Orientation Week

Man it's been busy, what with orientating and all. Hard to believe we've been here five days already. Over 1/32 of my time in Cairo is gone gone gone and it makes me sad.

That said, things are going pretty awesome for now. Matthew and Nadia—the Americans who run the program—are like the coolest. people. ever., as are all the Egyptian Arabic instructors. Everyone's really young and funny and sweet and helpful beyond belief, and it's great. I am so so so impressed with the AMIDEAST program thus far. I mean, I was impressed by it on paper when I looked it up before applying, but it has just surpassed my expectations in the best of ways.

Um my memories of the past week are becoming muddled so I'd better hurry up and write stuff down. One of the days of orientation, we met most of the actual professors for the content courses, and while they seem interesting they're also more aloof and professorial and english-speaking than the Arabic instructors, which is not super fun. Classes haven't started yet, but I might switch from international relations to media arabic during the first week if the teacher turns out to be significantly awesomer. We'll see.

Anyway, for the past couple of days we've had a couple of hours a day of survival colloquial Arabic (hereafter known as 'amiyya) which has been really helpful. For the first time in a long time I feel like I'm Actually Learning Arabic. It's a good—great—*amazing*—feeling, and reminds me of why I wanted to learn the language in the first place.

What else has been going on? Aside from survival 'amiyya classes and various lectures about academics, intercultural learning, gender issues, etc., we also had the opportunity yesterday to mingle with a group of Egyptian students that AMIDEAST works with. It was great—mixing English and Arabic, very low awkward level because of the organized group setting, etc. Later on in the semester we might buddy up with them to do a language-partners type thing. Inshallah it'll be helpful and fun, I see no reason why it shouldn't be. Hopefully we get to hang out with some of the people we met before then, though. Cool cool.

Really the only awkward thing about that whole situation was telling people I was a religious studies major, because they assumed I knew more than I do, or that I had taken a ton of classes, or something (I've taken six, all either intro courses or stuff to do with christianity+gender+american politics), and were asking me confusing questions about my opinions of Islam that I tried to answer but couldn't seem to do, at least not in a manner that was satisfactory to them. It was just like, ok, I'm not really prepared to do this. And one of them was a theology student at al-Azhar which made it all the more intimidating. I think I might stick to telling people I'm just an Arabic major or something…we'll see.

But yay interacting with ACTUAL EGYPTIANS within the first week of the program, as opposed to in Morocco when that happened, um, never. :D

This evening was also so much fun. The female students and Arabic instructors were supposed to have a discussion about gender/harassment/etc. but really we ended up just going out and getting dinner. Which was kind of a fiasco but mostly hilarious. We went to this Yemeni restaurant and it was super perplexing even to the teachers, mainly because they ran out of food (what?) and didn't have napkins or any cutlery other than spoons, and just kept bringing random food out and throwing it on the table, I guess as a replacement for the food people had ordered that they didn't have. Lots of meat with bones in it that looked like it had recently been hacked off a sheep, and in fact probably had. To be eaten with a spoon? Apparently. So that was bizarre, but I just ate lots of delicious rice and vegetables so I'm not complaining. Anyway, the six of us students chatted with the three Arabic instructors, a surprising amount in Arabic, and it was really chill and funny and awesome. Dinner was on them which was super nice of them, and then afterward we walked around a bit and they bought us sugarcane juice and boxes of sweets as well. Mostly they were just ridiculously generous and generally awesome. It was pretty great. Yay.

I know I know pictures. I have some of the apartment and from tonight but uploading'd probably be slow and I want to sleep. Today was the first time we made it to class on time and without getting even slightly lost, so that was good. Today was also the first day I didn't take a hindersome late-evening nap! Go me. I should probably go to sleep now though so the same can be accomplished tomorrow, when I embark on the mysterious "Cairo Amazing Race" that we'll all be participating in. Night! Sorry for being boring and wordy.