Here we are in Al-Azhar Mosque/University, which is arguably the oldest university in the world. All of the girls had to wear head scarfs and a few even had to put on galabiyyas there. Crossing the street in Cairo is definitely an adventure! Occasionally the classrooms where we teach flood with water, so we have […]

I will be on US soil in less than 24 hours!!!!!!! I am more excited about this than I think I have ever been in my life! I just can’t wait. So I’ve been carrying around a notebook with me here in Cairo, writing down all sorts of thoughts, quotes, and questions that I’ve had […]

Here it is, less than a week left in Cairo, and I am oh so ready to come home. Although this has definitely been a summer to remember, I’m ready for it to be over. I’ve already packed most of my belongings, save for the things I will need in the next few days. Given […]

So over the past few months here, I’ve experienced some things that just make me stop and think “Did that really just happen?!”. And after a few weeks of careful research using only the most up-to-date scientific methodology, I have compiled a list of Egyptian Oddities. So without further ado, The List: – Usually in […]

Well, it seems that I have my third round of food poisoning this week. I ate at the American restaurant Chili’s last night. We even had a birthday celebration there for Uncle Sam. They brought us a cake and sang some weird version of Happy Birthday. (One of the guys in our group said his […]

I finally have a bed!!!!!!!  It has been 8 days since I have slept in a bed. The funny thing is… The bed was installed while I was in class and they put it in the wrong room.  So now, my bed is stuck in a tiny room with another girl’s bed and stuff, and […]

I noticed that my feet were a little swollen after the flight yesterday.  However, it took until this morning for my ankles to swell up to the size of… um… something much bigger than ankles.  My feet look like two loaves of bread rising out of the pan.  Right now I’m laying down with my […]

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been very busy. This week we had the usual stuff: teaching English and learning Arabic. Plus, we visited more tourist sites in Cairo (Coptic Christian Cairo, Al-Azhar University/Mosque, Al-Hussein Mosque, Khan al-Khalili, etc…). Also, I went to Resala (an orphanage) and taught a First Aid course to […]

So today I spent a lot of money. In Egypt, everything is so cheap that when I spend money, I just about cringe. Today we visited the American University in Cairo bookstore and I spent 445LE (~$85). I bought a bunch of books: The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, The Thief and the Dogs by […]

So a few weeks ago, in a moment of sheer lunacy, I wrote a little diddy. It just happens to be to the tune of a well-known Christmas carol. I’m pretty certain that not all of my lines actually fit into the song, but you’ll have to give me a break. It was over 100 […]

I’m home!!!! I cried when the airplane landed on US soil, and then I quietly sang the National Anthem. My first meal here consisted of soup with bacon in it and cheddar cheese melted on top, a PBJ sandwich, and a tall glass of delicious tap water. It’s funny how you take some things for […]

Coming to Cairo has been a definite lifestyle adjustment for me and, I assume, most of my teammates.  Cairo is such a strange place to me that after 2 weeks I still do not quite know what to make of it.  Cairo is a modern city, but only in the sense that it was not […]

I just don’t know where to start or what to talk about in this post.  The past few days have been ridiculously intense and not the best of days. So I still don’t have a bed.  And I haven’t slept more than 6 hours per night.  Supposedly I will have a bed tonight.  But I’ve […]

So the internet is back. And we have a new refrigerator. It’s wonderful to have cold food and water again. Alhtough, the landlord still thinks he can fix the old one. There was a repair man in the kitchen working all day on that busted old thing. I wonder when he’ll figure out that the […]

I’m in the Library of Alexandria! It’s not the same one that Cleopatra was in, it’s about 200 meters away from the site of where the old library was before it was destroyed. This is by far the most beautiful library I’ve ever been in. It’s a library and museum at the same time. It […]

I just found an article on the New York Times that could not be any more true! http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/world/middleeast/20inshallah.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Today was the last day of our work at St. Andrews. We had a celebration for the students. Of course, being the way things are here, the classrooms were flooded with water and the pizza we ordered showed up 45 minutes late. I’m exhausted from the past few days (being sick yet again), so I’ll […]

So it’s about midnight on Sunday night before I leave.  Dad and I get to wake up bright and early at 6am to make it to the airport for my 9am flight.  Then it’s off to JFK where I get to wait for a few hours.  Finally, at about 4:30pm I will be off American […]

So here it is, 3 days before I leave, and I haven’t packed a single thing.  I estimate that I will be up all night Sunday night packing for my flight early Monday morning.  Hopefully, packing won’t be too bad.  I just need the normal stuff: clothes, tooth brush, toilet paper, head scarf.  Nothing too […]

This weekend we went to Sharm Al-Sheikh, a beach resort city on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula on the Red Sea in Egypt. According to our bus drivers, it’s in Asia, but I’m not quite so sure about that. Getting to Sharm is a hefty car ride. We shoved 14 people (12 of […]

Today we went on a window shopping expedition! Brooke (a professor from AUC) led us to the best, nearly-impossible-to-find merchants. In the Khan, it’s easy to be dragged into the tourist trap, but Brooke knew exactly where to take us, and we avoided nearly all hassles by salespeople. If you want anything at all from […]

I got really sick yesterday and I ended up in the hospital. I had severe food poisoning which caused dehydration. That was fun (not really). I thought I was okay until the point where I couldn’t keep down water or Cipro pills. (Cipro is the “miracle drug” that Duke Student Health gave us in case […]

Last week while catching a taxi from our work back home, we (2 guys and 3 girls) got in the taxi of a fairly religious man. As we piled into the cab, the cabbie all of a sudden started telling us to get out of the cab for a moment. I was confused as to […]

I’ve been in Cairo about a month now and I still haven’t written much about the students I teach. So here we go… Our group of DukeEngagers works with Somali unaccompanied minors (youth aged 13-21 in Cairo without parents/guardians). These young men and women are in Cairo without their parents for a variety of reasons: […]

After only a few days, I have come to the conclusion that Dr. Atkins had it all wrong.  Instead of some new fad diet like we have in the US, people who want to lose weight should just come to Cairo.  It’s not that the food is any healthier than what we have in the […]

So things in Egypt aren’t quite like things in the US. For instance, our internet stopped working a few days ago in our apartment. At first, we thought that our cheap landlord did not pay the bill or cancelled it. We were wrong. It wasn’t just our internet that stopped working, most subscribers to our […]

I realize that I sometimes sugarcoat the details of my life here in Cairo. And given my lovely (read: not so great) day today (due to food poisoning), I think I should outline the lowdown of our life here. Things that are/were broken in our apartment: – Electricity in half our apartment …including my bedroom… […]

Cairo is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. There are just a few facts of life here that are very different from what I am used to. 1. Real time is not Cairo time. When someone says, “Let’s meet at 10am,” he really means “Let’s meet at 11 or later.” In Cairo, time is more subjective […]

We arrived in Cairo today!  The plane ride was long.  We were delayed about an hour due to a scratch on the cargo door and then we had an 11 hour flight.  The flight was wonderful save for a few non-stop screaming children.  God bless benedryl and its amazing sleep-inducing properties!  I think I got […]