Friday, June 11, 2010

All That Beef - Wrapped in Culture

Sorry about yesterday's lack of post! I had a bit of a late night, and I was just not up to the task. But as today will be spent lounging around the apartment doing laundry and homework (just like a Sunday back at school), I have plenty of time to fill you all in.

Yesterday morning we returned to St. Andrew's to observe some classes and work more on our lesson plans. The class I went to was absolutely adorable - they were studying parts of speech and doing an activity to sort words into their different categories. They argued animatedly over where each word went, and each possessed an enthusiasm for learning not found in the typical classroom. At one point, one student turned to me and said, "Excuse me what does SOOR (sour) mean?" I attempted to explain by talking about lemons and making a face. By the end of the class, all three of us observing were caught between a glowing kind of happiness and the urge to cry - these precious, excited kids don't have an easy road to travel, and many waste away their lives in Cairo dreaming of a resettlement that will never come. Realizing the state of these kids' lives hammered in the gravity of our task over the next 7 weeks and didn't really help with my anxiety over starting classes. However, a pep talk from Fiona, the director of our program at St. Andrew's, did much to calm my nerves - she told us that even if they don't learn a lick of English or Arabic, what we are bringing to them is a safe space where they can feel at home and form a community, which could radically change their lives in Cairo for the better. Though this task is just as huge, this emphasis certainly takes the pressure off my ability to write lesson plans.

After St. Andrew's, we stopped to grab lunch, and while looking at the menu an old woman in the street started talking to me in Arabic, patting my back, and gesturing to the sky. She was talking too fast for me to understand, and I immediately started panicking that I was doing something wrong - was my shirt too tight? Should I not be walking around with other guys from the program? Was she unhappy that my hair was uncovered? However, it turns out she was merely praying for me to find a good husband.

Later that night, I went out with two other girls from my program to grab dinner, and then meet an Egyptian friend of ours. We went to eat at McDonald's, which is pretty classy in comparison to Mickey D's back home. Their signature dish is the McArabia - 2 hamburger patties in a pita with some kind of yogurt sauce, lettuce, and tomato - which bears the slogan "all that beef wrapped in culture." It's alright (although some people on my program rave about it), but honestly I'd much rather stick to Egyptian street food - far more authentic and far cheaper. As we walked around waiting for our friend, we got an uncommon amount of stares. It is typical for men to call out to women here, but this amount of ogling and muttered discussion was out of the norm. We eventually realized that their interest was sparked from the diversity of our little group: one Arab girl who might or might not have been Egyptian (she's not, but most people couldn't tell), one black Muslim wearing a hijab, and me - obviously very white and western. The people we passed were all trying to figure us out: "How did they find each other? Is she Egyptian? But that one's definitely a foreigner..." etc. When we finally met our friend, we drove up to the Moatam, a mountain that overlooks the whole city. The view was spectacular, though unfortunately we couldn't make out the pyramids through the pollution. We spent the night chatting and laughing around a little plastic table in the breeze. We made it home as the sun was rising, and I slept all morning before waking up to work on my homework. Tonight, we're getting together as a group to watch some of the World Cup.. if only I can get my work done before then!


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