Remember Us?

Wow, it's been a really long time since our last post. Classes are now in full swing, and between homework, Claire's studying for the LSAT, and the surprisingly large amounts of time it seems to take to do basic chores like run errands and cook dinner, we haven't had much time to go to internet cafes. The good news, though, is that we now have internet in our apartment, so regular posting should resume now. I don't think I realized how addicted I am to the internet until it became so hard to get access to it.

Classes are going quite well. Our MSA classes are moving at a brisk but reasonable pace. So far we have mostly been learning and practicing the alphabet, primarily by learning a very eclectic set of vocab words. The words were chosen not for usefulness but in order to show us how each letter looks and sounds when it appears at the beginning, middle, and end of a word. As a result, we don't yet know some really basic stuff like "excuse me" and "sorry," but we do know the words for elephant, rope, and--I kid you not--Pharaohnic aerator. Like a tool that was used to aerate the soil back when the Pharaohs ran Egypt. Yeah. Anyway, we are now finishing up this introductory section, and will soon be learning some more pertinent vocab and grammar.

Our ECA classes tend to be quite intense. Our teacher, Sherifa, is quite a character--a very short woman with a loud voice, a strong personality, and an imposing classroom presence. We are mostly learning a seemingly random set of grammatical structures, verb forms, and vocab words, a lot of it just as it comes up. Things seem to be getting a little bit more systematic this week--we're learning adjective pairs and how to form simple nominal sentences. However, it still feels somewhat scattered, and it seems to be part of her teaching strategy to overwhelm her students with material and then try to consolidate it later. Her class never ceases to be entertaining.

Oh, in other news, Ramadan started last Thursday. In terms of our day-to-day lives, that doesn't change a whole lot for us, except that the class schedule has changed to make the periods a little shorter. (We also bought a small Ramadan lamp for our apartment, which we are really enjoying). Most Egyptians are fasting between dawn and sunset, which means that it is extremely rude to eat or drink in public during those hours. That means we have mostly gone to cafes to eat lunch instead of eating our in the AUC courtyard, which is a minor inconvenience. (Some foreign students are fasting for Ramadan, but we aren't.) However, it is really interesting to see everyone congregated around outdoor tables at around 6:15 right before the fast is broken, with everyone staring at their food and dying to start eating. It has made me wonder, however, how people in the restaurant business survive in this country, since there is a whole month in which they have next to no customers at all. More musings about Ramadan will be forthcoming.

In other exciting news, we have bought a new spring mattress to replace the completely structureless pack-mattress we had been sleeping on, and, man, is it nice. Waking up without back pain is really wonderful. It's amazing how something like that can really improve your quality of life. We've also bought a small houseplant, which is beginning to make our apartment feel a little bit more like a home. We still need a side table, a small bookshelf, and some things to put on our extremely stark white walls, but we're getting there.

Finally, as an addendum to my post awhile back about getting scammed at the Pyramids, I actually went back there on an AUC-led tour on Saturday (Claire stayed home to study for the LSAT.) It was cool, but I have to say, I think a lot of the thrill of seeing the pyramids comes from the initial shock of seeing these enormous, 4,000-year-old structures in the middle of a modern city. Once that first moment of wonder passes, they are still very cool, but not to the same extent. Who knows, maybe the third time I go (I'll certainly go at least once more when my parents come) will be even more thrilling. I didn't get a chance to go inside any of the three largest pyramids, so I'll have to try that.

Alright, I have to go study now. Claire plans to write a post very soon. Most likely from here posts will stop being quite so much a play-by-play of what we're doing, and more thoughts about interesting things we observe. Like, for example, the fact that it seems to be impossible to get small bills here. Very few vendors have change for anything, and no one accepts large bills. I have no idea how a modern economy functions in a place where the hard currency is so illiquid. Anyway...

Oh, last thing. We have started enabling comments on all our new posts, so if you want to talk to us but don't want to go through the arduous process of emailing us, you can do that. Just click on the comments link at the bottom of any post.