Reason for hope and a mosh pit of other thoughts...

usually by the time I sit down for a few minutes to write on this blog, time has flown by as usual, and there are so many thoughts, experiences, memories, feelings that have passed that I feel as though if I open the tap just a little, they will all pour out without much order, and will probably not even make much sense. So is the case today...so I apologize in advance for the lack of continuity in themes, and for the horrible grammar that I am sure will follow. I am going to attempt to get all my thoughts out in the next 20 minutes before the bus leaves....which will only add to the beautiful mess this may be. :-)

okay where to start...first...I celebrated Easter Sunday on a yacht! Sailing south from Dahab to Gobry Bent.  There we went for a few dives about 20-25 meters deep to see God's beautiful handiwork in the coral and fish! It was so amazing! 

But honestly Easter weekend was one of my hardest weekends here so far.  Not just being away from family, and what is familiar, but being surrounded almost 24/7 by Arabic only speaking. Many of the people I traveled with could speak English, but without realizing it after only a few words in English, the whole group would transition back to Arabic (their native tongue of which I know very little-fruits and colors I joke). I was looking for a weekend of relaxing, but instead I incurred a weekend where even what should have been the easiest of conversations were difficult. I wanted a chance to build relationships, instead I found myself feeling very alone on a boat of thirty people. Even when I could understand the conversation occuring, I couldn't contribute to the conversation because of the language barrier. It is very hard for me in these occasions not to just pull away and not try to interact. It is not that these people didn't want me apart of the group, quite the contrary, a number of them would come to have conversations with me one on one to make me feel welcome. But still it was hard. By the end of the weekend I was in tears with frustration at the situation.  I sat down to have a conversation with Sam about it, and he gently reminded me I have only been here a few months and to stop giving myself a hard time about it. He is good at putting things back into perspective for me. I was able to let go of the frustration and enjoy the long bus ride home. I even sang a song in Arabic for the group with the help of one of my new friends. :-)

The day after arriving home I had a long day scheduled at work. Two interviews in different areas of the city and a meeting on campus. It was during the first interview, that the interviewee mentioned one of the greatest struggles of working in development is reminding the staff and yourself that there is a reason for hope. Not to become overwhelmed by the work to be done, or the lack of progress being made, but to remember why you started and celebrate even the small victories.  This coming the day after Easter (the day many people celebrate the greatest reason for hope), and after my long struggle of disappointment with my Arabic, was so encouraging. It is so easy to lose sight of a reason for hope, whether it is in your daily job, development work, homework, life, relationships, etc. 

Okay time to catch the bus, so I will finish this post later tonight :-). 

Picture update

The new slideshow on the sidebar is of my office and the new AUC campus! Hope you enjoy! More photos to follow soon!

The third car

I can't believe it has been 10 days since my last post! I am headed out tonight for a trip to the Red Sea for some R&R over the Easter holiday (Eastern Orthodox celebrates this weekend, and since that is the root of most churches here this is when it is recognized here)! 

These past few weeks I have spent a lot of time on the metro (subway as it is known in some areas of the world, the one here alternates between above ground and underground).  This is because I have been doing more and more interviews.  Instead of taking the bus out to campus, I travel downtown or across town to meet various NGO leaders. 

My time on the metro is hard, inspiring, and always eye opening.  The metro is very cheap, about 18 cents to anywhere on the line.  Because of the cheap cost, this is a popular way to travel for many of the lower income citizens. My ride to Doqqi takes about an hour.  At times the metro becomes so crowded that my feet don't touch the ground.  I stand suspended by bodies around me.  Segregation of sexes is a strong value here.  Especially if a woman is traveling alone (or not accompanied by a man).  So the third and fourth cars of the metro trains are dedicated to women only.  (If a man happens to jump in one at the last second as the doors are closing, they tend to blush and stare out the window, hoping for the next stop to come as quickly as possible so they can move cars). 

Being surrounded for an hour by people who live on such a small amount of money (probably 50 cents a day), always reminds me of how blessed I am to have a job, and the ability/health to work the job.  But I never leave the metro just feeling sorry for those around me, they inspire me.  I see women taking small children with them as they fight the crowds that I find difficult to get myself through.  Or the sensitivity of the women for each other, giving up the few seats for women who are elderly, pregnant, or physically challenged.  Or holding each others children so a mother can get a break, or entertaining a crying child to relieve a stressed mom. 

The hard part comes from being the foreigner.  When I step on the train, it doesn't matter what I am wearing, my appearance screams foreigner. Then there seems to be some unspoken rule when a person gets up from their seat, they choose the person to take their seat by motioning to someone standing.  I get the impression that because I am a foreigner it is assumed I am rich, therefore I shouldn't be riding the metro.  So why should I get a seat. (I know this isn't what all the ladies are thinking, and some even smile at me during the ride.  But since I am trying to be sensitive to culture, I don't want to step on toes if I can help it). So rarely do I get a seat.  The other day however, I was chosen. An elderly lady picked me, out of the 10 young girls standing in my area, to have her seat as she got up to leave the train.  I almost broke into tears. There is such an honor in being chosen when you least expect it. 

This post is a little messy.  Maybe because the metro ride is always so emotionally stretching for me that I am not sure how to put it all in words. But it has become such a routine part of my life, I wanted to capture at least a piece of it. 

The other side...

I am sitting here at my desk looking out the window to the desert, (it is a beautiful cool sunny day outside), enjoying the view and trying my best to remember what has filled the hours of my last week. Apparently this has become a once a week blog :-), well at least I am doing that much! I have some photos on my camera that I need to download as well. I was waiting until I got around to taking some more, but I have a feeling that I should go ahead and post some :-). So hopefully I can do that in the next few days.
What inspired this post was a statement made yesterday by a man I was interviewing about an NGO he started with a group of friends. He said something along the lines of when public speaking or speaking in front of a group there is a pressure to present your personal experiences in such a way that the audience will relate, or in an orderly process, but the truth of it is, the process is usually not orderly whether you are developing an NGO, or living day to day. So while the previous posts have been filled with stories of adventures and experiences, I feel the need to add a disclaimer that not all of my life here is portrayed in these posts. It is difficult to remember the tough moments once they have passed, or the fleeting thoughts of homesickness or lack of patience with cultural differences and miscommunications. So while this blog may make the grass here appear greener, this may not always be the case. The last few years I have been trying to learn that happiness/contentness is a state of mind you choose, not something you happen to fall into, and it is by God's grace we can choose this. And I am happy here :-).
Spring break begins this weekend. I will be working the first part of the week, but I think I will run away to the Red Sea for a few days to see if I can squeeze a dive or two in and relax on the sunny beach (my apologies to all of you who are still up to your eyeballs in snow ;-).
Since this post has been more my thoughts, than experiences I will leave you with this short story...the other day, after returning to Maadi (the area of town I live in) from a meeting downtown I stopped by RadioShak to pick up a powerstrip for my computer. After an interesting Arabic lesson with the salesman in which I learned the difference between mooza (banana) and moozah (pretty girl) (much to the anger and dismay of Sam), I was walking home and passed two boys 11-12 years old on the street. As they walked by me they grabbed ahold of the jacket in my hand and pulled it. I held onto it, but it made me so mad that I turned to run after them, yelling AYB ALEEK (where is your shame) at the top of my lungs, for those of you who have heard me yell, yes I am sure the entire 10 block radius heard me. People stopped to watch as I am sure it was a funny show to see a foreign girl running after two young boys. A man down the street stopped the boys, but at this point I had given up running in dress shoes and returned towards home. Another man stopped in his car to apologize to me for what the boys had done. I laughed at this experience as I retold it to Sam later, but he was horrified that this had happened in such a nice neighborhood. With a puzzled look on his face he asked, "how do all these things happen to you?". I guess I should have put a warning label on myself, "prone to unusual trying experiences and adventures". LOL! Please no worries...I am safe(not that I ever really felt in danger)! I made it home without any other adventures for the day.
I guess that is all for today! Thanks to you who are my faithful readers. I hope this blog is a glimpse of life outside the US.

Scuba and more

Wow! Another week has flown by! It is amazing how quickly life became "normal" here.

The scuba diving last week was amazing! I went down 30 meters/100 feet! The coral was beautiful and the fish amazing! I took a few classes to improve my scuba skills...the deep dive (you do math skills and motor skills to show the effect of narcosis at 30 meters)...and the drift dive (you allow a drift current to carry you along a long distance so you can cover more ground and see more beauty)! They were both breath-taking! Sharks had been spotted in the area both days we were diving (at the Blue Hole Dahab- an internationally known diving location) but unfortunately they decided to stay away from us, so my excitement was limited to octopus, coral, blow fish, lionfish, etc. :-) too bad. I have a hard time conserving my air underwater... I blame it on how fast the guys all swim and I have to kick 4 times to their 1 to keep up...haha...so on my last dive I ran low on air and had to use my buddies alternative (don't worry at this point we were only 5 meters under water) and this is the reason for all the review and practice, so no danger just me giving myself a hard time about not being as good as the guys :-). They have promised to help me improve my proficiency so I can dive longer and not use as much air! Yipeee! Since I am still improving my diving skills I do not get to use a camera underwater yet, but I promise pictures as soon as I take the underwater photography course!

I returned back to Cairo a day early and spent a day sleeping to catch up from all the diving/traveling exhaustion...and then it was back to the normal work week. But a normal work week here is not boring :-)! Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview a fairly famous man here in Cairo and international known in France and U.K. (He is even on wikipedia- the ultimate fame test. jk) My coworker and I will meet with him again next week to continue our interview and oral history recording. (Basically it is just asking him questions to get him talking about his life and then I get to sit back and listen to the stories for as long as he feels like talking :-) such fun!) I always enjoyed biographies and hearing people's life stories of how they got to where they are in life and who influenced them.

Last night my roommate and I went to the market to go grocery shopping. Her vocab this week is fruits/veggies/meat so we took extra time in the store pointing at everything and saying its name in Arabic. This is my strongest area of vocab so it was fun because I could keep up for once.

Well time to go catch the bus! See ya later!

my job :-)

As a person who loves to learn, I was always impressed when I heard someone was a Research Fellow. It was almost as if they had acheived a status in life when they didn't have to "work" for a living, but could spend their day "googling" to their hearts content about subjects the rest of us only dreamed of getting the chance to learn about. While it wasn't on my top 5 jobs to have (honestly I never thought I would be qualified for such a job since my writing skills are not the best), I was very excited when the opportunity came up to work with the Economic and Business History Research Centre at the American University in Cairo.

My job is very much like writing a term/research paper. Only the deadlines are more flexible, and the topic can evolve more so than for an assignment that you have to stick to the outline you turn in the first week of the class and four months later realize the subject is a dead end. Currently I am researching the first microfinance NGO that was completely funded by Egyptian finances and volunteers: Fathet Kheir. As well as looking into social entrepreneurship here in Egypt, microfinance as a whole, and other NGOS. The first few weeks were slow as I learned more about my topic, but now I getting into normal routine and realizing research has its slow and busy times just like any other job. Overall...so far...I am enjoying my job!

Tomorrow is another holiday :-)! Yipee! A three day weekend! Some friends and I are going to take advantage of the beautiful weather and the long weekend and head to the Red Sea tonight. I will be taking my second scuba diving course to get my advanced open water certification with PADI! This means by the end of the weekend I will be able to dive up to 100 ft/30 m! Will take pictures to post soon!

Day to day

I have offically been here two weeks! Hard to believe!

One of the things that I love the most about Egypt is the people: their generosity, warm welcoming spirit, enjoyment of each others company, the absence of the American rush to get things done. (Life moves at such a different pace here, not that it can be described as slower or faster as in the difference between St. Louis and Kansas, but perhaps smoother, with more liquidity. There is no switch that is required from work to personal to religion to family, it all blends so closely that you don't notice the change.) Since my arrival a number of Egyptians that I just met have offered to help me with anything I need. Inviting me to their homes for weekend getaways, or over for a meal. I love it!

It took me about 10 days to get on the right sleep/eat schedule. I would be wide awake in the mornings, but by 2 pm I couldn't keep my eyes open without propping them open with toothpicks, and again by 8 pm I would be dying for sleep, but come 10 pm I would be wide awake until 3 am. But now I am back to normal, needing a coffee just to keep my eyes open all day! :-) The effects of having stayed up too late watching tv, talking with my roommate, or going out. As I write this my body is screaming Caffeine! Please! or SLEEP! which definitely sounds the better of the two :-)

My normal routine here during the work week (Sun-thur) is wake up at 5:30 am to get ready, then be at the bus stop at 7:15. It is about a 45 minute bus ride to campus. The new campus is located out on the edge of town (the old one was right in the middle). Once on campus I sometimes stop for that coffee then head to the office. My work day is from 8:15-8:30 am until 3:30 pm. (I will write more about my job in another post.) At 3:30 I climb back onto the bus for the trip home, depending on traffic I get back to the bus stop between 4:30-5. My flat is only about a 5-8 minute walk. Once home I usually crash for an hour to quiet the scream of my body for sleep or caffine :-). My roommate gets home usually around 7 and we fix supper and watch some tv. (Some of the tv shows are old reruns of House, CSI, ER, etc. but American Idol is usually that week's episode.) Overall I would say my usual routine is fairly close to what it was at home. :-) At least until the weekends come :-).

Hope you have a great day!

P.S. The chocolate chip cookies turned out half-way decent! Yipee! Just a few tweaks and they will be almost as good as my brother's!