So our semester in Egypt is over and now we are leaving the historic country behind on our way to Europe. I must say that Egypt and Cairo definitely exceeded the expectations that I originally had of it; maybe because I didn’t really have any to begin with. I was so unbelievably busy at the end of last semester that I didn’t really have time to sit down and think about the upcoming trip. Between final exams, securing a coop position, and planning for our Eurotrip after the semester abroad, Egypt seemed to just be a prelude to Europe. However it was much more than that.
I feel like I adapted better than some people, taking in the atmosphere and new surroundings fairly well. Of course I got sick within th
e first few days, but so did almost everyone else. I think it is more of a mental thing then physical, so I got it out of my system. As far as adapting to the culture – the noise level, the lack of cleanliness or organization, the extremely polluted air – I think as easy as it was for me, it was an amazing experience. Of course I noticed some of these obvious differences in culture, but it wasn’t until a few weeks into the trip when I noticed some smaller differences that really shocked me. Our first couple weeks, we traveled to the pyramids, and temples, and tombs, and did most of the “touristy” stuff. Then we started classes. Although classes and service learning and other group events took up a lot of time, we still had chances to explore.The best part about Egypt was…
No surprisingly it wasn’t the pyramids, or the temples, or just being in a new surroundings for over a month. It wasn’t the Fluids class (sorry Professor) or the trips to villages and smaller communities of Egypt. Although all of these things were also better than I could have
imagined, the best part about studying abroad was the dialogues. At first I was skeptical about how they would go, if we would actually connect and have good discussions and make something out of the dialogues, or if we would just talk for a couple hours then go back to our daily schedules. They turned out not only to be interesting conversations with Egyptian students, but in the process we exchanged numbers and emails, and made friends with some of them. Going out night after night with the Egyptian students was a lot of fun. To be out with them made me feel more welcome in their country and I had a better time. Obviously we still stood out everywhere we went, being the only Caucasian people in every setting, but they would always be there to help us communicate or to just hang out. Some small things like people trying to “give” us items and saying they were free. Of course our first instinct i
s to take it and say thanks, but they would always be there to remind us: it’s not actually free. The people would just give it to you for free, before expecting to be paid for the item. For a couple of weeks going out with our new Egyptian friends made for a deprivation of sleep, but it was definitely worth it. We would go to multiple café’s or food places. We would sometimes go on felucca rides or get ice cream outside of town that we would have no idea even existed. Often getting back to the hotels around 2:30-3 a.m., I was exhausted, but it was still considered an early bedtime for Egypt. We would be falling asleep while young kids not even old enough for school, and entire families would be out walking around or downtown at the market.A lot of differences I noticed within the cultures came from being out with the Egyptian students. Things such as: everything in Cairo being fully functioning at 3 a.m., or families being up late, or the ridiculous amount of café’s here – they made my experien
ce so much more interesting. Just the other night we went to a facility to play soccer. (By the way, Boston or my hometown Pittsfield needs something like this.) The facility was ginormous; think of a college campus. It had fields and courts for every sport you could think of. There were at least five basketball courts, ten tennis courts, handball and badmitten courts, not to mention about eight Astroturf soccer fields. The place was chuck-full of kids running around. There must have been over 200 kids on the soccer fields alone. We got there at 9 p.m. and tried to start playing… tried is the key word. We started juggling in a circle, and before I knew it there was a circle of kids surrounding us about 5 people deep. I swear it could have been a never-ending juggle session. If we over-kicked it one of the kids would just kick it
or head it right back into our circle. They were so excited that there were Americans there playing with them that they stopped playing to come watch. We couldn’t even get enough room to kick it around so we had to wait until the place shut down around 11:30 p.m. Luckily the managers realized we weren’t going to get any time to play so they let us play after most of the kids left. We played for two solid hours before they literally turned the lights off on us at 1:30 a.m. Once again, everything goes late in Cairo – in the U.S. soccer or most physical activity doesn’t go past 10 or 11, in Cairo 1 a.m, easily. The Egyptian students were pretty good at soccer. Well I guess pretty good is an understatement for some of them. Even though I realized how out of shape I am, it was so much fun playing, I had so much energy and just kept running all over just enjoying the experience.
Our last night we went out to Versailles, a café on Zamalek with a group of the students. We hung out and watched a European soccer game. One thing that will be good to get away from in Cairo is the smoke and shishah. For anyone who isn’t sure what shishah is, it is flavored tobacco that is smoked through a huge water pipe. If you live in Egypt, you smoke shishah. Everywhere they go they have shishah bars and café’s have it on the menus. As if the air quality and level of pollution in Cairo wasn’t bad enough, the shishah smoke definitely won’t help my health. Anyways, it was sad saying bye to all our Egyptian friends last night, knowing that we most likely will never see them again. Hopefully we’ll keep in touch, maybe via facebook or online somehow, but while it lasted it was an awesome time. They were some of the nicest kids I’ve ever met and I will always remember how good a time I had in Egypt because of them.So I’ve come to the conclusion that Cairo is at least just a little bit different than Boston. Smoke everywhere, people everywhere, crazy driving that was someho
w ordered chaos. It was all a culture shock, especially when we went to Estabul Antar and Ismalya, two of the poorer communities, where they didn’t even have running water. At the glass blowing factory in Estabul Antar, we did our service learning project. We interviewed the workers about their life, the community, and the company. We also took pictures of all of their products and put the information together on a website that we created for them. I worked with Alex on taking pictures of the products. Our original idea was to create some type of cataloging system so that they could keep their inventory organized. Unfortunately, they only made the glass objects on request, so they rarely had many different items in stock. Still, we got some really good pictures of the products and put the best pictures on the websites so that their work could be seen and known. Alex also took pictures of the workers and the brothers who r
un the glass-blowing workshop. I thought that taking the pictures and advertising their products was a great way to help them with their business. I would have liked to interview the workers as well, or taken pictures of the surrounding community, but we had a lot of people working on the service project so there was only so much available for each person to do. Also, I was really looking forward to playing soccer with some of the kids, but some of the members of the community didn’t like the idea, so we didn’t get to play. It was really disappointing because after reading about my experience at the soccer fields, I’m sure you can imagine how awesome it would be for the kids from a poorer community if we played with them. Overall, the service learning went well and I enjoyed helping them out.
In both places – Estabul Antar and Ismalya – it amazes me how widespread companies are across the world. Even though these communities don’t even have running water, they still sell Coca-cola at markets throughout the village. I wrote about this in one of my recent posts but I really can’t get over it. Garbage lines the streets, kids play soccer in sandals, young children wait in breadlines and other food lines, yet we are offered coca-cola when we’re helping the glass blowing workshop. Even in Ismalya: the market we went to was so dirty. It had garbage everywhere, with fruit and vegetable stands lining the middle of the market. They had old tubs with live catfish and other fish still squirming around. They even had entire carcasses and pieces of meat hanging from the ceiling of stands or lying out on tables with all the dirt from the ground getting circulated due to people walking by. Yet still, next door to that stand, was a stand that sold coca-cola (and also shishah, to reiterate from above that shishah is everywhere in Egypt).As good as all of these experiences were, they came two weeks into our trip, after our tourist time. I can’t even begin to explain how cool all the pyram
ids, temples, and mosques were. Pyramids. The things we studied in fourth grade that were (and still are) the first image that comes to mind when I think of Egypt. I never thought I’d actually be able to see them, except in all the pictures that didn’t belong to me. I still don’t think it has completely sunk in that I saw them, stood on them, went in them and just stood next to them admiring them from a couple feet away. I realize that it is a big deal, but it doesn’t hit me like it was a big deal. Not to say I don’t already appreciate the experience we had, but it will become a whole other level of appreciation when I get home and realize where I have been. I think my favorite pyramid that we saw was Kephra – the middle pyramid of the three large ones that we saw on our first trip to Giza. We didn’t go in that pyramid, or even up to it to stand next to it, but it is the pyramid I associate with Egypt. Driving to Giza on our first day here, we turned a 
corner and all of a sudden we saw it. In the distance, the top of a pyramid stuck out in between a couple buildings like some enormous snow-capped mountain. The pyramid had once been coated with limestone and the limestone had eroded off the bottom of the pyramid, so from far away, it looked like it had been snow capped. Even though it was off in the distance, it was towering over the buildings in front of it; making it the most vivid image of a pyramid that we saw. In addition to the pyramids, the temples were amazing historical sites. I was astonished at how they dug up most of the temples and still managed to preserve the hieroglyphics and the carvings in the stone. My favorite temples were the first temple we saw, Philae Temple, and the Luxor Temple. The Philae Temple was HUGE, and had been relocated on to a different island from its original home in the middle of the Nile. The Luxor Temple was big as well. It had a row of sphinx’s outside the entrance, as well as a obelisk. We got to see the temple lit up at night, and the lights really had a cool affect on it. At one spot in the temple, there was a wall with a mosque on top of it. This was one of the best things we saw during our trip. Not knowing the temple was there, the modern city built a mosque directly on top of it. You can see the old street line and ground level about 30 feet above the temple floors. This really put it in perspective how old the temples were.
I have been in Europe for one day now, and already it has made me realize all of the things I adapted to in Egypt. When we were walking down the street last night, looking for a place for dinner, I realized that I was avoiding spots on the sidewalk that had water on them, fearing that there would be an air conditioning unit that would leak on me. It didn’t even occur to me that maybe it had rained earlier in the day. And of course the first thing I noticed in Greece was the clean air and the temperature. When we got off the plane I took a bunch of deep breaths and enjoyed the clean and cool air surrounding me. Amazingly, it was only in the 60’s and it honestly felt cold, but refreshing. After 5 weeks of 90-100 degree weather, it felt awesome to get off the plane to a cold breeze on an already chilly day. While 
we were exploring Athens, I kept realizing that I was walking in the streets. Apparently, in Cairo, I got used to walking on the streets because chances were that if you were walking on the sidewalk, you would break your ankle. Also, crossing the streets is a completely different story. We were crossing one of the main roads here, and Alex went across in front of the car. Me, Rod, and Sean stayed put thinking the car was going to fly by us, but then it stopped. I realized at that point in time that Egypt might be the only place where cars would split your groups in half – literally. We got used weaving between cars to cross the street, and when the cars stopped for our whole group, it took us a second to realize what was happening. As I said earlier, I knew I adapted to Egypt fairly well because I didn’t think that the cultural differences were such a big deal. As I experience Europe more and more, I think I will realize that while I was in Egypt I got accustomed to a completely different lifestyle.Overall, I think that the program was an amazing experience. I liked the organization of the tours of the temples and pyramids, but I also liked the class, and how the group seemed to split up into multiple groups. At the beginning of the
trip, both Professor Sullivan and Cynthia mentioned that we should expect things to be delayed or cancelled, and for our activities to happen on “Egypt time.” It took me a while to realize that they were actually very organized, and that the activities, and tours, and even service learning events were never finalized until the last minute. I always like knowing what the general plan for the week is, but Egypt was a nice change from the usual, and sometimes the day-to-day knowledge of what we had planned was the best. The experience I had in Egypt was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I will never forget it. The way I felt when I was there, immersed in the Egyptian culture was something I can’t even begin to describe. Also, seeing all the historical things in Egypt was so amazing that it wouldn’t do it justice for me to explain. Finally, to sum up the trip… Egypt was amazing.
