Stop being an outsider...

Two posts in one month...wow that is unusual :)...

(the photo is from a wedding of one of my friends)

Recently I have doing a lot of thinking...this is normal for me...well it used to be...before I became so inundated with new experiences that I didn't have the opportunity to process and absorb (ie thinking for me), but instead just caught what I could and tried to survive. (People sometimes use the analogy of a fire hydrant being turned on you, you are soaking with new experiences, but you don't actually have time to enjoy or learn from the experiences). The problem with this is you aren't as intentional with your actions, you are in survival mode...moving from one thing to the next without thinking or planning, you take the high and lows, and store the lessons to be applied to your life at a later time.

But the last few weeks, things have slowed down (I am not sure what to accredit this slow down to, whether it is just the summertime slowdown- everyone takes vacations before the Ramadan holiday, or if it is because I have now been here 1.5 years and have adjusted quite a bit to the culture here), and I have had a few conversations with a friend that made me realize where I am. It has been like waking up from a dream, to find that the dream has affected you in many ways, some good, some bad. I realized I was using the phrase "I am not like this in America" often. This can be a good thing, meaning I have adapted to the culture around me, and a bad thing if you are using it as an excuse, ie getting upset from a taxi overcharging you by $2.

The other day I went to the cinema with a group of friends. They were all Egyptian :). As we were waiting for the movie time, part of the group sat around a table in the concession area and began speaking in Arabic, and others were talking with friends they had run into. I looked around at my group of friends and suddenly felt like the outsider. I wandered down the hall to look at cinema posters for movies "coming soon" while I pondered this feeling. I didn't get far before one of my friends tracked me down to ask why I was alone. I have this feeling of being an outsider a lot, though less than when I first arrived, and despite this being the most welcoming and inviting culture I have ever been in. It caught me by surprise especially because this group of friends have been really encouraging to me, and they are helping me learn Arabic but still speak English around me so I can be apart of the conversations. So why did I feel like the outsider?

It wasn't until days later that I realized it wasn't the actions of my friends that brought on this feeling, but like most things regarding culture, it was a difference of perspectives. My friends, (this group in particular) no longer think of me as an outsider. They tell Egyptian jokes and look puzzled if I don't get them, they ask me for information about history of Egypt or cultural questions regarding Egypt. They even joke that I am more Egyptian than some of them, (many of them grew up in Kuwait or gulf states). But then I realized, I still think of myself as an outsider.

When I first arrived, I would often watch before I would do, to see how things were done, I was so afraid to do something wrong and offend someone. Even small things like asking for a seat at a restaurant, telling directions to a taxi driver, buying items from a kiosk or a candy stand. But I am no longer new. I need to stop thinking of myself as the outsider and readjust my thinking. When I first arrived, watching before doing worked well, but it is now time to stop being a guest and trust what I have learned. If I want to stop feeling like an outsider :), than I need to stop acting like one. And for this I am excited and happy...maybe just maybe...I have found a home away from home for now.

Mid Summer :)

My first experience in Egypt was over the 4th of July back in 2002. Wow has it been 8 years ago?! The American Embassy threw a huge party for all the American expats, students, visitors, in Egypt. It was a lot of fun I remember!

Last year rumor had it the party was canceled because of President Obama's visit to the country just the month prior to the 4th, but the party was canceled again this year, leaving the Americans exchanging messages on a list-serv asking what other parties or events were available to celebrate the 4th. I remember it seeming a bit ironic to me when I heard of people outside the USA celebrating the 4th of July, but after living abroad for a few years, I realize the need to capture the moments and celebrations of the familiar, and the importance of remembering your own heritage in the midst of being submerged in another.

So for me, there were no fireworks for the 4th of July over the Nile, but I did celebrate with a dinner at a nice steakhouse and by going to a club to listen to some live jazz music (what is more American than that? okay maybe ragtime?). Conversations with my family back home, who were grilling hamburgers outside, surrounded by 4 wheelers, bales of freshly cut alfalfa, and a sense of peace (with the exception of my little brothers playing with blackcats) now that harvest of wheat is done, made me miss home.

The past few months have been full of work (getting into nice routine now and still enjoying the work for the most part), hanging out with friends (I should really remember to start taking more photos of us hanging out), and looking for a new flat and car. My lease on my current flat ends August 1st, and on Wednesday my Italian roommate and I will sign a lease on a new one. The new one has a rooftop area for BBQs and watching TV, but with a view of the Nile from up there, I don't expect the TV to be on much :). I love having dinner parties with friends, and so I am really excited about this part of the new flat.

Social life is important here. Back home usually the second question you get asked is "where do you work?", here it is something along the lines of "who are your friends?". Not really that direct, but usually in the first conversation you begin to find mutual friends. The social networks here work both electronically and in 1st person. Usually my friends and I hang out at someone's flat and watch a movie, go out to dinner, play cards or board games, or go to a club to listen to live music, pretty much the same stuff as in the states, it is just a lot more frequent! LOL! The other day one of my friends was saying how he hadn't had time to hang out with the "gang" (my nickname for one of my groups of friends that are connected at the hip) recently. That week the "gang" had gone to his flat to watch a movie one night, another night had gone to watch Toy Story 3 together and to dinner afterwards, and to a coffeehouse another night to watch one of the semi-final matches of the World Cup...hanging out three times in one week...and they were all feeling like they hadn't hung out much :). I love spending time with friends, but I must admit sometimes I play hookie from the hang out times...my introvertedness gets the better of me. But I am thankful for the friends in my life right now. Life in Egypt is stressful (even just crossing the street), challenging (language and cultural barriers), hard (fighting with landlords over repairs and taxi drivers for change or directions), and the opposite of convenient (they are not linear in processes, conversations, driving, parking, or even standing in line), but it is friends that encourage you, teach you, and share their knowledge and life with you, that make it the beautiful culture that it is, and I have to admit, the landscape is beautiful as well :) (remembering a recent weekend trip to the Red Sea, surrounded by rugged mountains and beautiful water).

So here's to summer and enjoying time with friends! :)

....Ramadan starts in just a little over a month, hard to believe it is almost here already...

Summer is here...almost :)

(This is an old post, that for some reason didn't get posted...it was written back on the 8th of May)

Updating my blog has been on my "To Do" list for at least 8 weeks now....always so much to write about, but never actually take the time to record all my experiences. But again here is a glimpse at the last few months...

I finally made it back to the sea! We took a dive trip to Marsa Allam (one of the famous diving spots in Egypt). There it is possible to see dolphins, sharks, manatees, rays, etc. My friends and I spent 4 days living in tents beside the sea and diving daily. It was a great vacation and the sea life amazing! I admit I got sea sick when we took the zodiac out for a dive site an hour away, funny thing is I don't get sick when we are moving (which is when everyone else was feeling sick), but the second the boat stops I turn green :( and that is when we have to put on our dive gear. I managed with the help of the boat captain to get my gear on, then I would beg the instructor to let us jump quickly to the water. The cold water is an instant cure for sea sickness. We saw so many blue-spotted rays that I lost count, a white-tip reef shark about 5 feet long only about 7-10 feet away :)- it was beautiful, giant sea turtles (I love to watch them swim!), and tons of other sea life. The coral reefs were beautiful as well! I wish I had an underwater camera to share the beauty with all of you. It is unimaginable. I am captivated by the beauty of it every time I dive. It is good that I dive with a group, because I am sure if I was alone I would become mesmerized in the watching and forget about life above the water.

I am really enjoying my new job! Really, I count it as a huge blessing. I enjoy watching the differences between working in a corporate setting in the US and here. Since my degree is in international business, it has been amusing to see how the mechanics of a multinational company actually works. Small things that I took for granted in the US, like having a reliable mail system for delivering checks (here companies send drivers to pick up Accounts payable checks),

phone systems that work every time you pick up the phone, etc.

Another month...another year

Although the weather is warming up nicely here, it is not quite warm enough yet for diving but I never turn down the chance to visit either of the seas or to the desert. So this last month I had a lot of travel opportunities. Here are some photos from recent trips to Alexandria and the Sahara Desert...

And so it happens another month has passed...spring has arrived (with temperatures bouncing between mid 70s and mid 80s) with flowers blooming and trees budding...and the anniversary of my move here...it has been one year since I packed as many of my belongings as I could into 3 overstuffed bags and boarded a plane to Egypt. The year has been packed with learning experiences, laughter, sadness, difficulties and joys...but rarely a dull moment :).

I always have a list of topics to write home about...so here are a few to share with those of you that have been faithful in continuing to follow my undisciplined blogging...

I live in an area of the city (Maadi) that has a lot of foreigners (or expats as we are known here). There is a large American population as well as German, French, Italian, British, etc. Because there are so many foreigners in this area, the vendors speak English better and are familiar with the requests for strange items cheetos, dr. pepper, microwave popcorn, poptarts, fuses for convertors; where as in other places in the city a request for these items would just draw blank stares or even frightful looks (unknowing how exactly to respond to these alien words), here in Maadi you are rewarded with a polite smile of understanding and a negative shake of the head, BUT on occasion you are rewarded with even more...the item you are seeking...the small taste of home...the taste of comfort in familiarity. I find it is the small joys in life that make the big obstacles seem smaller.

I have many little places I like to go when I am craving a piece of home. One of them is a little restaurant around the corner from my flat (apartment), Lucille's. It is world famous for having the world's best hamburgers (according to Time magazine). The building is made of concrete as most buildings here and painted a mustard yellow with dark wooden shutters and doors. The neon red Lucille's sign written in a cursive script is the first hint that this restaurant is different from the others that line Street 9. The second hint is the wafting smell of grilled hamburgers, beaconing you to enter the restaurant every time you pass. As you enter, you feel as Lucy must have felt when she entered Narnia for the first time. It is a different world from the chaotic streets of Cairo. Highback dark wooden booths with cushioned seats, wooden tables, and wooden wall paneling decorate the small restaurant immediately giving you the welcoming feel of a diner...and then you realize it is country music playing over the speakers. Now whether you are a country music hater or lover, you should know that music is a huge part of the Egyptian culture whether it is the traditional arabic, modern arabic, or borrowed from western culture, rarely do you ever go anywhere that music is not blaring, but only in Lucille's is it country music. The best part of Lucille's is the food of course ;-). The menu has a plethora of American treats ranging from the world famous burgers, pies, cornbread, and even southern sweet tea. In the end, yes it is just a restaurant...with American prices included, but it is a taste of home on those days when that is just what you need.

In my last blog I wrote that I had been interviewing at a multinational company. Two weeks ago I signed a contract with them and my first unofficial day was today! Because of some paperwork for the work permit (please pray that there are no problems in getting it) my first day in the office will be next Sunday, but I am excited for this new change in my life. My new job is on a different side of town, so I am currently looking for a new flat with the help of some friends. I have until August before my current lease is up, but the commute will be 1.5 hours one direction...maybe I can use this time to study Arabic? :)

If you want to see more photos of my recent adventures...check out this link....Western Sahara Desert.

Quick Catch up...

LOL! I always say it has been a long time since my last post...unfortunately I have just not been disciplined enough to write as regularly as I hoped. Every day here is an adventure, and so it seems if I let one day pass, then another, then another, by the end of the week or month I am so daunted by figuring out what to post or what stories to share, that I continue to procrastinate and let that bullfrog stare at me .

So in a nutshell...just to catch up and then hopefully I can stay caught up....

1) After the last post I went to spend the weekend with some friends on a dive trip. It was the last one I have been on since it is too cold for me to go diving right now. Some of my friends have been gutsy enough to endure the cold, but I will wait for warmer waters :)

2) In mid-December I went home to KANSAS! It was freezing, but a beautiful time with my family and friends. Andrew (my little brother) and Nora got married on January 2nd! It was a beautiful wedding and a great party! It was nice because it gave me the chance to spend a lot of time with my family as well since everyone was off of work!

I returned to Egypt about 3 weeks ago. I have been interviewing at an international company here in Cairo...it looks like I may get the job! Will know for sure next week! I am excited about it as it is actually in my degree field and a great place to start a career. This means I will be staying here for awhile though. :)

Life here has settled into as much of a routine as possible here. Things have become "normal" so to speak. Friendships are made, and I am learning more and more how to interact with the culture around me so that it is no longer foreign but I am apart of it or at least understand some of it.

My job

This is an old post that didn't get posted for some reason...but here it is anyways...

A few of you have asked what exactly I am doing....so I thought I would post a video of me giving a presentation just 2 months after I arrived here about my research project. It is now 6 months later, and I will be giving another one in just a few weeks before heading home for Christmas! Hard to believe I have been here almost 10 months....

Another holiday weekend is fast approaching here, it is Eid Kabeer or the Big Feast. This year it happens to fall on the weekend after Thanksgiving Thursday, so my friends and I are planning to combine the celebrations into one long holiday! The weather here is starting to get cold, actually the other night I was freezing while watching the qualifying games for the world cup between Egypt and Algeria. Although the match was here in Cairo, because of safety reasons my friends and I decided to go to a cafe to watch it instead of the stadium. After the win though we went near the stadium to celebrate with the city... here are some videos I took while we were out....

It was so exciting being in the midst of the celebrations! I must admit when they scored the goal needed to win in the last minute of the game I was jumping and screaming as loud as my Egyptian friends around me. I will update the slide show on this page with some of the photos from the last few months, including ones from that night.

*Okay sorry the videos are not posting for some reason. If I get them to work later I will post them again.

Culture differences

After 8 months of living in Egypt, I can say somewhere around month 7 I realized that I was adapting more and more of the culture around me.

Riding on the metro a few weeks ago I realized that I was now staring at the foreigners on the train rather than being the one stared at. While waiting in the customs lines in the airport (I took a quick business trip to Amman, Jordan for a few days), I was asked twice if I was "masyrain" (egyptian) because I was responding in arabic to the conversations around me. (No my arabic is not that good yet, but I am able to understand about half of what is being said in simple conversations and respond with a few broken phrases with an Egyptian accent apparently :-). Although my skin, eye and hair color all are dead giveaways to my true genealogy, I can tell my mannerisms, thought process, dress style and minuscule habits are beginning to reflect the society around me.

It is sometimes a struggle to find the balance between the culture I was raised in and the new culture. Sometimes habits, values, or ideas need to be reinforced, discarded, or replaced. Though sometimes, it is just plain missing some piece of home. :-)

Here are some examples...

Inshallah....translated it means something close to "if God is willing". If you are asked by a friend to meet for coffee later that night (plans are rarely made more than a few hours in advance, most of the time they are made in the moment), the appropriate response is inshallah. Will you be at work tomorrow...inshallah. I asked my roommate for rent this morning...the response...I will be paid this afternoon inshallah. This phrase is used for just about every occasion, but more than just a lofty ideal it is a realistic part of life here. Sometimes it is used just to avoid commitment to an event or not wanting to ever give a negative response to someone. But more and more I am realizing that the lack of efficiency in systems tends to feed this idea of "inshallah". My roommate wasn't using it as an excuse today, sometimes she receives her paycheck on the 1st, and sometimes on the 15th, or sometime in between, depending on when the manager, finance person, etc all happen to get around to preparing the checks. As an American I find myself saying...it is my right for this or that...and then I realize I have no rights here (okay maybe a few since I hold a US passport, but even that is limited in its reaches). The options are for me to cling to my "rights" or learn that "rights" don't get things done here. They only get done in God's timing, and if it is not God's timing then what can a person do about it (this is a strong opinion here in Egypt).

So along with the attitude..."inshallah"...comes another piece..."mafeesh mish kella"...no problem or no worries...kind of like the Lion Kings "akoona matada". In order to survive without pulling your hair out, or having daily arguments with every social encounter you have, it is necessary to adapt a somewhat "mafeesh mish kella" attitude. The easy thing to do is become quite complacent then. "inshallah" and "mafeesh mish kella" do not really work well with the overachieving, goal oriented American society. So how do I as a person of both cultures now learn how to blend the best of these societies into my own lifestyle now.

Sometimes it is the simple things like greetings that make me homesick. Coming from a small town in Kansas where the front door is only used for strangers (even the UPS guy/gal delivers to the back door) and everyone except strangers are greeted with a hug, I grew up a "hugger" :-). I know about half my friends in St. Louis shudder at the thought of hugging someone in greeting, but it is a habit that runs deep in me. Here however any PDA (public displays of affection) are unacceptable between opposite sexes. Greetings between girls are usually two/four air kisses on the cheeks, between guys sometimes a brief hug or the air kisses, and occasionally you will see a limp handshake between a guy in girl during an introduction (ooops I can't tell you how many hands I have wrangled with my firm business handshake out of habit). So I miss my "American hug" greeting as my friends here have come to call it. My closest friends have adapted to it for me and I have adapted the greetings of Italy and Germany for my roommates :-) into my routine for them.

The hardest one for me though is the "I'm sorry" difference. My friend and I were laughing the other day because after a disagreement we were apologizing. I responded with "I forgive you" as I was taught growing up, and they responded with "words are not enough show me with your actions" as they were taught. Now before you are offended at one or both of these responses, you should understand that my response provoked the same reaction from them, that their response provoked in me. We both viewed the responses as being very arrogant. We were both familiar with the differences in the cultures prior to this exchange so we were able to laugh about it, but although I know and understand this element in the culture, I struggle to see past what I think is arrogance to the heart of the matter, especially since "I'm sorry" is not usually used in pleasant emotional situations already.

Daily the realization becomes stronger in me that the more I adapt to this culture and way of life, the more I will not fit when I return back to the states. Currently I am trying to decide where to call home for the next year or so, but the more I look at my options the more I realize no matter where I am, I will just not quite fit anymore.

There are strong points and weak points to any society and culture...living here in Egypt has definitely brought a new dimension to my life and who I am...