Day 41: October 4

First day back…. Ugh. Woke up at 7:15 to be out the door at 7:30… to the metro by 7:45. To the Bus by 8:00. To Campus by 9.

Sundays are in theory the easiest day in my schedule. All I have is Media, followed by a long break, and then colloquial. Well the Media teacher has decided that we are going to do all our makeup work for the two weeks we missed in one week… on top of our assignments for this week. This is going to be the week from hell. Class was fast paced and everyone felt dazed and confused. Personally I felt like I got socked in the stomach with a stack of homework. Absolutely nuts. Oh, and we have a test/quiz tomorrow…

We all left class feeling badly beaten. Max, Henry and I limped to the food court to grab some food before going to colloquial. Went to Omda, the Egyptian food place on campus. Got some fool sandwiches and ate with Henry and Max.

I’m gonna be completely honest, fool is losing its charm. Beans that are cooked and made into a paste get’s old pretty quickly. Especially when it is done really poorly like it is on campus. Oh well, I gotta eat.. After food Henry and I went to the library to print off the pages of makeup work we have for media. It cost us both 10 pounds to print off all the work we have. I’d estimate somewhere between 20-30 pages worth of media work.

Went to my discussion class for another battle. However, our discussion teacher was much more willing to ease us into school. We just discussed what we did over break and where we went. Very enjoyable after taking a beating earlier.

After class I went to the HUSS( HUSS is the ALI building) quad area for the language exchange program. The language exchange program is a partnership between the Arabic Linguistic Institute and the English Language Institute. In this program students from ELI and ALI are matched up so that they can have conversations and practice their languages together.
I was assigned two beginning level English speakers. Only one of them showed up today. His name is Mina and he is a 16 year old freshman. 16 and in college! His parents are both doctors and he wants to be an engineer. Really smart kid… and completely fluent in English.

I enjoyed the practice, but he didn’t seem all that interested in the program. At the end we exchanged emails so that we could meet up again in a week (we’re supposed to meet once a week however the program is voluntary..). From there I took the bus home and arrived at around 6.

On the way home I called Kevin and we decided to meet up for dinner. I hadn’t seen Kevin in a few weeks and was excited to hear how his adventures were going. I dropped off my bags and walked over to his place. We decided that American food sounded delicious. Don’t get me wrong, schwarma was good, but the fool I had today just put me in the mood for a taste of home.

We ended up in Tahriir where our choices were KFC, Hardeez (Wendy’s), McDonalds, and Pizza Hut. I had heard rumor that the Wendy’s/Hardeez was delicious and decided to try that. We both ordered our burgers and found a spot to talk. I told about Kevin about my travels and then inquired about his life.

Kevin decided to end the relationship he was pursuing with a Muslim girl here in Egypt. He decided that he did not want to become a Muslim himself in order to be with her. On top of this he had quit his job due to the many restrictions and ‘red tape’ associated. At this point and time Kevin feels that there is little keeping him in Cairo and that he will probably leave sometime in November.

It kinda bummed me out to see Kevin so set on leaving. A month before he had been stoked to be in Cairo and now he finds himself disliking many aspect of the city life and just wanting to go home. It’s too bad, I enjoyed having him in Cairo to hang out with.

Anyways, after dinner I hustled back to my apartment and immediately hit the books in preparation for tomorrows test. By the time I went to bed I was feeling pretty confident in the material. I guess we’ll see what tomorrow holds in store.