stupidity

There's an strange thing about living in a country other than your own, especially if it is a worse country. You give a lot of slack. Cultural experiences, authentic endeavors--they all add up to a sense of tolerance to the kind of stupidity and incompetence that you wouldn't excuse so quickly at home. The longer you stay, the more, though, you start noticing this complete lack of ability to perform basic tasks that surrounds you.

At least in the States employees at fast food restaurants know how to make the items on their menu. In the States, if you order something in a McDonald's or somewhere, you won't stand there for fifteen minutes while the idiot who can't recognize the word "egg" (in multiple languages) consults with two other employees. And the item wouldn't be made wrong, served cold if supposed to be warm. And when the manager comes out to run the register, because you've been waiting for ten minutes because the ogre at the front can't work it, he wouldn't refuse to break a ten dollar note. Well--if all this happened anyway, in America, you'd have something to complain about. In America, if all this happened, and you took one bite of whatever it was they tried to serve you and found it literally too cold, too covered in processed cheese sauce, too disgusting (and not to mention, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE EXACT SAME ITEM ORDERED YESTERDAY), and then you told the manager you didn't even want it (even after all the trouble it took to pay), and threw it away in front of him...in America, the manager might give a shit. It wouldn't just be a normal day. And if you were in a university food court, you maybe wouldn't even have to be eating in that crappy restaurant anyway because universities in America have cafeterias. And, you wouldn't walk to your office and find the door closed off with a rope that says "Fire Exit" causing you to walk all the way around the building to get through another door.

The paragraph above is a PERFECT example of the kinds of complaints from over-privileged, spoiled white jerks who come home from a two-week trip to Europe with a laundry list of ways "this is done different from my country and therefore wrong" that I used to spend time ridiculing. The paragraph above is racist, petty, overly reactive, and it doesn't really jive with the "everyone is equally special and apparent differences in ability are based in differences in blah blah blah" vibe that enlightened-folks-abroad are supposed to have. You're not supposed to go to wherever and come home complaining about the food or service or whatever. You're supposed to come home beaming about how you were the first white person so-and-so has ever seen, how the women aren't really oppressed at all because they love wearing sheets and marrying strangers, how their handicrafts have been handed down through generations and definitely aren't imports from China. Then you tack the photograph of yourself with those three little kids standing around you who had never seen a camera before on your facebook page.

Thing is--an idiot is an idiot, no matter their origin.

travels in america and NEVER fly American Airlines

So I spent the second half of December and all of January in the United States. It was a somewhat last minute decision and one that I'm immensely happy with. I went home primarily to visit with my boyfriend, the inimitable Aaron, my family, my friends, and, secondarily, to breathe air that doesn't leave chemical burns in my lungs. I sort of over-committed my time--I had work to do electronically for my professor in Egypt, work to do for one of my favorite Arizona professors, and work to finish for one of my fall courses. I also had a lot of sitting around to do, as well.

Highlights
1. Aaron and I spent a lot of time together. Usually this would be a lowlight, but I'm feeling charitable.
2. Disneyland: Cara and I took Aaron to the happiest place on Earth. We rode Space Mountain a lot of times, got funny pictures on the rides that take pictures, didn't get too wet on Splash Mountain, ate at the Blue Bayou, and no one got hurt. Success.
3. I went to Aaron's work, where I was on edge the entire time because I didn't know if they might try to put me on air. I wouldn't blame them, obviously.
4. I saw Jordann! Jordann is one of my best friends but I hadn't seen her since August 2008. She came blazing through the Southwest on her way to seek fame and fortune in LA, and she was kind enough to stop by Tucson to visit me, bring along her boyfriend, go to a dinner at a restaurant that proved to be way overpriced, and share the magic that is the Bumpit (as seen on TV). A year and a half is too long to postpone our next reunion.
5. It's impossible to live in Egypt, visit the United States, and not mention the food. As I've told many, food in Egypt is pretty much all the same stuff you get in the States, but worse. A little worse or a lot worse depending on the circumstance, but almost always worse. So it was a highlight to get to eat greens (always a little wilty and/or unrecognizable on the Cairo street carts), Mexican food (not Tex-Mex), etc.
6. I saw a number of my close friends, such as Nich, Ben, Matt, Nolan, Dave, and others, whom I hadn't seen in a long time, and it was awesome.

So, I was happy to spend six weeks in Tucson. And Egypt didn't make my return easy. My return itinerary had me stopping in Dallas and London; my final destination was obviously Cairo. Because Cairo is not in U.S. overseas territories, Europe, India, or Asia, it falls into the "Other International Travel" category of baggage allowance, which is "One bag carry-on. No charge. Two bags checked. No charge." Of course, the hellacious bitch at the American Airlines desk charged me $50 on my second bag, in direct contradiction of the posted policy. I argued the point but there was nothing I could do besides cry (which I did, with gusto). Already mad about flying on such a second-rate, lying airline, I was pretty upset to leave Aaron--my tears of anger and injustice were almost like tears of sadness and separation. Then, I got to Dallas, and the flight to London was delayed by an hour. Once we actually left, the beers were $6 and the wine was $7 ON AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT. And if you wanted one of those bags with the socks and eye shades, you had to pay $6. I hope American Airlines goes out of business--or at least made their tickets cheaper than the other airlines which perform SERVICES.


Anyway, that hour delay brought me into London a little late. I cruised from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 without more than ten minutes' delay--a bad omen. When I got to the desk to check into my flight to Cairo, I was informed that it left ten minutes prior. So I had to go all the way back to Terminal 3, which took 75 minutes. American Airlines rebooked me on an EgyptAir flight five hours later and assured me that my bags would get routed in the right direction. And the lady printed me off a 10GBP voucher so that I could buy basically a bottle of water.


When I got to Cairo, needless to say, my bags had gotten lost. EgyptAir claims they never even received them. Apparently five hours is not long enough for Heathrow to correctly route bags. The bags will be delivered to my building in three or two days, if God wills it. Honestly, I'm at the point where I'd really like more than just God willing this--if I could get, say, the employees to will it too, that would be great.

meta

I haven't been writing much on this blog. I'm back in Cairo, though, so maybe I will write some more things.

Today is a good day to believe in Creation

because given millions of years to "evolve," the average AUC undergraduate student surely would have been weeded out.

I have a carrel in the basement of the library. They are desks with locked compartments in offices along one wall, such that three sides of the office are short walls--about cubicle height. These carrels are assigned to graduate students writing their thesis, and if not enough thesis-writers request one, they are opened to other graduate students. I took advantage of the latter provision and got myself one for this semester.

It's almost more trouble than it's worth. Despite two huge signs on the door that say effectively KEEP OUT (using both words like "unauthorized"--which not everyone understands, sure, I get it--but also "Do not enter" which is harder to explain away), I always find some idiot in my carrel when I go down to use it. Usually I just ask them to leave, but sometimes I get too sick of it.

Today, some dude was there, and besides having an especially stupid grin on his ugly, fat face, he had taken both of the chairs (there are two carrels in my office), and had turned one of them (mine) around so he could put his ugly, fat feet on it. When I walked in, he immediately said "sorry" and slovenly turned the chair back around. He didn't make moves to get up, which is what they usually do, since they know they're somewhere they're not supposed to be. So I said, "Do you see the sign?"

He said, "I'm leaving." I said, "That's not what I asked. I asked if you saw the sign." He said yes. I said, "For my own curiosity, did you think no one would come, or did you think the sign didn't matter, or did you not care?" He said, "I'm leaving." I said, "That's now what I asked," and repeated my question. He claimed the door was open when he showed and that "everyone just comes in." I gave him a lecture on personal responsibility and he left.

With an intellect like that and such a miserable attitude, I would usually expect him to have a pretty sad life, and that would usually validate my own decisions to generally respect the private space of others and be cordial with people when they haven't disrespected me already. But knowing this place, his dad is probably a minister or something, and he's going to have a life much more comfortable (if less stimulating) than mine.

As I was writing this, a gross dude who looks like he just took an oil bath (because he probably did) walked by my door, swung around as if to enter, and leaned onto the handle with full force as if it would open. When it didn't--because it's locked, because it's private, personal space--he looked at me over the short wall and said "Sorry."

Why is everyone always sorry? Just stop acting sorry, you unbelievably incompetent fools.

the firsts of the month

I have decided to write a blog entry in the spirit of summing up 2009. Why not? I like years, and calendars, and keeping track of things. I couldn't think of a good structure for this, so I will tell you what I did on the first day of every month of 2009. This promises to be pretty boring!

On January 1st, I was in Doha, Qatar. I woke up in my room in Al-Zuhour 2, a beige apartment in a beige building in a beige land. Looking back, that place was a palace. I'd gladly pay a lot to rent a place like that here in Cairo. I was very lucky. I took the bus that day at 6:30, which was normal because the transportation schedule wasn't very accommodating. I had class with Dr. Abdullah, who is one of the coolest teachers I've ever had. He speaks lightning-quick, but always comprehensibly, and he had high expectations. After class with him, I had the final exam with Mariam in our media Arabic class. I remember it being easy--an article to read and comprehension questions to answer. We weren't allowed to use our dictionaries.

After the exam wrapped up, I had a number of things to do with Erin on campus. I saw Dr. Eiman, the assistant dean of faculty affairs--the person by whom I had been offered a position at Qatar University for 2009-2012, and by whom I had been unexpectedly snubbed when she withdrew the offer. Luckily, I am happy in Cairo, so this lady doesn't bother me anymore. My friend Dylan (from North Carolina) had borrowed someone's car, so he gave Erin and me a ride back to our apartment complex, although we made a significant detour by stopping by the girls' dormitory, picking up Elissa, and bringing her back to campus. When Erin and I got home, we watched two or three episodes of The X-Files (I don't remember which ones, but they were probably from the second season). I took a long nap, which was the almost daily result of my early rising. We watched more X-Files and ate dinner with Stephanie, with whom we had not had our conflicts yet. Erin and I stayed up late watching various television programs (most likely some combination of X-Files, Always Sunny, 30 Rock, or Flight of the Conchords). Then I went to bed.

On February 1st, I was traveling from Jaipur to New Delhi, India. I had just been in Jaipur seeing the fort, the pink buildings, the delicious food. I had stayed with my friend Carly (whom I met in India, but realized was a kindred spirit when she admitted in a hotel room in Bharatpur that her life's goal was to visit 100 countries) in an old mansion converted into a boutique hotel. Our room was simple--concrete floors, decent bathroom, two single beds. The service, however, was exemplary.

It was time to move on, however, so Carly and I, along with a couple other travel companions, went to the bus station. At a rest stop on the road to Delhi, we ate donut masala, which is some kind of fried carbohydrate swimming in spicy broth. Everything is masala. I also saw this sign, which looked like the fire hazard sign on the way up to Mt. Lemmon, which has interchangeable plates to fill in the blank in "Today's Fire Danger is ___." Today's "beware of thieves" danger was "stolen." Interestingly, the sign makes it possible to exchange what might happen to your belongings in English, but not in Hindi.

We ended up at the Bikaner House, but didn't stay for lunch, although we considered it. We took a taxi to where we were staying, Hotel Perfect, a pretty good business-y hotel. I then took a look around Delhi, marveling at the extreme search process that occurs every time you enter the Metro. I saw the Red Fort, lots of shops and cool dudes, and Rajiv Chowk.

Here are some cool dudes hanging out in the parking lot.

Here is a cool dude being a Sikh.

Unfortunately, after coming back to the hotel and watching some crappy international television with Carly, I wasn't feeling very well. I went out to dinner with my travel companions, but felt very nauseous. I went back to the hotel and was sick, but after I took a shower I felt a lot better. When Carly came home from dinner, we stayed up late chatting.

On March 1st, I was in Doha, Qatar. I took the 6:30 bus to school like usual. It was a Sunday, so my classes followed their usual Sunday schedule, which I don't remember perfectly right now. Instead of going to Mariam's class in the afternoon, though, she took us down to Ibn Khaldun Hall to attend a lecture. I don't even remember what the lecture was about, but it was about something to do with modern Islam in Qatar because the guy speaking was an important Islamic dude. After the lecture was over, I hung out with Erin in her classroom until it was time to take the bus home.

When we got home, we watched a number of 30 Rock episodes. I napped until 7 (as I said, this was my usual custom). When I got up, I worked on my computer, ate dinner, and slept again. This was a pretty uneventful day.

On April 1st, I was in Doha, Qatar. My friend Kevin (a professor at Qatar University) gave me a ride to school. I had class, and an exam. After the exam, I sat in the cafeteria in the Shari'ah building eating lunch and using my computer. Kevin and I went to my favorite Thai restaurant on the way home from school, and I had my favorite dish there--green curry with seafood. That restaurant is outstanding. I would visit Doha just to eat there. It has a goofy Thai facade facing the street, and the only sign you can see is a huge neon one that says "Thai Massage." Through the courtyard of the restaurant, in fact, you can enter the associated Thai massage parlor. This place is one of my favorite restaurants in the world.

After I got home, I took a nap. This is the Doha way, after all. Then I went to Lacey's house--she's another professor at Qatar University, and a very close friend of mine. Kevin, Lacey, Robert, Erin, Eric and I ate pizza for dinner and watched Pink Flamingos. I hadn't seen Pink Flamingos since probably 2005 when I was still dating Jonathan. It was just as I remembered it. However, after we finished the movie, everyone else started watching something boring (I don't remember what), so Eric and I went and sat on the street near our apartment complex. We chatted and then decided to take the bus somewhere.

This the central bus station.

I had never taken the Doha public bus anywhere, as it is used primarily by the male South Asian workforce and I had been told it wasn't appropriate for me to ride it. With Eric, however, I felt comfortable enough. We rode the bus to the end of the line, which was the central bus station. When we got there, we asked the driver when we could get a ride back to our starting point. We had about an hour before the bus continued on its route, so we walked laps around that area of town, looking at jewelry stores. Eric was kind enough to buy me some phone credit, as well, which I remember. When we headed back, we watched Beavis and Butt-head at Lacey's house for awhile, and then I went home. Erin and I chatted for an hour or so, and I went to bed.

On May 1st, I was in Doha, Qatar. I went to Ric's Kountry Kitchen with Robert, Kevin, Lacey, and Eric. Ric's is another great restaurant in Doha. It's a Filipino-run American comfort food place, with Calgary rodeo posters all over the walls. I always get huevos rancheros when I eat there, a unique interpretation of one of my favorite dishes. Ric's is in a nondescript strip mall--you'd never know how awesome it is unless you just went inside. They have great iced tea, also, rivaling the quality of the iced tea at Lucille's in Cairo.

After lunch, I went back to the apartment compound and napped. Why did I nap so much in 2009? 2009 was the year of naps. I read for awhile--I was reading Bergson's Creative Evolution at the time. I went to Lacey's house in the evening where I met Kevin and Lacey, and then we moved up to Robert's house, where we all played cards for the remainder of the evening. I don't really like playing cards too much.

On June 1st, I was in Doha, Qatar. I hitched a ride to school with Kevin, hung out in my classroom waiting for class to begin. I had an exam this day. After the exam, I got a ride back to the apartment compound with Kevin, where we swiftly picked up Lacey and went for lunch at the crappy Indian restaurant near our compound. I don't really like that restaurant too much, but it's very cheap. Kevin and Lacey call it the Choke and Puke, and this is a pretty apt appellation. After lunch, I took a nap--who would have guessed--and then went to Robert's house with Kevin. We ate pizza, watched movies (Role Models and maybe another). Then we took Lacey to the airport. She was flying back to the States for a visit. After coming back from the airport, I went home. This was a typical Spring 2009 Doha day.

On July 1st, I was in Tucson, Arizona. I ate lunch at Sushi Yukari with my mother--a very delicious place for sushi. They also have great lunch specials. We went to the vacuum store on Grant, which is a place I had always seen but never thought about patronizing. Mom's vacuum had broken, but my step-father Jamie had cleverly determined that actually only the power switch had broken, so replacing that switch would solve the problem. The vacuum store had ordered a replacement switch for us. We had an excellent customer service experience, and the switch was really cheap. While we were out, we visited Michael's (the arts and crafts store--I bought a too-difficult cross-stitch design that I never started), and then Sunflower market. I took a long nap in the afternoon (GOD! Really?!) and went to Cecile's house for dinner. Cecile is my mentor and one of my closest friends. She, Jesse, and I went to Char's Thai, which rivals Thai Snack in Doha in excellence.

After dinner, I went to my best friend Cara's house. We got food for dinner at Fry's, played Guitar Hero, and chatted. This is one of my ideal Arizona evenings. I was improving at Guitar Hero pretty quickly, but now that I haven't played for a long time, I am probably not so good anymore. Then I went to Aaron's house, after he left work, and we watched the Onion movie. We didn't play Guitar Hero, which was stupid, because he had it. I regret this decision until now.

On August 1st, I was in Tucson, Arizona. This was one of my last days in Tucson, in fact, before leaving for Cairo, with stops in Jackson, Wyoming, and Charlotte, North Carolina on the way. This was the day of my going-away party. I love throwing parties for myself! I ate breakfast with Mom and Jamie and packed all my things for Cairo. My aunt Susan came over, then Emily, Cara, Liz, Mark, Katie, Zac, Megan, Amy, Akshay, all arrived, and we ate dinner, which I had cooked (or, supervised, more exactly, as my mother did the actual preparation; I prefer to contract these jobs out). Suddenly more and more people started coming: Jaime, Andrea, Kacee, some others...and then they all started leaving just as quickly.

It was definitely party time!

After everyone left, Aaron and I talked most of the night. I had decided to stay up all night--for some reason, since I had to be at the airport at around 7 the next morning, this seemed reasonable. So I didn't go to bed that night.

On September 1st, I was in Cairo, Egypt. School hadn't started yet, but I was already dealing with AUC bureaucratic stuff. I took the 8:30 bus to campus with my soon-to-be roommate Ellie. Errands were followed by lunch with Ellie, and the bus home. Ellie and I walked to the apartments were were staying at in Degla (I posted about that apartment, but my stay there was short-lived, due to some issues with some people being jerks). I took a long nap--I had an excuse, though, as I was jet-lagged. I ate dinner, watched television (I had satellite at that place! Now, I don't even have a television that turns on. We store the television set behind one of our couches). I talked to Aaron for a few hours on Skype, and then slept.

On October 1st, I was in Cairo, Egypt. I slept until past noon (it was a Thursday, so I didn't have any appointments). I read the internet, talked to Aaron for awhile. Then I went out to dinner with my roommate and this guy Tito, who sucks, and whom my facebook friends know about. I was in a bad mood about this because Tito is such a mean jerk, but I decided that maybe if I forced myself to hang out with him, I might see some redeeming qualities. Unfortunately, I didn't. We ate at a pretty decent hole-in-the-wall place on 26 July, Tito said some majorly jerky things, and I came home. I talked to Aaron again and went to bed.

On November 1st, I was in Cairo, Egypt. I took the 7:25 bus to campus. This was my first day working at the Center for Learning and Teaching, where I had been hired as a Student Technology Assistant--someone hired to teach professors how to use Microsoft software, Blackboard, etc. My boss didn't come in that day, though, so I hung out in the library for awhile. Then it was time for my Encyclopedic Works class, going to work for real for my afternoon shift--John trained me in the ways of using a computer--and then John, Amanda, and I got McDonald's ice cream. I eat too much McDonald's here, but it's better than many of the other food options on the New Cairo campus. I took the bus home, gave Ashour our rent money, got koshari for dinner, cleaned the bathroom, read for one of my courses, and slept. My Cairo life is pretty boring, now that I'm taking a critical eye to it.

On December 1st, I was in Cairo, Egypt. Same as ever. 7:55 bus, worked, walked around campus doing things, worked in the library, worked more, got ice cream with Amanda and John (hey, just like I did on the 1st of the previous month). Left on the 4:30 bus, met with my Arabic tutor, walked home, read for my courses, slept. I'm tired of this exercise. Luckily I'm also finished.

Conclusion: I need to be more exciting. Or, I need to do the exciting things like skydiving (14 January 2007), bungee jumping (29 January 2007), showing up in Paris alone, without an itinerary, with a plane ticket out of Athens (3 February 2009), getting dropped off on a freeway off-ramp with no directions to the nearest town in the middle of the night in rural Greece (27 December 2006), etc. on the first of the month, or I need to pick a different date for my retrospectives. See: I do exciting things. Just not on the first.

Welcome in Egypt: Movies

Tonight I went to see the film Welad al-Aam ("The Cousins," referring to Israelis), and it was exactly as propagandistic as you might think (SPOILER COMING, SHIELD YOUR EYES) an Egyptian film about a pious Muslim lady whose husband turns out to be a Mossad agent and abducts her and their children and takes them to Israel and counter-spy actions ensue and lots of folks end up dead (esp. Israeli folks) would be. (That is, pretty propagandistic.) The violence was remarkable--especially for the number of people who had brought their tiny children to the packed show. (We saw the 9:30 show, so it started around 10:10, and when we filed out, there was another mob outside waiting for the 1:00 show.) I think my sympathies weren't quite with the intended development of the plot. When our protagonist awoke in Israel after her abduction by her husband, she found herself in a really, really sweet house. Sure, her husband turned out to be a Jew and a spy and stuff, and he's already got their kids learning Hebrew, but seriously, this furniture was awfully nice. (Ahl al-kitaab, after all, you know.) Also, when the protagonist gets shot, and you're supposed to think she's dead, I kind of thought, "oh, that character was pretty annoying anyway." But obviously she's not dead, and I had to feel a little bad about acting so internally cavalier about the lives of these fictional characters.

Seeing the movies in Egypt is as interesting as doing everything else. I went down to the Ramses Hilton Center where there's a theater on the seventh floor. On the escalator up I was looking around, wondering how they managed to fit so much useless plastic in one building, when a dude from right behind me said, "You are looking for somedzing?" I said "shukran" and he left me alone. When I got to the seventh floor, I noticed that there were two lobbies for the theater, one on either side. So I waited for my two friends right in between the elevators and escalators so no matter which mechanized mode of elevation they used, I would be visible. Same dude from the escalator came over and leaned in close, saying something I couldn't hear. I asked him to repeat himself, and he said, "Do dzu speak ah, English?" "Ah," I said ("yes") and he said, "I am seeing dzu before, by one minute, I ask if dzu looking for somedzing, now I think dzu are yes looking for somedzing." "Shukran," I said again. "Dzu are Egybsian?" "Amriikiyya," I answered. "Welcome," he said. Typical conversation. Then he stopped talking to me but stood near me kind of creepily. I was glad when my friends showed up.

Then as we were waiting in line to buy tickets (I know! If you've followed my journeys in Egypt up until now, you will notice that this is the first time I've waited in line for anything in this country), we saw a mom come out of the theater with her kid. As they were walking, the mom with her hand gripping the child's arm, her pace a little faster than the kid can keep up with--usual, ya'ani--the kid just stops and vomits. Mom keeps walking, pulling the kid behind her. She doesn't look back at the streak of puke (mostly red, probably candy) left behind her trailing, lagging child. A bunch of people step in it until finally some guy in line throws some kleenexes on the mess, which caused people to avoid it, sort of.

After like ten minutes, an old man in a janitor's uniform came out of somewhere and pushed the vomit around with a dirty rag mounted to a stick (might have been a mop once). Then we bought our tickets.

'Eid break

I haven't left downtown Cairo since Thursday when I went to Maadi. I think this is a bad thing. See, the only problem with being sick here is that sometimes you don't really stop being sick. Especially if all the stores are closed, the university is closed, and there's nothing to do. Even though I stopped being sick pretty much, I have spent the last...uh, few...days reading the internet and talking to people on Skype. Tomorrow the buses start running again, so I can get out to the new campus, which is good since I have to be at work there at 9:00a. The best part of a swine flu forced vacation is that everything ELSE at the university stays open, so I still have to go in for work. And on Wednesday I will still have class--but since class is the only thing that's forbidden during a forced vacation, we have to have it at my professor's house. University administration fail.

Some personal developments, since I don't know anything about the outside world:
Hypnosis: I've been listening to some hypnosis that my friend gave me, and for which I am grateful. There's some for getting motivated to do some studying, and some for going to sleep. The sleeping ones work if I'm tired, but I kind of think that might mean they don't work so well, because I can usually sleep when I'm tired. The trouble is when it's time to go to sleep and I'm not tired. For that, I find going to the gym earlier in the day works better. But the study ones work pretty well. I listened to one called "Motivation to Study," and when it was over, I immediately, intently, listened to three Savage Love podcasts in a row. Congratulations to me, right?

Hair: My hair is too dry. This is a problem, and one I don't usually have enough time to notice. Luckily, I go back to work tomorrow so this problem will fix itself, since I won't have enough time to worry about it.

Food: I lied when I said, above, that I hadn't left downtown Cairo since Thursday. Actually, last night I went to Zamalek with my roommate to visit Alfa Market, the closest thing we have to a grocery store. It would be nice to have a proper grocery store in downtown. Also, it would be nice if our "proper" grocery store would put prices on all their products. It gets tiring to flag down an employee (they would much rather stand around in groups doing nothing than work, and I can't blame them, really) to ask the price on an item. Usually they look at you like you are absolutely crazy. It makes you doubt you even asked the question properly. Then they ring up the item and tell you how much it is. Checking the price at Alfa Market is crucial because some products are laughably inexpensive and some of them are inexplicably four times what they seem they should be (like when I went to buy a shower curtain. They were all 300-400LE, but I found ONE that cost only 13LE. It sucks, though. It's not even worth 13LE. And last night we bought a carrot peeler for 4.50LE because it was such a steal and it's already fallen apart. Carrot peelers should cost more than a dollar, it turns out).

But, anyway, we went to Alfa and I got some food. I had gotten so tired of the food I eat in Cairo. We have all the normal food here, it's just not as good as you're used to. That's pretty much the rule: Same stuff, not as good. A grocery trip doesn't really fix the problem, but at least I don't have to go out and buy crap food from around here--I can just go to the pantry and make rice or something. This has the added bonus of no one bothering me on the street.

thanksgiving debrief

I got sick on Wednesday, and so I almost missed the Thanksgiving gathering, but I rallied with enough time to make it to dinner. Close one! I don't really have much to say about that, besides that the sweet potatoes were good and there was a baby there, which was pretty frightening. It was only a month old, so it was no bigger than a monkey, but stayed pretty quiet and kept all the ladies of the party occupied.

This morning I had plans to celebrate Black Friday Eid by walking around with some friends to watch the slaughter. When it came time, I woke up and looked out my window. There wasn't any slaughtering on my street, thankfully--perk of living across from a church. I could, however, hear the exclamations of livestock from streets nearby. Probably mostly sheep being stuffed into the trunks of taxi cabs (saw of lot of that) and cows being dragged from one place to the next. Those sounds, though, made me realize that there was no way I was going to make it through the bloodbath, so I cancelled on my friends and stayed in the house until I thought it was safe to leave. When I left much later to visit some friends, the amount of blood on the street alone made me glad I had stayed in. Slaughtering animals in the street certainly isn't much different than doing it in a slaughterhouse like we do in the States, but it's definitely harder to deal with. Maybe next year I'll have more fortitude.

Not much else to say about that.

eid, thanksgiving

Edit: An insightful reader (LPJ) has commented below that "Eidul Azha isnt the biggest Islamic holiday. Eid-ul-Fitr is. how long have u been living in egypt?:P." Apparently, the length of time I've been living in Egypt has got me confused about the holidays! It turns out that they call Eid al-Adha "the Greater Eid" (العيد الكبير) and Eid al-Fitr "the Lesser Eid" (العيد الصغير) as a joke, and anyone who's been living in Egypt a long enough time--longer than me, anyway--would know that! Tricky, tricky, tricky. Thanks for your input--my mistake is so embarrassing. There I was, overestimating the importance of Hajj and all. Silly me.


Sometimes it's hard not to be a hypocrite, and sometimes impossible. My friends and I will spend an entire bone-jarring, brake-slamming commute from New Cairo to Tahrir (sometimes more than 90 minutes) talking about how if Cairo drivers followed the rules of the road (or ANY rules of the road), it wouldn't take upwards of 20 minutes to move forward three kilometers. We talk about how the rules should be enforced without regard for someone's skin color, social or economic class, or gender (if this happened, Cairo would be a bizarre fantasy land and no one would know what to do). Then, as I'm sitting on the 7:55 bus to New Cairo waiting for it to leave at its customary time of 8:01 or 8:05, some dude (employees are rarely dressed the part) looked at me sipping my latte from Costa (the price of which went up a pound since yesterday; INCONVENIENT) and said "No drink." Without even thinking, I just said, "ok, I'll finish," my immediate thought being, "who is this guy telling me what to do?" even though there is a no food/drink sign on the door of the bus. Apparently the rules should be applied to everyone but me. Duh.

So starting this Thursday we have 5 to 15 days off from school (either until next Tuesday or the end of the semester depending on how skittish the government gets about swine flu) to celebrate Thanksgiving, Eid al-Adha, and possibly influenza. (Swine flu blankets?) For anyone who doesn't know about the Big Eid, it's the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar and coincides with the lunar-yearly Hajj (pilgrimage). It's animal sacrifice--apparently lots of folks didn't realize that a holiday of animal sacrifice forms the cornerstone of Islamic ritual. It does! It's a commemoration of Abraham's (Ibrahim's) willingness to kill his son up until God said "JK LOL" and revealed the entire setup as a prank. Since Abraham killed a sheep instead of his kid, this decision (and relic of one of God's  best April Fool's pranks) is immortalized in the yearly slaughter. I've spent this Eid in Izmir, Turkey, where the local news coverage showed aerial shots of the rivers running red with blood, and I've spent it in Rabat, Morocco, and you can read about that in this very blog.

This is my first Eid al-Adha in Egypt, and I've heard that the slaughter is particularly brutal. (If it's more brutal than the body odor of the dude who just walked into the office where I'm writing this to take out the trash, then I will vomit, for sure.) I think this holiday is interesting because it commemorates someone's willingness to commit murder. Sometimes I wonder about if the same kind of thing had happened in the Christian heritage--what if God had been like, "JK Pontius Pilate, just crucifying these two thieves will be fine, but thanks for your willingness to kill my My son." I guess the issue gets complicated between Abraham's son and God's son because God's son is also God and all, but this isn't the place for that debate. The point is that if we celebrated the willingness to crucify Jesus, I'm confident that Easter would be a pretty bad time to be a thief, instead of just a bad time to be a ham.

Lest one think I'm critical at all of this bloody, bloody holiday, this is a great time to remind us all that this year, Eid al-Adha weekend falls on our very own bloody, bloody holiday. Thanksgiving doesn't just celebrate the early Americans' willingness to commit genocide; it celebrates that they did it. And how does it celebrate that bloodthirsty expression of Manifest Destiny? By raising and slaughtering tortured turkeys (have you seen the USDA regulations for "free-range"?), we can celebrate how some folks led by Powhaton around Jamestown Colony helped the settlers (although they weren't Puritans, just regular entrepreneurs without too many life skills) through the winter. Or, how in 1637 some pilgrims in Massachusetts massacred about 700 men, women, and children celebrating one of their own holidays, all because they happened to be living in Massachusetts first. "Gathered in this place of meeting, they were attacked by mercenaries and English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building...The very next day the governor declared a Thanksgiving Day...For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won."

It's too bad that God didn't stop that particular killing.

On the Street

Walking around in downtown Cairo is not something I do by choice. Foreign students in Egypt experience a strange phenomenon of their economic class not matching with their social class--in a society with a rigid social hierarchy. Here, we are thrown into the upper-middle and high classes socially (which I suspect reflect most of our conditions in the States as well). By this I mean that foreign students pay a skin tax (prices are higher for white and foreign people), are subject to public scrutiny, and are often treated as cash dispensers. Trying to tell a taxi driver who wants to gouge the price to six or seven times higher than an Egyptian would pay can often result in accusations of affluence and the driver's knowing expressions that he's only asking for money that comes in extreme abundance.

The reality for many foreign students is that their budget throws them out of the top of the social structure into the economic class of low-middle and lower class Egyptians. This isn't the case for all of them; plenty of well-funded, fun-loving kids on their study abroad semester come with cash to spare and spend it all. Others simply have a sizable reserve and can't understand when their companions can't spend with such cavalier abandon. But the majority, I'd guess, of cases are like mine: my budget doesn't regularly allow for real restaurants, taxis for short walks, or nights at nice bars and clubs. These things can be occasional experiences, but in general after paying for a little food on the astronomically expensive AUC campus and paying my rent, I'm not working with much. Walking down the crowded streets of downtown Cairo to avoid the cab fare, then, is a necessary action--an interesting one, but necessary all the same.

Walking around on the street is something that well-off Egyptians don't do regularly; enocunters on the street have a certain economic characterization to them. This leads to colorful sights, and sometimes very upsetting ones.

Not long ago I was walking from my house to the bus stop to make the hour-plus commute to campus. I was planning to take the 7:25 bus so it was a little earlier than that, an hour which is nearly unfathomable to most late-rising Egyptians. The streets at this time are clear, although in the large intersection in the middle of my route there was a crowd of policemen standing around (what they can usually be found doing). As I passed in my usual near-men mode, eyes on the street, posture dropped, face looking either sad or angry depending on what I can muster, they started calling out to me and each other in Arabic, I suppose assuming I couldn't understand. They called me a whore, and they "playfully" asked why I was going home so early in the morning, as it was "still morning," after all. Sometimes those things don't bother me, but sometimes they do. That day, it bothered me, and if I remember, I was bummed out the whole day.

Other times when I pass by policemen on the road I can laugh at their catcalls. On my walk to my Arabic tutoring, 25 minutes down the corniche, I pass a lot of guard stations. One day I made a conscious effort to pay attention to each cop's behavior as I passed. One grabbed his crotch and made a lewd motion in my direction. One sang snippets of a song as I passed. A group of three or four remarked that I was "so beautiful, very very beautiful." I know it must be boring being a policeman, posted on the street with nothing to do, so I can ignore those.

Encounters with regular dudes often have the same flavor. My favorite was one day walking down a street I don't usually walk down. A man came in the opposite direction and just as he was pasing me he looked at me in the eye and said "Fuck you." This is unusual because he said it in exactly the same tone that men usually use when they look you in the eye and say, "I love you so so much." I thought that guy was kind of cool. Usually, it's just the same things over and over, "beautiful," "wow, wow, wow," "I love you."

Sometimes, the best things to see on the street don't even include me, if you can believe that. From the vantage point of the AUC bus, and a daily commute of 60-90 minutes each way, I have a lot of time to get carsick trying to read or to stare out the window seeing what I can see. It's common to see a few men welding with absolutely no eye protection; the other day I saw a man welding with an eye patch over one eye and the other eye unprotected. Uniformed school children filter by on the sidewalk; the girls wear their uniform white veil that turns them, not even past puberty yet, into sexualized objects by the very act of "desexualizing" them with the veil. People often use the side of the raised highway as a place to leave a few bags of trash, and sometimes set them on fire before they head off.

There's a lot of weird characters, too. On the corner of my street and the nearest square, there's a huge bank--something like the National Bank for African Financial Development or something. It has a very 70s stone frieze on its exterior walls, and columns holding up the awning that stretchs out over the entrance. Walking home not too long ago, I saw an old woman standing between a column and the wall--in perfect visibility--with her pantyhose and skirt around her knees, urinating. There are no public bathrooms, unless you count open sewers that would give someone hepatitis for looking the wrong way at them.

Today I was walking to the bus and coming in the opposite direction was a huge man. He was probably 6'5". He wore a grey-greenish gallabiyya--it wasn't clear what color the garmet started out. He had a massive, protruding pot belly and the slight breeze in his direction pasted the gallabiyya (a long, traditional men's dress, like a very low-rent version of a Saudi thobe for those unfamiliar) to his curves, outlining unambiguously the belly he had a lot of and the other stuff he had not so much of. As he walked, he looked around kind of maniacally. He had in his hands a long sheet of paper, about the length and width of an American family's receipt at Wal-Mart. It was folded into maybe eighths. Every three or four steps, he would tear off two squares of the receipt and throw it casually onto the ground (there's no concept of littering here--the entire city is a waste heap these days, and also, all days). When we passed each other, I scowled at him for his blatant disregard, and he scowled at me and threw his next bit of paper right at me, so it fluttered and landed on my chest. He kept going and didn't look back. There was nothing written on the paper. This actually wasn't that unusual.

Cairo at its best

My weekend begins on Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m. when I finish meeting with my Arabic teacher.  From that point until now, Saturday evening, I have accomplished the following:

1. Napped

2. Ate koshari from the place around the corner

3. Drank a couple beers with my roommate in our living room

4. Slept

5. Read the internet

6. Ate dinner at Spectra

7. Slept

8. Pizza and beer, watched Alien with some friends

It's still only 6:00, which means there's time enough for Aliens, at least.  This is the most time I've taken "off" from school in awhile, and it's pretty awesome. Especially since I've got five days full from early in the morning until late at night this coming week, and a number of projects I'm juggling. There won't be another weekend quite so relaxed until probably December (maybe Thanksgiving weekend, since we've got a few days off for Thanksgiving and Eid). This weekend, though? Won.

9:22p UPDATE: we've made it through Alien, Aliens, and now we're onto Alien 3.

Things in Egypt I Am Grateful For

1. No Small Change. A lot of people would put this in the decidedly negative column of Things About Egypt. There is a real, documented (on the internet) problem in this country of there never being enough small change. I've got 200 pound notes in excess (HA! I wish) but I can never find enough one-pound notes or coins.

Here's the thing. You already saw my sarcasm: Too many big bills, not enough small ones. I've heard of worse white crises (for those who aren't familiar with my cavalier use of "white people," I refer you to Stuff White People Like, an effective primer in the use of "white people" to mean a certain non-racial designation of folk). I'd rather have this problem than, say, my problem in America, which is that I've got enough one-dollar bills to...uh...well, not to do much, but I certainly have more one-dollar bills than hundred dollar bills. The problem in Egypt amounts to two things: 1) taxi drivers won't give you change even though they obviously have it because all kinds of people pay them correct change all day, and 2) stores don't want to break your bills. It's easy enough to get in the habit of never using small bills at "real" grocery stores like Alfa, where they might roll their eyes if you hand them a 200LE or 100LE note, but they'll break it. You can see their box of tiny bills all stacked up. And when it comes down to it, most little stores, even the kiosks on the street selling sodas and weird Turkish processed cake products want to make the sale. It's amazing how they manage to find bills even after swearing they don't have any.

So it's not really that big of a deal that there isn't enough small change here. At least not for me. That brings me to the thing that I'm Grateful For--sometimes shopkeepers want to keep their small change so much that they'd rather have your small change, even if it's not enough, than give you any of theirs as change. Once at a Radio Shack I bought an electric plug converter for 3LE (less than a dollar) and all I had was a 20 note (still less than five dollars). Dude just said bring correct change "tomorrow." Unfortunately, that was down in Maadi, well outside of my current sphere of existence, so I'm adopting a very very Egyptian time-view of "tomorrow." I hope to pay him the three pounds sometime before the end of the year.

Just half an hour ago, I went across the street for some mango juice (see 5 below) which costs two and a half pounds. It's marked on the sign, too, so I know it's the right price. I had 52.25LE on me, a 50LE note and various piaster notes adding up to 2.25LE. I told the dude that I could give him 2.25LE (0.25 short) or a 50 pounds note, and he took the 2.25LE. I even saw that he had the right change. Granted, 25 piasters is nothing, but when you're doing business on two or three pound transactions, I would have thought it added up. But the Egyptian fear of giving away small change is mine to exploit!

2. Food is Cheap. I am on a tight budget here. It's not quite like Qatar, where my budget was tight and my expenses astronomical. Here's, it's more like my budget is tight and my expenses match. At the end of the month, I break even. But I don't have a lot to throw around, and eating on the AUC campus, which I do a little too often (I'm often there from 8:00 until 8:00 and I can't bring that many meals; I'm inept), is expensive. Much of my food budget, then, goes to AUC food and the occasional trip to Lucille's or City Stars. For an everyday type meal around my apartment, I've either got to pick up cheap stuff from a corner store or patronize a restaurant.

Usually, I patronize a restaurant. It often is as cheap or cheaper than preparing food at home, especially given my limited culinary repertoire and predilection to use products that haven't expired. There are two restaurants on my radar: Koshari Lux one block over from my house, and Felfela, about an eight minute walk. Both truly exemplify how I'm able to survive in Egypt on the kind of budget I do.

Koshari is an Egyptian institution possibly deserving its own entry, but this will suffice. My friend John and I were eating some of it yesterday after class and determined that koshari is "food" in the truest sense. It is food. That is all it is. If someone asked you what it was, the only reasonable answer is "Food." What does it taste like? Food. Why should you eat it? It's food. It's a few kinds of white carbohydrates (rice, spaghetti noodles, macaroni, sometimes penne), lentils, tomato sauce, and fried onions. A huge bowl of it at Koshari Lux is 3 pounds (around fifty cents). Remarkable. The longer walk to Felfela brings larger rewards, though, and food that deserves adjectives. There you can buy falafel sandwiches, foul sandwiches, mashed potato sandwiches, koshari (but they can put shwarma meat on it), and some other stuff. I had lunch there today: falafel sandwich (1.75LE), mashed potato sandwich (1.50LE), and a soda (3LE). The can of diet Pepsi was the price of the food. And the take-away Felfela has bar-level tables where people stand to eat. They have another location around the corner that has waiters and sitting tables, but it's more expensive and touristy. It doesn't match standing-room only falafel.

3. Taxis. I don't use taxis much this time around, but I used to; I do, however, enjoy their existence. Almost anywhere you stand in Cairo, a taxi will hesitate to see if you require or can be cajoled into requiring his services. Unless, of course, you need to go to the airport, and then all the taxis disappear. I perhaps am particularly grateful for the abundance of taxis because I understand what life without taxis is like. If I stood in front of my house in Tucson, no taxi would drive by no matter how long I stood. If I stood in front of my house (or compound) in Doha, it wouldn't be too long before one drove by, but it would cost like a million rial to get anywhere. The fact that I can step outside of my building and step into a taxi and pay a fairly reasonable price to get anywhere in the city is awfully awesome. Also the fact that I've been looking for a certain kind of face cleanser everywhere in Cairo and after a month and a half it turns out the pharmacy in my apartment building sells it for a reasonable price, that's pretty awesome too. But unrelated.

One potential downside to the taxi glut is that white people walking around Cairo, even those who have chosen to walk to their destination and have glued on the staring-straight-ahead look of fixed determination, are usually bothered by taxis along their route. I walk to my Arabic class, which is about a half-hour walk along the corniche. I usually don't walk on the waterfront side of the street because since there's benches on that side looking at the river, the harassment from the relaxin' dudes is worse. I'll take my chances with the semi-sidewalk on the car side of the street. But being so close to the cars also means that whenever a customer-less taxi driver cruises on by me, he slows to half a mile an hour and I hear the ubiquitous "hssssst taxi taxi taxi?" This can get grating for those who don't want a taxi. I wrote "potential downside," though, because I happen to like being offered services. And maybe sometime I will take a taxi from such an unscrupulous taxi man. At least the dude is working hard.

4. Spectra Cafe. Spectra is some of the best American food I've ever eaten. It is a nexus of fond memories, delicious food, and Calories From Fat. You can eat nachos here, coated in processes cheese (some of it grated, some of it just melted slices). In a rainbow of yellows. They make fajitas, they serve seafood (although I haven't ventured that far). They do good hamburgers, they do good juice, they do good desserts, they deliver. They have a non-smoking section that's far enough away from the smoking section to actually qualify.

The picture was taken inside Spectra Cafe and demonstrates just how happy Amber, Eliza and I were to be there in the fall of 2006. It was taken on the night of our first-ever visit to this jewel of Egyptian restaurants. I believe we asked the dude at our dorm where to get hamburgers in Cairo and he wrote out some illegible instructions to give to a taxi driver. We handed the piece of paper over faithfully (it's possible that this story is apocryphal, but it seems like this is how it happened) to our cabbie and ended up at Spectra. It's hidden within some trees on a side street off Gameat al-Dawal. The menu is forty thousand pages long, and there's a picture of every item, and without fail, the item comes out from the kitchen looking like the picture. And tasting awesome.

5. Non-Alcoholic Beverage Culture. From my last post, it might seem that I'm one for the boozin', but the truth is that I'm just not really. I don't like overpaying for drinks at bars, and for that matter, I don't like buying drinks. I don't like the taste of alcohol really, and I definitely don't like most social organization that revolves around drinking it. One thing I love about the Middle East in general, and this obviously applies to Egypt, is that there is a beverage culture that doesn't center around drinking. Juice stands charge 5% what Jamba Juice does, and you don't have to deal with pretentious Jamba Juice jerks in line in front of you. Hell, you won't even be in line. Cafes have pages of beverages and cocktails, all of them non-alcoholic.

Something I find amusing about this scene is that the juice scene is organized around the priceline scheme. Name a price and you can buy a mango juice somewhere in Egypt for it. 30 pounds takes you somewhere like the Mena House or the Intercon, somewhere where you can watch the pyramids grow older and shorter, or the Nile grow dirtier while sipping on mango puree. 15 pounds? That's AUC. Eight to 10 pounds at one of the nicer coffee shops like Costa or Beano's. Finally, I tend to name my price about 2.50 (see 1 above) and get mango juice--identical in every way except perhaps presentation--from the juice shop across Midan Falaki near my house. Rather than a tall, skinny glass with a saucer and napkin, it comes in a Wal-Mart-looking tumbler that the guy washes out from the customer before you in the sink in front of you. The mango juice is the same, though.

Things in America I Am Grateful For

1. The Prius. In this case, I refer both to the Platonic Prius, because I am really pleased by its existence as a thing and concept, and also my father's Prius which I borrowed this summer and used to get from wherever I was to Club Congress (see 5 below). Dad's is light green and had two ski poles in the backseat the entire time I had it, which I think really upped my credibility on the white person scale. Despite being photographed by Skynet a couple of times for going a few miles per hour over the speed limit, I really love this car. I love playing the MPG game, even though it causes me to brake a little too much and sometimes enrage other drivers because better scores are achieved coasting into a red light at 3 mph from a mile or so away.

The Prius is also significant because it's the only car I've ever driven that tied in Driving Happiness with Steve, my old 1988 Volvo 240DL that I sold with 239,000 miles on it (and, little did I know, only a month left before an exploded engine--oops). While Steve was (and is--I sold it to a mechanic who was able to fix the exploded engine) a remarkable car, he didn't get the best gas mileage and the back doors didn't really open or close. They were kind of just stuck closed. I think if I ever buy a car, it'll be a Prius.

2. Not Getting Harassed by Scumbags. I don't really like including negatives here, but when you've lived in Egypt, Not Getting Harassed by Scumbags isn't really the absence of something; it's, rather, the glorious presence of something, and that is the option of walking with a smile on your face. In Tucson, Arizona, America, I can walk down Speedway (reciting "The Cremation of Sam McGee" as I used to do freshman year of college), with a smile on my face, and no one will yell, hiss, kiss, or hit on me (with the occasional exception from a passing pick-up truck). Of course, freshman year of college, I had no concept of the alternative, but I can look back on those memories now with fuzzily wizened (and wisened, maybe?) synapses. Here, I must walk with a scowl to keep smarmy scumbags from following me, and that still doesn't stop nearly every one of them from saying something disgusting to me every time I walk down the street towards my house. They would never do anything--theirs is a classic male ritual, and if they could puff up some feathers on their equally bird-like chests I'm sure they would.

3. White People Grocery Stores and Kombucha. I'm referring mostly to the grocery stores I frequented (or just visited) in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where my father and stepmother live (whose Wyoming lives I'd gladly take over if they moved to Argentina or something) live. I visited this past August on my way to Egypt and just about every day I drank a bottle of GT's Kombucha from the Jackson Whole Grocer. My grandmother was kind enough to support me both emotionally and financially in my drinkin'-kombucha-every-day-endeavor with the help of her local white person grocery store when I visited her the following weeks.

About kombucha: It is the best thing that happened to me this summer. Well, that's a lie, but it was very good. It's got a learning curve, but not quite like that of Red Bull (see 6 below), and it's good for you, which I know from reading the text on the label (like Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps it has lots of claims and reading material). Mostly, I know it's good for me because it tastes like vinegar, and if a beverage is that tough to drink, it's got to be either good for you or it's gonna get you drunk. GT's brand is white person gold: organic, raw, and expensive. It comes in a lot of flavors, and some of them have functional names. Next time I'm in the United States of Freedom, I am going to drink a lot of this. I assume ounce for ounce, it cancels out the deleterious effects of my other favorite difficult-to-consume beverage, alcohol.

There are a lot of places to buy kombucha in Jackson (like the new place downtown that sells nothing for under $23.99 I'm pretty sure), but the Jackson Whole Grocer is a place about which I cannot actually say anything sarcastic. Sure, it's got the same overpriced hippie food as the others, but it's in easy walking distance from Luther and Liz's (marvelous) house and it stocks all manner of kombucha, Greek yogurt, and other stuff I like eating. They discourage the use of plastic bags (even though I got some from them, but I needed them for packing, so maybe Environmentalist Jesus forgives me?) and they have a sign out front that asks you not to idle your car. And it's a Mecca for Priuses, Subaru wagons, and sexy rugged-type dudes. (I'm trying to get my boyfriend to go to Jackson with me next summer because my bearded Aaron would fit right in with the sexy rugged-types. Maybe unless there was a kayak-skills contest. But who knows, I've never seen Aaron in a kayak. I have seen him drink beer, though, which he does very well, and that's another good skill for lookin' suave in Jackson.)

4.Waiting In Line. Or on line, for those who prefer. There is little more satisfying than knowing that when you and some other patrons reach the cashier at a store you will be served in the order in which you arrived. If there are three people waiting before me, I'll be served fourth, and if someone gets there after me, they'll be served after me. It's a beautiful, natural, logical system and it's BETTER than any other system of pushing, shoving, yelling, and cutting. I even say this as someone who regularly benefits from the lineless state of the Egyptian social system, because I have a social conscience.

Actually, I should really amend this to say that there is little more satisfying than being served by the cashier in the order in which you arrived in a store like Target (or a white person grocery store while buying Kombucha, see 3 above). Target is one huge place with item after item. In locations. Aisles are marked. If you don't know where something is, there is a procedure to find it. There are stickers on the items or labels underneath them that show how much you'll be asked to pay for them, and the stickers or labels usually match the price you're later asked to pay. Name brands you expect, alternatives you didn't expect, toilet paper under the same roof as 8.5" by 11" college-ruled lined paper. Target is amazing, and it is an integral part of what makes America the greatest country on Earth.

5. Ace Perry Cider. I was introduced to this symphony of tastiness by my friend Cara, whose opinions on beverages I hold in high esteem. She's not a beer drinker, but has found this stuff to be a suitable--wonderful--substitute. However, my appreciation for Ace really didn't flourish until Impulse Summer '09, when I lived with my mom for a month or so in Tucson. In addition to spending time with the venerable and hilarious Aaron, I went to Club Congress, and Congress usually involved an outrageous evening with Jaime. Why is this important? Because Congress serves Ace on tap.

Now, there are two times when drinking Ace glass by the scrumptious glass at Congress is not appropriate. While Ace is always appropriate for the first drink of the night, economic considerations really demand that the second through nth drinks on Monday and Thursday nights be vodka-based (unless they've changed it, that's 80s night and Optimist Club, and vodka drinks are a dollar). For me, this amounts to a vodka and soda water with extra lime. But on other nights--Sunday, especially--Ace is the correct choice.

My love for Ace in glasses at Congress should not totally overshadow the convenience of Ace in six-packs from the grocery store. First, a grocery store which stocks Ace can be trusted (even if they don't have kombucha, see 3 above). A grocery store which doesn't stock Ace should be avoided unless they have a sale on Rockstar (see 6 below) or kombucha (see 3 above). Or, if they're really cheap. Otherwise, if it comes down to Safeway on Sabino Canyon and Tanque Verde or Albertson's at the Dinosaur McDonald's, it's worth the extra two traffic lights to get the Ace from Albertson's. What has that little Safeway got, anyway? Hornsby's? Alright in a tough situation, but not a competitor to Ace, the perfection of the pear.

6. Rockstar Juiced Guava. I was introduced to this, the King of Energy Drinks, by Cara, whose trustworthiness in beverages has been established. During one of our trips to Disneyland, I was feeling too tired to appreciate things as much as they needed to be appreciated. She suggested I try a Red Bull--I tried a sip and was shocked by how thoroughly disgusting it was. I mean, seriously, it's medicinal, it's ambiguous, it's artificial. I took another sip and experienced the same reaction. By the third sip, though, the Answer to the Question began to coalesce. By the end of the can, it became clear that Red Bull and I were going to have a very happy future together.


For a long time, I surfed the grocery store ads looking for the elusive Red Bull sales--Cara would call me when 4-packs were going for $5.88 at Wal-Mart or $5.99 at Safeway. Sometimes the cans were on sale at Circle-K or 7-Eleven. After a few months of crippling addiction to this, the mysterious Thai ambrosia, I swore off the stuff. Total abstinence--I didn't relapse until more than a year later, when delicious Red Bull in South African rand was cheaper than its American counterpart. When I left South Africa, though, I left behind Red Bull, (almost) forever.


But this isn't about Red Bull. Red Bull was destructive; like my first boyfriend Jonathan, it cared not for what it did. If Red Bull were a man, it wouldn't introduce me to its friends. It wouldn't call when it said it would. It would make plans with me and at the last minute call to claim it can't go. In fact, it seems to be the case that I've dated this Red Bull man, in numerous forms.


Rockstar Juiced Guava, though, is different. One day Cara and I were driving around in her car back when she was a courier and I was going through a weird phase and I spent many an afternoon playing co-pilot on her jaunts around Tucson. She had an unfamiliar, large, frosty can of purple and gold in the cup holder; what was this? She explained that it's a new energy drink. I tried it. Words cannot do this stuff justice. It doesn't taste anything like guava, although there's a vague tropical fruit sense to it, with a distinct foundation of banana. There was no learning curve and no obsession later. Guava lets me drink it when I want to. For a long time, the Circle-K on my way to school senior year was selling them at two for $3, and I would buy them several at a time. The grocery stores go on rotation selling them for $1.99 a can off the regular $2.39, which is good when none of the convenience stores are doing a 2-for-$3 deal.


If Guava were a man, it would be sensitive and respectful. After long enough, it would ask you to marry it, and it would have talked about it with your father first. It would compliment you. It wouldn't break plans at the last minute and it would do nice things without being asked. If you want some time away from Guava, it doesn't mind. It'll always be there; it's confident enough to be independent, too. I've returned the cosmic favor that Cara did when she introduced me to this stuff by getting my boyfriend Aaron hooked. You're welcome, Guava.

just say no

At risk of making painfully elementary observations on Egyptian culture, I want to highlight one of my favorite Egyptian techniques for "saving face." In a few words, it's lying to make yourself look better.

"Saving face" is deeply entrenched in many societies around the world, but in very different ways.  Here's a quote from an essay I found on the internet, so it is definitely correct: "In societies that highly value the concepts of shame and honor, such as Korea, China, and Japan in Asia, Middle-Eastern countries such as Egypt and Iran, and Latin American countries, face is extremely important.  People dislike confrontation, and often avoid saying 'no.' Evasion and inaccuracy are preferred to keep appearances pleasant. Being humiliated before the group can be a fate worse than death" (found here). In American society, I'd boldly venture that saving face is equally present, but more complex and less overt. It's more important, overall, to avoid inaccuracy and evasion, culturally, and saving face is relegated to other spheres of interaction.

So people around here prefer inaccuracy and evasion to just hearing "no." It's like stagnating all personal growth at my little brother's anti-no phase, a time of his young life during which he cried whenever he heard the word "no," up to and including the Sesame Street "NO" song. But the difference is that Christopher grew out of his fear and sadness related to the word "no"; he exorcised those demons by probably the age of four and moved on with his life.

How does this affect everyday interaction in Egypt? My roommate and I went to get some passport pictures made for her, so that she could take them jumping through hoops of red tape. There's a Kodak "Digital Products and Services" store right by our house, so we started there, even though it didn't seem like they had the requisite set-up to take passport pictures. We figured we'd see, and at least get directions to the closest properly equipped location (that's another hilarious mistake: assuming the proprietor of a camera store will be willing, able, and or interested in referring a potential customer looking for a service he doesn't provide to a place where the service is provided--NOT GONNA HAPPEN).

We walked in, and encountered a very typical situation: Four employees are working behind the desks (although it should be emphasized that "working" and "chilling out" exist with not a line in between them, but a gradient). When Ellie and I walk in, it brings the employee: customer ratio to 2:1, and when it's adjusted to reflect that I didn't need any services, we can see the real ratio at 4:1. I asked on behalf of Ellie, assuming none of them spoke English, whether they provide the service of making passport pictures. I think I asked "My friend needs passport pictures. Is it possible for you to take them here?"

Naturally, they said of course. The next question from one of the two employee who wasn't on the phone was where her pictures were--"Where are they? Does she have them?" So I repeated my original request, emphasizing that she wanted to enter into a relationship with store that would ultimately result in THEM taking pictures of her, printing them out, and selling them to her. Like any usual passport picture service.

One of the other employees got off the phone, and started fiddling with some digital cameras. They started replacing batteries and unwrapping plastic satchels of things, but no progress towards anything that would seem appropriate for taking passport pictures: no unveiling of a plain background, no further communication with us. We gave it a few minutes and just as we were turning to walk out of the place, one of the employees tells me that he can make some passport pictures in 20 minutes. We left.

Conclusion: It is abundantly clear that we happened upon a Kodak store that sells cameras and photo albums, and does not take pictures of people. These are distinct services, and some stores offer only one and some stores offer both. Instead of just telling us that the service we required wasn't offered, we had to waste ten minutes of our time and probably annoy that dude who doesn't have the equipment for passport pictures anyway. Had we waited to see what services they would ultimately offer us, it probably would have involved walking with one of the employees to his "cousin's" shop "very close." Or a picture of Ellie against the store's front door printed on an HP Laser Jet and cut out with scissors.

Why not just say, "No, we don't offer that service at this time. Thanks!"

City Stars

This morning Kelsy and I went to City Stars, Cairo's Capital. It's the single most magical place in the entire city, if not country or region. There's a few reasons why it's one of my favorite places to shop:

1. Self-absorbed, ironic white people spend all their time drinking and talking about budget accommodation in Syria at Huriya (across the street from me), which truly is discovered semester after semester by AUC students. They don't have the time or capitalist lust to make it out to Cairo's largest shopping and lifestyle destination.

An animated white person discussion at Huriya

Only a tiny fraction of the stores in City Stars

2. I went to a mall three to four times a week while living in Doha last year, and the sterile hallways, cheap British clothing stores, and multiple branches of Costa Coffee that characterize the typical Middle Eastern shopping mall have become a true panacea for me, a feeling of familiarity and comfort. Surrounded by consumer goods, imported food, and public restrooms with toilet paper in abundance, I feel at home, as if I were back in the Gulf.

3. There's one of every restaurant I've ever thought of in City Stars. Just about every American chain with a global presence, every fast food, a number of Egyptian places--everything.

4. The Spinney's hypermarket on the lowest level puts the Maadi Carrefour to shame.  I found Listerine at Spinney's. Q.E.D.

Kelsy and I made a great decision by going on Friday morning, when most of Egypt is sleeping or praying.  We spent a chunk of time in H&M and a few other stores before it was time for lunch.  We chose Ruby Tuesday, which has a salad bar.  Usually, Chili's, Applebee's, T.G.I. Friday's, Ruby Tuesday, etc. are all on the same level of general undesirability in the States: They're the kind of restaurant you go to when one of you friends that you don't really like has a birthday and they want to get drinks at Chili's and you think that's a pretty stupid idea but you show up anyway, pay ten bucks for a drink that isn't really that good, and split.  But in Egypt, the game changes.  A restaurant with a salad bar?  Sign me up.

The traffic on the way home was pretty bad, but mostly because at the place where a two-lane highway merged with a one-lane on-ramp, there were five lanes of traffic. I think it's simple geometry that five Peugeots squished onto a raised highway, along with several decrepit East Delta buses (at least the passengers on those get to watch old black and white Egyptian movies on VHS players probably made around the same time as the films), just can't move as fast as three Peugeots.

don't go for the students

One of my favorite things is to really analyze my reasons for forming negative initial impressions of people, when I do form them.  It can be very difficult sometimes to encounter someone, feel a very ambiguous feeling of distaste, and then really set out what exactly it is that causes that feeling.  I encountered one a few days ago.

As a disclaimer, I'm in a uniquely rich situation for meeting jerks. My university is in a prime position, itself, for attracting them. Offering English-language courses in a number of different subjects, located in the Arab world but in one of the world's capitals, and safely sheltered from some of the more challenging situations someone might encounter by traveling in Africa, my university attracts study-abroaders who are slightly more self-important than the typical semester-in-England type, but a little more impressed with themselves than the semester-in-Australia type. Add to this the Egyptian student population who represent the richest of the rich.  When asked where they do their shopping, might reply, "Paris" nonchalantly, and you have a veritable cesspool of potentially undesirable people.

I was waiting in line for a falafel sandwich last week and had the good fortune of encountering an all-too-common phenomenon: the echolocator. A girl got into line behind me, and she either met someone there whom she knew, or just ran into him, and the conversation that followed was unbearable. Bats use echolocation to determine where they are and where they're going. Echolocators use the sound of their own self-obsessed comments to let them know where they stand in a public situation.  The volume of this girl's voice was significantly louder than what was required for her to be having a conversation with the young man with whom she was ostensibly engaging. The volume of her voice could only have been explained by her secondary motive to inform everyone around her about her recent experiences in Jordan.  She had clearly just been on a trip to Jordan with her friends; the highlight of which, it appears, was that they were the only white people in the country at the time of her visit.

"Did you see any other kids from here?" asked her companion, referring to students from our university.  This was truly a gift; it allowed her to relish giving her response of "No, not really, I think we were the only ones there."  The accuracy or sensibility of this statement is immaterial.  It's obvious that she and her friends weren't the only American students visiting Jordan that week and it would be impossible to imagine that she actually thought that. The real content of the answer encompasses more than just students, though.  Because American students are indistinguishable from young white people traveling in Jordan full stop, her response really indicated that she and her friends were the only white people in Jordan that week. And what remarkable credibility does that lend to her authentic Jordanian experience.

My favorite exchange between the two came next. She followed up her comment about being the only American students by remarking that they weren't alone at Petra, a major touristic site. "At Petra, this group of Notre Dame kids randomly showed up at our hostel. But I guess Petra's not that big." This is golden. I really want to take this comment apart, because I think it's immensely instructive.

First, the scene of the incident is colored by her use of our hostel. While it's certainly more common to say something like "our hostel" than "the hostel where we were staying," in this particular use it serves to localize the hostel to her own perspective--after all, they were the only students in Jordan at the time, so her temporary ownership of the hostel is crucial.  By implying that they were the only white people in Jordan at the time, a comment which could only be substantiated by expanding university students to include all white young people, she's established that the scene was her and her friends forming the centerpiece to the hostel's operations.  They were the intrepid explorers, the lone representatives of faraway Cairo and the more distant West in Petra, a pretty small town.  (The hundreds of $250 one-day all-inclusive trips to Petra from Dahab, not to mention Sharm El-Sheikh, that I saw advertised last week obviously aren't relevant here.)

The most important element of the comment is the word "randomly."  This word is THRILLING!  I am SO GLAD she used it.  It was without a doubt the most illustrative word in the entire exchange I heard.  A bit of background on the word "randomly" is required, however, before any further analysis of its appearance in this conversation can be completed. As with any generation, mine has a number of words which figure as filler words.  "Essentially," "basically," and "randomly" share space in the lexicon with the more obvious choices such as "like" and "know what I mean?" "Randomly" is an appropriate word to use in a myriad of circumstances outside its immediate semantic field, and its use as a filler is not lost on me. But words are decisions, and filler or not, this girl's use of "randomly" is telling.

We have our friend staying with an autonomous group in Petra, and she's there representing the entirety of our university in the country.  Despite clear issues of very questionable accuracy in this statement, the unquestioned premise is that their group was at least a rarity and that they didn't find many colleagues on their travels.  The one circumstance over the course of the vacation when this premise was abruptly and disruptively challenged was when they were close enough to other students to require a response; namely, when their hostel housed a group from Notre Dame.

Rounding down the foreigners they encountered to an even zero was possible as long as they really didn't encounter many foreigners; however, a group of students in the very same hotel can't be rounded down to zero. The next best option for the speaker was to separate herself, and her group, from this invasive, inauthentic group, to ensure that her conversation companion a week later would understand that under normal circumstances, they would have been the only white people in Jordan.  Hence, we have "randomly." Our speaker has established herself as a traveler with major credibility--traveling through Jordan without the help of other white people has given her a perspective and authority on the country.  Ostensibly, the only way another group of students (from Notre Dame) could happen to stay at her same hostel--the one she and her friends ostensibly found by using true, authentic, genuine methods--is if they showed up "randomly."  This is absolutely beautiful.

The use of "randomly" as explained above leads directly into her explanation piece, "But I guess Petra's not that big." Our speaker has been interrupted in her authentic Jordanian experience by the "random" inclusion of some white-person competition; she absolutely must account for their "random" entrance into the hostel.  If you run into a friend from Texas on the streets of New York City, that might be characterized as "random," and if you run into someone from Arizona in central Mongolia that might too be so characterized. But a sober look at the situation could never describe a group of white students in Jordan during university break running into another group of white students in Jordan as "random," and our speaker must account for that. She knows at some level that her use of "random" to describe the Notre Dame students finding their hostel is strategic, not descriptive, so she has to backtrack in her next statement to avoid seeming untruthful. What better way than to indicate that Petra's size had everything to do with it. They ran into other white people not because white people travel everywhere during university breaks, but because Petra only has so many hostels. Majestic.

Returning to my original hook of echolocation, just a few minutes after this conversation segued into the more banal, the power abruptly went out across the university.  Living in the Middle East for longer than five or ten minutes should accustom someone to these sorts of events; power isn't magic, and it does actually come from somewhere.  The students around the dining hall made their few sounds of surprise, but it wasn't that shocking since the dining hall is semi-open air and nothing got that dark.  Within ten seconds, everyone had settled down and returned to jostling and cutting in line to get their sandwich just a little sooner.  This girl, however, found the need to echolocate her position when the lights went out, by exclaiming in unmediated exasperation, "First day back at school, and of course the power goes out!"  The volume and the tone were both unnecessary, especially since the lights came on within two or three minutes.  Yet, her exclamation allowed her to establish herself as someone with standards, and expectations, and it indicated to everyone around her that she was particularly inconvenienced--unlike the zombies around her, this girl wasn't going to let the school get away with such behavior.  Not on her watch.

Backdated material

I've just finished posting a lot of backdated material to this blog to preserve about 5% of a previous blog I'm liquidating.  Looks like some posts are showing up as new, but I emphasize that they're not.  I tend to think about myself as being a continuous work in progress, but reading through old blog entries from 2003-2006 is really alienating; who is this crappy teenager complaining about boys, using vague words from the thesaurus to dress up everyday angst?  At least I've matured, moved on, dropped the pretentious young-adult self-loathing and produce, instead, in the words of Miztr Jamesiz, a "profusion of snarky witticisms about Americans/white people having authentic experiences."  Reading through the 5% I saved from the delete button is really difficult enough--I leave it to you to imagine just how unbearable the 95% was.

Dahab

Dahab: Thailand in Egypt.  When Ellie and I returned from a week in Dahab, that was one of my comments.  The restaurants all with the same uninspired, vaguely American menu, the subdued bars with drunk Aussies, the floor pillows with insipid Americans draped over them talking about where they've been, every other store front offering the same touristic services (dinner with Bedouins! camel safari! climb Moses Mount!).  Humorously, that's what Ellie's Lonely Planet had to say about it, too: Thailand.  So, I'm certain that my assessment is sound.

Dahab is really beautiful, and it makes sense how it's become this Thai center of chilled-out relaxing (although the house-music blasting clubs of Sharm are making an entry, see: THE BLACK PRINCE).  Sharm el-Sheikh is on the map, as it were, of European pleasure tourism, and there's a ton of flights from European cities straight there.  I had never been to Sharm, but with my friends, it seemed an obvious enough choice to go with Dahab, long regarded to be Sharm's tamer younger sibling.

We opted for an overnight, chartered bus arranged by an especially bossy American with no ostensible motive for the passport-juggling, head-counting, money-dispersing job booking a bus in Egypt is--except for pure, unadulterated love of power.  Well, we let her love her power and take our cash; we boarded the bus at 12:15a and didn't worry about a thing.  Ellie and I joined Kelsy and Annie, Kelsy's friend-from-home Marae, and the wonderful Mexican-Greek Egyptologist Javier.

Dahab is a spread-out city, with one section of expansive five-stars (Hilton, etc.), one section of more traditional housing for locals and long-terms, a road dotted with four-stars on the way to the famous Blue Hole, and the oceanfront avenue and a street behind it catering to tourists not ready to put up the big money.  Annie, Kelsy, Javi, and Marae stayed at Penguin hostel, but when Ellie and I joined the group it was full, so we booked a room at Jasmine Pension a few feet down the road from Penguin.  WRONG CHOICE!  It was more expensive than Penguin, the water running in the bathroom was sea water (at Penguin it was mildly desalinated), there was no air conditioning (there was at Penguin), the room was barely bigger than the bed (even though I had booked a room with two beds), and on top of all that, they didn't even have record of our reservations when we arrived.  The staff were very helpful and nice, but that doesn't make up for an overpriced, overheated closet of a room with sea water in the shower.  But hotel rooms are secondary to everything else.

And hotel rooms don't take away from one of the best things about Dahab: CATS.  So many cats.  They were everywhere, all the time, stealing toast, drinking cream from the table, fighting, climbing up ladders, being cute.  It was either kitten season or it's always kitten season in Dahab, but either way, they were pretty adorable.  Ellie's allergic to cats (else I probably would have adopted one or seven hundred), and she suffered the indignity of having one of the cats sneak onto the table on our first morning and drink straight out of the milk for her coffee (one might lay the blame on me, as I had ample opportunity to knock the cat away, but I thought it was a very cute event), and she even took a picture of a cat by the last night.

One evening we went horseback riding, about which I was somewhat apprehensive as my history with horses is buried deep in my past.  It was Ellie's idea, but everyone went along.  I was given the ridiculous horse, a tiny thing named Ameera, and it became really quite clear that even though I'm a decent rider I didn't have the skills to ride her.  I was really very shocked that they gave that horse to tourists.  She was the only horse who  didn't obey her rider (and you can't blame her--they're trained to be responsive to their trainers, who walk alongside the foolish tourists aiming for an authentic experience), and the trainers got a kick out of suddenly commanding some of the horses to start galloping.  My horse, instead of obeying my yanks of the reins and kicks at her sides, would gallop if she saw the horse in front of her galloping.  Without helmets, I am not comfortable (although the lack of helmets did accompany a lack of release forms).  When a horse belonging to another group in front of ours started galloping, my horse was the only one that started tearing off after it.  No amount of pressure from me got her to slow down, and finally I started yelling internationally-understood curse words to at least get the trainer's attention.  That was the end of that for Ameera and me.

The main highlight of the trip for me was scuba diving, something that none of my friends did (one of them does now, as Javi completed his open water certification on the last day of our trip).  While nine dives in four days meant no boozing all night like the rest of the gang, I happily traded in my beach relaxing in exchange for nine awesome dives.  I went on the first day to Mashraba, off the main drag of Dahab, and Eel Garden, where long, snakelike eels dance on the long, steep drop-off to the open ocean.  The second day was the Blue Hole, a--you guessed it--hole right off the coast that goes down impossibly deep.  That dive was cool because we started at Bells, a very narrow entry through a natural archway into the reef wall.  The dive finishes at the Blue Hole.  Swimming along the top of it is disorienting, and apparently it's easy for divers to lose track of their depth.  It's  popular place for freediving, too, and at lunch at a well-positioned restaurant overlooking the Blue Hole we watched the free divers with their funny fins and buoys.  Not for me.  The second dive that day was the Canyon, which is an underwater slot canyon at about 30m.  The third day was the Islands, a great reef dive with beautiful coral, and a seahorse-searching dive in the afternoon during which we found, in addition to seahorses, a moray eel attacking an octopus, leaving us amazed, hovering in the cloud of octopus ink.

The last day of diving was the best, because it was a boat trip to a shipwreck, SS Thistlegorm, a British ship sank in 1941 by the Germans and discovered in the early 1950's by Jacques Cousteau, who, like a slick badass, pretty much kept the discovery secret, and it was forgotten.  It didn't become one of the hallmark dives of Ras Muhammad until the 1990's.

I left with the other divers for Sharm el-Sheikh on the evening prior to our dives.  We got to Sharm around midnight and boarded the dive boat and slept there.  Before we woke up, we had started out from Sharm marina to the dive site, and early in the morning we did our first dive, around the wreck.  Diving a shipwreck is awesome.  The visibility was clear enough to see the wreck from the moment we jumped off the boat and it looks just as cool as you'd think; the reef is taking everything back.  A huge grouper hung out underneath a huge gun, an eel has made a narrow turret its home.  The second dive was within the wreck.  With the mobs of Sharm in and out of this dive, the boats tying onto the ship to anchor, and the air bubbles from the divers collecting within the chambers of the ship, it's not clear how long divers will be allowed to enter the ship.  I'm glad I had the chance because it was totally sweet.  In the afternoon, we did a third dive in Ras Muhammad at the site of a 1980 sinking of a cargo ship carrying bathtubs and toilets.  It was a little other-worldly to see the reef swallowing huge piles of sunken toilets and stacks of bathtubs, but pretty neat also.  We spent the evening in Sharm before heading back to Dahab.

Finally, Dahab is a good place to shop, and by shop, I mean get annoyed by merchants at every opportunity. Jordann, I did take this picture with you in mind:

Ok come back one week you wait

As much as I griped about the bureaucratic hoop-jumping of Qatar, I'm afraid that I'm oddly nostalgic for it.  The university's new campus seems to be chronically confused, and despite the opportunity they had when DESIGNING A NEW CAMPUS FROM THE GROUND UP to put offices that are supposed to communicate with each other next to each other, they DIDN'T.  So that explains why today I made my fifth visit to a visa-related office, I was told I'd need another tourist visa.

I entered Egypt on a 30-day tourist visa, with the expectation that the university would get me a student visa within 30 days (what I think is a reasonable expectation, but expectations here are kind of like moderately funny jokes). The current hold-up is that the visa office of the university still hasn't received a list of who's enrolled in the graduate school at the university.  At the university.  At their own university.  This is after I've, as a routine part of the process, submitted a request for proof of enrollment AT this university to take TO this university.  But the visa office doesn't have the list.  So to avoid being an illegal immigrant, I have to renew my tourist visa (guess who pays for that? ME) and then, when the university gets around to finding out who is supposed to be there, I have to buy a student visa (guess who pays for that? ME). Guess who gets all their toilet paper from the library bathrooms?

My new apartment

Long delayed are a few visuals of my new apartment on Fahmy Street.

My room, strewn with the exploded suitcase of my Dahab trip.

The living room, with functionless television, shabby couch, and a partial view of our fabulous purple seating.

The kitchen, somewhat Spartan.

Jesus and Mary across the street (this is the view from the window in Ellie's room). They light up in bright colors at night.

start of classes

A day into the second week of classes and it's starting to get routine enough for me to slowly adjust to a schedule, although at the moment not enough of my time is filled to inspire much more than minimal-level preparation. I guess I'll need to add something(s)--I've got three classes and a part-time job as a graduate research assistant, but it's not keeping me from afternoon naps, which do keep me from sleeping early enough to be dynamic the next day.

My three classes are seem good; the only fault in the courseload is that I had wanted to take four, with one course outside of my department but within my interests, but it turns out that my fellowship covers only the bare minimum of courses required for me to graduate. I could expand about how it doesn't cost the university any more for me to take a few extra-departmental or intradepartmental beyond-the-minimum courses, and it doesn't really foster a spirit of inquiry to offer someone full funding but ONLY IN WHAT YOU NEED JUST BARELY. It's a different approach to work ethic, that's for sure. The minimum required for graduating just won't last until the end of my funding, so I need to get used to taking a very slow, slow saunter through my graduate studies.

I'm taking "social & economic history of medieval Egypt," "Islamic institutions," and "encyclopedic works in Islamic scholarship." The medieval Egypt course should be fulfilling; our term paper is not a research paper but rather an investigation into primary sources, so a good deal of the readings are in Arabic, and I know we'll be looking at some of the Geniza documents, which are in medieval Judeo-Arabic--colloquial Arabic written in Hebrew letters. So I might have a good chance to learn the Hebrew script, something I tried without result to teach myself a couple years ago. The course on Islamic institutions is one I've taken before as an undergraduate, but the professor is the one I'm assisting, so she's going to be proactive in giving me other readings besides the assigned and my term paper will be in a different area of studies than the paper I wrote for her in 2007. Finally, the course in encyclopedic works deals entirely in Arabic sources, so that will be sufficiently stimulating.

Dealing with the university's bureaucracy is a part-time job in itself; stories don't seem worth elaborating. The fact that acquiring a student visa is a three-week process involving, if you have the route memorized, a few office visits, and if you don't have the route memorized, several. Even getting a university email account isn't merely an online endeavor: registering online for the account is the first step, followed by a visit to an esoterically placed office, a long wait, the repetition of a secret, unique number to a help-desk worker, and a wait of twenty-four or more hours. All this is eloquent of the typical processes required of achieving any goal in a Middle Eastern university. It makes submitting a change of schedule form to the administration building in Tucson seem unendingly banal and predictable.

Our apartment is still infinitely superior to the last place. My roommate and I get along, no one takes anyone else's money, and in a week or two we should have internet. Once I get internet, everything will be functioning. Our super had our toilet replaced today, so we even have 21st-century sanitation (well, late 20th-century is a more apt description), a good improvement over our previous toilet, a non-flushing mockery of indoor plumbing. Cairo living!

relocation

In the time between the last post and now, I've attended orientation, spent several days on campus pushing paper, and moved apartments.

1. Orientation

Orientation was mostly what I expected. Bussed out to the new campus; marveled at the labyrinthine corridors and elaborate mazes of classrooms and maps neither properly oriented nor marked with "you are here" indicators. The actual orientation session was a marathon of only questionably useful information, malfunctioning air conditioning, and Power Point slides. After the session, we were corralled into rooms for "advising" and registration, given cards with numbers, and told to approach by number. I saw the professor for whom I will act as research assistant, jumped in line, and completed that task quickly. I met two fellow students on the way back to Maadi, both of whom I've spent a lot of time with this week.

2. Pushing paper

Highly expected: it took a few trips out to the new campus to get an AUC student ID, determine fellowship information and sign the contract, visit my department, etc., etc. It wasn't efficient or logical, but entirely on par with my expectations.

3. New apartment

One of the girls I met at orientation and I started discussing becoming roommates after my commitment at my Maadi apartment terminated. I had told my roommate there (one of two, but only one was on the lease) that I'd probably stay until December, so after Ellie and I found an apartment that she could rent alone for three months before me moving in, I told my roommate that I would be moving out December 1st for sure. When I told her this, she had apparently changed her mind about how long I had committed to live there and informed me that if I didn't stay until December 31st, I'd have to move out right away. When faced with four months instead of three months, I chose to move out right away (although, due to the details of the situation, it was a false choice--the only viable option was to move out right away). Luckily, due to the demand for rooms in Cairo, I found a replacement for my room within 24 hours, and moved out yesterday.

Our new apartment is positively fantastic. My last apartment had a number of perks (garish Tarheel blue bedroom, circus stripes, plethora of living room seating options, all-around nice interior, large television, good internet already set up, big kitchen, washing machine), but it also had a lot of drawbacks (20 minute walk from the metro, the close grocery stores were expensive, electricity bill was astronomically unbelievably cosmically high, AUC bus station was a good fifteen minutes away, rent was very high, a 30 minute metro ride to town after the 20 minute walk).

The new place is not as palatial, but it has pretty much all the same perks, if a little subdued: a smaller common room but with two couches, one of them bright purple, newly tiled floors, a working but small television, the possibility of getting internet, decent kitchen, washing machine. More importantly, it has none of the drawbacks: it's downtown, right in the middle of things, a five minute walk to the metro or AUC bus station, cheap food all around since we're not in a high-rent area, on a side street not a main road (right across from a church; I see a huge electric light fixture of the Virgin outside my window). Rent's much cheaper, everything is close. The elevator doesn't work, but it's only on the third floor. Lifestyle-wise, my roommate Ellie is also a graduate student at AUC, so we're going to have similar time usage and pressures, which I think is a plus. Pictures forthcoming.

apartment in egypt

I've been in Egypt for a few days now, and not much to show for it. Spent too much money at Carrefour on towels, sheets, and yogurt; walked around my neighborhood checking out the shopping, restaurant, and interesting sights. Within a ten minute zone on foot, there's a forboding Brazilian restaurant, a basement Italian restaurant, a store of Hello Kitty and rhinestone goods called What Women Want, a convenience store that stays open during iftar, a Yemeni restaurant, an "African" take-away, several veterinarians, an Indian furnishing import store, an English language book store, a Crocs (the shoes) store, etc. No lack of choices.

I'm on Road 199 in Maadi Degla, the very outskirts of what could be considered the greater Cairo area. It's a short cab ride to Road 9, possibly the main drag of Maadi, with a Metro supermarket, Lucille's, Cinnabon, etc. Maadi is a tree-lined suburb of Cairo that concentrates on wealth, foreigners, and embassies. The high-rises aren't as high (our apartment is on the eighth floor out of not that many more), and many of the streets aren't tall buildings at all but rather ambassadors' and diplomats' (and rich people's) villas. Our street has a lot of Asian residents, and I've seen a number of white people around, but regardless of who's living in the floors above the street, most faces outside are Egyptian--proprietors of shops, taxi drivers, bowabs, cops, dudes hanging out.

We're close to a mosque and within earshot of a few more, so the prayers are loud. I'm not sleeping through the morning prayer yet but I'm sure I will. Prayer is better than sleep after all.

My own bedroom is painted tacky bright blue, with white furniture, mirrors everywhere. Mirror above the vanity, sure, but mirrors on the wardrobes and a mirror on the headboard.

And the wardrobe, too, is perfectly sufficient.

Our living and dining rooms contain a glass table with six chairs, four couches, and three armchairs. It's like a yard sale.

The design of the place is really pulled together by white and burgundy vertical stripes in the hallway (nowhere else).

The balcony is kind of Spartan, owing to the fact that Cairo is dusty.

The view to the right (vaguely northeast) is prettier. It's really nice to be living in such a nice part of town.

The view to the left (vaguely southwest) is more of a dirt road. I think it's the more recently constructed stretch of road (all of these buildings are fairly new).

I think this deserves a close-up:

Notice how the dirt road is wet. Needless to say, it hasn't rained, but this is a good segue into introducing a typical feature of Egyptian culture: They wash dirt.

Jackson

I'm in Wymoing visiting Luther and Liz. It's climatically far superior to southern Arizona, although I left many of my friends in Tucson. We went hiking yesterday in Grand Teton National Park, and I put bug spray on my arms, which were the only parts of me exposed. When I got home, each shoulder had around twenty skeeter bites on it, which was disappointing. I'm not sure how to deal with mosquitoes who have no problem biting through clothing. On the bright side, we saw four mooses, each of which had most ridiculous antlers on his head. Them moose have got weird heads.

america

Before this summer, I had been a passenger on three very long flights: thirteen hours from London to Phoenix (and back again), and twelve hours from Duesseldorf to Cape Town. My most recent long-long-long-haul flight topped these, of course, with sixteen-plus hours from Doha to Houston. The most notable aspect of that flight is that unlike the others, neither the origin nor the destination were cities I particularly wanted (or want) to be in. That affects morale. I watched six episodes of Bones, six episodes of The Big Bang Theory, six episodes of Friends, six episodes of Scrubs, a documentary on Mars and Venus, and I think I still had a hours-long nap. Miserable.

Since being back in the States, I've eaten some Mexican food, seen some friends, played Guitar Hero, incurred and repaired a flat tire, celebrated the American Invention of Freedom, and attended some board meetings in Denver.

I had never been to Denver before, or at least, not that I can remember. I've decided I'd like a slick condo with a hip open floorplan, unfinished walls, and floor-to-ceiling windows. Also, a butler. And a Portuguese water dog.

end of finals

Just finished the end of my finals...I should write something informative or clever...I will think about it...

Arabic Day

It should probably be explained that much of the rancor exhibited here towards Qatar "University" is personal. I was offered a job here for the 2009-2010 year about six months ago by the person for whom I was working part-time, a job which I was planning on (and planning around) taking. In the middle of the spring semester, a point in time after which I was able to apply for other positions, the job offer was withdrawn without prior notice, explanation, or apology.

Despite my suspicions that it was a fake university, suspicions that formed when I first arrived here, it was really this callous, unprofessional disregard for me that polarized me against this place. While I admit that writing about it in a public forum is ill-advised and perhaps unprofessional, I am consciously refraining from including any details beyond what is surely uncontestable (and any details beyond those I would present to the very scorpion-woman who sent me the saccharine-coated pink-slip pleasantries that amounted to "get a life, but not here, please").

That's all fine, but there's really a further foundation to my doubts in the quality of this institution. This is all besides the general feeling around here that despite the Western educational system's centuries of development and trial-and-error requisite to a huge, established system of knowledge dissemination, the system can be purchased, for cash, and brought intact without any thoughtful contribution on the part of the adopters. Quality here is measured in new chemistry-department gadgets, parties are thrown when 30-year old departments are accredited by Canadian boards, teaching strength is counted exclusively in the hours spent in the classrooms built out of natural gas and oil. What I'm talking about today, rather, is the kind of farce that makes the late Armstrong Academy end-of-year recitals look like polished Broadway musicals; specifically, I'm talking about today's activity that cancelled today's classes for my program: "Ana Lughati" (I Am My Language), or "Arabic Day."

First, exceedingly relevant to the discussion is the manner in which we were informed of the schedule's change-up. An announcement was posted yesterday to an out-of-sight bulletin board in our program's lobby about "Arabic Day" from 8:30 to 3:00, attendance mandatory, classes cancelled. Students were exhorted to arrive at 8:00. Some classes were apparently informed yesterday by their teachers, but mine wasn't, probably due to my teacher not knowing. Sometime during the evening, the pan-"university" email list spat out a generic message about the festivities. I didn't hear about "Arabic Day" until late last night. Erin and I begrudgingly decided to go instead of lying around all day; surely our fellow students would fail to show and we'd be certain to get the extra points. Everyone came, though, since no one really knew about it.

We filed into the main auditorium of the "university" where students were milling about, wrapped in their high-school cackles and sparkling cell phones. We sat down with two friends, although a few minutes later Erin and I were funneled to another part of the auditorium where we'd not face the temptation of talking to the males. After the would-be moralists left, we went back; no one noticed. Things didn't get started until about 9:30.

First was a too-loud recording of the Qatari national anthem, cheesy in the tinny speakers and accompanied by an "inspiring" Power Point presentation. Next some Qur'anic readings, and then a presentation on something else, but I couldn't pay attention because the girl, face totally obscured, who was operating the computer hooked up to the projector display kept editing (and not very gracefully, either) her Power Point slides with the entire gaggle of cheap chairs watching.

Then came a speech by someone important about the declining prominence of Arabic in Qatar. As he garbled on in educated Arabic about how the foreign-born domestic workers were eroding the dignity of the Arabic tongue with their habits of teaching their toddler charges their native language, and the inconvenience and dishonor of needing to speak to the waitstaff and common employees in English rather than Arabic, an out-of-the-loop servant from the Pacific Islands mounted the stage to bring the presenter a bottle of water. As the woman, with the discomforting non-expression of someone who doesn't know she's being talked about, placed the bottle in front of the man, he laughed heartily.

There was a break for food and syrupy juices. Thirty minutes later one of the organizers tried to get the attendees to return to their seats with no success; little did the cat-like herd of teachers, students, and various ambiguously important people know that what they were being rounded up for was a succession of poorly-made poetry slides, with comically over-the-top voices narrating a series of Arabic poetic meters, on the projector screen, with no human up front to deflect the boredom. More videos followed, then finally the pièce de résistance, a montage of still photographs of Doha, each on the screen for twenty seconds longer than necessary, looped together with mild, patriotic classical music, all of it a video clip conspicuously lifted straight from You Tube.

On the downward slope from that thundering crescendo of amateurism was the Arabic-translated theatrical trailer for the Oprah-approved film The Secret (the new-age life design that insists that all of life's hoped-fors are obtainable merely by wishing them into being). The trailer was followed by a poorly produced video-taped conversation between three Qatari students about the method. It was around this point that I left, eschewing even the promised free lunch, something I would never usually do.

Most appropriately, on the way to the library to access online journals through my still-active University of Arizona account (since Qatar "University" does not subscribe to electronic academic journals), I passed the woman who had offered a job and six months later withdrawn it. A phone hung loosely out of her ear, but she was attuned enough to her environment to notice me, and match my forcedly enthusiastic wave with the kind of head nod and shoulder shrug I'd expect from a bitter, but time-healed, ex-boyfriend.

apology

I haven't been writing much lately. I've tried, but sometimes thinking of clever things to write is as fruitless as trying to get someone at Qatar "University" to do their job.

three new things

1. I went to the Al-Jazeera documentary film festival yesterday at the Sheraton. It was a typical Qatar University field trip (we left an hour late after milling around outside for forty minutes, one of the two bus drivers didn't know where "downtown" is, and we weren't given any idea of where anything was or how long we were going to be there). We were there long enough to watch one film, which was a 2-hour piece by the Al-Manar network out of Lebanon. It's called قبضة النار and it is about the Party of God's crushing, demoralizing victory over the armies of the Zionist Entity in August 2006. It came complete with hokey special effects for interview scenes, dazzling transitions straight out of Windows Movie Maker, and English subtitles that rival in their syntactic sophistication the emails I get from the Qatar University International Students Department (Amanda, we are noticed you to sent email from personal account, however it being a policy against ours to accept these emails of personal accounts, however despite, you send email second time, but we take emails from Qatar University account, official, for we are recommended you in NOTES to checking for your Qatarer University email on the daily scheme). Considering that I wasn't even aware that Hizbullah had won that particular war, it was a fascinating piece.

2. I went to Amsterdam for a week for spring break. Besides falling victim to the new outbreak of bed bugs (as I saw in the American newspapers during one of my daily "let's pretend I'm in America by reading what the American media are saying" sessions), I had a great time. I went with three friends and they all understood the appropriate tone for the trip. Usually I travel quickly, a day or two here, a day or there. For this week, we stayed in the same city, in the same hotel, doing the same things, for an entire week. I accomplished three major things that I can't accomplish in Doha:

a) I ate pork. All the time. I ate bacon, ham, sausage, and other stuff that was also awesome.

b) I bought books. Considering that the Arabs pride themselves on preserving the Greek literary legacy, the peoples of Qatar at least don't like books too much. Finding a good book store, like the one I visited on four separate occasions in Amsterdam, was as pleasantly surprising as being in a country where drugs are legal (wow, this country trusts me as an adult to make my own decisions!)...

c) On the same train of thought, I was treated like an adult in Amsterdam. That's the most soul-crushing, painful, anger-fueling aspect of living in Qatar: You're a child here. You're a child-slave to their personal choices. They've decided that they don't want to drink alcohol or eat pork or smoke dope, or whatever, and that's perfectly fine, as I've decided that I don't want to eat celery, olives, or gore-wood tea, and that I don't want to smoke crack. But they not only refrain (if they even do refrain) themselves, but they insist that you do as well and let me tell you, while I do think it is morally reprehensible to consume olives and smoke crack, I sure do think you have the right to do it.

3. Continuing with the theme, I went into Qatar Distribution Company the other day. What is Qatar Distribution Company, you ask? THE BOOZE SHOP. God forbid that God finds out that the Qataris are letting the infidels drink their kaffir-juice, so they had to keep the word "alcohol" out of the name. The building looks embassasorial, and apparently it was run by the British Embassy for a long time (God bless the British Empire) but the Qataris saw a profit in it, so they absorbed it, slapped a $700 license on the right to buy alcohol as a non-Muslim expat, and set up shop. When you go inside, you're immediately (if you've been in Qatar for longer than two or three hours) dumbstruck, awestruck, lovestruck by the plethora of bottles around you. You think, "wow, I could live in here! What's this? A rum section! Here's some whiskey! Oh joy! Oh happy day!" Then you realize that you've walked into a building the size of a Target with the alcohol inventory of a Circle K where a regular-sized bottle of Grey Goose costs $90. Then you see the sign that posts the rules (because dealing with child-slaves adult expats requires setting rules). These rules include: Only the licensed permit holder may purchase items at Qatar Distribution Company. The permit holder must conceal the purchases in his car so that they are not identifiable. The permit holder must drive with his concealed purchases directly from the Qatar Distribution Company to his place of residence. Purchases made at Qatar Distribution Company must be consumed at the permit holder's place of residence only. Et cetera.

Oh, and also? There was a sign at the check out, and I memorized it.

Save some time and let your wife do the shopping! Get her a JOINT-PERMIT today!

I swear.

random

I haven't been writing much about my life in Qatar this semester. I think I should try to do so more often.

I've been watching a lot of movies, eating Thai food, and just yesterday I rode the city bus for the first time. I've been approaching my schoolwork with a level of apathy and indifference that I thought was positively impossible from me, and it's been okay. I have an exam tomorrow that I actually will probably fail (and I mean fail in the sense of getting a grade of F, not fail in the sense of getting a grade of B, which is how my father and I describe failing). It's kind of exhilarating, in a weird way; I've never been in a position where failing an exam was a real, pressing possibility (it's a little different since this exam doesn't really matter in any substantive way).

I'm glad I'm going to graduate school next year instead of hanging out longer in Doha (even though Doha would be a lot of money).

I ate at T.G.I.Friday's today. It was really mediocre, just like at home.

I watched Michael Jackson's Moonwalker tonight. I'm surprised I've gone so far in life without having seen it.

boring wrap up

I'm bored of writing about my trip. I'll wrap up the last 4 weeks of it.

I left Thailand went to Kathmandu. Kathmandu is the weirdest city I've ever been to--it's the main city of the country, but no major office buildings exist, I didn't see any streetlights, and for months out of the year (such as when I was there), there is no electricity for most of the day. Thamel itself, where I was chillin, is an urban area of rural buildings smashed together. Storefront after storefront sell fake North Face trekking gear, some of it better imitations than others, along with knit clothes and patchwork for hippies in this, their Mecca. The clothes were right out of (or on their way to) stores like Hippie Gypsy, and a pieced together plaid and floral skirt that would cost $60 in Tucson could be purchased for whatever the owner could be talked down to--maybe $5 or $8. At most.

So we saw some ghats, which is were they burn up their dead folks, and also where Awesome Holy Men cover themselves in the ash so that they more awesomely might worship Shiva. There's also some cool Buddhist stuff, and also lots of hippies.

One awesome experience in Thamel was our first night. I went out with three girls, from Australia, England, and Canada, and we had some drinks in a shisha bar where a local band was playing Eagles covers. Weird.

After Kathmandu was Pokhara, Nepal's second city. It's even more hippie-friendly, with long streets buffeted by fairy clothes and cafes. The Annapurna range looms over the lake, and the restaurants are filled with sweet trekkers coming off the circuit or lame hippies trying to look like sweet trekkers.

We hiked up a few hours into the mountains and stayed in this village. It was sweet, accessible only by foot, and marred only by the fact that I had to be near Nepali children for an extended period of time. Luckily, that was neutralized by the baby goats and majestic mountain dogs that were chillin around.

Back to Pokhara, more of the same, then on the road again to go to Royal Chitwan National Park, where I checked off some life goals: saw a gharial. Rode on an elephant. Petted a baby elephant. It was awesome.

Then Lumbini, a town not far from India where the Lord Buddha was born. Also, I broke my toe that night.

India was next. A day's drive to Varanasi from the border, where we saw some more body burnin and prayers to Shiva. Folks get some serious baraka from the Ganges river there, which led me to conclude that getting touched by Ganges water--while maybe absolving you of all your sins--is a fate worse than getting touched by Nile water.

After Varanasi I took an overnight train to Agra, where I saw some sweet architecture, such as the Taj Mahal, which is EXACTLY as awesome as you would imagine it is, possibly more awesome. We had the Worst Tour Guide Ever. I asked if the Taj or the mosque next to it were oriented to qibla, and he gave me a lecture on how Muslims in Canada pray a different direction than Muslims in Borneo. Um, duh. Thanks for avoiding the question because you don't know. Also, he did other annoying stuff.

Then Bharatpur...bird sanctuary...one of the best in the world. I rode a bicycle...then Delhi...then I guess that was all for India. Then I went to Europe, and it was awesome. I went to Paris, then Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris again, Geneva, Lausanne, Rome, Bari, Patras, Athens, and finally home to Doha.

rest of my thailand trip

As for the rest of the trip, AWESOME. From Sangkhlaburi we took a bus back to Thong Pha Poom. On the way we stopped at a waterfall that was kind of underwhelming, but there was a short-legged dog there that looked like a golden retriever with unreasonably short legs. The immigration cops stationed there to check buses for undocumented Burmese also shared a pomello fruit, which is a huge, irrationally huge fruit with sections inside like an orange, a taste kind of like a grapefruit, and the size of a volleyball. (Not that I've ever handled a volleyball, but I think I remember seeing one once or twice in gym class in middle school.)

The guesthouse at Thong Pha Poom was outstanding. It was set up like a motel but each room had a portion of the porch on the back of the building that ran across its length and overlooked the river. The restaurant was an outdoor collection of sunken terraces and wooden furniture and the area was covered with heavy tree cover. It was a nice place. We walked through the town to see the market, where fish were piled up in mountains for sale and pig heads were on display. We walked down to the river and crossed a swinging cable bridge that led to a temple complex. From the temple complex we picked up a local monk who would accompany us to the top of the sheer cliff face that was the backdrop for the complex. From the front, it would have been a serious climbing endeavor, but from the back it was a moderately serious set of unbelievably steep concrete stairs. The temple at the top of the cliff was perched on it like a cat in a shoebox, the concrete foundation running to the very edge. Our monk escort smoked a cigarette and we turned back.

The next stop the following day was Hellfire Pass. The museum there was built with Australian money and is impeccable white tile and coherent, thoughtful displays. I didn't really know anything about the Pacific theatre of World War II (and we discussed this--I was accused of coming from a backwards, history-biasing nation of war-lovers, which isn't too far off I guess, but by someone who claimed that the Irish schooling system is completely objective and even-handed). The museum and the surrounding section of the railway that visitors can walk is a reminder of the forced work camps of prisoners of war and foreign exploited workers that built the pass through the mountains between Thailand and Burma. The Japanese built the railway as part of their structural mobilization efforts, but unfortunately the war kind of ended before it really got used. They took British, American, Australian, and Dutch prisoners of war and forced them to work on no food and without concern for disgusting tropical diseases like deplorable leg ulcers and fevers. They also tricked semi-skilled workers from the region to voluntarily come and work (a lot like in the Gulf now) but didn't let them go home. The pictures of emaciated war prisoners and workers are haunting, especially because it's uncommon to see European and American soldiers in conditions like that, and because I wasn't even familiar with the Thai-Burma railway atrocities in the first place before I visited.

From Hellfire Pass we headed to Kanchanaburi, which had been a layover on the way out to the Burmese border. The town is a backpackers' destination, with cheap guesthouses lining the road up to the point where the girly bars (you can get a little more than a drink in them) outnumber the restaurants. Travel agencies hawking visits to the Tiger Temple (where orphaned or claimed-to-be-orphaned tigers are brought, drugged, and photographed with paying tourists--I didn't go) and other locales compete with the Thai massage parlors. This is also a town with a somber cemetery for victims of WWII, another museum about the Thai-Burma railway with a replica of the long-house that the captured soldiers would live in, and the bridge over the river Kwae.

The bridge was pretty cool, but I haven't seen the movie. We walked over it to the other side and watched the Western tourists taking photos of themselves. At one point, a train came through--everyone on the bridge had to stand on the narrow beams on the side of the tracks as it slowly passed. Kanchanaburi is a cheap, short ride from Bangkok, so it gets a lot of tourism.

The next destination was a village (I think the name of it is Bang Pa-in but I'm not sure) where we stayed at a house. The village was pretty awesome. The houses are huge, built on stilts, and nearly empty inside. Space is valued more than belongings, so people build their houses as big as they can even if they don't have furniture on the inside (Buddhist sensibilities and preferences for open space also encourage the size of the houses). Everything is clean, everyone keeps things clean.

Then on to Bangkok for the tourist sites, Grand Palace, Wat Po, walks around the city. I spent the next few days in Bangkok walking around, buying t-shirts, eating street food, and watching tourists negotiate themselves in a world where their usual social rules of engagement don't apply. From Thailand, it was time to head to Nepal.

days 1 through 4

I’ve decided to start posting about my long trip as I write about it. So, here’s information about the first four days of the trip, beginning 5 January.

I wasn’t prepared at all to leave Doha. I had some computer print-outs hastily done on the Arabic program director’s computer of documents I thought might be necessary and eleven kilograms of junk that I would have to carry across two continents. Preparation is overrated anyway; besides, I had made a semi-special trip to City Center to buy long underwear, and after all, if someone is carrying long underwear, how unprepared could he or she be? My hope was, “not very.”

I gratefully accepted a ride to the airport from Stephanie, who is with car, and Erin, who is without (and had been passed out on the coach up until the moment of departure, which was for me about 02:00). I booked the flight to Bangkok months earlier, and hadn’t really imagined what actualizing a 05:00 flight would entail (namely, leaving the night before). Granted, I also hadn’t really imagined what arriving in Bangkok would be like either, because I think the thrill of things is really zapped when you do things like, “look them up on the google.” At one point in December, I remember flipping through the pages of a Lonely Planet on Thailand, but ultimately the steep price caused me to decide that guidebooks are for sissies.

All but one of my flights for the duration of the January-February trip were with Gulf, a company I had flown with only once before, but had enjoyed, as they had given Jeremy and me ice cream on the way from Johannesburg to Bahrain. I like ice cream, so I like Gulf Air, so I booked through them (they are also in the cheaper end of the Gulf airlines). The flight that morning to Bahrain was nearly empty, and I suppose everyone arrived early, because we left a half hour before departure time, landing in Bahrain when we should have left Qatar. This was sort of a drag, as I had to kill the time in the Bahrain airport, so I napped for a couple hours. Napping in the airport is great, because every ten minutes you wake up in a panic without any idea where you—or your passport—are. But usually, your passport is where you left it, and you are where you fell asleep. This has only failed to be true for myself once before, and has always been true for my passport.

When it was finally time to board the monster plane to Bangkok with the Omani tourists and Thai restaurant workers on leave, as well as a healthy sized group of annoying, Converse-wearing, guidebook-flipping white kids my age with whom I probably fit in perfectly, I was upgraded to business class. Outstanding! I was wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a Columbia sweater, so I doubt it was my debonair appearance that won them over into granting me the upgrade. Chances are, it was charity.

Business class is really, really awesome. I’ve flown in front of the curtain three times in my life. The first time was from Phoenix to Tucson in the nineties, and was a bit of a letdown, since the only perk was getting a soda before takeoff for a flight usually bereft of beverage service (i.e., all flights now that the United States has decided to make all their flights even worse). The second time was from Istanbul to Düsseldorf, and was pretty awesome, except after a two-day layover in Germany, we had a twelve-hour flight to Cape Town, in cattle steerage, which made the sweet, sweet memories of such recent dignified flying turn decidedly acrid. This third time from Bahrain to Bangkok was lovely, though, as I had no flights coming up immediately after it, and cruising time lasted for longer than 18 minutes.

One of the best things about traveling is seeing ridiculous people from foreign countries interact with each other, and this starts well before International Arrivals and customs & immigration. In the seats—beds—behind me on the plane, I saw a group of kids that confirmed my suspicion that the business class-upgrade had been a charitable donation. These kids were some kind of European, and some kind of dirty. I think it was the fashionably affected sort of dirty, but either way, it was their first time riding up front, and possibly their first time leaving the local park where they smoked weed and talked about conspiracy theories. For a bit I wished I could have been as audibly excited as they were, just to experience that kind of enviable wonder, but then I remembered that if I were even a tenth as loud as they were, it would be even more annoying for everyone in the vicinity.

The guy next to me was Austrian (I know because I craned my eyeballs enough to read his passport when we had to fill out the landing cards). He looked kind of normal and boarded the plane with a magazine about cars or watches or women, something normal.. After a long nap, a meal, and some announcements in Arabic about how we would be landing soon if God would be kind enough to will that we do, he broke out what I assumed was his real reading material, a cheaply-bound book about Tantric sex. Uncomfortable! I was glad that he didn't try to speak to me.

We landed 40 minutes early in Bangkok, which is always good because it takes people at least 45 minutes to disembark. I’ve never understood why people unpack when they get on a plane as if they’ve signed a nine-year lease. The Bangkok airport was right out of the future, which is usually how I feel about any international airport I visit that isn’t in Cairo or Zanzibar, but this one was extra cool, because I imagined how easy it is, apparently, to shut down.

Acquiring my visa was easy because I hold a shiny, beautiful Freedom Ticket; picking up my bag took time but not effort; after asking only two employees I located a cash machine. I had to get to the hotel, so I figured a public taxi would be a worthwhile indulgence, as I didn’t feel like negotiating the airport bus. The taxi driver claimed to know where the Grand Watergate Hotel was, but as usual, he lied, as all taxi drivers are wont to do at any opportunity. He took me to a hotel that also had “Watergate” in the name—which is kind of odd in itself—but was not on the street I so emphatically told him I was looking for. Luckily, an employee of Amari Watergate with his head screwed on properly enlightened my driver and I arrived and wasn’t even asked to pay the bloated fare incurred while driving aimlessly.

The hotel was nice, too nice, much nicer than I anticipated it being. I checked in and my room was a vision in white and light-colored laminate woods, with a tasteful(-ish) lighting installation behind the headboards of the twin beds and two bottles of water sitting there in all their complimentary glory. I went back down to the lobby to investigate my dinner options, but a guy started talking to me. I was waiting in line to ask the receptionist about what was in the area food-wise (later exploration of the area's 403984 restaurants led me to believe this was a redundant, stupid question, but at the time, I had no idea where I was or just how much food I was surrounded by). This gave Creepy Lobby Guy ample time to be creepy in my direction. He spoke with a funny accent, so I assumed he was from somewhere else, although he introduced himself as John from Santa Fe. He said he was in Bangkok because he owned a company. He wanted my phone number, and I said I didn’t have a cell phone, which was unfortunate, because I had forgotten that I was holding my cell phone in my left hand. That really should have been enough of a hint, but not for Creepy Lobby John from Santa Fe. He said he needed a way to contact me because he wanted to take me out to a disco. I wasn’t going to explain that I would have been infinitesimally closer to taking him seriously if he had said “bar,” “club,” or “restaurant,” instead of “disco,” but I didn’t feel like engaging that much. I said there was really no way for him to contact me since I was working on the assumption that the phone was invisible, and I had forgotten about the invention of the Internet. He of course remembered about the Internet and asked me for my email address, to which I just said no. I gave up on dinner and went back up to my room.

A little while after that, I met Seua, Thai dude. He goes by Tiger in English, which is sufficient reason to assume someone is awesome. I dumped all my stuff out of my back—unwise decision—and repacked it, then I took a shower with all the hot water I cared to use, a nice change after the months of two-minute showering in Doha with the World’s Smallest Hot Water Tank. I was in bed by 9.

The next morning, I took advantage of one main thing, and one sub-thing: free breakfast at the hotel, and pork sausage. The rest of the breakfast was kind of crap, because it was just pile after pile of white bread (I didn’t realize that the huge metal box sitting on the buffet was the toaster until well after breakfast was over), hard-boiled eggs, and sausages. The thing about sausages is that pork is illegal in Qatar, because obviously, if you have a religious belief about your conduct, EVERYONE ELSE NEEDS TO FOLLOW IT TOO, so I hadn’t eaten pork in a long time. I sat at my table, chewing on sausage, thinking about how if I had a country on which I could impose martial religious law, I’d outlaw olives, celery, the Dillinger Escape Plan, and Republicans.

After breakfast, I met the other people I’d be traveling with. First, an annoying Canadian couple, who were positively American in their bizarre approach to travel and interaction with unfamiliar cultures, then a pair of Aussie cousins, who were close to my age and charming although probably not candidates for my long-term friendship, then an Irish lawyer named Honorah, who was great, and a teacher from New Zealand, Sally, whose personality I very unfairly could not separate from Jemaine and Bret.

First step was to take a taxi with Honorah and Sally to the bus terminal. It was really, really far away, to the extent that we wondered if we were being kidnapped. Bangkok is huge. It’s unimaginably huge, and I only saw a tiny fraction of it. Several layers of roads cross over pointy shrines, 7 Elevens, foot massage parlors, and futuristic office space. The Sky Train zooms over all of this, and a few outrageous skyscrapers poke out above the rest of the buzzing. I’ve also never seen so many 7 Elevens in my life as in Thailand. If you ever feel sorry for the poor 7 Elevens in Tucson that have one car out front, the car belonging to the tweaker working the register and stroking the handgun undoubtedly in his front pocket, you should cease, as the company is doing just fine by selling weird coffee products and pickled fruit to Thai people half a world away.

The bus terminal was mostly closed, and I have no idea why, but the two 7 Elevens I saw inside it were open and packed. We got to our bus, a public coach, with fabric seats, air conditioning, and glass on the windows, so I figured I was doing pretty well. We drove to Kanchanaburi through the last drips of Bangkok and then through some village-y stuff, passing grocery stores, tourist traps, and signs advertising especially pious holy men (or so I gathered from the wild Thai scribbling all over billboards with pictures of orange-clad Buddhist monks always with a look of confused surprise in their eyes). The Kanchanaburi bus terminal was more subdued than the Bangkok bus metropolis, and we had a little bit of time. We made use of the restroom facilities, which were a new style that I hadn’t encountered before, where the money you pay not only ensures your entry into the restroom and sometimes even toilet paper, but also the privilege/requirement to take off your shoes, don a pair of the communal rubber flip flops, and keep from dirtying the place. Thailand is really, really clean.

Next we looked for some awesome culturally-exciting food products, but the market only sold produce, and we had no implements or know-how for actualizing a produce purchase, so it was 7 Eleven—which was culturally appropriate, anyway. I bought a weird coffee product, some pickled fruit, baked seaweed, and water, and felt like a local. Back in the bus terminal, I expanded my pork-istic reunion by buying some room-temperature pork on a stick and sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf from a woman with a tray of random food products. Thailand is better than Qatar by a power of very large exponents.

The next bus was nice, and it came with the advantage of a television perched over the windshield so that we could watch a videotaped concert of a Thai superstar at top volume. We rode through the mountains and tree-covered hills, green but not lushly verdant. During the course of the conversation, I learned that the Canadian guy didn’t know that snakes have bones, which I found troubling. It seems difficult to confuse snakes with boneless creatures—perhaps he had them crossed with earthworms? Or sea sponges? Or fungi? Who knows. We stopped for a one-hour rest, because drivers in Thailand apparently need frequent breaks. I ate some fried rice, which was delicious and actually not that unlike Thai fried rice I have consumed in the past in countries that aren’t Thailand. However, the bathrooms in non-Thailand Thai restaurants are usually flushing Western toilets, not ceramic pots cemented to the concrete floor “flushed” by a bucket poured from the huge open tank of stagnant water (and they wonder why they have mosquitoes), and you don’t usually have to pay for the privilege, either.

The bus continued and we reached Sangkhlaburi and our destination of P.’s Country House, which has a remarkable view of Khao Laem Lake. Khao Laem Lake is a man-made reservoir for which the government had to relocate an entire village. Luckily the villagers, according to Tiger, didn’t mind, since their houses were easily movable and they stood to gain a lot of profit from having a lake in their backyard. I have no way to gauge the veracity of that, but there sure were a lot of people fishing.

P.’s Country House was unlike anything I was expecting. In the middle of nowhere in this Thai village (albeit somewhat touristic) is this huge stone inn, with enormous wooden wagon wheels decorating the balconies and making the whole thing look kind of cock-eyed American Southwest, huge marble slabs for tables on the restaurant’s outdoor patio overlooking the lake, and hardwood accents in the rooms. Some of the rooms were in the proper inn, but there were also rooms built along the slope down towards the lake, and my room was positioned along this slope. I don’t know what the other rooms looked like, but mine was definitely not the deluxe room; it was made out of stone on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, and not regular stone, but little river rocks glued in with concrete, so it was all very uneven. It was like a cave, especially as the only light source was a bare bulb and the furniture was two cot-like beds and a chair made out of a partially hollowed-out tree stump. It was pretty awesome. And it was close to the common bathroom, which, for being in the Thai countryside, was nice.

Over dinner, I learned from Tiger about the monastic tradition in Thailand. Monks—in Thailand, all this information is for Thailand, not Buddhism in general—obey five rules: no lying, no stealing, no boozing, no adultery, and no killing. Adultery should be really simple as they also have to be chaste to take the robes. The interesting thing is that it is extremely common, if not expected, that every Thai man will become a monk at some point. Tiger had done it for five days, but grew tired of it quickly. I saw monks doing all kinds of worldly things, though, in Thailand, such as smoking cigarettes, riding motorbikes, and waiting in line to get their computer fixed at the Acer store. But I respect dudes who wear dresses (which should clarify why I live in the Arabian Gulf).

I woke up already tired the next morning, which was aggravating. It had been a long night. In the middle of the night, someone started knocking on the door of my room. As I explained, my room was made out of stones, but the window was a single pane of glass and probably not sealed, and the door was thin wood and probably not sealed, so I heard every time someone walked past to go to the bathroom or to go into the room in the same corner as mine. When the guy started banging on my door, it was so loud that I thought at first the whole place was under attack. When he drunkenly started yelling someone’s name in Thai, it made a little more sense, but in my partially sleeping state, I was frightened. Finally, after about twenty minutes of him banging on my door and me pretending to be deaf, I realized that in his stupor he wasn’t going to realize he was at the wrong place. So I said, in my meekest English, “I’m sorry?” He got the picture, I suppose, and immediately began assailing the door next to mine, which I heard with the same wrenching clarity as when it was my door under siege.

Finally a girl opened the door and screamed. This was not a usual scream; it was the kind of scream I’d reserve for being murdered, having a serious internal organ infection given to me by watching the train wreck that is the movie Coffee & Cigarettes, or finding out that the grocery store is out of rice pudding (seriously, what do I eat now?). My heart jumped and I was certain that this 30-second, heart-stopping scream was the prelude to this girl’s axing, and mine next. Instead, she just must have been drunk too, because they proceeded to have a loud, drunk, 30-minute conversation at top volume in front of my unsealed, single-pane window. I say “top volume” and mean it, not top volume for how one imagines demure Thai folk to be, but top volume for Americans. Apparently, Thai people get drunk and turn into angry Southerners.

So I didn’t sleep that well. I got everything ready, but didn’t have to pack since we were staying there that night too. I ordered breakfast with the Australian cousins. I had hoped it would be crazy, weird Thai food for breakfast, but the choices were fairly restrained and I ultimately settled on French toast, which was familiar and delicious. After breakfast, it was time to visit Three Pagodas, the border town in the western part of the country with Burma.

I had no idea what kind of relationship Burma has with Thailand. Burmese people are allowed to freely cross the border, at least around Three Pagodas, but there is a certain point beyond which they are not allowed to enter Thailand. All the public buses in the country stop periodically for immigrations officials to check the national identification of every person on board (except of white people, score), making sure there are no illicit Burmese. The root of the problem is that Burma is a poor country and Thailand isn’t, so Burmese people want to enter Thailand for job opportunities, and the Thai people seem divided on wanting to keep the jobs for themselves but also not really wanting to pick vegetables for 30 cents an hour. Sound familiar?

The border town was tiny, since the border had been officially closed. I took pictures of myself just across the line, in Burma, thereby entering another country, in a fanfare of victory. The jealousy of my father was palpable. The rest of the time in Three Pagodas was spent shopping at the little shops run by Burmese people. They sell jewelry, food, Buddha statues, turquoise, anything to the tourists who come to take pictures of themselves crossing the border into Burma. I bought a tasteful red necklace, and by tasteful, I mean unbelievably tacky.

The next stop was a roadside temple. I appreciate the notion of the roadside temple; it’s a lot like the drive-through wedding chapel. This was really a bit of a temple complex, as there was a huge reclining Buddha, across the road six sitting Buddhas, and some actually indoor temples. When I say “huge” in reference to these Buddha statues, I’m talking about hundreds of feet. Why someone needs an idol of their philosophical leader to be hundreds of feet long or tall, I’m not sure—but it certainly involves that philosophical leader being treated as a deity, that’s for sure.

After the reclining Buddha it was time for the Mon village, the people who had to move when the reservoir was created. The temple complex there includes a multi-story edifice built to house at the very top two pieces of the Lord Buddha’s right thumb bone. All around it are life-sized statues of Buddha and favorite characters from his biography, such as one of the most awesome, Angulimala.

Angulimala is apparently most popular in the Theravada school. Quickly, the difference between Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada is the older school and is dominant in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. I find it to be much more credible than Mahayana Buddhism, but that’s personal preference. Mahayana Buddhism was popularized later than Theravada, and is now dominant in East Asia and worldwide as Tibetan Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism—and I hope not to offend my Buddhist friends—is a little bit silly to me, because it involves flying spirits and magic Buddhas and stuff like that.

Angulimala, anyway, is a guy who was sent to a guru to study. He excelled at his studies, so all the other students got jealoush and decided to mess his life up by framing him in an affair with the teacher’s wife. The teacher was too much of a wuss to fight him like a real man, so he told Angulimala (whose name at the name was Ahimsaka) that his training was complete, just as soon as he acquired and presented a necklace strung with 1,000 human fingers, in most sources, each from a different victim. Sources vary about whether he set off on his killing spree due to his insane desire to do right by his teacher, or if he was just an ass, or if he was predisposed from previous lifetimes to be a dick, or if he was, instead of ordered to kill, just cast out by the Brahmin caste and pushed to a life of wandering vagabondery and murder.

In any case, Angulimala excelled at his new position as a highwayman, killin’ folks right and left. He liked to chill out in the forest and kill whoever walked through, and after the villagers wizened up he started killing them in the village. He kept a finger from every victim, and to keep track, hung them on a necklace in a tree. When the necklace kept getting eaten by birds, he started wearing it around his neck—which is what Angulimala means, finger necklace—and I’m sure this increased his fearsomeness ten-fold, and also probably his scent.

Next, the Buddha is hanging around these parts, and he can foresee that Angulimala, who at this point has 999 fingers and is in desperate need for the last one, will either encounter him, become a monk just by encountering the Buddha, and reach Nirvana (a Nepali explained that this was because he was so thoroughly evil that once he became a monk he would become so thoroughly good he would attain Nirvana immediately), but if he didn’t encounter the Buddha, he would encounter instead his mother, kill her for the finger, and spend life in hell for matricide. Tough choices.

The Buddha positioned himself in Angulimala’s way, and set himself up to be the final victim. The Buddha started walking away, though, slowly and calmly, and even though Angulimala was running after him in full-on sprint, he couldn’t catch him, because the Buddha was made out of pure, reincarnated magic. Angulimala was like “srsly dude, stop,” and the Buddha was like, “No, you stop, I already stopped.” And Angulimala was like, “huh? wtf? nuh uh…” and Buddha was like, “haaaa, I mean I already stopped hurting living things, and you haven’t. Score one Buddha!” And Angulimala was like…“this guy makes a good point, I am a murderer” so he decided to convert to Buddhism and become a monk. If only the procedure were this easy on George W. Bush.

The story about Angulimala post-conversion goes on and on, because he became an awesome, awesome, top-ranking Buddhist disciple, but that part is pretty boring, since he no longer wears a finger-necklace. Luckily, the poor guy is immortalized in his darker days in most of the statues about him, kind of like how Yusuf Islam finally found God but most of us still remember him as the godless Cat Stevens.

After getting some religion and shopping in the opportunistic stores that spring up around every Buddhist temple, it was time to walk through the relocated Mon village to a frightening rickety bridge that stretches across the width of Khao Laem Lake. Some places in the bridge had wholes through which you the diagonal crossbeams are apparent underneath, and below those shimmers the water. I remember thinking how much it would suck if I fell through, because I had my iPod with me. This should be an indication of how broken-hearted I was when the iPod broke in late February long after my return to Qatar. Anyhow, the bridge ended not with my doom but rather with a bowl of noodle soup at an outdoor Thai restaurant perched on stilts over the water. The noodles were punctuated by tiny little shrimp, too tiny to taste like much besides kind-of-shrimp, but noticeable for having tiny beady little black eyes that made it strange to consume them.

The walk to the hotel led to a conversation with the other ladies I was traveling with about politics. I’ve found that when traveling with people you meet in foreign countries, it’s best to be fairly subdued in political conversations, but I don’t always follow my own advice. Usually in these conversations I find myself defending American liberalism, as if people from the United Kingdom shouldn’t already be aware that there is and always has been opposition to the ruling Republican regime of criminals. Being abroad reminds me that no matter how I shape my own identity, a large part of it will necessarily be that I’m American. Luckily, America is the freest nation on Earth.

friday

So today my roommate Erin came in to say good morning at around 4 p.m. I was sitting on my bed, reading blogs on my broken ipod (the "home" button is broken, which means if I want to switch applications, such as go from the internet to listening to music, I have to turn the thing off and back on, a 45-second process, meaning the thing is BROKE). I said "good morning." She said something like "what's up?" and I said, "well, I woke up about eight hours ago but I haven't really gotten out of bed today yet. I hope that's not a sign of depression." That kind of ended the conversation.

Qatar Environment Day

Today, 26 Feb, is an auspicious day, as it is Qatar Environment Day. I didn't know this when I made the regrettable decision to get out of bed this morning at 05:45. When I came to school, I thought I was sentenced with the usual Thursday schedule: listening & speaking 8-9, literature 9-10, writing conventions 10-12, reading & writing 12-2. Six hours, no break, no focus, no attention span.Then, halfway through my writing conventions class, around about 11, we were dismissed for Qatar Environment Day. Apparently the way this day is celebrated is by building a huge tent in the desert behind the girls' science building (which meant a trip to the Women's Campus for all the guys in our program--the promised land where sometimes one or two girls has taken off her shayla). Here's the mildly interesting thing: I totally had the wrong idea about what Qatar Environmet Day would be.

Now, when you talk about philanthropic, charitable, or otherwise "good" events, functions, and fundraisers, usually the topic being addressed is named in the affirmative and people are left to their own assumptions about whether it's a positive or negative meaning. What I mean by that is that when you hear Earth Day, you just assume that it's a day for the Earth, not against it. When you hear AIDS Fundraiser, you just assume that it's a fundraiser to stop AIDS, not encourage it. You don't really have to include the coding for "good" or "bad" because it's obvious.

So, I assumed that Qatar Environment Day was for the environment. Boy, was I wrong! It was a bunch of people sitting in a tent cooking food and serving them in plastic and styrofoam containers, all while handing out huge bags of plastic and vinyl souvenirs that no one will ever use (I also got a book called Resurrection and the Hereafter: A Decisive Proof of their Reality by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi with a quote--and I literally just flipped the book open randomly and picked the first paragraph I saw--"Indeed, the Almighty Disposer of this world's affairs creates in every century, every year and every day, on the narrow and transient face of the globe, numerous signs, examples and indications of the Supreme Gathering and the Plain of Resurrection"; can we say it together AWESOME, but that book wasn't from Qatar Environment Day, it was just from another student who sees my uncovered hair every day and finally decided to do something about it). So within minutes I was covered in disposable, mass-produced junk with the QU logo affixed, piles of little plastic bowls, and plastic spoons. The only way it could have been more against the environment would be if they had the tent surrounded with everyone's cars with the engines running and air conditioners blasting. Oh wait, they did.

The good news: We stood around eating fried dough balls (Qatari delicacy, as in the rest of the world) from 11:00 to 12:00 and then everyone started leaving, and it became clear that there would be no more class, shortening my horrible Thursday in half and bringing in my weekend three hours early.

medical system

So, many of you know--because you've pried so rudely into my life, insisting at all times to know about the minutiae of my health, and god, is it annoying--about my broken toe. I acquired this broken (well, who knows if it's broken--I certainly won't for ten to 14 days) toe in Nepal, on my last night, on the only night of the trip I drank (and by "only night of the trip," I mean "only night that weekend of the trip").

I was with two British ladies and two Nepali guys, a fun time in a bar with four tables and one waiter. Tuborg after Tuborg and I threw a 500 rupee note at the mess and we made our way back to the hotel. I had my own hotel room--win. And I had a high blood-alcohol content, too. So, when I entered my hotel room, I promptly walked into the bed, slamming three of my toes on the right side of the leg of the bed and two of my toes on the left side. I heard a huge crack, and immediately I was on the floor. I assume this is what giving birth is like--one or two seconds of intense pain. If it's any worse than that, you can definitely count me out, because hurting my toe really sucked. Probably the suckiest thing that happened that night.

So I took a shower, and since I was somewhere around the "not sober" range, I went to sleep without any problem. The next day it was about three times as big. Over the next few days of ignoring it and wearing flip-flops because putting my foot inside a shoe was the most painful thought I could muster, it, along with the rest of the foot, turned a really unappealing shade of purple. It kept its size, and it was crooked, turned about thirty degrees from its appropriate position. A little over a week passed and I arrived in Paris, where it is cold. I wore my flip-flops in that weather for all of three minutes before realizing that I could either avoid the pain of putting on shoes or have my feet amputated from frostbite. I thought about choosing frostbite, but ultimately dug out my hiking boots and (wool) socks. The pain was unbearable, but I had stuff to do. Besides, I come from a long line of people who suffer in silence, who suffer unimaginable pain and suffering without saying a word about it, the kind of pain that turns your insides black but remains a stealth secret because of the martyrdom enjoined on my line of people. That's why you're not hearing me complain about it now, you're only reading it.

So Europe was great, and I'll post about it and the rest of the trip in non-toe-related details soon (I'm working on it), but the swollen, discolored toe was kind of a consistent reminder that I probably should do something about it. Wearing shoes consistently, though, straightened it out, so it at least now points in the right direction. Fast-forward to the present moment, and it hurts like crazy when I'm sitting still, lying down, or walking, i.e. doing anything, and it's still swollen, but I had pretty much accepted that this is how my toe is now, and that my foot will probably always hurt because of the funny stride the toe causes the entire leg to take.

Today I decided to do something about it, as it's getting really ridiculous to have nine reasonably skinny toes and one obese one. I decided to start at my university's free health clinic (for women only! The one perk of being a woman in this peninsula!), where the doctor, after hearing that it had been a month and I hadn't gone to the hospital in the first place, gave me that look doctors always give me when they are pretty sure I am the most reckless, cavalier person ever.

First, let me explain about why I didn't go to the hospital. It was my last night in Nepal, and I went to India the next day. I'm sure India is all first-world and stuff with medicine, but my anecdotal, and therefore correct, impression is that I have no desire to have my toe attended to in an Indian hospital. The Indian approach towards health is single-minded: do you have any snot in your nose? You've broken your leg? Too bad, clear your nose. You've lost your vision? Well, perhaps you have a mucus problem. You've been stabbed and your intestines are falling out of your abdomen? Here's some magical herbs to break up the phlegm! So, I didn't go to see a doctor in India.

Next, I was in Europe, an excellent candidate for place in which to seek medical care. But, the downside...I was in Europe. So I didn't feel like going to the clinic. That's that.

Now, back in Arabia, I have to contend with the Arab approach to health: the Evil Appendix. I just know that as soon as I walk up to the hospital, I'll be asked whether or not I have an appendix. If I didn't, then maybe they would take my toe seriously, but I am 100% positive that since I actually do have a normal, human appendix in my guts, they'll need to take that out first before x-raying the toe, and I think my appendix is just fine.

So the doctor at the clinic on campus told me in a very disapproving, but kind, tone that I need to have it x-rayed. That can only be accomplished by going to the emergency room, because this country is nuts. To do that, I need a healthcard, but I figured it can't be that big of a deal, because the healthcard gives me free healthcare (after I pay the $30 the card costs), and after all, the doctor is saying I need x-rays soon, so how long can the card take?

I went to the Events & Hospitality department to find the contact person to get the card (it's obviously not dealt with through the medical clinic). It entails a paper application, two photographs, a copy of my passport and visa, a copy of my Qatar national identification card, and $30 in Qatar money. It'll take ten to 14 days, despite my insistence that no, really, I'm supposed to get this sausage attached to my foot looked at soon. I guess it can't be that big of a deal if Events & Hospitality isn't worried about it.

My new friend

Last night I decided to embrace the fact that I am a Liberated Western Woman living in the most sickeningly conservative region on Earth and, at 19:45, walk to the grocery store, about a half hour's walk away, in the dark, alone (and "alone" as in without any other people, not "alone" as in "without a father, husband, brother, or adult son"), and beyond all that, in short sleeves. I don't know what inspired me to take such reckless and risky action; probably, it was that I am a Liberated Western Woman, and therefore, have no sense.

Walking is fine, as Doha is the safest place on the planet (with great safety, of course, comes great BORINGNESS). As usual while walking in public outside, I listened to my music and ignored the fact that my elbows were exposed for everyone to see--and see they did, as my uncovered flesh attracted the attention of the entire resident population of Kerala in Qatar. But as usual, only a few cars honked and only one actually pulled over to try to offer me a ride until he realized I was walking--on purpose--the opposite direction of his car's orientation, so he gave up.

When I neared the Villaggio, the colossal up-market (I love that I say up-market as if Qatar isn't already the embodiment of the term) shopping mall with a Carrefour, I noticed a guy in front of me walking slowly. I sped up to pass him on the sidewalk. Most glaringly obvious about his appearance was the unfortunate fact that he was wearing a bright orange shirt. I got around him and when I was four feet or so ahead of him and thinking it was a non-event he said "Hi." Pretty creepishly, too, but I'm not rude, so I dismissively and with transparent (because everything I do is transparent) disdain, said "Hi." "How are you?" he said, speeding up to keep the gap between us constant. "Fine," I said, speeding up to get rid of him. "We be friends?" I ignored this comment and figured that my usual tactic of pretending to be deaf would work. (Usually I just imagine that I've fallen deaf that very instant, right after the last thing I said to the creeper.) "You have number?" he went on, to which I said "No," sort of annoyed that I happened to be holding my cell phone quite obviously in my right hand. But maybe he would get the hint?

So I went on and entered the mall and decided to go into Boots, a British pharmacy-cum-perfume store that seems to be heavier on the perfume. I walked around wondering what I would buy if I didn't have credit card debt and made it as far as the soap section when I noticed the orange shirt guy was in there, too. I doubted he had walked all the way to the mall in his ugly clothes to buy cologne or shoe inserts. He saw me see him and came over--great. He picked up the most random item for sale near his hand and said, "This good?" I said, "I don't know. Please leave." He looked crestfallen--but hey, that's what happens when you approach a girl and don't bring your game. I mean, come on! Finally, he said, "No chance?"

This was the easiest question. "No, there's no chance."

I felt kind of bad, though.

Speedbumps

In the mornings, at about 05:45 when I have to wake up, I have to go over in my head, before I turn on the lights, the two options I have in front of me day after day: one, remain in bed and enjoy a wonderful day of sleeping, eating, and not stepping foot outside the compound--i.e., a normal weekend day--or two, pulling myself out of bed, eating, wondering what homework I didn't do, starting on the 45-plus minute commute to a university from which students are not authorized to leave by taxi (more on that later, I am so not kidding), sitting through four to six hours of foreign language instruction in a freezing-cold classroom, and waiting half an hour to two and a half hours for a ride back to the compound. It is usually a very, very difficult decision.

Involved in the decision are these speedbumps in my compound. They are made out of plastic and have been installed into the asphault, but because they lack uniformity of substance with the pavement, the yellow and black plastic glares in every direction. I have so much active hate for these speedbumps that I'm afraid it's going to rot my heart. These speedbumps are definitely on the side of me staying in bed at 05:45. Every morning the pain seems brand new--the bus tears over them with no concern for the fact that if that wretched vehicle had a suspension system at any point in its long history, it most certainly has whatever the opposite of a suspension system is now. The front of the bus takes a nosedive when it clears the obstruction, then the entire body of the thing sinks and pops back up, propelling the back of the bus--usually where I am because God saw it fit when I was conceived that I should sin while still in the womb by becoming female--to fly up with such force that it seems the wheels are going to tear from the axles and then the whole thing smashes down again and every bone in my body smashes into the neighboring bone, my head bounces, and my feet slam on the floor. No amount of bracing, preparing, or gripping can avoid this. Generally--this is about 06:33--I wish I had stayed in bed.

back in Doha

So, I am back in Doha, and school has started. Overall, my judgment of Doha--if four months of living here and a month and a half away to reflect are enough to make a reasonable judgment--is profoundly negative. Don't come here.

Anyway, for the city being one I don't particularly like, things are great. Erin and I missed each other desperately, and so the reunion has been joyful, involving trips to the grocery store, H&M, and the television. School should be difficult, which is good, although the class hours are too long to be very beneficial because in the sixth straight hour of class without a break in another language, I just don't focus anymore.

I'm going to try to write about my trip in chunks. My own computer is broken right now and only the somewhat-to-moderately competent employees of Computer Arabia could tell you when it'll be fixed. Until then, I'm on Erin's, so my ambitious plans for disseminating every detail of my trip (because you all obviously want to read about it) will have to wait, but I'll see what I can do until I have my own portal to the Real World back.

Here's a table of contents, to introduce the upcoming posts in the order they will arrive:

1. Traveling around Thailand (5 Jan-12 Jan). In which I arrive in Bangkok and leave to visit Burma, Kanchanaburi, Hellfire Pass, and a village.

3. Chilling in Bangkok (13 Jan-16 Jan). This will be really boring, because the most exciting part of each of these days was acquiring Pad Thai.

4. Nepal (17 Jan-24 Jan). Wherein I visit Kathmandu, drink a mojito listening to Nepalis play Eagles songs, look at but do not climb some mountains, check off a life goal by seeing a gharial, ride on an elephant, visit the Lord Buddha's birthplace, and break my toe.

5. India (25 Jan-2 Feb). During this time I visit Varanasi and am splashed with some Ganges water, absolving me of all my sins, see the Taj Mahal and it's as sweet as you think, check out some birds, and ride the Delhi metro.

6. France (3 Feb). A short sojourn in the City of Lights leads to an impulsive decision.

7. The Netherlands (3-5 Feb). I travel to Amsterdam to see if it really exists--it does; I meet an Indian and decide to go through Europe with him (the chances!).

8. Belgium (5 Feb-7 Feb). Despite having no desire to go to this country, I go to Belgium, and speak only Arabic.

9. France Again (7 Feb-9 Feb). Again, no desire to spend even more time in Paris, but I finally take the stupid elevator up the Tower.

10. Switerland (9 Feb-12 Feb). I see Geneva, a huge lake, a sporty museum, and I fail to complete the Tour De Freddie Mercury, leaving Switzerland in shame, vowing to return. Damn you, Switzerland!

11. Italy (13 Feb-16 Feb). Skipping the presumably missable Milan, Venice, Florence, Pisa, etc., I head straight for Rome and check out some old stuff. Sweet.

12. Greece (17-18 Feb). The most gratuitous part of my trip, I traveled by foot, by train, by foot, by public bus, by foot, by ship, by foot, by train, by bus, by train, by metro, and by foot again to get to Greece from Italy, just to have dinner at a restaurant and then immediately thereafter a second dinner at a second restaurant with two charming American girls. Worth it.

Then I came back to Doha.

traveling

For those with whom I'm not in email contact, I've been traveling since the 5th and will be returning to Doha and regular internet on the 18th of February.

christmas in doha

I realized that I forgot to write anything about Christmas in Doha. I stayed home from school, but not really for any good reason since all Erin and I did on our observant day was sleep late and eat. Erin's a Muslim, but we decided that we could both share in our culture's heritage by eating and listening to Christmas music. We made hash browns and eggs and listened to Christmas music on the internet and then tried to find some movies on television to watch but nothing was suitable, so I think we watched Star Trek. After a few hours of this, we had to start cooking our contribution to the upcoming Christmas potlucks for the crew of Americans & Friends.

Erin and I are both pretty stupid in the kitchen and most nights we make dinner together and then laugh at how this consists either of ordering delivery Indian food or cereal. This time I procured a recipe from my wonderful aunt Susan for something called a "casserole." We had purchased all the necessary "ingredients" the day before (we had actually paid and started walking out without the main thing, broccoli, but luckily we remembered and went back). So, we followed the instructions and successfully formed what surely looked like a casserole, yet uncooked. The next step was to put it in the oven for a mysterious amount of time. The recipe called for 450 or some such, but our oven doesn't have a temperature-reading mechanism so we just turned it on as hot as it would go and figured it would work out fine. Below you will find me pictured putting the dish into the oven. For the occasion of this photograph, I put on my most 50s-looking dress.

The next step was taking the dish out of the oven when it seemed sufficiently cooked. I delegated this task to Erin, who, not to be outdone, removed it with quite a flourish.

Below you'll see the top of the dish, which has browned to indicate that we successfully used an oven. Wow!


Below is me and Erin at our Christmas festivities at our friend Macey's house.


Lastly, here is the entire dinner. No one really coordinated things, so it turned out to be all tan- and white-colored food. Oh well.

Gaza situation

As is probably needless to say, the situation in Gaza is on the minds and tongues of just about everyone right now. I'm saddened by the civilian casualties and the blatant disregard for human life and welfare. I hope for the end of the apartheid state in Israel and for the peaceful resolution of the political turmoil that has plagued Israel and Palestine. However, I won't go into much of my opinion because it's very controversial in this part of the world. Namely, I believe not only in the existence of Israel as a state, but I also believe in Israel's right to exist. I draw a distinction between human rights abuses and complicated political processes that demand scrutiny and nuance to be understood. I don't see either the Palestinian issue or the existence of Israel as a call to any one religion and I would like to see Gaza administered humanely until a long-term political solution can be determined. Disproportionate military fire is saddening no matter the religions, ethnicities, or nationalities involved; violence on the national scale is usually more complicated than black-and-white. These kinds of controversial opinions are not the sort I'd openly express.

Trip to Morocco

This past week I went to Morocco to see what was happening over there. I've enjoyed all my time in North Africa, although it's only been Egypt. I was interested to discover how different Morocco would be from Egypt, but more importantly, I was excited to be out of the Arabian Gulf for a little while. The week also coincided with Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice, in which Muslims celebrate the fact that Abraham killed a sheep instead of his son. I bought the tickets in July to go for Eid al-Fitr in September, but my passport was irretrievably lost in the labyrinth of Qatar University's administrative apparatus that would have been cutting-edge in 1983.

I flew out of Doha on a late flight to Abu Dhabi, since I was flying Etihad. The Abu Dhabi airport is striking in its celebration of excess and consumerism. It definitely brings to mind the austerity and bedouin ideals espoused by Arabian Gulf culture; the idolatry eschewed in the region seems to go only so far as religion, because there's no problem with erecting massive, sparkling monuments to Dior and Versace.

Etihad was a nice airline to fly. They beat you over the head during their pre-flight television programs, their company magazine, and their crew announcements that they are on their way to becoming the Planet's Best Airline. They constantly bring up all the awards they've won for customer service. Of course, to me, becoming the Planet's Best Airline is kind of like making the World's Best Shitpie. It's still sitting in a tiny seat for hours eating bad food and trying to keep more than half an inch away from the musky Emirati still chatting on his iPhone minutes after the plane door's have been closed.

The flight from Abu Dhabi to Casablanca was about eight hours. I was sitting in the back of the plane with the excited Moroccans returning home for the holiday. The excitement bubbled over into conflict at some moments; the lady across the aisle from me burst into tears in front of a flight attendant when a man asked her to switch seats with him in English and not Arabic--or something. I managed to sleep enough though that when I landed in Casa about an hour and a half late I wasn't too out of it.

My first goal was to call my friend Katie, who was waiting for me in Rabat, to tell her how late I was running. My Qatari sim card picked up Meditel, one of the Moroccan networks, so I figured I could call her if I only knew the country code, which I didn't. I asked a lady on the plane, who said there was no country code. I did not believe her. Every country has a code, and I don't for one second believe that no one outside of Morocco has ever called someone in Morocco. I asked two guys waiting in line at Passport Control and they both said there was no number; I even asked the guy who stamped my passport but got the same line. I went to the information desk over by the arrivals hoopla and the lady there finally told me 212 is the number, but it didn't work. I decided to give up on calling Katie, and went downstairs to the train station, but of course I only had dollars and rials. I came back upstairs to change my money--I changed my dollars, not my rials--and asked the information lady again. Finally she just called Katie on her cell phone, and I let her know I was running a couple hours late.

I went downstairs again to buy the ticket. It cost about $8.00 to buy the ticket to Rabat. The train rolled up about 15 minutes before departure and I was unsure about how the system worked; when I boarded the train I asked a dude if I was in the right place. I spoke to him in Arabic, but he answered in English, telling me that he was going to Rabat as well and we would need to change trains, but he would tell me when. I was glad, and took a seat within view of his place.

When the train came to Ain Sebaa, he motioned that it was time to change, so I got my stuff and stood with him on the platform until the right train came. The next train didn't have any free seats so he and I stood in the empty space by the doors. We started talking about our work, because I was curious how he knew such good English and he was curious how I knew standard Arabic. Turns out he has a PhD from the U of Rabat in phonology and just returned from the U of Mass - Amherst to work with John McCarthy as a visiting scholar. I'm reading A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory by McCarthy right now! So we talked shop until he got off the train, since he was getting off at a Rabat suburb and I was continuing to Rabat Ville. On the way, I had my first brush with danger. It turns out that one of the more dangerous things about Morocco is the local kids' fascination with throwing rocks at trains passing by. As Khaliid and I were talking, I suddenly heard a huge sound and the window right by us shattered all over us and our stuff. As you can imagine, I panicked--I was covered in broken glass and surprised. Luckily, no one was cut or anything. As the broken window continued to collapse in on itself, I looked around wondering why no one else noticed THE APOCALYPSE OF TERRORISM (or something). Khaliid explained that kids just like throwing rocks at trains, and there's not much the government can do.

I arrived in Rabat around noon, about three and a half hours later than I had expected. Katie was waiting for me--she had done some errands. I hadn't seen her since Oman this summer, so I was happy to see her again. We got money from the ATM and headed first to the medina to get a hotel room.

Medina in Arabic means "city" but in Morocco it takes on a specialized meaning as "old city." The big cities in Morocco have medinas, where the streets wind through passages and trash, and they have new parts, the ville nouvelle, where the modern apartment buildings, office buildings, and cars can be found. The medinas have the cheap pensions and hotels, so it's what we selected for our needs. Katie was living with a Moroccan family there as part of her study-abroad program, but there wasn't enough room (or, apparently, will) to fit me there as well. We found a hotel called Hotel Marrakesh at the attractive price of $14/night for a double room. The rooms have two beds and a sink, and there's a communal squat toilet in the courtyard. It was decent.

We ate at a typical restaurant in the medina and I spent about $3 for my meal. It was wonderful to spend a few dollars and get a meal; in Qatar, the same meal probably wouldn't have been as good and would have been three times the price. It's also strange to be in an Arabic/French country; in Egypt, Qatar, and Oman, the languages are Arabic and English, and in Lebanon, anything goes, linguistically. My French reading skills definitely improved over the course of the week.

After lunch, we went to one of the doors to the medina (the medinas are characterized by being surrounded with medieval city walls) to meet Katie's boyfriend Issam. He's a Moroccan dude studying English at the American Center and interning at a hotel. We walked around the medina with him through to the other side, where Rabat opens up to the river, across of which is the city of Sale, and a view of the Atlantic. I've now seen the Atlantic from eastern North America, eastern Central America, western Southern Africa, and western North Africa. I win!

As regards Rabat, it began in the third century BC as a settlement known as Chellah. The door where we met Issam is called Baab Chellah. The Romans came and re-envisioned the the settlement as Sala Colonia and controlled it until 250 AD, when the Amazigh (Berbers) took over until the Arab conquest of North Africa. It was in 1146 that the Almohad ruler Abd al-Mu'min started fortification of Rabat as a launching point for attacks on Spain, but it was Yaqub al-Mansur who moved the capital to Rabat. His architectural legacy includes the Kasbah, a word familiar to many a Westerner, probably because of the Clash, and to many a Tucsonan, probably because of 4th Ave.

We went to this Kasbah, the outside of which is pictured. It was built after the Almohads destroyed the Kasbah of the Almoravids. In 1150, they began reconstructing it. After the death of Yaqub al-Mansur in 1199, the Kasbah was deserted. He also built the beginnings of what would have been the world's largest Mosque, the Hassan Tower of which still stands looking forlornly over the sprawling city below it. Fail. The tower is only 44 m tall, and Yaqub had intended almost twice that. I guess sometimes you just can't finish what you started. According to the tour guide I overheard there, the minaret was going to have ramps so that the muezzin could ride a horse up to the top to give the call to prayer. In the picture you can see the inside of the Kasbah, to which the entrance is free and lots of people seem to go to hang out in the clean, well-manicured gardens. There are also a number of cats being super cute everywhere, so I took a lot of pictures of them.

Following Yaqub's death, the Almohads experienced a long decline started with the loss of their territory in Spain. Eventually the empire totally collapsed, leaving the Kasbah to be renovated in the era of modernity and the Hassan Tower to become part of the splendid burial complex of Mohammed V, where no expense was spared to ensure the former king was buried in royal splendor.

Pictured is a street of Rabat behind the Kasbah winding up towards the view of the ocean. The streets in this section of town were painted blue and white and the plants set on the sidewalks were really striking. Issam, Katie, and I walked through these narrow alleys and found a guy sitting on the sidewalk in what looked like a pretty permanent set-up, with a blanket and his gimbri, which is a three-stringed bass instrument used to play gnaoua music. Gnaoua is a religious order with influences from sub-Saharan Africa and Islam, the music of which is focused on expelling spirits from bodies suffering from possession. Issam talked to the guy for a bit, who started playing a gnaoua song. It's a haunting form of music, complemented by the performace of it; the singer wore a fes-like hat with a tassle on the top and swung his head around in small circles so that the tassle revolved around his head as he sang. The belief is that the principles and music of gnaoua came from sub-Saharan Africa such as Ghana when a Moroccan sultan conquered Timbuktu and brought African slaves back to Morocco and their religious predispositions mixed with the extant ones, much like the spread of Catholicism in Central and South America.

That night we went to the medina again to get some dinner at a different, but similar, Moroccan restaurant where I once again spent under $5 for an excellent meal. I was happy to enjoy a second bowl of harira, the most delicious soup, which is made from a tomato base and flavored with onions, herbs, and a little bit of meat. There's also rice, eggs, and lentils; it's actually a lot like koshari in theory, but not in practice. It was very delicious. From the second-floor table at the restaurant, we could view the mob in the below, where people pressed up against the vendors to buy whatever they needed for Eid which was only a couple days away. Walking through the medina in the evening for the couple days before Eid was miserable, and surprisingly similar to walking through a packed concert. As much as it was annoying to get shoved and stepped on, it was kind of nice that men and women all go to the same place, and everyone is on an even level. Guys shove women just as much as they do other guys; it's just people. As much as that's not a super positive trait, it's so much better than the artificial barriers put between men and women that characterize my time spent in the Gulf.

The next day we checked out the Hassan Tower and Mausoleum of Mohammed V that I mentioned earlier. I made the mistake of letting the couple women lurking outside the entrance with henna put henna on my hands. Katie had mentioned that henna should cost a little under $3, but after the process was done, they wanted more like $12. We had to give them half that--I was still letting myself get ripped off--and hasten out of there. We viewed the excess of the burial of the king and walked around the city. After that we went to Katie's host family's house for lunch. It was a little awkward, though, because we went on the day before Eid that Muslims tend to fast, so Nadia, the mother, served us lunch which we ate alone in the kitchen. We felt a little odd eating lunch while the family fasted, but they had invited us for that day so we went.

After lunch we went across the river to Sale. We were meeting one of Katie's other Moroccan friends, but we arrived a little early. In the picture you can see one of the doors to the city walls. The city is more populous than Rabat, but so close that they operate as a single metropolitan area, although much significance is placed on where in either city someone is from. Issam is from Sidi Musa, on the other side of the city, facing the Atlantic.

When we arrived at the door, where we were planning to meet her friend, we found a festival to celebrate Eid. It was fascinating. The first part was an exhibition of children's talents, as far as I could gather. We first saw two teenagers in overalls with a ladder perform a pretty sharply choreographed show of acrobatics with the ladder. Next was a kid with several bowling pins, who jugggled them more impressively than I expected. Then eight or so kids did a circus kind of thing, with flipping and cartwheels. It was pretty neat. After that closed down, the focus shifted across the park to some kids my age playing drums on overturned trash cans. They did that for awhile, and then things started getting kind of weird.

Two people wearing backpack-based costumes of huge African people made out of paper-mache or something came out. The costumes were probably twenty feet tall, at least, and long poles coming from the costumes' hands were controlled by the people wearing them. Rhymthmic bouncing made the figures look like gigantic dancers, and they walked around the festival stretching out the huge painted hands to the spectators. Next two people wearing tall stilts and dressed as sheep with devil-masks came out. Sheep are the animal sacrificed for the Eid, so I assume that was the rationale for the sheep costumes. They too bounced up and down, the grimacing, sinister masks staring and the piles of sheep wool fluttering. It was really, really weird.

After that, we found her friend and walked through the city doors and found a cafe. I had yet another glass of Moroccan tea, which is pretty constantly offered in Morocca. It's tea cooked with sugar and mint, and sometimes sage, and it ends up being minty, sugary syrup. Pictured is one of the cats who hangs around the cafe. We sat on the street drinking tea and watching people go by; it's exciting when a traditional old Moroccan walks by in his pointy hood and bright yellow slip-on sandals. Less exciting was when a cart would roll by, men pushing it, with two or three sheep stuffed inside. At least the sheep were still alive. We walked back to her host family's house to get some stuff, then met Issam at the medina. We decided to go to Agdal for dinner, which is the upscale European part of town, and we settled on a French cafe. It was a different view of Morocca, where chainsmoking young people wear new fashions and chat in Moroccan Arabic--totally incomprehensible to me--splattered with French lexical items for effect.

When we got back from dinner, we were informed by the management at our little hotel that there would be a cow sacrifice that night in the courtyard so we may wish to move hotels. The family who owned that hotel also owned one two buildings down, where the rooms were renovated and the price was the same, so we took them up on their advice and moved. We had a nice room with two beds and a sink still, although the communal squat toilet was inside next to our room instead of outside across the courtyard, so it was a net improvement.

Unfortunately, that night I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep when I became aware of the fact that I was going to be very sick. The squat toilet was close to our hotel room, but nothing really makes the promise of vomiting in a squat toilet any less disturbing. Needless to say, vomiting in a situation like that is a last-resort sort of event, but I was in a last-resort sort of situation. Luckily, after a few hours, the problem was solved, so I was fortunate not to be really sick.

The next day, Katie had a full day of school so I was on my own to walk around Rabat. I had plans to visit the Roman ruins and the art museum, but when I left the hotel it was raining and taxis were impossible to find, so my motivation slipped and I just decided to walk around. I ended up at an archway to a long, imposing clay wall stocked with a couple guards, so I decided to walk through. Apparently it was the royal palace; as I walked through, the guards stopped me and peppered me with questions about my intentions and nationality. At the end, they said "have a nice journey" as they waved me through, so I think they weren't operating with any official capacity, just curiousity.

When I got to the palace, I was impressed by how different the palace grounds are from the regular city. I guess that should be expected. I was also surprised because for some reason I thought this was THE palace, but of course, there's actually a palace in every city. This one maybe is a little big because it's the capital city, but it definitely isn't unique. When I approached the main gate, I found some tourist groups assembled so I hung around listening in on a Spanish tour guide for a little bit. I walked around the grounds, where there is much more than just the palace. There are also a huge mosque, several governmental buildings, and some totally unidentified stuff. The grounds are maintained meticulously, of course, and it made me wish I had gone on a sunny day.

After I wrapped up my personal tour of the palace, I sat in an extremely nice restaurant for an hour or two reading a bilingual French-Arabic book about the Arabic sciences in the golden age. Through the windows I watched the people walking by, happy to see the cultural vibrancy that seems to be completely usual in Morocco. It's amazing how much dress makes a difference; in Qatar, all the nationals wear nearly the same style of clothes, and it gives the impression to the visitor that there is some kind of monolithic culture. While that is of course untrue, the subcultures, trends, and styles of Moroccan young people make it apparent. Kids carry skateboards, wear spiked belts, some have dreadlocks, wear shirts with pictures of metal bands. It's exciting.

That night I met Katie at the hotel and we went out looking for food. We had a Chinese place that she had seen in mind, but we didn't end up finding it so we chose an outdoor cafe at a small independent cinema. Pictured is a kitty who sat with us as we ate cheeseburgers and drank juice. The cat may or may not have eaten about half of my burger. It was also a good example of my language difficulties in Morocco. Because of my appearance, the locals think I'm European and speak to me in French, so then I have to ask them to speak in Arabic instead, but then they speak to me in Moroccan Arabic and then I don't understand, so they have to work with what they can do of standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic. It's a hassle! I tried to learn some phrases in Moroccan Arabic, but it wasn't enough to learn anything particularly useful.

The next day was Eid. We left the medina to get to the first street with cars so we could get a taxi to Sale for our Eid festivities. We had plans with both Issam's family and Katie's host family. We headed first to Issam's house, which is in Sidi Musa, on the Atlantic coast. Inside the house, we found the results of the morning's activities hanging in the living room. I was glad we weren't present for the slaughter because just seeing the gaping cavity of guts and dripping blood was enough. Issam's family was charming and hospitable, and I felt very grateful to have been invited by them to join in their biggest religious holiday of the year. We sat and drank tea and talked about language. Issam's sister is a fan of Egyptian films so she translated everything into enthusiastic Egyptian Arabic for me. In Morocco, the tradition is to eat the organs on the first and second day of Eid and save the meat. We were served mostly liver, and at this meal, the liver was manageable. I am not a big fan of liver, but maybe the fact that it had been living liver just a few hours earlier and stuffed into pillowy Moroccan bread that made it palatable for me.

After lunch, we chatted for a little longer and then made our way outside. Katie and I were going to move to the next Eid party, so Issam came outside with us to get us a taxi. The beauty of the coast right in front of his house is ridiculous; it's surprising that no Emirati or American company has come in and built outrageous resorts perched on the dramatic rocks and waves.

Pictured is me just aross the street from Issam's house. Imagine growing up here!

Next we took one of the few taxis prowling the streets to another part of Sale to go to the house of the extended family of Katie's host family. This event was less social, as we settled into the television room with the other kids and watched Oprah. We were served more liver, although this time I found it much less easy to handle. We ate what we could and settled in for a few hours of television. When it was about time for us to go, we ran into the typical Middle Eastern problem. No one ever wants you to go! We told them we had plans, and they said we needed to stay for dinner, so we said we had plans in an hour, so they insisted that we stay for dinner, which they served to us alone since the family wasn't eating for another few hours. This time it wasn't liver, but stomach, kidney, and heart. I actually had to tell them I couldn't any more organs, and tried to explain American cultural norms and expectations. I think they understand, or at least, I hope.

The next day I set off on a solo journey to Tangier. In the picture, you will see a picture of one of the typical Tangier avenues. I've always wanted to go to Tangier, seriously, my whole life, or at least since junior year of high school when I wrote my JCP on William S. Burroughs, who spent time in Tangier after legal problems set him off on a journey to Rome. While in Europe, he read some fiction of Paul Bowles, who lived most of his life in Tangier, and decided to head over in 1953. While there, he lived in a home famous for providing homosexual prostitutes to American and European clients and wrote Interzone. He lived there for several months before returning to the States. When he returned, his friend Allen Ginsberg was in California, he was having royalty problems with Junkie, and his parents were threatening to cut off his allowance (he was part of the Burroughs adding machine family, after all). So, he returned to Tangier, which, as an internationally administered city, was a hive of scum and villiany. In November 1954, he arrived and stayed for several years writing what would become Naked Lunch in a drugged blur of marijuana and opiates. In 1957, Ginsberg and Kerouac came to Tangier to help him revise, order, and prepare Naked Lunch for publication. While Burroughs ultimately moved to Paris, Bowles stayed for the rest of his life and Tangier has been living in the shadow of this golden age ever since.

I left on the train an hour or so late (trains in Morocco run on time only some of the time) and sat with a Spanish tourist on the tailend of a month-long journey through Morocco. He spoke to me in English and Spanish, and I was impressed that he managed to navigate rural Morocco with only English, since no one in the south understands Spanish. He got off at Asilah, a tourist town not from Tangier, and I rode to the end of the line and got a taxi into the ville nouvelle to get a hotel room for myself. I chose a three-star for a change, since I was staying alone. I was glad I did, because I would have been fine anywhere else, but it was nice to stay in a good place (and it was the first Western toilet I encountered in Morocco!).

For the rest of the day and the next, I wandered around the medina and the new city and walked along the coastal road. In the picture, you can see the view from the Tangier shores. The boat is coming from Spain, and the landmass you can see is Spain itself. The strait of Gibraltar only stretches 14 km across, so the boat ride is fast. Tangier is also the biggest port in Morocco, with tourists and goods constantly coming in and going out, and a flurry of European languages, especially Spanish, flying around. It's an especially popular weekend destination for tourists from southern Spain.

The city is absolutely gorgeous. In the picture is a view of part of the city from mid-town. I ate in a couple cafes and tried to avoid the lecherousness of the men there, which went beyond the lecherousness of Egypt and the rest of Morocco by a lot. One guy tried to hang out with me both the first day and then ran into me again the second day, although I appreciated that both times he did desist when I told him firmly. The only slightly unsettling encounter I had on the second day. I was crossing the street at an opening of cars and walked in front of a car waiting to make a u-turn. He made the u-turn slowly, but then craned his neck out to whistle at me and turned the car around so that as I crossed the other side of the street (there was a median), he was making another turn right behind me. He whistled and yelled again, but I ignored him and ducked into a cafe for lunch. I sat and was looking through the menu when I noticed him park outside on the street and come into the restaurant looking bent on something. He walked through the other two parts of the seating area but didn't come into the section where I was sitting, and I was glad, because I couldn't quite imagine what he intended. As my food came, he was sitting in his car, visible from the window where I was sitting, and a few moments passed then he turned around, stopped the car in the road right in front of my window, and watched me. I ignored his creepiness and he left after a bit. I didn't see him again, but I was glad I was observant enough to keep on top of his whereabouts during the thirty or so minutes he was around.

On the way back to Rabat, I went into the bathroom at the train station. Morocco is currently renovating its train system, starting with the big metro stations, and it seems to have started with Tangier. I was so impressed with the aesthetic values and cleanliness of the bathroom that I took a picture on my way out. I couldn't believe it!

I took the long train back to Rabat (about five hours) and spoke to a Moroccan businessman who was practicing his English. I like meeting people on the train; it's a secure way to speak to strangers as long as you don't leave your passport visible, I guess. The countryside between Rabat and Tangier is breahtaking. Rural farmhouses and sheep dot the pastures, green is everywhere, and the mountains roll into hills and groves. It's not what I expected; for some reason, I thought Morocco was all desert. It's not!

That night, I met Katie at the train station and we decided to give an Asian restaurant another go. Our first, Japanese in Agdal, was closed, so we walked to a restaurant we had seen before. The picture is of Katie inside the restaurant. It was truly bizarre. The facade, pictured below, is set onto the lower floor of an otherwise unremarkable apartment building, and visitors to the restaurant must walk through the grass to get to the door. I tried to take pictures of the inside, but they don't do justice to just how weird the place is. The ceilings are low and covered in bamboo, and the decor is exactly the same stuff that covers the walls and tables in American Chinese restaurants. There were two other patrons, one possibly Chinese and the other some kind of European. Both were speaking in broken English to each other. The lights were low and the menu in French. The food was decent enough, but it was mostly interesting because of how unexpected it was.

The next day was my last in Morocco. Katie, Issam, and I decided to take a daytrip to Fes. It's a long daytrip (about four hours on the train each way), but we didn't intend to spend too much time there, and I didn't want to take a week in Morocco and miss both Fes and Marrakech. We arrived in Fes to rain and Issam's fear that we'd be pickpocketed; despite the distinct honor of having been possibly the largest city in the world from 1170 to 1180, apparently, Fes is known to modern Moroccans as a dangerous place to go. We walked to the medina, which was a good forty minute walk from the train station. On the way, we passed by a graveyard. The people you can see are going to visit the graves of loved ones to read the Qur'an to them. This is sure to gain them favor in the hereafter, according to Issam. This graveyard lies just outside the walls to the old city.

We walked through the city but most things were closed. Friday after Eid isn't a great day to go to Fes, and the heavy rain coupled with Issam's incessant fear of danger made for a fairly tense situation. We raced through the corridoors where I would have preferred to stroll and browse the storefronts that were open. We did eat some decently priced lunch in a tiny loft of a "restaurant" accessible by a ladder. We also saw the madrasa (although I saw it spelled in Roman letters as medersa) of Abu Inan Faris, who built in 1351-1356 who also built a madrasa by the same name in Meknes. It is representative of Marinid architecture and, according to our guide, the most famous building in Fes. Like most madrasas in the Islamic world, it had a dual function as a school and a mosque. Currently, it is the only place of worship in Morocco where it is legal for non-Muslims to enter. This alone makes it special, because it was the only mosque I got to go into in Morocco. It's a wonder of decoration. It was renovated in the 18th century under Sultan Mulay Sliman and reconstructed in part in the 20th century to stabilize the infrastructure. There were also two cats inside who were very cute.

After we left Fes, we spent another long evening on the train. Because we arrived at the station just as the train was whistling its departure, we had to sprint onto it and didn't buy tickets beforehand. We were waiting to pay the $13 fare plus the $0.50 fee for buying on the train instead of at the station when Issam started plotting his scheme to avoid paying the controller. Katie and I decided to just pay when the controller came, and the conversation for the entire ride seemed to focus on how Issam would get us out of paying for our fare despite Katie's and my neutrality in the matter. The train was so packed, though, that the controller never came, and we never had an opportunity to pay. Strange!

Katie and I spent a final night in the medina of Rabat eating omelettes and "Moroccan salad" which is absolutely just the salsa fresca of my homeland. I woke up at 2:30 am the next morning to catch the 3:15 train to Casa, since the trains were on special Eid schedule and it was the only train I could get to make my 9:00 flight. The flight back was long and difficult, as daylong flights are more difficult to me than night flights. I finally actually got home at about 11:00 pm since my roommate Stephanie was kind enough to pick me up--if I had queued for a taxi, it'd have been another hour.

Exciting! I like Morocco a lot.

Qatari villa

These days, when I'm not watching Flight of the Conchords or making flow charts in Microsoft Paint, I'm working. I spent many hours this week working in the office of the associate dean, and a few more hours in the evening with a Qatari student of English who needed help with her phonology homework.

I've decided that a Qatari villa is the apex of my personal hopes and ambitions. Her house is new; they moved in a week or so ago. Lots of people live in the house; it's the house of her husband and his family, which of course is her family (first-cousin marriage is respected and encouraged here). It's huge. It's state-of-the-art. I couldn't even count all the flat-screen televisions; they were overshadowed by the tons of fabric wrapping the front wall of windows, glistening with, literally, I am not kidding, multi-colored, shining, sparkling glitter. It was my dreams made manifest.

I'm going to Morocco tomorrow. I hope it rules.

Thanksgiving in Qatar

Thanksgiving this year didn't include turkey but it did include an American franchise and European techno music.

Erin and I met fellow Americans Dylan, Elissa, Macey, Alex, and American-for-the-night Khalid at the Ponderosa Steakhouse. Ponderosa Steakhouse is a franchise with 46 overseas locations. It, and its alter-ego after a merger with Bonanza Steakhouse, were both named for the television show Bonanza and the Ponderosa Ranch.





The restaurant is closer in American spirit and mentality than the Embassy. The furniture looks like any cheap, un-renovated Ihop, and if it weren't for black-clad women and men in thobes, it might have seemed just like home. We convened at 5:00 to imitate Thanksgiving's odd middle-of-the-afternoon schedule and descended upon the all-you-can-eat "Grand Buffet" which wasn't quite so grand. When all was said and done, we had spent three hours in microwaved fried American-food heaven, and the bill was 440QAR for all seven (about $120). Not bad.

Here's me

Here's our Honorary American who didn't quite get the idea of gorging yourself:




Erin and I:



As were were standing outside in the parking lot devising our next move, two guys in a white sedan drove by with M.C. Hammer's timeless classic "2 Legit 2 Quit" blaring. We reacted accordingly, inspiring the two to stop the car, leave the engine running, and breakdance impressively on the asphault for the remainder of the song. It was, as long as it wasn't a group halleucination--as when the song was over they drove away as quickly as they had come--a most majestic site.

After that, we moved on to a shisha place for a more all-encompassing cultural experience, although we had lost our Qatari companion. Erin and I returned home around 10, and were promptly invited by our flatmate Stephanie to attend a concert given by the famous Italian DJ Benny Benassi at the Diplomatic Club. We don't usually do things like that, so we impulsively decided to go.

Our group had a free ticket, which was the enticing factor, as discounted student tickets were still $40. The event was housed in a huge, semi-permament tent structure usually used for Qatari weddings and Ramadan gatherings. It was hazy with cigarette smoke and chaperoned by thobe-clad security detail wandering around making sure dancers were leaving space for Jesus (or...something). I wasn't exactly impressed by Mr. Benassi's performance, but that probably stems from my confusion that there exists a genre of music in which the famous performer merely shares the contents of his iTunes with the masses. The first couple hours of the set were enjoyable from a cultural and sociological point of view, but by about 2:00, the population of women in the tent had dwindled to us, some die-hards, and prostitutes. Guys started looking around lecherously, and Erin and I became uncomfortable. We weren't in any danger, because lechers might give you a creepy look but are too smarmy to try anything, and besides, we had two of Stephanie's imposing guy friends with us. But, nevertheless, the atmosphere changed a little and we were glad to be on our way when the lights came on at 3:00.

It probably rivals 2006, the year of Egyptian Chinese food in Zamalek and ice cream in Mohandseen, for top unconventional Thanksgiving experience.

oh, the weather outside is weather

The air is finally getting cool enough to see the outside without squinting, and the accompanying feelings this brings reminds me of the best time of the year in Tucson, when winter is looming elsewhere but at home everything is crisp enough and clear, like the heat waves of the summer had actually impaired vision. (they're freezin' up in Buffalo, stuck in their cars, and I'm lyin' here 'neath the sun and the stars...) When the heat settles down, it seems like visibility shoots up, like I can see again, like the options are endless and enthusiasm unflappable. It's usually the time I make a detailed schedule to allocate my time which will last a week or two before melting into the ebb and flow of routine and naps.

The point is that it's finally like that here. I think it's gotten to everyone, too, because some things are finally starting to move. Despite the semester being well half-over, we just got our student identification cards. I got a four hour per week tutoring gig in the women's campus, and it's just now getting underway. The mornings are brightly colored but the sun isn't so bright. It's a beautiful time to be in Doha.

For the first time since I came to this country, I finally am juggling a number of assignments, projects, positions, and activities. This is how I am happiest and without constant, distracting, simultaneous directions at which to focus my attention, I quickly slump into incomprehensible but deep sadness. I wasn't quite there before, but a number of my earlier Doha days were spent sleeping and watching whatever came on MBC 4. Days like these never seem so bad when they're in the present, but looking back at them from the vantage point of excitement and involvement, even with just a few weeks' hindsight, it becomes clear that I was killing time.

I've managed to make peace with the expense of this city. I am saving for what will probably be the greatest trip of my so-far life, so I'm not spending any money on myself or my free time. Instead, I've actually started doing a lot of homework instead of just what I need to, and I got this tutoring job, and I have a job at Georgetown (although I haven't had hours for it for a long time), and I just received another job offer from Qatar University's administration (but it's still in the works). Tutoring requires me getting up to take the 6:30 a.m. bus into school three days a week, and it's wonderful. To go the extra mile and truly bore my unfortunate readership, I'll mention that waking up at 7:30 is miserable, but waking up at 6:00 is no less miserable at all.

Besides these promised and actual activities, I've also got applications, essays to write, research to do. My new house has a friendly atmosphere instead of a stifling, angry one. I'm planning my winter break trip (and fretting over the costs I have yet to balance into my budget).

The downside of all this is that, for instance, this past weekend I didn't do anything at all. On Thursday night, Erin and I entertained for the first time; we had Alex, two of his friends, Adonis, Magda, and Elissa over for dinner and a Monopoly game. It was the kind of wholesome evening I probably haven't encountered since high school at my or Nich's house. On Friday night, I didn't make it out of the house again, preferring instead to watch a couple of the many episodes of No Reservations I've got on my hard drive before watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall with Adonis, Erin, and Mohamed. How boring does it get? Yesterday I at least left the house to walk (on our feet! walking! in this country? indeed!) to the Villaggio with Adonis and Elissa, but all that happens there is regrettable consumption of T.G.I. Friday's, wishing and wanting over the new stuff at H&M, and a partial grocery trip. Maybe next weekend I'll make it out to the desert and have something worthy of writing about; regardless of how interesting it all is, though, it's all been perfect.

lots of info

Ok, here's a more substantive update for those of you (numbering in the negatives, assuredly) who care about my life.

First, I think I've said enough about the election.

Second, I mentioned bizarre program decision number infinity. I actually wonder if I am being ridiculous about this one. I have no skills or training in second language pedagogy, so I'm not one to talk, but I was pretty ok with my 13-person class. It's kind of big, but everyone knows everyone and there's progress and assignments and camaraderie. A week ago, some bizarre favor-owed-to-someone brought 18 Malaysian students to Qatar for "one month." I realize I'm here on scholarship, but were I paying tuition for this experience, I'd certainly feel like two weeks to a month of severely compromised educational quality would be unacceptable.

Oh well. Not my place.

Anyway, I also mentioned Halloween. It was pretty uneventful, but we did go to a Korean restaurant to celebrate my friend Alex's birthday. It was expensive, but quite delicious. We also made our first trip to a bar in this country, where I decided that I will not be doing much drinking. Two drinks set me back 112QAR, which is $31. Yikes!

Another major event of this past week was our move. Erin and I were sharing our apartment with the third American student from Georgetown. Things were alright, although apparently not that alright, because our roommate went to Stephanie, a French graduate student living upstairs, to ask if she could switch. Stephanie was living with two very conservative Muslim girls and something had gone wrong somewhere, so she was amenable to a change. Erin and I decided that if our roommate went looking for new roommates without consulting us, it would be prudent to move. So, Erin and I packed up our stuff, and the two girls from upstairs moved into our old rooms and we moved on up. Already, we are very happy.

Our roommate told us not to take it personally--although it seems like a very personal decision. We don't mind at all, but how could wanting to switch roommates be anything but personal? In this case, it's wonderful, because now Erin and I live with someone who is very like-minded and our former roommate can surround herself with people who are likewise like-minded. Excellent! It's also kind of nice that one of our three-person flat isn't American. Stephanie doesn't mind if we have co-ed social gatherings in our apartment--something I'm very much used to in the United States, as my mom was accustomed to regularly entertaining Nick and Ben on the weekends at our home.

The entire mood of the apartment is different! Stephanie actually has a coveted residential alcohol permit, which means she can legally have booze in the house. Wow! It's exciting despite the fact that I won't drink much, or any, alcohol at all. Stephanie also has a cleaning lady once a week, and while I wasn't thrilled about an extra $11 a week that comes right out of my otherwise paltry restaurant budget, I think that for the amount of time I spend at home and how busy I am going to be once I am doing this program, one extracurricular activity, and two jobs, I think it's worth it. (Notice mention of one extracurricular and one job more than I've mentioned. My typical habit of loading up on time commitments has followed me to Qatar and given me back my happiness that I missed at the beginning of this year here. More information forthcoming once I find out more about these two new activities, both beginning tomorrow.)

As is probably evident, I am enjoying myself.

american abroad

Something great about being abroad right now is that I get to see the transformation of America from the psychotic, xenophobic, war-mongering country it has been recently (a country of people who tolerated George W. Bush for eight years without armed revolt) into a respectable nation of people (well, just a little over half) who want to end this nightmare.

Last night, I went to a party at a house hosted by a Romanian-Finnish couple. She is from Finland, he from Romania; they have been in Doha for a couple years. The people there were mostly Romanian, but also Jordanian, Algerian, French, etc. Something I love about the world's victory on 4 November is that there doesn't need to be discussion about whether you supported Obama or not. When our Finnish host discovered we were American, the first word out of her mouth was "Congratulations!"

This is the first time I've ever been abroad when it doesn't seem like maybe a bad idea to mention I'm American.

Thank you, a little over half of my country, for giving me a break.

And for the record, I fully intend to break Arizona constitutional law by defining marriage more inclusively than my deplorable state's hate-based, homophobic new amendment. Even if you support marriage inequality, can't we all agree that limiting civil rights and ensuring discrimination belongs in legislation? Can't we all agree that limiting people's rights IN THE CONSTITUTION is a scary, scary precedent? I believe, strongly, that constitutions should be used to protect people's rights, not limit them, regardless of whether we're talking about marriage inequality or not.

history

WE DID IT. A black man is president, in a country that wrote its slavery into its founding documents. This is an important day.

here's two pictures

On Sunday, we didn't have class so that the program could be escorted to the private museum of Shaikh Faysal. It's a palatial villa with the contents of his personal collection of schtuff on display. I imagine that were Clyde Jr. an Arabian shaikh, the farmhouse and schtuff might have had a different fate in the early 1990s.

An entire hall was filled with military and artistic artifacts, from the 4th century AH to the Ottoman period. There was some cool Abbasid stuff and a formidable mannequin of a soldier in Borneo. There was also a hall of classic cars, over which some of the guys expressed great excitement, so they must have been pretty good cars. There was a hall of money, with several bills representing every country I could think of (the American portion was from a few Southern states--Virginia, Georgia, maybe another--in the early 1860s).

There was also a wall of Important Photographs of Important People:


Who knew he could be such a pimp in his free time?

Here's a picture of me and my friend Elissa after furthering our museumistic endeavors:


She's from Duke. Sorry, Dad; we're friends anyway.

update forthcoming

I'll post something soon, probably tomorrow. My life is on hold until the election is over.

Topics for Discussion:

1. Election
2. Bizarre Program Decisions Part 4,509
3. Halloween in Qatar

i slaved over a hot stove for this

In order to impress my friend Adonis, I decided to forgo my usual character and cook something. Since I care so deeply about his approval, I knew I had to go with something certain to be a success. So, I knew it had to be something a four-year-old could assemble.

Unfortunately, this involved a number of complicated procedures. First, I had to turn on the stove. This involved recruiting the assistance of my patient roommate Erin, who showed me this huge tank of gas underneath the situation. Then, you have to be daring and quick as you stick a lighter into the open gas stream and try not to set your face on fire.

With the gas thus ignited, I began to prepare my magnum opus of the kitchen: grilled cheese sammich. I used the excuse that the grilled cheese is emblematic of the American South and this Australian ought know about it.

The process involved selecting bread, slicing cheese, putting margarine on the bread, and then applying directed heat onto the sammich until the sammich was done but not overdone. It was very complicated and I was very nervous.

I served the sammich with chips, and it was a great success. In fact, he asked for another, and I, in my newfound domesticity, complained about having to take all the stuff out again only minimally.

Living in a pigheaded chauvinist country has not done much for my strong-willed American feminist background.

standardized testing

Today I had the distinct pleasure of taking the GRE. It was held in a hotel room of the Ramada Inn, so it may or may not have actually been the GRE. I hope it was.

listening and speaking

I was encouraged by one member of my considerably sized fanbase to update this blog. Unfortunately, I have nothing of real interest with which to update it, but that hasn't stopped me in the past.

Looking over my notes, I see that nothing much has happened since I went to the zoo. The school week was an uneventful stretch of class, naps, and homework during which I checked the news on McCain's floundering campaign and wondered if the Republican criminal conspiracy would even let an election really happen. That takes a lot of time. Add homework--essays, grammar, poems--and naps, and my life is fairly full.

One thing that I did was give a presentation in الاستماع والتحدث class, or listening and speaking. The professor is a fast-talking Mauritanian who speaks French but not English--when he glosses a word for us, it's in French, so that's cool because now I know some French words (French seems really easy: objectif, subjectif, phénomène). The first round of presentations were topics assigned by him, seemingly off the cuff, tailored for each student--entire class periods of him in his impeccably Arab style of discourse, singling someone out and saying (I translate): "Fouad, you'll talk about...globalization. Globalization. Yes, globalization. Does anyone know what globalization is? Globalization...our world, it is based in connections. Connections! Globalization...it has positive aspects, and negative aspects, and it is our task to discern between them, to arrive at a conclusion based on our discernments of the positive and negative aspects. This is our task. Fouad, you will talk about globalization, its positive and negative aspects. A century ago, nothing was known about globalization..." And it continued like this, with pontification on every single subject, for about a week until everyone had a topic.

The topics were painstakingly chosen to complement our interests, personalities, and skills. (I jest.) To demonstrate this, I was given the topic...wait for it..."Woman: Her Role in Society and History." At the time this topic was assigned to me, I was the only female student in the class. Another female student from Russia has joined the course. Her topic? "The Soviet Union: Its Decay."

Anyhow, so I had to give my presentation. Arabic style demands widely outrageously broad introductions to equally outrageously broad topics. I'm not too good at this, so I chose to talk specifically about the role of women in the Roman Republic, the effect of the rise of Islam on the role of women in Arabia, and the modern suffrage movements. I figured that speaking specifically on topics that span the breadth of, oh, all of history would suffice. After I gave my presentation, our professor responded to it in the same way he responds to most things: a long speech of his own. "Students, we have listened to a fine presentation by Amanda. She has spoken to us in modern Arabic without errors. She has exposed the role of women in history; she has exposed the role of women in obtaining the freedom of franchisement; she has spoken of women in history and society. Women: they are our mothers, our sisters. What do we know about marriage? Amanda has spoken to us about marriage in Rome. Women! They have a role in society." And on, and on, and on.

Basically, he's totally awesome.

Doha Zoo

This weekend was a downward slide.

On Thursday night, I went out to dinner at a restaurant called Turkey Central which served mostly Syrian food and delicious juices. Then we went to see the new Abdel Imam film, Hassan wa Marqus (Hassan and Marcus), an Egyptian move in which two Egyptian families, one Muslim and one Coptic, hilariously (and poignantly), have to pretend to be members of the other religion. It was heavy-handed (in the tradition of Crash) in its message of national unity over religious factionalism, but it was a good film overall.

On Friday, I didn't do much.

On Saturday, I went to the zoo. The Doha Zoo is close to my house, and while I didn't know much about it before I went, I expected that since Qatar enjoys some of the highest statistics of wealth in the world, the zoo would be fabulous. I naively didn't expect it to be the worst, by far, experience I've had in Doha and emotionally damaging on the level that only my first, childhood watching of Old Yeller could top.

I should specify before discussing my long, long hour at the zoo that I am aware that this zoo should be couched firmly in relativity. Yes, you might say, the Cairo Zoo is worse. Yes, you might say, the animals are fed, and they have space, and blah blah blah. I respond: I never went to the Cairo Zoo, because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it. The difference here is that the Cairo Zoo probably doesn't have funding; here in Qatar, someone in the government could easily write off a few million for habitat creation in the zoo (and they have the space--it's a country of empty desert) and no one would notice. So sure, the Doha Zoo probably isn't as bad as some others, and I'll be the first to admit it--but why should there be such a deplorable gap between the resources available and the zoo as it is?

Another point I should discredit before talking about the Doha Zoo is that American zoos only became moderately tolerable--and not across the whole country--recently. How can we expect zoos in other countries to match the marvelous facilities we have in America when other countries are dealing with basic issues of human health and welfare? Simple answer. If a country can't support a zoo, it shouldn't have one. Children should be raised to respect, revere, and love animals, but never at the expense of keeping lions in a tiny cage filled with discarded plastic bags and popcorn. Zoos should serve the wildlife that the most recent period of humanity's development has so severely threatened; their value in education and amusement should be second to their mission to serve the wildlife. Yes, we're just barely moving away from the circus-boxcar model of animal treatment in the States, and there are, shockingly, still circuses that enslave animals and even commercials and television shows that use apes and other animals to sell products (killing the reverence children should have for them in the process). So it shouldn't be surprising that such a unenlightened approach still prevails elsewhere, but in my opinion, at least in the case of the Doha Zoo, the money that is surely available to a project like this should yank the entire park into the realm of the best American zoos.

There is no way to adequately explain how troubling, disturbing, and haunting my visit to the zoo was. In fact, it took me almost two days to be able to write about it here.

This picture was take right by the entrance to the zoo. I think it encapsulates the lack of respect for wildlife the zoo represents. The animal exhibits are only one part of a carnival-themed space; the emphasis is tacitly on their value for human amusement, not as living things that have intrinsic worth and dignity. (Click on any picture to see it bigger.)


The first thing you see is a spherical metal cage with two bonobos in it. My first reaction, admittedly, was positive, as I've never seen bonobos before in any zoo. They are our closest relatives, arguably genetically close enough to be in our genus Homo. Their cage, quickly, changed my mind about the situation; what could have been an enjoyable trip became unavoidably depressing when I noticed that these bonobos were living in featureless dirt, in a space barely bigger than a prison cell. In America, despite the amount of racism and classism that goes into conviction, at least the majority of incarcerated citizens have committed a crime to deserve such abbreviated living conditions. What have bonobos done? They don't even have warfare in their species.

Next was the elephant. I immediately noticed that it was an Asian elephant alone in the enclosure--at least it wasn't living with an African elephant like the species-bending elephant enclosure in Reid Park Zoo! You'll notice that the elephant has been painted--someone told me this was customary for Asian elephants, and that's fine--I've seen my share of decorated camels and I've colored a pink stripe on my mom's white cat--but the painted flowers combined with the cramped, completely featureless cage made the decoration seem nothing but mocking and deragotory.

Here is the elephant--an animal intelligent, capable like humans of modifying their environment to suit their needs, and so emotionally developed that grief and mourning is a part of life:


Here is the enclosure, to give a sense of just how tiny the space given to this elephant was:


Next I walked by some monkeys, some birds, and then the chimpanzee. I couldn't get a good picture of this depressing prison cell, but the chimp was hanging on the bars staring outside of his enclosure. I'm not one to anthropomorphize (LIE ALERT) but I definitely felt the sadness and solitude of this chimp in his tiny dirt wasteland.


Now, if you know me well, or at all, in fact, then you know that the big cats are a fundamental part of the joy of my life. One of the worst days last year was when Raja died. Tigers are the largest of the cats and arguably the most majestic. They are also solitary, sneaky creatures, always slithering around the jungle. The tigress may have a territory of 7.5 square miles, while the male tiger needs between 23 and 40 square miles. This tiger here has about 1,000 square feet. Constant pacing has worn a path around the enclosure.

There was an enclosure even tinier for two juvenile jaguars. Jaguars are some of the most slitherous, secretive kitties, and here they are without anywhere to hide. I was shocked because while jaguars don't need the huge territory that tigers do, they like to hide in dark places and here they barely had a place to sit.


Next was the African lion. It should go without saying that I believe that zoos operating for anything other than captive breeding, re-wilding, and strong educational programs should be illegal, but I feel especially strongly about the lion. To imprison a lion in an enclosure as featureless and cramped as this one should be an international crime, punishable by rotting in the Hague.


All of this is sad, yes. But the very worst part, and the part that forced me to sit down on a bench and sob--I got some odd looks from the locals--is the lack of respect any of the zoo's patrons seemed to have for the animals. The exhibits are designed without any space between the walkways and the animals, and in many cases a simple fence is all that separates humans from animals. I watched, and cried, as parents laughed as their children threw popcorn into the peacock enclosure, into the ostrich enclosure, into the crocodile pool, into the monkey enclosure. Small red signs discouraging feeding the animals obviously were ignored or only half-hearted to begin with. I wanted to scream, to wake the parents up, to do something. But there was nothing to do. How could the parents reprimand their children for their abominable behavior when they saw nothing wrong with it?

gender segregation and school transportation

I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss the fairly odd phenomenon here of educational gender segregation. It's not like in Saudi, where girls' classes have to be separated from their male instructors by a wall (the instructors speak through an intercom system into the room of unseen veiled girls), but it is more strictly segregated that any educational experience I've had in the Middle East (Egypt, Oman).

Qatar University is composed of more than two-thirds female students and it should go without saying that there is a men's campus and a women's campus. Equally unnecessary to mention is that space allocations favor the small minority of men--the men's campus is larger than the women's despite the numbers going the other way.

The only mixed-gender program in the university is our Arabic program. Our classes are held in the men's campus--so there is one building of the men's campus which regularly sees girls. Naturally, as fits a thoroughly rational place, the building in which our classes meet is the Shari'a building. Where else?

More on Qatar University's enviable administration system: our transportation to and from school. I thought this was one aspect of this experience I could count on. A bus used to come at 8, stop in front of our apartment--since it is a bus arranged for us specifically--and take us to school. Then, we could, at our leisure, take either a 1:00pm bus or a 2:00pm bus home in the afternoon. Little did I know that this was only a holy-month miracle; after Ramadan, bus service has either been terminated, changed, or misunderstood.

We went to find out about the bus that supposedly is arranged for our convenience and were told yesterday that it still comes at 8 to our house. Strange--because it hasn't been doing this since Ramadan. Today it didn't come, despite our multiple checks. We drove to school in Nadia's car--if she didn't have a car, I suppose we'd have just missed class because taxis need to be arranged a day in advance. We went to find out about the situation and the bus driver told us he was at our apartment waiting at 8. I don't want to call anyone a liar, but there are definitely multiple interpretations of reality occurring here. They also say that there is a bus going home every day at 2:30pm and 4:00pm. Class gets out three days a week at 1:50 and two days a week at 2:50, so if these buses do exist, we shouldn't (in theory) need to keep driving.

At least we can park in the faculty lot right by our classroom. One thing that's cool about the Middle East is that if you just look like whatever you want to be at the time, no one is going to question it--in fact, in this case, they'll just raise the bar across the parking lot's entrance.

eid

Eid break was extended by two days, so we don't have class until Tuesday. I haven't done much.

Here's a photo of our hilarious faux arranged marriage wedding shoot thanks to Erin:

Eid

So far for Eid break, I have not done much. Since my passport is locked at QU, I can't travel. I had plane tickets to Morocco for this break, but I had already changed them to December since I suspected bureaucratic obstacles. So, on Thursday night, my friends and I attempted to eat dinner as a whole group, but ultimately failed due to transportation issues, so I had dinner with Alex and Adonis at an Iranian restaurant. It was delicious.

On Friday, I studied for the GRE and then Erin, Nadia, and I went to get dinner at a cheap restaurant. That was the whole day.

Today, I studied for the GRE, and shortly Nadia and Max are coming back to the house for dinner. Then maybe we'll go to the souq or do something fun.

I have the whole week off from school. I hope I get a lot done academically.

final step?

Today I turned in my form for my iqaama at the Immigration office of Qatar University. Despite all the forms I've collected along the way, all they needed was a new form I got from another part of campus, a photocopy of my blood type certificate, and my passport. So I handed it all over, and I was told I'd get the iqaama after Eid. We have all next week off from school, so it means that my passport is probably locked in a Brazil-sort of situation until October.

Of course, the same day, I get word that my job is at the formal hiring stage and they need my passport as a scanned copy won't do. I can only imagine how well my attempt tomorrow to retrieve or at least pinpoint my passport will go. My prediction is "Very Poorly."

The best part about receiving the permit, though, is that once I have that, I can get my exit permit. Due to the odd perk structure of the different programs sending students to QU, I have the privilege of acquiring a multi-exit permit, meaning that once I get it once, I can leave and enter Qatar as I wish. This is great news--all the non-Georgetown students have to apply for EACH sojourn outside the country! Great news indeed, as I have some international travel planned set to truly smash my father's face in the TCC competition, until he gets his island-nation-hunting jaunt together.

It's a great day in Doha.

fingerprinting

In the seemingly endless quest to achieve the ultimate governmental paperwork goal of an iqaama, the residence permit which will provide me with Qatari health care, legitimacy as a Doha reisdent, and the ability to seek an exit permit to leave the country, we visited yet another government-y place today. The theme of today's trip was fingerprinting, and it was the least interesting. We got picked up in an unmarked vehicle this morning from our apartment and taken to a complex of gated buildings. We went into the women's fingerprinting hall (it goes without saying that with the exception of the blood typing, all of this is gender-segregated into separate facilities) and got fingerprinted. It was the same machine the TPD used when I got my clearance to work with children (yay, I'm not a criminal!)--the kind with clear glass and no ink. They took the full 24 kinds of prints, so I guess I'm in the system.

blood type

Tonight we went to yet another medical office to have our blood types determined. We were very suspicious at how short the wait was, how professional the staff seemed, and how quick was the determination that all three of us are O positive. I guess that's pretty common, though. Also, while it was "only" a finger prick, as Erin so casually put it, it hurt pretty bad. I felt sorry for the tiny child who was waiting to go after us, because I almost started crying, and that probably didn't help the parents' case that "it really doesn't hurt at all just watch the big girls go!"...

my birthday

Since I'm sure you are all putting your lives on hold to find out what I did on my birthday, I will give you some relief by detailing my weekend events in full.

On Thursday, I went home from school and promptly took a nap. This is becoming customary, and sustainable. I then spent my evening in such noble and productive pursuits as watching Arabic-subtitled Knight Rider and taking quizzes online about my morals. (Go to yourmorals.org for some excellent time-wasting potential.) This extended well into the night, until I decided to go to bed.

On Friday, I was more productive, as I watched some television but also composed a most brilliant essay for my class. Then Erin and I went to the souq to meet my friends for my me-celebration dinner. We met Elissa and one of her friends, and Nadia, and went to wait for the male components of our group at a restaurant. We chose al-Bandar, a seafood restaurant, and were told we would have to wait until 8 p.m. before being seated indoors. The boys weren't coming until then anyway, so we waited in the humidity outside. Then the guys came, and they said it would be 9 before we could be seated, so we moved on. The ship waits for no man, or grilled fish.

We (I) chose an Indian place and we (I) were very satisfied with our (my) choice. It was ultimately the girls aforementioned, although Nadia left shortly after we got into the place, along with Alex (friend from Oman), Adonis (Australian), Eric (one of the Duke students), Dylan (another Duke student from Rutherfordton, believe it or not), and Max (Wisconsin). After a lovely dinner, I suggested (demanded) ice cream and so we went to the gelato place. We chatted until almost midnight and the remaining people (me, Erin, Dylan, Adonis) split gender-segregated style to our separate abodes.

Pretty exciting bithday celebration, no?

Then, on my actual birthday, I finished writing my essay and enjoyed some dial-up internets. Then, it was the mall (the Villaggio) once again where I completed a journalism assignment for my bonus dad and ate dinner at Sarai. It was a pretty excellent evening.

So, now you know how I spent my 22nd birthday. Hooray for me!

pictures of my house and Doha

I have finally acquired and electronified some pictures of my house. After the pictures of my house are some of my travels in dynamic Doha.

Captions follow pictures.


First, we have the living room. You will find the television on the left, with the seating area on the right. It is a very nice living room. It is directly adjoined to the dining room--one might say, in fact, that it is a single "great room."


Here we have the dining room, complete with a person for scale. The person is my lovely roommate Erin, displaying the magnitude of the table and the grandeur of the palatial digs we've got up in here.


There's our kitchen. It is an overly spacious kitchen considering that it doesn't have a single useful appliance (read: microwave).


Here is a large appliance that dominates one side of the countered walls. I am not sure what it does, or how to operate it. I am concerned about this appliance.


This is where I thought the microwave would be, but I keep looking and never find one.


Here is a fine example of Qatari mass-housing interior design.


This is my bedroom. You'll notice that I have two beds, the second of which is superfluous.




Now here's some Doha cityscape. I am not a very good night photographer.


Above is the last remaining vestige of the Qatari pearling industry--a tacky, gargantuan pearl monument on the corniche.


Here's the souq, a touristified homage to what is authentic in other places.

Cupping! Oh my gosh!

this week

Yesterday we had to miss class to go to the medical commission to have our chests x-rayed and our blood drawn. It was horrible, long, bureaucratic, and mildly frightening. I am glad it is over.

Just now in class, which has proven to be so far a waste of my time, we were answering questions. One of them was, in similar linguistic complexity, "Tokyo is the capital of Japan. Its population is 10 million. Its population exceeds that of New York by 3 million." The question was multiple choice: is the population of New York 3, 7, or 10 million? And it took about five minutes for my team to arrive at the answer. Needless to say, I wasn't participating. I am very grateful to be part of this program, though, and my complaints usually dissipate within an hour of leaving class.

I got a job, which is the greatest thing about being in Qatar so far. Hopefully, my position as research assistant will occupy some of the time I thought Arabic instruction would. I am extremely enthusiastic about it, and I have my first assignment due tonight. Good--because I don't even have any Arabic homework (it would probably be miserably repetitive if it existed).

classes

This weekend was pretty boring, but ok. On Thursday night, I went with Nadia, Erin, and the other English speakers, but not my friend Alex, to the corniche. We got a taxi-scam to the Sheraton and paid three times what we should have and then walked the length of the corniche (which is very long!). We then walked through the souq, which is one of the most touristy souqs I've ever seen! It was nice though, and we had some good gelato. Then the girls and I got a taxi ride for the right price home. It was a successful night.

On Friday, I sat around for the morning, then in the afternoon I started walking to the Villaggio in order to ascertain exactly how long it takes. It was very hot, and I made it about 10 minutes before accepting someone's offered ride (which is hitchhiking, I guess). His name was Thaha Busair, and he was nice enough to drive me the rest of the way to the Villaggio, and within thirty minutes, as I was sitting with my roommates in the mall, I received a text message from him professing his love. I did not respond to this heartfelt attempt to win my affections. I have so many potential suitors!

We spent the afternoon in the mall, but the stores were closed since it was Friday. Some of the restaurants opened at 5:40 for iftar, so we ate at Sarai, a Levantine restaurant. It was pretty delicious. Then we went to Carrefour and I bought some coathangers (aren't you glad you're reading this blog!)...from Carrefour to our house in a taxi that doesn't scam, it's only 10 QR, which is about $2.75, so I was in a good mood about that. I went to bed at 8, which was kind of lame, but I was pretty tired.

The next day, it was even more sitting around. I used the internet, I watched some television, and I ate some food. I didn't even leave the house! The most exciting thing that happened was when it said Law & Order on the television satellite guide, but then when it came on, it was L & O SVU! Great excitement! I went to bed at 8:44.

Today, I had my first day of classes. They were supposed to start at 9, so we started at 10. I am in the intermediate level, which means I was upset all weekend about it, and still disappointed that both I and the State Department were completely wrong about my Arabic competence, but I got over it. Turns out that my class is only around 12 people while the advanced level is 17! So I think I'll stay in my level, repeat sophomore year, and maybe be at the top of my class (and not put my level on my resume...). It should be fine.

So, I am feeling more positive about being in Qatar.

a couple days in town

On Wednesday morning, as I mentioned, the bus never came. We kept going outside and looking for it, but it was so hot that this was an increasingly unpopular idea. We did find the Club House, though, and there I discovered that our apartment compound is actually pretty awesome.

The Club House is, firstly, and most importantly, women-only on Sundays and Wednesdays, so that's totally boss. It has a huge main building, imposing in its scale and emptiness, with some billiard tables, low chairs, and a gym (consisting of a mostly-empty room with a bike, treadmill, and some free weights). My sagacious roommate Erin commented that while things seemed very clean, they appear mostly that they used to be very clean and now are unused. This is how it seems.

In the back of the Club House, there is a beautiful swimming pool. It is tiled in blue and has one of those infinity edges that pours into gutters on the sides. I look forward to what I assume will be year-round swimming weather (on Sundays and Wednesdays only, most likely).

Behind all this, there is a little super market that has cokes, chips, and smokes, as well as some beat up fruit and things like toilet paper (EDIT: a clever reader has insisted that I emphasize that I do not intend to buy or use "smokes"). I imagine that it will come in handy.

Around 9:30, we decided that we must not have school. We called for a taxi to try out the Villaggio, which is the only commercial center within a 1-hour walk from our compound. With our vehicle coming at 10:30, we settled in for a break from our exciting morning. Then, at about 10, the front-gate guard came knocking on our door saying a bus had come. We canceled our taxi and, confused, headed for the Club House. Indeed, there was a bus, with a driver and one gentleman. We drove the 30 minutes to campus and dropped off the gentleman at his desired location, at which point the driver asked where we were going. We had no idea, and neither did he. He suggested some places, none of which seemed right, so Erin called Dr. Abdullah and spoke to him in French. He told us to come to the mosque where he would meet us. So, we convinced the driver to drop us off there despite his protestations that it was on the men's side, and Dr. Abdullah came to meet us.

Dr. Abdullah is the director of the program, and he is very nice. He told us we didn't need to take the four-part several-hour placement exam and we were very grateful. When we arrived at the program's department, we saw that there were many other students, from all kinds of nationalities. I saw Alex, my friend from Oman. Then, we were given the placement exam (I guess you can't trust anyone). I wasn't ready for a test since I had slept about 9 hours in the last three days, but what can you do? The testing process took about 2 hours, and we only did the reading and listening part of it (not writing and speaking). We were totally finished at 12:30, but had to hang out until 2 when one of the professors could give us a ride. This seems unsustainable, especially since we were told we'd have transportation to and from campus, but at least we had a way home. I found out later that all the guys, who were heading to the dorms, went to wait for their bus, and they waited for 1.5 hours in the 110 degree heat (while many were fasting) and the buses never came! They had to be ferried home by professors. So we were lucky to have waited inside and left by 2, whereas they didn't get home for hours.

That brings me to the subject of accommodation. Overall, I think I am jealous of the boys and the rest of the girls in the program. All the other students except for my two roommates and me, I believe, live in dorms. I am not sure why the three American girls got this nice apartment. The dorms include all food, which would save me hundreds of dollars a month, and they can also walk to a number of commercial centers with easy 10 minute walks, which would also save me a ton. So, I think I would prefer dorm housing--but then I'd have a curfew, a shared bedroom, and no kitchen...and no swimming pool...so maybe it's fine. But definitely a trade-0ff.

We came home, arranged for a taxi at 6:50, and slept. The taxi's call woke us all up and we went to the Villaggio. It cost about $4 to go down the street maybe a mile.

The Villaggio is a mall unlike anything I've seen. It is one story, but about three stories in height and the ceiling is painted blue with clouds. There is a river that runs through the mall that has those boats like in Venice that you can pay to ride in. The food court has an ice rink in the middle of it where kids go to play hockey. The stores are wild. There is an H&M, which is my favorite store, as well as everything from Tiffany & Co. to Claire's. We had dinner at a Thai place called Thai Chi, which was about $20 a person, but had we been more prudent, we could have taken food home, so maybe it wasn't so bad. Then we ravaged Carrefour, which is like a Super Wal-Mart, for towels, groceries, household things.

With our bags and bags of groceries, we got a taxi. This is a good example of the kind of thing that annoys me. Either we got scammed or just taken advantage of, because we told the driver our compound's name, and since it is literally down the road, when he nodded and started driving I think we assumed he knew where he was going. Why else would he start driving with an apparent purpose? Of course, he drove right past our place so I said something, at which point he admitted (or something kind of like admitting) that he didn't know where it was. It took about half an hour for him to turn around and get to our compound--with our help--and of course, the meter was running the whole way. What a typical scam--excpet I don't even think it was a scam; I think he just didn't want to ask where the place was. What if we had let him keep driving? At some point he would have had to have asked...(is that too many verbs?)...but by the time we got home, I was frustrated and feeling very negative. That's when I found out about the boys having to wait in the heat for a bus that never showed, so I was in a pretty bad mood.

Today things are nicer, mainly because I slept a few hours last night. Today we are supposed to go to campus at 4, but who knows whether there will be a bus or not. I guess we'll have to go to the Club House at 3 and just wait.

I think the one thing that makes me sad is that I sort of expected to be able to get things done here, like I could in Cairo. I wanted to take courses at the French Cultural Center, etc., etc., and it looks like between it taking 3-4 hours to get transportation to or from the campus, in addition to however many hours of class we have, to taxis needing to be arranged hours in advance, to them costing $4-$10 to get anywhere...I think this all means that I will be, for the most part, going to school and doing homework at home. But it's early in the program! Maybe they will institute a reliable transportation system to and from campus and I will find a way to get around town!

in Doha

Well, I’ve arrived in Doha. This is a less exciting statement than I would prefer. Our apartment is overwhelming, but the location is significantly underwhelming and it looks like getting anywhere is going to be nearly impossible, or at least very expensive. We took a taxi to an internet café last night, and it cost $5 on the way and $6 on the way back. I hope this is somehow not indicative of the usual, but it was the middle of the night, too, which doesn’t bode well for me living on a budget.

This sounds negative, and it shouldn’t, because I’m sure I’ll deal with transportation somehow, but it is a letdown because in Egypt and Oman it was possible to just get into a cab and pay a reasonable fare. The bright side is that despite being in a desert suburb development not close to anything interesting, our apartment is palatial. Nadia got the master bedroom, which is distinguished not only by its own bathroom but a larger bed, and Erin and I got the two smaller bedrooms. We share a bathroom at the end of the hallway, but there is also a half bath in the living room. My room has two beds in it, which is unnecessary since we can’t have guests.

We’ve got a huge dining room table in an open, spacious main room. On the other side of the main room are three couches and a huge television. The kitchen is huge, larger than bedroom-sized, with mostly empty space in the middle and a ring of counters. The housing guy was nice enough to stock it with some tea, jam, etc., as well as a blender, water boiler, and toaster. It has a dishwasher, refrigerator, and washing machine.

As far as the journey over, it was long and uneventful. On Monday morning, Cara took me to the Tucson airport with all my stuff. My American Airlines flight to Chicago was delayed by two hours, which would have me missing my next flight, so they rebooked me onto a United flight that would take me to Los Angeles where I switched to another United flight to London. Despite the flight out of Los Angeles being delayed an hour too, I managed to arrive in London with three minutes to spare before my Qatar Airways flight to Doha. Qatar Airways wasn’t the gold-plated experience I imagined, but the food was good.

When I arrived in Doha, I presented my passport to control and just had it stamped. I guess it’s pretty easy to enter Qatar, or else I just was in the system. I got my luggage without complication and found a man with a sign with my misspelled name on it, so I went with him. He didn’t say a word to me, and I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but after about ten minutes, I determined that we had made some sort of mutual decision on the talking issue, and if I said anything then, it would be in violation of our understanding. So it was a moderately uncomfortable drive, but it allowed me to view the city.

We passed the biggest LuLu I’d ever seen, and I immediately wanted to go (I didn’t bring shampoo, a towel, or coat hangers). We passed lots of Arab-style housing, which looked like the Arab resorts on Zanzibar or the smaller apartment complexes in Oman. Most of the cars on the road were smaller saloon cars, but the Qatari nationals seemed to be driving exclusively Land Cruisers with cartoons playing on the DVD screens. We also passed a house with a huge dinosaur statue that filled the entire space between the front wall and the house, which was about eight hundred square feet. I am not sure what this dinosaur was intended for, but if it were hollow underneath, it would have been a useful canopy for the yard.

We drove out a desert road lined with other apartment complexes and then arrived at ours. My flat is in Alpha 7 building on the ground level. Nadia was outside waiting, and I was unbearably happy to see her. I also met Erin, our third roommate. We had no way to reach Alex, which was disappointing. I made a tiny effort at unpacking but decided I really needed some coat hangers first, so my second bed came in handy for collecting stuff.

Nadia and I wanted to let people know we had arrived, and the alleged internet “access” in the apartment wasn’t looking too good We called for a taxi, and the driver was nice, although I wished it cost less than it did. He took us to an intersection that had a Crepe Away, a Johnny Rocket’s, a bookstore, an internet café, and a lot of other stuff. The internet café took dollars, which we embarrassingly had to use since neither of us had riyals. We managed to get back to the apartment for even more money, and I managed to sleep for a few hours.

This morning, we thought we were supposed to go to school, but the bus didn’t come, so we’re just waiting to decide what to do right now.

Of course, I’m currently posting this entry from my apartment, which means I got the dial-up connection to work. Great!

about to leave

I leave on Monday for Doha, and I am not prepared at all. I have a pile of stuff and two pieces of luggage, and that's it. I've been spending my time doing what I want to do when I want to do it, and it's been hugely pleasing. Unfortunately, the reality of things is setting in, and I need to pack, sometime before Monday morning. Maybe tomorrow.

I'm leaving the U.S. on good terms, though. My friends are great. Liz and Mark are keeping my cats, and I'm going to miss all of them terribly: Liz, Mark, Cara, John. So many of my friends are abroad...but so many, and family, in Tucson.

I'm over the joke that is Sarah Palin; I'm no longer laughing. I think it is immoral that so many Americans at and below the middle class level plan to vote for McCain. It seems fine to live your life in ways that aren't in your best interest, but when you vote, you vote for the country. I think it is truly wrong, immoral, unethical, to vote not only against your best interest, but against the best interests of most Americans. So, I'm not laughing anymore about Palin.

The biggest priority, though, is packing. I wish I could just snap my fingers and be there with suitably arranged suitcase contents.

u s and a

I came back from Oman in a grueling cross-world aeronautical experience and had a week in Tucson, Arizona to see the family and friends residing there. I completed some tasks and came up to Jackson Hole to see my Wyoming-based family. It's gorgeous here. Absolutely wonderful.

In the time between the last post and now, we embarked upon and completed our final trip to the environs surrounding Salalah. This time is was to the West, the great West, and it was the best of all the trips. We first went to the mausoleum of Prophet Job, who, despite what may make sense for a prophet from the Levant, died in Oman. He also had very large feet, as evidenced by the footprint he left behind (which is surrounded by concrete blocks). The grave itself is about twelve feet long, so it's a sight to see.

Next we drove to Mughsail, which is a huge cave with huge blowholes. The ocean comes up in huge waves and is forced through tiny holes in the rock, causing riotous geysers of water and sometimes just huge gusts of air. We camped there, in concrete cabanas. We ate in the restaurant that night and slept in mattresses that grew progressively wetter from the sea air over night. We were also warned by one of the signs that "Your attention is drawn to danger marine currens. Swimming at your own responsibility." We opted for not swimming, at our own responsibility.

The next day we drove a few hours to the border with Yemen and walked up to it. Yemen is equally as beautiful as Oman, from what I could see of it. The drive itself was otherworldly; I've never encountered fog like that. With the windows down, you could see the fog in the car. Driving on narrow mountain passes was the most striking, since the fog covered visibility up to the edges of the road, so it seemed that we were driving on a boundless suspension bridge through the air. Our driver was hilarious, and I was in the car with Ali, James, and Alex, so it was a great day. That afternoon, we visited a crashed helicopter on the beach. It's not just any helicopter; the president of South Yemen crashed it in while fleeing. That evening, we stayed in a huge villa in a tiny town. The next morning, we explored the remnants of a couple-hundred year old town across a marsh from the town we stayed in. Next we drove the long way back to Mughsail for lunch and returned to Salalah.

The weekend was fairly uneventful; I spent one night "out" at the Hilton with some friends and the next night at the fair.

Today there was a talent show. It was far more serious and formal than I anticipated, but the impromptu American acts brought down the seriousness factor a bit. There was a tongue-in-cheek homage to one of the staff members, a drum performance, a square dancing show, and my own act, in which Sam, Paul, Danny, and I recited poetry. Sam recited some poetry he wrote, and Paul and Danny exchanged defamatory poetry, which I translated into English. For your bilingual enjoyment, here are the poems we read tonight at the show:

هجاء طيران الخليج
من بولس

في البداية أطرح سؤالا عليك أتعرف القرق بيني وبينك؟
أولا علينا تناول تفكيرك والبديهي أنّ ذهني أقواء من ذهنك!
ثانيا يا داني ننتقل إلى شكلك ولا شك أنّني أجمل منك!
ويجب أن نذكر شيئ عن طولك هو مجرّد مثالٍ من غرائبك!

وثمّ نتعامل وساخة رحتك نعرف وصولك فورا من شمّتك!
أخيرا ننظر إلى جودة كلامك والواضح أنّ لساني أفصح من لسانك!
قصائدي بديعة وأمّا شعرك فهو يشابه قباحة وجهك!
طيب يا داني داني ما بالك هل لديك ردَّ أم تدرك خسرانك؟

To start, let me ask if you have in your mind
the difference between my and your, simpler, kind.
First I've the task of taking what you call thought...
but how can I seek what's not there to be sought?
Then I must know how you got your face.
Is it so hard to see who wins in this race?
Next I should go to your laughable height.
On qualities like these, I could go on all night.

One out of many is the hideous air
that seems from the seams of the clothes that you wear.
Next, but of plenty, are the words that you spit.
Compare them to me and you may as well quit.
My poems are great and yours are so base
it's easy to say they resemble your face.
OK, now, so Danny, I hand it over to you.
Can you think of a reply that's even half true?

هجاء الذبابة
من داني

ساقولك يا بولس بياناً بيّناً أنا أفضل منك فضلاً كبيراً
ردّي عليك ليس مهماً لانك لستَ شاعراً عظيماً
لكنك أخطأتَ خطأ مشؤوماً فسيكون ردي شديداً وشريساً
كلامك يمثل إزعاجاً ضئيلاً مثل ذباب أقتلهم يومياً

فوجهك عندما أراه مكرهاً واضح أن أرى وجهاً وحشياً
وشكلك يا بولس أذمه سهلاً فجسمك يشبه طفلاً ضعيفاً
لا أريد أن اجعلك تبكي بكاء لذلك عن هونك لن اقول شيئاً
هل تجرؤ أن تجيبني؟ أنا جاهز دائماً وفي هذا الهجاء لن تفوز ابداً

Let's do this, Paul, I've got something to say.
I'm better than you in a remarkable way.
But what's the point of even saying so?
Rank your skills next to mine, let's give it a go.
You try to do something and don't even come near.
So it's simple for my reply to be so severe.
To me your words don't even annoy.
They're like the flies I so easily destroy.

Out of all your faults I like your face least.
From the first moment till now, I thought you a beast.
And if there were something about you even weaker,
it's that you resemble a sick child, only meeker!
I could go on but you'd cry and complain
so since you're inept, I'll kindly refrain.
Do you dare to respond? I'll take my turn again.
Since in the game of defaming, I'll always win.

هجاء المسوّف
من بولس

طيب يا داني...أنتهيت من كلامك؟ هل هذا نكتة أم هل هو ردّك؟
لا تحزن يا مسوّف من ضعف قصيدتك الفشل أوّل خطوة إلى نجك!
ولا تبكي صديقي من ذلّي لك من الطبيعي أنّني أفضل منك!
قد تصبح شاعر يوما في حياتك ولكن للأسف اليوم ليس يومك!

عندي في صدري ألف رد على ردّك والأسواء من عندي أحسن من عندك!
يمكن قتل الحشرة في قدرتك بس حتى شعر الذبابة أفضل من شعرك!
أنا خاضر البديهة وأما عقلك فنجد أكثر ذكاء في البطيخ من في رأسك!
فسمح لي بإعطاء تصيحة بك لا تكتب الشعر وسلّمني قلمك!

OK, so Danny, are you done trying to speak?
Was that a response or just something weak?
Don't feel sad that your jabs at me fail.
A poem near mine can't help but pale.
Don't cry, my friend, that I tell you the truth.
It's as easy to see as you are uncouth.
I'm sure you'll write a poem some way.
But unlucky for you, I guess not today.

I have in my mind an opus to share.
But if I should do this, it couldn't be fair.
Because, after all, you're dumb as a stump.
So why don't you go pick on some other chump?
I think it's quite clear I'm ready any old time.
But why bother--you're not any smarter than slime.
So let me help you to get you a clue:
Stop writing your rhymes, admit, I'm better than you.

Lastly, I seem to have lost Danny's final Arabic poem, but here it is in its translated form:

A reply, Paul, I see you've decided to try it.
Lo and behold, the whole theater's quiet.
They laughed to themselves as they watched you fail.
They cheered to themselves as I crushed you, nail by nail.
You gave it a try and I guess that's cool.
But now's the time to accept, you suck and I rule.
It shouldn't be hard since you're totally lame.
Call back your insults, they all sound the same!

Get out of here and return to your house and your bed.
Turn it all over, what happened today, in your head.
My poetry will come to knock on your door
to laugh as your crying and weeping grows me
My poem's a flag o'er your house that says WIN
as you're in your hovel, a boy among men.

middle east amusement

We've had a three-day weekend. I've determined that attempting to put a year of Arabic study into one summer is really, really impossible; maybe it's possible on paper but it rests on an individual's ability and desire to actually do a year's worth of school in a summer. This is, I suppose, a rationalization for why I'm at an internet cafe reading the news instead of doing Arabic homework.

Our class on Wednesday was canceled to honor the Prophet's ascension to heaven in one night. That evening there was a party. Yesterday, we went to the fair for a concert. Because we wanted to sit together with the men in our group, we were sitting in an otherwise all-men section; this was very uncomfortable. Yelling "Free Bird" didn't help, although it was funny. We left the concert with about 1/5 of it over; this was a decent idea because it gave us about a half hour of the fair left.

The fair is a summerly phenomenon celebrating the monsoon season. It's positively eerie--it's exactly like a county fair in the States, only with a very different clientèle (we didn't really see any girls with uncovered hair). We rode "Crazy Dance," which has similar iterations in the US, only this one had a plaque on it with a line of writing in Turkish and then, in English, "Turkish Company for Manufacture of Amusement Rides," or something similar. Then we tried to go into the tents for buying stuff, but they were closed.

Since the first trip away, we had another two weeks of class and another trip. Class days are fairly rhythmic--there's a lot of homework and a daily routine.

Our second trip was to the "east," which doesn't really mean much since we determined that much of the excursion is spent making lazy loops of Omani locales. We visited a castle, which was more like a refurbished villa, but it had the advantages of being well-equipped with such amenities as a guard room, weapons store, and a prison. The prison was only for one person, but I suppose you rarely have need to imprison more than one person at a time in your country villa.

After the castle, we stopped at innumerable beaches for reasons that I cannot fully ascertain. Swimming is severely forbidden, so we only went in to our waists. We camped at a marvelous site in between a sort of valley and spent the evening doing not much of anything. The next day was more travel, this time in brand-new, all-the-fixins Land Cruisers (Condi spared no expense on these). Our driver was a surly, surly Mr. Crab, but the day was fine enough, although slightly wrapped in mystery as we spent it stopping at beach after beach for longer than what seemed necessary. We camped, indirectly due to a quarrel between two of the facilitators, in a veritable wind tunnel. Tents collapsed--and this was on top of the fact that Stephanie, my tent partner, and I had accidentally erected a one-person tent, not two. So we were already nearly tentless when the others started collapsing. Katie and I decided to cut our losses and sleep on the sand a ways away from our colleagues, and this was ultimately a good decision after we shifted our goals slightly and accepted that we wouldn't sleep at all. The wind didn't die down after nightfall and at one point in the night Katie had to go chasing after her pillow which was rolling down the beach.

The last day of the trip brought more unexplained visits to beautiful locations. Instead of returning to our former home, the Haffa House, we were delivered to our new hotel, Hamdan (or Hamilton) Plaza. Four-star hotels be gone; now we demand five stars. It's pretty nice--this time we have four-person suites instead of two-person rooms. Our suite is bigger than my apartment last year. I share a room with Stephanie of failed one-person tent fame, and in the other room is my Haffa House ex-roommate Andrea and new friend Meredith. The rates are posted at about $230 a night for the suites we have.

Thanks, US government.

First excursion

We just got back today from our first excursion. Every other week, we skip three days of class (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) to go on a trip, and then we come back on Wednesday night to enjoy another weekend. Pretty boss, all things considered. My class (Class 1) went with Class 3, so I had a number of my friends on the trip with me.

On Monday, we started by visiting several 'ayns, which are freshwater springs. The Salalah area is already pretty green, but the springs are even more so. One of them particularly looked like the cenotes in which Heather and I dove this June in the Yucatan. We ended up in Thumrait, a tiny city in the middle of nothing, well beyond the reach of the monsoons. We stayed at a hotel that at first glance looked like it would have been a fine enough place to be, but intermittent power outages, no running water, bugs, and general strangeness gradually convinced the lot of us that camping would have been preferable. We spent the afternoon walking around town and drinking tea.

The next day was mostly driving, but we had slick Toyotas. The ultimate destination was the Empty Quarter, which is the expansive desert that includes parts of Yemen, Oman, and a lot of Saudi. When you think of Arabia, you think of the Empty Quarter--sand dunes almost as dramatic as the dunes of the Namib, scattered bushes almost as pathetic. Right after we left the packed, rocky desert and entered the sands, we stopped the cars to view. Another student and I immediately took off our shoes with the intention of dramatically running down a dune. We succeeded both in running down the dune and in burning the bottoms of our feet (it was about 50 C). We stopped at a sulfur spring in the middle of an oasis before some ridiculous off-roading to find a suitable camping site. We found one, and a few of my colleagues and I climbed a very tall dune. I thought I was going to die, but I didn't want to turn around and be humiliated by my enemies, so I kept up with them.

We camped in the sand and it's entirely possible that I may have slept a little bit, but I woke up fairly certain that I had just spent seven hours in a sauna. After the cars were packed up, there was a huge pile of refuse. A few of the students and I were very concerned that none of the cars had room for the trash, and we were asking around about where the trash would go. In the first true culture shock of my life, I was incited to genuine cultural imperialism. As the cars pulled away, someone lit the pile of rubbish (about 60% plastic water bottles) on fire. And we drove away.

This is wrong.

There is no doubt that this is wrong. There is no room for cultural relativism in this. I had just spent the morning complaining under my breath about the spoiled Americans who left cigarette butts and water bottles scattered over the dune for us to pick up for them, and then once it's all gathered in a pile, we just set it on fire and leave it. How long does it take for a semi-melted water bottle to break down?

Other than that moment of cultural imperialism, it was a good day. We went to the lost city of Wubar, a trading post that hundreds of years ago served the frankincense trading routes. When we reached the hotel in Salalah again, we rejoiced in the ability to take a proper shower.

Oman is still pretty neat. We're going on a trip tomorrow to the "north"...further details after Thursday when we return.

in Oman

Well, I am here in Oman and it's been a long week and a half of orientation. First we had about three days of orientation in Washington, D.C. and we were thrilled to discover, after a day-long around-the-world trip, that we'd have three or five more days of orientation in Oman. Muscat is oppressively, destructively, painfully hot, about 50 Celsius, and humid. We stayed at a suitable-enough hotel on the corniche with rooms suffering from a definite lack of floorspace but thankfully not cleanliness. We orientated, we placement-tested, we oral-interviewed, and we clustered around air conditioning. I have two friends here, and a nebulus of acquaintances, and that should do me just fine. Several people here were in Cairo the same time that I was--one of my two best friends here was in fact there the entire year I was yet we never met. Things happen in due time, I suppose.

Because we all missed the soothing discomfort of flying on airplanes, we took a flight to Salalah on Thursday. It is significantly cooler here, yet still hot, and humid enough to feel like the air is a swamp. The environment is beautiful and there is a charming LuLu market nearby with the products of a circa-1990 Target crossed with an Asian grocery store, and the prices are marked. We had a particular adventure on Friday, but one that I can't divulge until the program is over, as it is incumbent upon me to discourage jealousy among my cohort.

We had our first day of classes on Saturday, which consisted of me placing in the highest class. My friends were properly humiliated (I write this for the benefit of my father), then I set to work of attempting not to be the worst of the best--i.e. the stupidest student in my class (there is a strong indication that despite my best efforts I will in fact be the stupidest). Our teacher is a Syrian translation expert, and I think he is dynamic and humorous, although not all the students feel as positively as I do. I am remarkably positive about a lot of things--and remarkably negative about some things.

In the afternoons, we have small group time with Peer Facilitators, those poor Omani students roped into summer jobs talking with Americans. They are good at Arabic and nice to spend time with. This evening we have yet another orientation-style gathering and a lecture in Arabic to the entire 65-person group. It should be orienting, although after nearly two weeks of orientation, I dare say I am oriented.

weddings and the same stuff you've heard before

This weekend I attended a wedding reception for a friend who graduated with me from high school.  It was a nice opportunity to see many people I wanted to see and many that I wouldn't think of seeing but appreciated seeing.  It causes me to think about how thoroughly different my life is from that trajectory.  She seems extremely happy with her choice to marry right out of college, and I have other friends who married during undergraduate school and are very happy.  But going to functions like these tends to remind me that I couldn't be farther from that, and I am generally enthused about my non-domestic prospects.  The strongest ties of responsibility I have to the United States, after all, are my two feline children who require the minimum of attention (though they receive the maximum).  As long as I can find a generous soul who can cat-sit for my extended absences, I have total freedom to do whatever whenever wherever.  It does seem appealing at times to have things "figured out."  If you're married, that part of your life is done, finished, figured out--you've got the life companionship angle totally down.  The rest can build on that.  I've got nothing of stability--and I'm excepting things like my parents since that kind of support doesn't lend one credibility as an adult--in my life, and that can be sort of daunting.  If I can't get into the program or get the job or find a place to live, it's on me, just me, not me plus one (well, it's always me plus two cats, since I've resigned myself to the creepy cat collection I'll keep as an old lady).

The point--despite enjoying wedding receptions and feeling envious of miles-wide dresses and sparkly rings, my own life is going to be different.

early summer travel

My summer trip doesn't start until 19 June, so I had the chance to travel. At the beginning of June, I went to Quintana Roo to stay at a timeshare resort north of Playa del Carmen with one of my friends and her friend. The resort was typically sumptuous, and equally expensive. We had four full days. The first we spent in the pool and on the beach, which was satisfying since the resort campus covered a lot of pools. The second day we rented a car and drove to Chichen Itza (almost running out of gas en route, creating a disturbing situation); the touristic infrastructure of the site reminded me a lot of Egypt. Tacky souvenirs and sweltering humidity didn't affect the grandeur of the ruins. The third day we went scuba diving in cenotes, which are freshwater-saltwater caverns that dot the Yucatan peninsula. That was the best diving I've done in my life. The last day we went reef diving in the ocean. A day after returning, I went to Disneyland and California Adventure with my best friend, which was a typically fantastic excursion.

Last weekend of college

Last Thursday, I had a few nonstandard campus excursions marking the end of my ephemeral studies at the local university. I met with the higher-ups in the College of SBS to chat about, ostensibly, the commencement on 16 May, and practically their travels in China and impressions of SBS professors. After that, my mother and I ate lunch on University Blvd and attended the Honors "Pre-Commencement Ceremony." I, like all the other students there, got a medal for having written an honors thesis. After that was adjourned, we crossed the street to go to the linguistics department function, where Cecile said some nice words about me. We departed a little early to see Cecile's companion dog in training, Sawhney. My mom also got to meet my former boss and friend, Nova.

Yesterday began with the same level of excitement, since I met the professor for whom the linguistics award I won is named. The DRC had me for hours and hours after lunch; I left after all the finals were put away at about 9. I'll be working again next Monday and Tuesday, hoping to make some money. Then two finals on Wednesday and a paper submission and I'm done. Next weekend I have several events lined up, then some things to get done next week. After that, I'm driving the Prius to Durango and flying back on Memorial Day. I need to move out of my apartment, and then the time in June before I leave for Oman is packed.

A well planned life

After graduating next week, I will be done with my undergraduate education. I have to move out of my apartment by the end of May. In early June, I am taking a trip to Cancun with my friend Heather, and the day after I return, Cara and I are going to Disneyland for a few days. After a few more days in Tucson, I will travel to Salalah, Oman, via Washington, D.C. and Muscat to study Arabic with a Critical Language Scholarship. I'll be in Tucson again for a little while in August, then in September I'll go to Doha, Qatar to study Arabic through an intensive program at Qatar University. That's the rest of 2008, as it stands.

buyin books, trouble

I bought some books today. It was sealed the moment I activated my shiny new Platinum Plus Visa card...so the purchase (while quite economical) was a bit...unplanned. I got On the Sociology of Islam, by Ali Shari'ati and translated by Hamid Algar; A Short History of Chinese Communism, by Franklin W. Houn; No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, by Geneive Abdo (actually my second book with the title No God But God, although the first I read was punctuationally distinct, as it was written No god but God); The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire, by Lord Kinkross (I assume a book by a Lord has to be pretty sweet); and The World of the French Revolution, by the lovely R. R. Palmer, that silly man. Exciting times.

somewhere to live

I found a place to live next year, which is terribly exciting. I'm living in a two-bedroom apartment with an industrial engineering grad student from Turkey, so I'm hoping to learn (more) Turkish (than what I learned in Turkey). The apartment is at Park and Adams, which is also terribly exciting, because I will walk 7 blocks due south to get to my 9 am MWF class, and due south 7 blocks then a left turn half a block to get to my 8 am TR class. This is truly good news. I mean, one never knows when one is renting half of an apartment sight (or is the phrase "site"? Now that I think about it, either option seems to make logical sense) unseen while residing in a foreign country, but how bad can it be for the fantastic rent I'm paying? I'd pay the price I'm paying to live in a cardboard box 5 blocks north of Speedway on Park.

Also, I will be in Washington, D.C. from June 26 to July 5. So all of you Tucson folks who just can't wait for me to be home on the 24th of June...well, I must perform my Megamerican duties and make pilgrimage to the Mother City of Patriotism for Independence Day

trip to Lebanon

Well, after the last post, the next big thing was my trip to Lebanon. It was fantastic. I couldn't have tried for a better trip, and Lebanon is an absolutely beautiful country. We flew in on Tuesday evening and discovered to our great pleasure that Americans don't need a visa to enter. We got an overpriced taxi from the Beirut airport who took us to Hamra, the district near the American University. We had a few misses with hotels but ultimately settled on the Moonlight Hotel, which had its pinnacle in the 1960s. The neon sign was very Hitchcock and it was on a shadowy side street.

We went out that night to see AUB, which was a short walk away. The AUB campus is gorgeous and set amid a flurry of well-dressed Lebanese college kids. It was very different from AUC. No men hassled me, nobody whistled; it was very pleasant.

The next day we got up early and went to Baalbek, the largest site of Roman ruins in the Middle East. It is in the Bekka Valley, a Hezbullah stronghold (at least, before the war). We walked around the town and ate lunch. Then we went to the ruins. Nearby the ruins, a few shops hawk Hezbullah gear. The ruins were splendid; better than anything I had ever seen. Several buildings remain and there is a fine museum as well.

After we left Baalbek, we went back to Beirut, changed minibuses and went to Sidon. Sidon was a major Phoenician city. We stayed at a converted convent owned by the last Christian family in the town (the rest left after the civil war). It was stuck in the middle of a labrynth of a Medieval souq, with tiny holes in the stone fortifications holding stores and restaurants. It was hard to find and in fact took us an hour or two. We tried a different hotel first, which was much cheaper, but it had been bombed last year and the bathroom (only one for the whole hotel) was not too...usable. The room at the convent has its own bathroom. Sold.

After we secured our room at the convent for two nights, we went out and looked around the town. We ate dinner on a boat and walked on the scenic corniche. The next morning we caught a bus into the mountains and went to Beitaddine, which we didn't really like--it's a weird old palace. We also had a miserable lunch served by a croaky Francophile Lebanese woman who hadn't seen tourists since the 70s, I guarantee. After we left the mountains, we went to Tyre, which was hard hit by the Israeli offensive last summer. The Palestinian refugee area was rough, but the town center was gorgeous. We looked at the Roman ruins and sat at a cafe on the corniche. We went back to Sidon that night.

The next day we went to Tripoli and saw the magnificent medieval citadel, which had no restrictions and no rails or other such things to keep tourists from killing themselves. One highlight was a stone spiral staircase, worn down so far as to be almost unusable, which wound down seemingly endlessly. We took it down perhaps two flights, but then the light no longer reached from the top and it was pitch-black dark, so we went back up. We wandered around the souq then headed back to Beirut.

That afternoon in Beirut we walked miles. We walked all along the Parisian downtown development and looked at the skyscrapers being rebuilt. We walked back to the Moonlight Hotel to get a room. That night we went back downtown for dinner and we tried to go out, but we ended up just paying way too much at a ex-pat jazz club.

The next day we walked south to see the bombed buildings and we didn't get too far but we went through some very popular areas. Beirut is a wonderful city but the divide between rich and poor is very apparent--as with anywhere. We got a ride to the airport from the owner of our hotel and flew back to Cairo that night.

maybe the most boring thing I've ever written?

Well, on Thursday I didn't get my passport because I decided sleep was more important. I had Arabic class and then I ran into Alex and two of his friends, Nick and Kate, in the library. Jeremy came around too, and we decided as a group to eat at the new Mexican restaurant at the mall in Heliopolis. The Mexican restaurant has been a mythical, magical rumor for months, and the boards covering the site advertising gourmet Mexican food in Egypt have been tantalizing many for as long. My friend Edward, a Mexican, has already eaten there four times. It is now the only place in Egypt to get Mexican food.

We went to City Stars, the mall, and headed to the restaurant. It was everything we had hoped for. The proprietress is Mexican, as in native Spanish speaker, lived in Texas but has a heavy accent, doesn't speak more than two words of Arabic. Endless chips. Horchata. Chiles rellenos. We spent a lot of money. Good thing we spent probably fifty bucks on the five of us in US money, but that's a LOT for here.

Nick, Kate, and Jeremy left the restaurant to the mall movie theatre to see 300, but Alex and I had already seen it, so we went to Jason's apartment and watched Family Guy with a group of people, including Kate (a different Kate) and Jason's girlfriend Kristen, both of whom are people I like.

On Friday, Alex and I tried to go the Modern Egyptian Art museum, but of course (and contrary to the hours listed in print), it was closed. Oh well. We went to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a Western coffee shop with Parisian Starbucks prices. I didn't think about it and ordered a Christopher Propst-style beverage that cost me $4.75 in US money. Pretty silly. We sat and read for awhile. At least the price is somewhat justified by a good atmosphere.

Then that night we decided to "stay in." We had sandwiches and beer delivered (from two different establishments, of course), and watched High Fidelity. Paul's friends came over too, and we got to play spectators to a rousing game of Beer Pong.

Yesterday, Alex and I repeated the coffee shop thing, except we went to a new one, Joffery's. It was much superior to the first one, so we might go back. We both did homework last night.

This morning I got up early and went to the embassy to get my passport. American Citizen Services closes at 11 am, so I was cutting it kind of close by taking the 10 shuttle in to campus. It's a five minute walk from the shuttle stop to the American compound (which is definitely a compound), a five minute security process (you can't keep your phone, you need a badge, all the hoopla), and then you go downstairs to ACS and get a number. There are only 3 customer service windows, and I got 43, and they were only on 32. I prepared myself for a long wait. Then the lady announced that anyone who dropped off a passport renewal application more than 10 days ago could go straight to window 3 and pick up the passport. I figured that even though none of that was applicable to me, I might as well try, and the lady was very nice and gave me my passport. Now it is very fat, and I have 24 more pages of travel left. Yay!

minutia

I don't remember what I did on Saturday. I imagine it involved homework, though.

On Sunday, I had tutoring, and then I met Dana for coffee.

On Monday, I got back the midterm for my Islamic law class, and from the grade, apparently I don't know anything about Islamic law. I'm going to try to rewrite it.

On Tuesday, I did homework, almost all day. There was a sandstorm, so it was not a conducive day for going outside. Walking a block around the dorm got me covered in yellow dirt.

This morning, I went to the American embassy to submit my passport for new visa pages. It was rather easy to get to the embassy, and once there, they take your cell phone and ID. Then you get to take a number, and wait in line, which was pretty exciting, because there are no lines in Egypt. The passport with new pages will be ready tomorrow morning; then I can go about finding the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies based on the scant street numbers I found on the internet. Luckily, I don't need a visa in advance to enter Lebanon, which is good, because I'm flying to Beirut on Tuesday.

mind-numbing!

To begin with, the rest of Port Said.

The morning of 17 March, Alex and I wandered around Port Said. One highlight was the 1.50 pound fruit we found; a benefit to having had my share of Eschererichia coli is that I no longer must tiptoe around options of fresh fruit. We walked to the Mediterranean coast where the end of the canal spits ships into the sea and viewed a wall of huge bronze murals depicting the Suez canal from the idea's origins in the times of the Pharaoh to its completion, and subsequent Crisis, in the 20th century.

We saw the Suez House, an imposing structure looking out onto the Suez just before it ends and iconic in Suez tourist and business materials. The building used to have various governmental functions, but now it seems to sit empty. While Alex and I mused that such a gorgeous edifice could easily be used as an upscale market complex such as San Francisco's Ferry Building, we noted that such a building, in Egypt, would probably remain dormant for many years.

We ate lunch at a random restaurant on the street, using the patented technique Jeremy and I developed in Greece: ask for some food; see what they bring you. We got some decent food for a good price, and then hailed a taxi for the bus station. We got a 1:00 bus out to Cairo, and because the East Delta buses weren't running until 2, we took the more expensive Superjet (government-run) bus line. It was interesting to compare the visible indications of socioeconomic class found among the patrons of the East Delta line and the Superjet line--a few extra pounds per ticket seems to create quite a gulf between ridership.

We were dropped off on the side of the road in Mubarak square. One might think we'd have ended up at the bus station, but we didn't complain, as it was just as convenient to get a cab from there. Back to Zamalek, and our Suez adventure was over.

The next day, 18 March, was a usual Sunday--Arabic class, Latin tutoring with the Stewart girls, dinner with Alex at his apartment, homework. On Monday was my Islamic law class as usual, and on Tuesday Jeremy came over to Alex's apartment to convene with Alex and I to explore lunch options. We ate at the koshari place in Zamalek, which is inferior to the koshari establishment in Tahrir square, after which Jeremy went home, Alex went to class, and I took a nap. The next day involved a similar level of koshari consumption, as I ran into Alex, Jeremy, and Alex's friends Kristen and Jason and went to Koshari Tahrir. Afterwards, I had my five and a half hour block of class and ate dinner at Alex's apartment.

On 22 March, Alex and I decided to be extra social. We went to dinner at At-Tabei, a cheap Egyptian restaurant in Mohandseen which serves what I think is the best Egyptian food in the country. Afterwards, we went to Harry’s Pub in the Marriott hotel and met a group of Alex’s friends, including Kristen, Jason, and some other people. Surprisingly enough, Jeremy showed up, because he knows Rob, Jason, and Jon, all people who were there and whom Alex knows. After all, there are only so many American students. Thursday night is karaoke night, apparently, so I watched as some people made fools of themselves, including Alex, naturally. Edward also came, which was excellent, so I had Jeremy and Edward to keep me company.

The next day, 23 March, was a glorious Friday. I went with Jeremy and Matteson to the Khan al-Khalili because Jeremy wanted to buy a hookah. We went to the less tourist-friendly area in Bayn al-Qasrayn and Jeremy bought what seemed to be a decent piece of smoking equipment. Matteson lent me her copy of Only the Strong, the greatest early-90’s devoted-teacher-against-all-odds film featuring the Brazilian art of capoeria set in Miami ever made. Alex and I walked to At-Tabei again that night, and then we watched the film. Alex had already seen it, also, and seemed to think that after watching it he was qualified to practice martial arts on various people.

The next day started late, as I didn’t get up until 2. Alex was sick, but I had to attend to class registration for Fall 2007. I am currently, by the way, registered for German 101 pass-fail, Hebrew 101, Linguistics 315 Intro to Phonology, Arabic 495M Special Topics in Arabic Linguistics: Diglossia, Arabic 495A Modern Arabic Prose, Classics 250A Greek Literature in Translation, and Latin 401 Latin Reading Course: Martial and Juvenal. After I registered, I went back to Alex’s to witness him writhing in pain. We ordered pizza, because pizza is a decent remedy for most ailments. After the healing effects of the pizza wore off, we walked to 26 July to buy juice and mysterious stomach pills. I don’t think Alex felt better that night.

On 25 March, I had a regular day of class and Latin tutoring. Monday was an equally usual day. On Tuesday, I packed for spring break and wrote my paper that was due the following day for my Islamic Institutions class. On Wednesday, I turned in the paper, took my Arabic midterm (which I ultimately got a C on--apparently I don’t actually know any Arabic), and wrote my paper for Islamic law. On 28 March, I stayed up all night and left at about 5 for the airport to come home for spring break.

I arrived in Tucson on 29 March after a series of delays. Mom was nice enough to pick me up at the Phoenix airport. My first stop in Tucson was Taco Bell, and after a glorious return to the Mexican pizza and chalupa, I determined that I was probably set until June.

The next day, and, in fact, week, passed quite quickly. On 30 March, I went to dinner with Sonya, Susan, Mom and Jamie, Christopher, and Alyson and Justyn at Lotus Garden, which was a fine meal indeed. The next day I saw Luther and Liz and in the evening went to Christopher’s pre-graduation celebration at India Oven. On Saturday I saw Cara finally and visited with my poor abandoned kitty cats—Neesha spoke to me without hesitation, but Blue Kitty seems to be harboring a grudge. Luckily, I will be able to reclaim my feline children in July.

I had a nice meeting with Martha, my Arabic professor freshman and sophomore year, on Monday and enjoyed some delicious Chipotle. I was invited to dinner at Cecile’s house on Tuesday, where I saw some former students of hers, one of whom I already knew, and met Jesse. Wednesday brought such wonderful medical experiences as a yellow fever inoculation so that I don’t become diseased by stepping foot into Kenya, and I saw Cara again that evening. On Thursday I met with Cecile, Nova, and Samira, and made plans to have lunch with Samira on Friday, which I actualized the following day. I also visited Bookman’s with Alyson and Justyn on Friday and purchased Medieval Islam by Gustave Grunebaum, as well as a book of Arabic stories from the Qur’an in Arabic.

On Saturday I visited Jake, an old cowboy who is a friend of the family in Patagonia, Arizona. I also was fortunate enough to accompany my generous quasi-step-mother to Summit Hut, where by her beneficence I acquired some new items of clothing to take to Tanzania this summer. That evening I saw Cara and the gang again for the final time this visit. Sunday brought an attempt at cleaning my room and saying farewell to Luther and Liz. On Monday, the whole trip was over as I lugged my half-empty suitcases back to Phoenix and flew back to Cairo.

I arrived in Cairo at 11:30 on 10 April. I didn’t go to bed until about 4, though, as my brain seemed to have been rather confused by the temporal shifts of the previous 18 hours.

On 11 April, I had class until 5:30, then I waited in the library until Alex came and found me, because we had plans to get dinner with one of his friends. Before we did, we ran into Jeremy, who decided to accompany us. Alex’s friend was Lauren, a girl from his university who is studying abroad in Kenya this year, and had come to Cairo for a long weekend. We met her at the hostel where she was staying in Tahrir square and went to the fiteer restaurant around the corner.

On 12 April, Alex and I met Lauren for dinner. Afterwards, we went to Sabai-Sabai, a delicious Thai restaurant, for Rajiv and Jessica’s birthday dinner, two people whom I know through Aleema, my roommate. Alex and I didn’t know anyone too well, but it was enjoyable and Aleema had purchased a marvelous cake for the occasion, so it was quite festive indeed.

Yesterday, Jeremy and I had a fieldtrip for our art and architecture of Cairo class to the Saliba area to visit Mamluk buildings. Alex decided to tag along, and our professor was kind enough to allow him to come. We visited first the mosque and madrasa of Sultan Hasan, which is widely regarded to be the finest Islamic building in the world. It was built in the mid-14th century. Across from it is another fine building. It was built much later and houses the remains of the last shah of Iran, and the last king of Egypt, among others. After the fieldtrip, Alex, Jeremy and I went to Al-Azhar mosque, where the soldiers were lining up to squash any Muslim Brotherhood protests (it was Friday prayer, after all), and crossed the street to drink tea and watch the Friday prayer at al-Husayn. In the evening, Alex and I met his friends Kate, Kristen, Jason, Rob, and Jon at the Ramses Hilton cinema where we saw a drastically edited version of the new film 300. The Egyptian censors left in all the violence, which was the bulk of the movie, sure, but clumsily cut any scene remotely suggestive of sensuality or sex (and I heard there were a few of these).

computer

Important News Update:

For those of you interested in the Terrible Saga of an Aging Notebook Computer, a significant breakthrough in diagnosis has been made. While my roommate was forecasting death to my hard drive, I had my doubts--the horrendous sounds emanating from deep inside the device resembled not a hard drive going to the dark side but a fan malfunctioning. Of course, it's barely been a year since my last fan replacement, but Cairene pollution may be to blame. Anyhow, ingenious problem-solver that I am, I merely relocted the computer to a position square on top of the air conditioning vent, and now it doesn't overheat and shut off in the middle of my essays! A more long-term solution will be applied, perhaps during my visit to the United States.

suez trip

Last week finished unremarkably. I always forget what happened on Wednesday nights; I think it's because I have a 9:30 class, then class from 12 to 5:30 without any breaks, so when I get home I stare at the wall until I go to sleep.

On Thursday, Alex and I set off for the magnificent Suez Canal. We met after my Arabic class and put in a request for plane fare from the travel office for the trip to Lebanon. I am always incredulous about using the travel office, because I am fairly convinced they type in your search on Kayak and add thirty US dollars. I know this because every time I've made a plane fare request, it's been about thirty US dollars more than Kayak's price. Alex seemed convinced