Classes Begin and Pyramids

Hello everyone! Quite a bit has happened since my last post, but I'll just try to go over some of the highlights. First, last Sunday Egypt beat Ghana 1-0 to win their third straight African Cup of Nations. Unfortunately I missed most of the match because of crowded traffic on the commute from school, but I was able to catch the last ten minutes and the only goal of the game. Of course the streets were crazy afterwards, especially if you left the island of Zamalek and went into Downtown or Mohandissen on the west side of the Nile. The Egyptians would have preferred to carry this momentum into the World Cup this summer, but it does make a nice consolation prize for missing out on world's biggest sporting event.

Sunday was also the first day of classes, which I'm mostly happy about. I think my Arabic will improve a lot, since I have a very good (and patient) teacher, class four days a week, and plenty of opportunities to practice. My Islamic Art and Architecture professor is great, he's an Irishman who backpacked around the Middle East in his twenties and fell in love with its art, and never looked back. I also have interesting courses on Sufism, Islamic Law, and Middle Eastern history between 1500 and 1800 or so. My history teacher actually went to school in Lebanon with one of my Notre Dame professors, so I guess it's a small world, at least for American academic expats. My only real complaint is that I have to get up at around 6:00 AM every school day, in order to catch the 7:00 AM bus to campus. It gets there around 7:40, which is still 50 minutes before my first class, but the next bus doesn't leave until 8:30.

We don't have any classes on Tuesday, so that is the designated day for exploring Cairo and its immediate surroundings. This week I finally visited what is probably the biggest must-see in Egypt, the Pyramids. Like the Mayan ruins, seeing them in person had an impact that no picture could convey. The two biggest ones, of Khufu and Khafre, are mind-bogglingly huge, especially when you consider that they were completed around 2500 B.C. We were able to go inside the Great Pyramid (Khufu) and the interior chamber still had completely smooth walls. After seeing those two we wandered around the area for a bit, and scrambled up one of the smaller pyramids nearby before the police caught us. It was unfortunate, but there were no real repercussions. Finally we took a loop through the desert and ended at the Sphinx. Unlike the Pyramids, which are bigger than I imagined, the Sphinx is smaller. It was, nonetheless, impressive, but by then we were ready to find some food and rest our feet for a bit.

Egypt's Through to the CAF Final!

I'm afraid this is becoming for of an Egyptian football blog than one about me, but the biggest news of the week is easily Egypt's progress through the African Nations Cup. Tonight Egypt beat Algeria 4-0, with two of those goals coming very late in the game after Algeria was penalized again and again. Finally, they finished with only eight players left on the field, and faced a humiliating loss to their most bitter foes. Of course Cairo is celebrating like crazy right now. There is a car horn rythm that seems to have become the national expression for supporting the soccer team. It consists of two short blasts followed by a triplet, and that is definitely the predominant sound of the city right now. Taxis have been playing it all day, and before the game all the cars at an intersection would synchronize themselves, "dum, dum, da da da." There are also the expected celebrations in the streets with people waving flags and chanting "Masr, Masr;" which is Arabic for Egypt.

I saw most of the game at the Marriot Hotel here in Zamalek, which is an incredibly nice place. It would have been preferrable to see the game in a cheaper location, but most of them were already standing-room only by the time we got back from campus. The upside of the experience is that we met a German man who happened to be the president of the Kiel Baltic Hurricanes. I'm assuming most of you, like me, don't know much about the Baltic Hurricanes. Well, they are a German American football team, as in they play American football in Germany. They are also quite good, having finished second for the past two years. I've never followed the German Football League, but as of now I'm hoping Kiel can break their string of finishing second.

The bar at the Marriot got too crowded for us to see a TV near the end of the game, so we left and joined an Egyptian crowd of about 50 people sitting in an alley watching a single TV. By this time the match was more or less over, so I was mostly watching the Egyptians reactions. Their exuberance didn't disappoint. Next up: the final against Ghana on Sunday. Coincidentally, my sister spent her semester abroad in Ghana, so the game creates a bit of a family rivalry.

Zamalek Dorms

Last Friday I moved into the AUC dorms at Zamalek, and the change of scenery is quite refreshing. The island is almost European; with lots of trees, relatively uncrowded and wide streets, and lots of expats and embassies. I also took the bus out to AUC's new campus on Saturday. The ride is very long, but the campus is beautiful. Everything is almost brand-new and the architecture neatly reflects Islamic tradition. The buildings are very open, with lots of courtyards. The only problem is that it will be very easy to get lost for the first few weeks.

Today Egypt played Cameroon in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations, and pulled off a 3-1 win in overtime. The game was much closer than the score indicates, and Cameroon probably played better througout, although I wouldn't say that to the locals. We caught most of the game in the dorm lobby. There was a crowd of about 30 Egyptian staff crowded around the T.V., and then about the same number of students watching from outside. In reality, most of the students were watching the Egyptians cheer as much as they were the game. And, of course, their passion did not disappointment. After the game we walked towards a cafe to get dinner, and all the taxis were honking the horns (although this is hardly a rare occurence) and the Egyptian flags were out in force. If this is the celebration for a quarterfinal victory, Iid like to see the cheering after a major victory. This Thursday provides a big chance, as Algeria and Egypt face off in a semifinal. The two teams already have plenty of bad blood, as Algeria recently beat Egypt to secure a World Cup berth.

Tomorrow I have classes for the first time in over a month, and they began with a vengeance. From Tuesday to Saturday I will be taking a survival Arabic class which focuses on the Egyptian dialect from 3:15 to 7:45, with two 15 minute breaks. I'm excited to learn some practical Arabic that I can use in the streets, but I've never had once class for 3 hours and 45 minutes in one day. Finally, today I visited the Egyptian Museum. The amount of material there is incredible, and I was quickly inundated with mummies, hieroglyphics, and other Ancient Egyptian things. The presentation is fairly poor; as one person told me, the place somewhat resembles a warehouse stuffed full of priceless artifacts. Nevertheless, it was certianly worth a visit just to see the sheer volume of artifacts. And, of course, to see King Tut's mask and tombs, which are impressively laden with gold for a king who only ruled for a decade and died at nineteen.

First Impressions

With two full days of exploring, I think I might be getting a basic feel for this place, meaning that I found my hotel without wandering in circles for four hours asking confused locals where a nonexistent square is. That was Tuesday. Yet for the most part I've enjoyed getting semi-lost repeatedly over the last two days; that way I see parts of Cairo I would normally have missed. On the other hand, I haven't made it to all the famous places I intended to go, but I suppose I still have 5 months.

Tuesday morning I headed vaguely east, and before long found myself in Khan al-Khalili, the famous market for just about everything, but especially for tourists. Before long I had accepted a nice fellow named Ali's offer to guide me to any section of the bazaar: spices, silk, gold, and so forth. I chose the spice market, figuring that there couldn't be too much harm, since he wasn't actually taking me to his shop, right? Well, not exactly. First he guided me through the spice market, and gave me all sorts of good information about which saffron was actually safflower, and thus should be avoided. I bought some basic spices, mostly for tea, and then he asked me if he could host me for tea. Hint: tea is a Cairene salesman's most potent weapon. After all, once it's served you can hardly leave until its finished, and if it starts at near boiling then that could take awhile. Meanwhile there's time to discuss all matters of topics: family, football, Obama (Egyptians love him), and of course whatever happens to be on sale. To be fair to Ali, he did give me considerable practice in Arabic, and was always very nice. I'm only a little riled because, somehow, he managed to get me to buy 8 small bottles of ointment. Sure the price was nice, but soon after leaving I realized that I now had enough perfume/musk to last me approximately 500 years at my going rate, which is basically occasionally putting on after-shave.

The other notable event Monday happened when I finally gave up on finding my hotel on foot and hailed a taxi. Luckily the driver figured out that by "Midan Ibrahim Pasha" I was actually referring to Midan Opera, which happens to have Ibrahim's statue. Then he took off, and for the next thirty minutes I saw more near accidents than in the rest of my life. First of all, most Cairo taxis are old black and white vehicles which are invariably missing some part-on mine it was, of course, the back seat belt- and only continue running because all the taxi drivers are secretly MacGyvers. These vehicles are then driven with a recklessness that makes the little street racing I've seen a joke. I'm convinced that if someone practiced defensive driving skills they would never move, because any forward progress of the car is a mini game of chicken, as two or more vehicles compete for the coveted position. I'll probably keep blathering on about the traffic during a later post, so I'll stop for now.

On Friday the other ND students will be showing up, and by now I'm quite looking forward to their arrival. Having complete independence is nice, but eventually it would be good to know someone who I didn't meet five minutes earlier. Finally, I put some pictures from Amsterdam and Cairo up, you should be able to access them here. And just to keep this place a little visually interesting, I'll throw one in here.

Arrival!

After 6,900 miles, 32 hours, and five airports I arrived in Cairo this morning at 2:00 AM local time, and was very glad AUC arranged a pickup for me at the airport, saving the hassle of finding a cab. My driver averaged about 110 km/h on the way to my hotel, and on arriving I got to experience my first stranger intent on getting baksheesh, or tips. The entrance to the Pension Roma is down an alley off a major street, and as I approached an elderly man came out of the shadows on my left, mumbling something in Arabic. I was either too tired or too trustworthy to be suspicious, which turned out to be fine, as all he wanted to do was direct me to the elevator towards the fourth floor, and help me with my bags. I underestimated the dedication of these guys; anyone guards an entrance until 2:30 in the morning on the off chance that someone checks in at that time deserves a tip.

I'm still quite bleary from jet lag, and I might not make it all the way until tonight without a nap, but now I'm going to take my first fairly random walk around the city. Today's the 19th, and the AUC dorms don't open until the 22nd, so the next few days are more or less entirely mine. One of the nice things about Cairo is how cheap it is, I'm not sure I could afford to arrive a few days early if I had gone to London or Dublin. But here I'm able to get a single for under $15 dollars a night, with breakfast included. Granted, it's not the nicest hotel in the world, and I haven't fully solved the mystery of the shower with two reddish handles, both of which caused very cold water to come out, but I'm young and should be able to handle these sort of things. I'll try to get some pictures up later, I have a few from walking around Amsterdam during my 9 hour layover, but the internet service here is only up for around 4-5 hours a day, so I can't promise they'll be up soon.

An End and A Beginning

Hello everyone, and apologies for my long absence from writing. The second half of the semester had considerably more papers than the first, and I had to direct most of my writing impetus to that end. However, it is now Christmas break and I have no responsibilities for several weeks. My desire in this post is to review the latter half of the fall semester, but I'm afraid I'm too far removed from it to recall it really well. Gosh, that makes me sound like I have amnesia. However, I will try to recall some events from the semester. For our Fall Tour the Glee Club took a rather convoluted route between stops in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. It was certainly not the most inspiring itinerary, but most of that can be blamed on the football schedule, which had two home football games on the Saturdays of Fall Break. The tour began with a day trip to Warsaw (I think), Indiana, where we performed for an elderly but appreciative audience. Then we returned to Notre Dame for the night, an odd interlude that made it seem like the tour hadn't really begun. The next day we drove to Wisconsin, where Pete Dolan impressed everyone with his knowledge of local history, most of which was actually very interesting, keeping in mind that I came to college a history major. We also were treated to a tour of the Miller brewery, capped off by three free samples in their tap room. The volume of beer produced there daily is astounding.

After that we began criss-crossing the upper Midwest, I believe we drove by Chicago three times without stopping. Nothing too special stands out, except for a swine flu scare in Illinois and nice day touring Grand Rapids, Michigan. They had a competition that involved artists using public space to display their work, with some surprising results, like the giant table and chairs on one of their bridges.

The rest of the semester went very well for the most part, as I realized that I was entering my final weeks at Notre Dame before leaving until next fall. The football season, however, went downhill fast after our "home" football game against Washington State, which in fact took place in San Antonio. I'm not sure about the new policy of playing one game a year at a distant location, I would rather schedule another home and away series or a neutral site game against a quality opponent. At least we won the game, but then promptly lost the next four games, including our second straight senior game loss, this year to Connecticut. I'm a bit worried about my last home game as a student, which will be against Utah next November.

Although we lost our second straight home game to Navy, the rest of that weekend went very well. My parents, grandparents, and sister all visited, the Glee Club had their triennial reunion, and on Friday night I went to the Navy Ball with a lovely young woman named Maya, who proved herself to be an excellent dancer. I suppose that isn't too surprising for someone who grew up in Rome. Unfortunately I had to miss the Reunion concert that night, but it was certainly worth it. Then on Sunday I visited Chicago with my family on my sister's birthday, where we ate a wonderful but huge Greek dinner that left us barely capable of waddling back to the hotel.

I wasn't able to return home for Thanksgiving, but I still had a great time in South Bend. On Thanksgiving day I joined Robbie, Jessica Mannen, and some other friends for dinner, followed by Monopoly and the first two Lord of the Ring films. Then on Black Friday I went to Chicago with Ashley Elias, as well as her mother and brother. We visited the Field Museum, ate some Chicago-style pizza, and looked at some ridiculously expensive cars, the details of which Nicholas was surprisingly familiar with. The entire day was a nice opportunity to get out of South Bend for a day, and the Elias were a most welcoming family. On Saturday night, or actually very early Sunday morning, Robbie, Tom, and I finished the break's work by seeing Return of the King. I forgot just how long the extended version of that film was, I think I finally went to bed around five in the morning.

The weeks after Thanksgiving are both some of the most hectic and most enjoyable times of the year at Notre Dame. On the one hand there are more papers and tests, with the prospect of finals on the horizon. On the other, it is the Christmas season, which means a lot of caroling (about 10 hours worth spread over two nights) and the Glee Club's most popular concert. As always both the concert and the caroling were a blast, from the timely snowstorm at St. Mary's to the reappearance of Chubby Santa.

Meals provided a setting for some of the best times of the fall. On the weekend of the Purdue game Will Docimo, Matt Drummond, and I all had lunch at North Dining Hall, followed by a great afternoon that included making t-shirts and inventing two great dances. That began a tradition of Saturday lunches that I hope continues next fall. Several of these lunches included trips to Five Guys, and I must say that they are the Willy Wonkas of Burgercraft. That's a bit of an inside joke, but its also true. I also had a series of great goodbye dinners with friends I won't see for 8 months (or in a few cases, perhaps much longer), including a long, delicious dinner at India Garden and a little brunch at Greenfields that relieved me of my remaining FlexPoints.

Finally it was time to return home, this year via I-80 with Jon Asbury, a trip of over a thousand miles. But despite its length the drive went quite well, with good weather, a bit of fast driving, and cheap iced tea to sustain us. Finally I pulled into my driveway on the 19th after listening to the Wyoming Cowboys pull off an exciting victory over Fresno State in the New Mexico Bowl, and was greeted with the familiar row of lighted milk jugs that says Christmas like nothing else.

Now in a couple of weeks I will be flying to Egypt, finally beginning the journey that led me to began this blog in the first place. I also suspect that the readership may increase quite a bit, since I'll actually began to advertise its existence. I've been anticipating the trip to Cairo for well over a year, so it seems odd that I am actually so close to taking off. I know that it is an opportunity for adventure, for going into the unknown, that rarely comes across us. This uncertainty, which makes the semester exciting, also makes it a bit nerve-racking. Especially the prospect of the first few days, when I will arrive at Cairo around 2:00 A.M. local time after a day and a half of flights, alone in a foreign place. Most of the rest of the Notre Dame students will be arriving on the 22nd, three days after me. But I'm confident that I'll be fine, remember that I've had worse (2009 began with the Rome airport fiasco, which involved staying there overnight with very few Euros and even less communication with home), and enjoy my first taste of the city that will be my home for the next four and a half months.

Anna Karenina and Birthday

A couple of weeks ago I finished Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Out of all the infamous 19th century Russian novels, this may have been the one I expected to enjoy least. Perhaps it was because my edition was headlined as "One of the greatest love stories in world literature," or maybe it was the rather unhappy woman pictured on the front. Whatever it was, I am happy to say that my fears were not at all justified. It was a very good book, which I found much easier than War and Peace. I think that some of the things I thought would turn me off the book actually helped me like it all the more. For example, Anna Karenina is almost entirely a personal novel in that it has a setting that only involves a small, intimate group. War and Peace, conversely, is a grand historical novel, set largely during Napoleon's wars in Europe. While I enjoy both types of novels I find the personal setting easier to read, which is a rather startling reversal of my earlier tastes in books. For a good portion of my childhood and youth I was inclined to choose "dry" histories over many fiction novels, whose pleasures I discovered later and only very gradually.

One of my favorite parts of the book were the scenes surrounding Levin's engagement and marriage to Kitty (now I've definitely left myself open to charges of sentimentalism). During this time Levin is described as having an unfailingly positive outlook on mankind. He can clearly see that all the people around him are truly good, and that their minor faults are more than made up by their essential good-hearted nature. He is completely filled with love for his fellow men, and is willing to embrace any of them. And while many look upon him with gentle condescension for his love-struck attitude, they cannot help but share in his happiness. I believe that there is some wisdom in this attitude of love that cannot quite be grasped with a more "practical" outlook. A bit of this wisdom is shown by how others react to Levin: they reciprocate his kindliness with their own, although they almost seemed surprised at their own actions. There is a basic truth here, that kindness begets kindness, and an easy way to make the world a better place is to see the goodness in the people around you. But I don't think this is merely a matter of perspective; seeing that goodness will encourage it to grow in them. But of course this really isn't an easy task, it is a lifelong task. One more thing: near the end of the book Anna adopts the opposite outlook, and this helps drive her to despair. The question is: if there is legitimacy in Levin's attitude of seeing people as good, is there equal legitimacy in Anna's tendency towards hatefulness. I fear that there might be, for we all contain both love and hate, but Anna Karenina shows the terrible consequences of focusing on the latter.

Enough with my amateur efforts at literary analysis and philosophy, at least for the night.

My birthday was about a week and a half ago (September 22nd, shared with Bilbo and Frodo!). So now I am 21, and enjoy all the basic rights and privileges of an adult. Not that much has changed in my actual life. I did go to a bar, but only to split one pitcher of Smitwicks between four friends. I came back out quite coherent, which is good since it was a Tuesday. I hope that I don't embrace adulthood too much, and was pleased to receive The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald as a reminder that there is no need to leave childhood delights behind when we grow up. The other side of the equation was shown by by sister's gift: a large water bottle sealed with duct tape and labeled, also on duct tape, "Freakin' Delicious Polish Whiskey." It is, in fact, quite good. The package gave me a good, long laugh, so thanks to Mira. Finally, I got a great surprise when I looked out the window on the morning of my birthday, thanks to Adrianna, that indomitable pillar of cheerfulness. Here's the picture!