Sondheim Solves Everything

Seriously, who else do I ever turn to to explain life in meaningful, rhyming, clever, everything-would-be-perfect-if-only-I-could-write-lyrics-that-well terms?

The song on my mind today is "Sorry-Grateful" from the musical Company, one bit in particular:

Everything's different; nothing's changed...
Only maybe slightly rearranged.

You're sorry-grateful, regretful-happy,
why look for answers where none occur?
You'll always be what you always were,
which has nothing to do with—all to do with her.

I can only assume that the "her" in this case is Cairo—though lord knows it's been other hers before—and while the song and show are technically about the uncertain happiness surrounding marriage (ew), really that same idea can transfer to any human experience ever I think. Just the way in which experiences affect you and your identity/identities and shape you into the person you would probably be anyway except somehow, subtlely, totally different. Does that make sense? I just really love that last couplet. The whole song really.

Anyway, my point here (which I promise I'll get to) is not that I'm sorry or regretful to be in Cairo, and maybe Sorry-Grateful's a bit too melancholy to be entirely appropriate right now. ('Cause like, dude! I'm in Cairo!) But what's currently most important is the "everything's different; nothing's changed" part. Sometimes I forget how life is always life. How I always have classes, how I always have homework, how I'm always bad at going to sleep at a reasonable time and at waking up in the morning, how I'm always liable to catch colds at inopportune times. How I always put off doing laundry for far longer than I should. How there's always an awesome lunch place down the street that I always go to between classes. How there're always people around me who I really do like. How nothing central to the human condition ever actually changes.

So I drink Fanta apple (!) instead of apple juice, so I eat koshari instead of burritos and ful instead of peanut butter, so I walk down city streets instead of across campus. Life is still the same and that's not a bad thing that's a great thing, I think. Because the little things that change, the things that make it seem so different, also make everything wonderful and exciting and new and happy, but the big things being the same is what keeps you sane. Or something like that. Makes you realize that humanity is humanity.

(...Although, really? Classes already? At eight am? Seriously? Haha. Oh wellllll.)

Sorry for being rambly and philosophical, I thought I had something to say but maybe not.

But yeah, the past few days have just been the start of classes, the start of homework. Buying books, reading papers, forgetting to do homework, deciding which classes to take. My final schedule is as follows, though, I think:

 

So that should be good. MSA's going to be crazy intense. I should probably be doing homework for that right now, actually...oh well. 'Amiyya and media Arabic will probably be pretty laid back and vocab-y, though, maybe balance that out. Inshallah. And I'm super excited for both of the content courses despite their awkward timing and slightly intimidating workloads. So I'll let you know how they go once the semester's underway. Because I'm sure you all care SO MUCH. Seriously though. I'm betting they'll be rull cool.

I guess the IR professor (who has a Wikipedia page) is like, a member of the Shura council, which, what?! I mean I think he was appointed, not elected, but still. Like where are we, how is this real? During the first lecture, he was all, "oh yeah, and then the president of Iran invited me to give a talk there..." and it was just ... seriously? Seriously you're our professor? So it seemed pretty cool, he totally knew what he was talking about, plenty organized, et cetera. And while some of the other people here know a lot about modern history/politics, the formation of the Middle East and so on, I definitely don't. So I think I'm going to learn a lot from this class. Yay.

Also, Islam and Politics. We'll see how that one goes. It's a different professor for the first two weeks than for the rest of the semester—the former is I think a religious scholar at al-Azhar, whereas as far as I know the latter is ... I don't know, a normal academic. (Haha. Sorry, I'm a bad person. I just mean like an ostensibly-secular/neutral political scientist or something. Haven't actually met her yet so maybe not. Dunno.) Anyway, the first lecture was just basic early Islamic history—which is to say, the same first lecture as every Islam class ever—which was fine; the second was an overview of the importance of shari'a and fiqh and stuff like that. Also fine, aside from what I think were a lot of made-up statistics, but I'm still waiting for the course to hit its stride so we'll see. I'm excited. I mean this is kind of what I live for you know? This is my class. Islam and Politics. Bring it on.

Anyway I reeeeally should go do homework. (grumble grumble procrastination.) We're meeting later to go to a lecture/discussion that sounds like it should be pretty cool, so I'll keep y'all updated on that but that means fus7a-ing it up now. Mmmmmmm al-Kitaab. But yay Cairo!

Okay homework time go.