I realize now that other than writing to let my friends (and strangers) know what is going on here in Cairo, this blog is also a means through which I will later look back and remember little snap shots of my time here. I'm going to write about a few things that I would like to remember.
I hardly mention things that happen in the day to day. Sometimes, these normal things tend to slip our minds because some "exciting" thing will take precedence and make its way into writing, meanwhile, we might forget the drudgery of the day to day and forget what really made the experience what it was. Somewhere along the way, I think I've looked around and realized that my extremely normal experiences have been, in some ways, just as magical as those cool trips I've been on. In some ways, they are infinitely of more worth.
One of my favorite normal things to do is go to my Egyptian Colloquial class. I love this class because it is the one class where I get to interact extensively with not only my professor but also with other students. We're a pretty rowdy and random bunch. We come from all over: Texas, London, Minnesota, France, Princeton, North Carolina, and California. Then, there is our professor: Ustazza Hanan, native Egyptian who used to teach at Middlebury. She is a small middle-aged woman who calls us all her habibi/habibti and will still get our names wrong sometimes. Half of the class time, I find that I'm making some type of ruckus with Gus and Lia, Guillaume is being misunderstood yet again by the professor and he just trails off and gives up on what he is asking, or the professor can't understand what Lucy is saying because she is British.
Today, it was the professor's birthday. We had a "dish party" (potluck) and all brought different foods to celebrate. She brought a giant cake and stuck a single candle in it. After we sang "Sanna Helwa" to her in Arabic, she struggled to blow out the candle for a while (it was one of those magic ones that keep coming back) and then proceeded to cut us huge slices of cake. She kept encouraging us to get more food and pointing at the desserts saying "Torta Ketir!". After being in college for the past couple of years and being around starving students who grapple at food and run to kill each other for a spot in lines, it is refreshing to have someone tell you to get more food.
I love that we have a professor who treats us like her children; its nice to be around someone who reminds you that even though you're supposed to be growing up in college, there's is still room to be a kid. As much as I have complained about the Egyptian bureaucracy (bureaucrazy) and the strange dynamics of AUC being a posh school, I have to admit that I do experience real Egyptians here-- real Egyptians who are warm and loving, even if an academic setting would bar that from actually being said out loud.
Well, I think we say it out loud anyway. Haha. I can't even count how many times we've told her that she is the best Arabic professor ever, or equally numerous, the times we've tried to get her to say that we are her favorite class (She says that she loves all of her classes equally, ha. Fine, be that way).
I guess what I really mean to say by all of this is that I will really miss that class. Bah. To conclude, "Fein Kevin?"
(Kevin is the mysterious student who disappeared after getting sick, but never remembered to drop the course and therefore remains enrolled...Everyone once in a while, we'll ask the professor where he is...he has become something of an urban legend.)
