Disorganized thoughts and part of Alexandria

January 6, 2010 8:59pm

My name is Sara, and I ate Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for dinner. Oh yeah.

My right eye is magnun (or “matartash” as they would say in Alexandria)… this means crazy. I don’t know how to say “sick” or “red, watery, and gross” in Arabic, so magnun is my choice. I think that my lacrimal duct is blocked. I’m takin’ care of business. Why am I writing about this? Because my desire to scratch my inner canthus like there is no tomorrow is consuming my mind more than anything else at the current moment.

Apparently fish aren’t animals because they don’t have sex to reproduce. The fact that they have two eyes, a mouth, blood, and bones… is irrelevant. They’re not animals, so vegetarians really should eat them.

By the way, please go to niccageaseveryone.com My favorite is probably the Mona Lisa. Thank you, Alec and Michael.

I’ve been very tempted to play “luggage” on the minibus rides. The thought of it cracks me up… but it probably wouldn’t be as funny to any of you.

On Saturday night, Olivia (a tenth grade student), Neven (Arabic teacher and Pastor Tom’s secretary), and her sister Nermin (business office worker), and I took the train from Ramses in Cairo to Alexandria. I have been reading the book A Celebration of Discipline for a religion class that I am taking through correspondence, and I really like it. It is incredibly practical in its disciplines to have a closer relationship with God. I would like to expand more later... but just not now.

Olivia’s uncles picked us up at the train station, and took us to her aunt Sahar and uncle Ramy’s house. (I feel held to a higher standard in my capitalization because I teach English, so I feel the need to defend not capitalizing aunt and uncle. I am describing them—not using aunt and uncle as part of their names.) This family has the sweetest four and a half year old girl named Lydia, and she looked like a little model with her long eyelashes and curly hair. They gave us amazing koshary at about 12:30am, and we were in bed by 3:30. I thought that this was unusual, but apparently staying up until obscene hours is normal—even for the kids. At both houses that I stayed where there were young kids, they went to bed at 3:30-4:00am whenever we did. Whatever happened to an 8:30 bedtime? (Alec and I were discussing why parents choose 8:30, and we reached the conclusion that it’s not as rebellious as staying up until 9:00, and it’s not as prude as 8:00. It’s a little on the wild side. Thanks parents for the leeway.) They stay up obscenely late and get an obscenely late start. I wonder if they know that that’s weird. I don’t think that I feel that way only because it different from my culture… but that’s just weird. Lydia couldn’t grasp the concept that I didn’t speak Arabic, though I said it in many ways. J “Ana mish fehma Araby.” “Ana mabafhamsh Araby.” “Ana mabitkalimsh Araby.” She would just speak louder and slower. It was really cute. I played it off that I understood what she was saying by nodding, smiling, and saying yes, no and maybe. She saw gum in my purse at 3:00am and asked for a piece, so I, thinking that I am her parent, told her that I would give her some tomorrow. She went and pouted to her parents and came back and tried to ask in English. I told her that I would give it to her tomorrow. Eventually she started sobbing. Oops. Oh well. I told her no, and it would be bad to change my mind just because she begged.

We met up with Mina, Abanoub, and Wael, who were a lot of fun. Mina told me that his younger brother might leave school to meet us at a café in the San Stefano mall. I was shocked about him leaving school, but he told me a little more about the government school system. There were about 80 kids in his class, and people drank and smoked cigarettes and hashish during class. The teacher would come and join them sometimes. They may have taken English classes for 12 years, but some of them still didn’t know the alphabet. If the teachers only made 300 LE a month, they would intentionally not teach very well so that parents would hire the teachers as private tutors before the tests (where they would teach them to memorize the answers). This way, they would make so much more money than their normal salary. I have heard these kinds of stories from all of the students who have gone to the government schools all over Egypt. It’s so sad, and it makes me grateful that I took field trips to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and that I learned the bones of the body in fourth grade and learned how to summarize a story in second grade. These students have to learn what I learned the first 16 years of my life in five years, when their minds are not as absorptive as the minds of little kids.

Alexandria is gorgeous. The architecture is so pretty, and I love just sitting by the beach and watching the waves crash over the rocks. Olivia, Nermin, and Neven left on Tuesday morning, but later Tuesday night Wael, Abanoub, Mina, and I walked along by the water, and the white foam looked so cool in the moonlight.

I love walking up and down the streets in Alexandria and just watching the people. On the less busy streets, the people stand out on the balcony and yell down to the people on the balconies below them. I saw people pulling on ropes to bring whatever was in their basket up from the ground to their balcony. I was reminded of the beginning of Beauty and the Beast.