Two weekends

Surprisingly, Egypt has been treating me pretty well these days. Despite the fact that I’m on week number two (and entering week three) of a terrible cold, I decided to ignore it completely and go about my business as usual.

Last weekend, my Societies and Cultures of the Ancient Near East Class went to Tell al-Farama (the site of Ancient Poliseum) and the Suez Canal. I was bound and determined to go, mostly because of the two months I spent writing a paper on the Anglo-French Relationship and Egypt (1876-1882) last semester, which focused largely on matters relating to the Suez Canal. We crossed the canal via the Mubarak Peace bridge, just as ships in a convoy finished making their way past. When we rolled over the canal, my professor announced that we’d just entered the continent of Asia, something that I’d never thought about before. That means that I’ve got five continents down—North and South America (Peru), Europe (Italy, Frankfurt’s airport, Zurich on the way home), Asia (Egypt, Jordan, Turkey soon), and Africa (Egypt). I can see myself perhaps traveling to Australia in the future if I can find a good reason to go, but Antarctica might be a bit more of a stretch. I really don’t like being cold.

We went to Farama first, which is one of the most complete sites I’ve been to. Tannis and Bubastis were really just fields of fallen granite with (in Tannis’s case at least) interesting statuary sprinkled throughout the site. Farama actually has foundations, which illustrate the set-up of the town. It’s also home to a massive defensive fort whose walls have been excavated, but the interior remains buried under heaps of sand. My professor said that no one will likely ever excavate it, because of the vast amount of labor needed to clear the sand. Farama is in an isolated area far from where regular tourists venture, so there’s not much profit to be had in figuring out what lies in the Tell. It was a beautiful day, and since we could see the Mediterranean at the far edge of the horizon, the air was clear.

We drove along the area where the biggest tank battle since World War II took place (during the October 1973 war) and experienced the weird phenomenon that takes place when ships sailing in the Suez Canal appear to be sailing through sand from a distance. My Professor spent the time between Farama and Suez telling us about the history of the Canal—and my dad, who proofreads all my papers and knows exactly how boring this topic can be, would be astonished over how interesting it can actually become.

Suez and Port Tewfiq are really depressing cities—rebuilt after 1973, they’re just ugly. However, we did get to see where the Suez Canal empties into the Gulf and watch a grain tanker go through the canal. I got a phone call from my roommates while in Suez, and two hours later I was back in Cairo, dressed up, on my way to see Carmen at the Cairo Opera House, performed by a traveling Spanish flamenco troupe. It was slightly surreal.

The next day we all got up early and the five of us piled into one taxi that (of course) got lost taking us to Islamic Cairo and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. The mosque has been restored and is very dramatic. We climbed into the Minaret and were able to look across of all of Cairo---we could even see our apartment building.

I carried my obsession with house museums with me to Cairo, and Miranda and Joanna and I paid to go into the Gayer-Anderson Museum. It cost us twenty pounds, which was a total rip-off, because if you happen to be a tourist who understands and reads Arabic, you can see on the signs where it says “Egyptian students—one pound.” We have student IDS from the American University in Cairo, which technically make us Egyptian students, but the clerk at the museum wasn’t budging since we clearly are not from Egypt. The Gayer-Anderson museum is made up of two restored, sixteenth century homes that are absolutely beautiful and full of mashrabiyya screens and ornately decorated Persian furniture. We were enthralled and really glad we’d paid the price of admission (I have some really pretty photographs). From Gayer-Anderson we went to a local restaurant that serves the best falafel in Cairo according to the New York Times (and it was pretty darn good, actually), though we couldn’t figure out why there were bananas in the baba ghanoush.

We then found our way to the Street of the Tentmaker’s and Bab Zuweila (one of the medieval gates into Cairo) where I started my souvenir shopping. We wandered through the markets until we left the tourist section completely behind and ended up walking past stands selling rabbits and pigeons and every variety of vegetable imaginable.

This weekend we hired a driver and went to visit Saqqara, the site of Djoser’s step pyramid. I went inside my first pyramid—the Pyramid of Teti—which on the outside is a crumbled heap that conceals an intact burial chamber. We had to bend nearly in half to descend the passage leading to the burial chamber and got to see the original sarcophagus (the mummy is at the Egyptian Museum). You can see the Pyramids at Dashour and the Pyramids of Giza from Saqqara, and we got our first real sense of how many Pyramids there actually are in Egypt! We got yelled at a record number of times for trying to go into areas that were blocked off to tourists/take pictures without flash inside the tombs, but it was a wonderful time. We also spent the day posing as Canadians—on our way into Saqqara we were stopped at a checkpoint. Before the soldier came up to the window our driver asked where we were from. When we answered—honestly—America, he clicked his tongue, shook his head, and lied flat out to the soldier, telling him he had six Canadians in the van. After he pulled away he said it was better for us to be Canadians—if we’d told the truth we would have had to wait likely an hour for a police escort to join us, who would have been sitting smushed between the driver and tommy in the front seat.

We’re packing so much in because—as of today—I only have twenty eight days left in Egypt, and seven of them are going to be spent in Luxor and Aswan! I’m very excited about this—while I like Egypt, I can’t wait to be done with AUC. So that’s one Nile cruise, five exams, one powerpoint presentation, one group presentation, and one paper to go until December 20 when my flight leaves Cairo International for Istanbul.

It was seventy five degrees in Cairo the other day, and I was freezing cold. It’s sixty six degrees now, and I’m sitting in my lovely living room using a (borrowed) internet connection, wearing long sleeves and a light jacket zipped up to my chin. This is perhaps going to be a huge problem in January when I return to 30 degree weather and the possibility of snow. Which, I guess, brings me to my next point.

As most of my family and friends likely already know, my plans have changed. I will not be staying at the American University in Cairo for a second semester. My frustration with the administration and my dislike of the new campus notwithstanding, I still might have decided to stay except for the most crucial factor: the quality of my education.

AUC—touted as one of the best schools in all of Africa and the Middle East—is just not what I was expecting academically. The comparison that all of the international students make is that going to AUC is like going to high school—which doesn’t work for me because I liked my high school, very much actually. I planned my two semesters at AUC very carefully, and I devoted my current semester to fulfilling my outstanding 200 level history requirements. My next semester was supposed to be devoted to fulfilling SIS requirements, done through a combination of political science and area studies courses. I’m in one political science class right now – Comparative Politics of the Middle East—that I was very excited about initially. I love politics. I really do. I also think the Middle East is pretty intriguing, which you might have figured out already. This class, I figured, was tailor-made for my interests and taking it at AUC would offer me the opportunity to hear unique perspectives on the issues. Umm, well, not so much.

I learned more about the Middle East in the one marking period we spent on it in my ninth grade World Cultures class than I have so far in a 300 level, semester long college course. This particular course is taught like an eighth grade social studies class—except, again, I actually had a good social studies teacher in eighth grade, so I feel like writing that is an insult to her. I need to take foreign policy courses next semester for my functional concentration and I cannot take the chance that they will be as badly taught as Comparative Politics (Also: I’m not being overly critical. I know I have high standards, but even people who don’t care about school as much as I do agree that this class is the biggest joke of their college careers).

I’m not willing to risk the quality of my education and I’m certainly not willing to waste more time and money on AUC’s political science department, so I’m going back to AU for the spring semester. I’m registered for some fabulous courses: US Foreign Policy Toward the Middle East, taught by one of my all time favorite professors, a Counter-proliferation and WMD colloquia, Arab-Israeli Relations, Arabic, and a science GenEd. If I’ve figured it out right, going back to AU for the spring semester will allow me to essentially finish my International Studies degree, minus perhaps only one class. I’m also registered for a senior seminar in SIS, which means that next year I can write my history thesis on any topic I choose instead of being required to write on an international topic. This is fabulous because now I can write about some aspect of the history of the Pennsylvania Dutch community in Pennsylvania (I know, I know. But I love this topic).

The only regret I have is not being able to travel as extensively as I’d hoped, but I still have some things to look forward to. My plane ticket home is booked out of Ankara---Kelly and I are headed to Istanbul (I was bound and determined to see the Hagia Sophia for myself) for a few days, then taking a sleeper train to Ankara for Christmas with her sister. I’m scheduled to land at Dulles at 8:05 pm on December 26, and I’ve instructed my parents to bring my wool coat to the airport. I’m thinking now they should probably bring a parka (and mittens and a scarf and a hat and those little hunting hot hands packets) instead.

November 4

After we visited the Pyramids in August we had difficulty finding a taxi cab to take us back to the metro station for less than an exorbitant sum. We’d resolved to walk further down the street in hopes of catching a taxi further away, when a man driving a private car offered to take us instead. He offered half what the other drivers had requested, so we jumped at the offer. Kelly and Savannah and I were in the back, with Tommy up front. As soon as he started the car, the driver started talking politics with Tommy. He wanted to know what we thought about Barack Obama---and despite our best efforts to convince him otherwise, he said that he thought America would never elect the “black one.”

Tuesday night in the United States was Wednesday morning in Cairo. I got back from class on Tuesday and discovered that the sandstorm two weeks ago had disconnected our satellite. There was a pulsing, flashing “No Signal” every time we tried to turn it on. We ended up crashing a friend’s apartment—where his roommates were all asleep—to watch CNN’s election coverage via an actually connected satellite. We started watching at 4 A.M. after Pennsylvania had already been called, and stayed up, biting our nails, waiting as Ohio was called, and then Virginia. I called my parents at around 5:45 A.M. and my mother told me that she had personally counted my ballot and even had a picture of it on her camera phone. My precinct went 900 votes for McCain to 545 votes for Obama, but I count that a solid Democratic turnout.

At 6 A.M. Cairo time, the sun was already starting to rise when the polls closed in California. I cried when it flashed across the screen that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States. I had been waiting for that moment for four years—ever since, exhausted from band camp, I watched him give his famous speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. I didn’t always think he could do it, I didn’t always think he should, but since the day I watched him launch his campaign from my dorm room in February of my freshman year I was solidly behind Barack Obama. Last year I got up early, froze for hours in line, and skipped class to hear him speak with the Kennedy clan at AU. I signed my (very Republican) father up to receive news alerts from the Obama campaign, hoping maybe he would read them. I proudly taped my Obama sign in my window at home, which prompted my across the street neighbor to put out his McCain yard sign. I wore my Students for Barack Obama t-shirt to work at the shelter to encourage the residents to register and vote. My biggest regret about the summer is that in-between my job and internship, I didn’t have time to volunteer for the campaign. In August and September I begged my parents and my friends to email me news articles charting the progress of the race, because my internet connection wasn’t strong enough to load anything but basic gmail.

On Tuesday, we stayed up even after the race was called, watching McCain’s concession speech, waiting for the acceptance to begin. Two of my roommates who made the smart decision to go to bed arrived just in time to see the President Elect walk onto the stage. We all cried together as we listened to Barack Obama accept the overwhelming victory handed to him by the American people. The next day in class, one of my professors said it best. She said that for the first time in a long while, she was proud to be an American abroad. I am proud, too.


YES WE DID!

Astonishingly I Actually Have Schoolwork...

Today (Sunday): Submit 10 page paper about the history of Lebanon from a Shi'a perspective (written this weekend, fueled by Turkish coffee and Shirley Temples made with Lebanese grenadine. I know that I am kind of ten years old, but they're tasty.)

Monday: Colloquial Arabic Midterm (an oral examination, unfortunately)

Tuesday: Submit an as yet un-started 3,000 word paper on the 2003 Iraq War. No sweat. seriously.

Tuesday night into Wednesday morning: ELECTION PARTY. complete with pancakes and blueberry jam. I hope this one gets called early for my sanity/sleep/the possibility of attending classes on Wednesday.

Thursday: Societies and Cultures of the Ancient Near East Midterm (with semi-prepared essay about the ideology of Mesopotamian kingship. ugh.)


Hopefully I'll have something more substantial to say this weekend after I sleep for 24 hours straight.

Success

Signed, sealed, delivered, received...and in one week, counted.




(in other news, it rained today in the desert for the second time in a week. this is certainly very, very weird.)

Since coming back from Eid I have:
Had three midterms (one of which was a surprise)
Gone on a field trip into the Nile Delta
Endured a housing crisis
Found an apartment
Moved into said apartment
And not slept.

When I finish my group presentation on the Gulf Wars and manage to subscribe to an internet service for our beautiful and somewhat gaudy apartment that has a view of a sliver of the Nile from one of the bedrooms I'll finally be able to finish my description of our trip AND respond to the backlog of emails in my inbox AND hopefully post pictures of the illuminated crown molding in our living room/dining room.

Ballot oh Ballot where are you?

I applied for my absentee ballot in person at the York County Elections offices in the basement of the old courthouse the week before I left for Egypt.

The office was deserted except for me, and when I got there I was prepared to do battle to get exactly what I wanted from them: an absentee ballot sent in the very first batch of ballots prepared to ensure it got to me on time.

During the run-up to the primary election in the spring I had my mother (who happens to be one of the official election people at our local precinct) call the voting office no less than three times to see when my ballot would be mailed to me in DC because I was testing the system to see if they would send them out in time for me to receive it in Cairo. They failed that test (apparently because of court cases that held up the official ballot) but when I spoke to them in August they guaranteed that the ballots for the general election would be mailed out no later than mid-September.

I had to tape a post-it note to my official absentee ballot request because the blank for the address wasn't long enough (causing endless amusement) and explain more than five times exactly what I was planning on doing in Egypt. I also made them promise that they would notify my parents when the ballot was sent out so I could know when to expect it. They were surprisingly accommodating, actually.

The Elections office notified my parents that my ballot had been mailed on September 15, the same day the woman at International Student services informed me that the mail office "hadn't been built yet" and that the entire campus had not received any mail at the new address despite having officially moved more than two weeks before.

Two weeks after I made my inquiry about mail the International Student's Mail Desk was set up, right inside the entrance to campus. There were ten letters for over 400 international students, none of which happened to be election material or the card that my Nana sent me during the first week of September to test the mail services. I'm not sure who to blame for my ballot not getting here yet--the general Egyptian mail services aren't known for being too on top of things, but AUC certainly complicated the situation by not having the facilities to receive mail for more than a month, so at this point I'm splitting the blame.

I check every day that I get on campus early enough for the mail desk to be open--and so far, no ballot has shown up (and neither has my Nana's card).

Since I am voting from overseas my ballot technically does not have to be in until November 12, in which case it will only be counted if a Florida 2000 style recount would need to take place. I am not satisfied--I want my vote to be tallied on November 4th, because I want it to actually count towards the vote totals in my heavily Republican precinct and county--though it does look like Obama will take Pennsylvania with a comfortable margin (plus 11 in the latest poll data from fivethirtyeight.com).

If I haven't received my official ballot two weeks before November 4, which is looking increasingly likely, I do have the option to download and print a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, which I will then have to FedEx from Cairo to the United States to make sure it arrives on time (preferably by October 31, the deadline for normal, domestic absentee ballots). I think that this is the way to go to ensure that my vote is counted--which is why I spent two hours trying to load the Overseas Voting Foundation's website this afternoon instead of doing my homework.

So, Mom, if you happen to open a really weird absentee ballot on election night, you'll know its mine. Make sure its counted!