN 221 and see if I don't die. the subject matter looks more interesting and it'd be nice to skip ahead a bit, if I can force my French to improve quickly).


The fourth class remains to be figured out. I'm interested in the Romance Linguistics course, but the Wednesday class falls on the GIS lab period I have, so I have to try and switch with someone in the Tuesday lab if I really want the class. If not, there are a few other options I'm interested in: Western Musical History Part II, 19th Century European Painting and Sculpture, maybe an intro Econ course. Maybe something very different. Who knows.

I also may try taking a poetry workshop as a fifth class. I have the approval from Parini already, so I'm going to try and go ahead with it. Awesome.

That's it for now, I'll summarize the Luxor-Aswan trip a little later.

Updates

So I've officially gotten over my sickness. I ate Egyptian street-food and felt fine afterwards, which means that my stomach has regained its hardiness. Hurray for lack of digestive problems!

Tomorrow evening we leave for Upper Egypt (the Saeed). The train ride should take about 17 hours from Alex, which....I'm not too thrilled about. But it gives me time to space out I guess, which is alright enough. We get to run around a fair bit on our own once we get down there though, and I'm excited (and a little wary) to float down the Nile in a felucca. Because it's flowing water we should be alright in terms of mosquitoes and such, but still. It's just nice to get out of the Alexandria area, which is kind of dull after a while. Pretty, but dull.

I may or may not spend time on the last few free days of the vacation in Cairo, seeing the Museum and a few other must-sees. Pictures to be taken and posted at such a time as Facebook allows me.

Still trying to hammer out travel details. Which means I have to actually be decisive. Gar. But thankfully I have the option now of being indecisive, thanks to a long chain of frustrated emails exchanged with financial aid.

Again, I hope everyone is enjoying/feeling better in their respective situations abroad and at home. I hope to wake up and find a better four years in store (i.e. Obama has won the election), for all of us.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Struck By a Fish

After neglecting this blog for a period of time (again), I feel this event pertinent to my experience here in Egypt. The other night a lot of us went to the Fish Market, which is probably the best (or most expensive, as I've heard) restaurant in the city. It was certainly some of the best food I've tasted in ages - most Egyptian food is really simple, and consists of bread, beans, meat, potatoes....lots of carbs and protein, essentially. Anyway, there were real-dead vegetables at this place, which is a sign of how fancy it was. Not having eaten fish in a while (and having enjoyed the last time I did greatly) I ordered some here. It was quite good. After dinner we left to go get some ice cream by the sea, which was also nice.

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling as if an alien were trying to burst out of my stomach, and spent a considerable amount of time in the bathroom between 3-5 AM (more or less, I didn't exactly check). So these past few days have been spent feeling extremely weak and incapable of eating anything that isn't a piece of bread. But I'm better right now, or so it seems. It's a more than a little frustrating that I missed the trip to the White+Black deserts, because I was really looking forward to that. Maybe we can round up a bunch of folk in the future.

The past bit of time has been relatively uneventful. More of my feeling generally apathetic to doing anything. Part of that is the setting, part of that is because I don't really have anyone to do anything with. Traveling by oneself is alright, but kind of lame at the same time. Also, by myself I have to be a lot more watchful of my stuff, etc. Egypt isn't that bad, but still. It isn't home in that regard.

Speaking of which, the email addressing J-term class sign-ups has brought up the issue of when I'll be returning. As financial aid has deemed fit to more or less forget part of my package, I may have to return earlier, and with fewer places under my belt. Sigh. I have arguing yet to do, but honestly.

I'll reiterate that, despite my (I assume) negative-seeming comments about being here, Egypt isn't bad. It just isn't....anything in particular. For me, at least. There are some folks in the program who I can tell are enjoying it, but I'm having difficulty. Also, because we're so stupid in terms of language we can't really learn anything of substance (or that we haven't already read about in classes) from the Egyptians. Kind of silly. The whole thing feels as though it is without nuance. At least this is a good experience for language use and acquisition.

Finally, if anyone is at all interested in a visit to Egypt, complete with complementary/caustic tour-guide, I would advise them to say so soon, as I have to work out my return to the US, in whatever simple/complex form that takes.

I hope everyone is enjoying themselves, regardless of locale/climate.