A week's updates.

Dear readers,

In case you were any way put off by my recent lapse in blogging, allow me to catch you up on all the recent happenings in Egypt.

One. 

I became intimately acquainted with the Egyptian hospital system after my roommate logged a solid 7 1/2 days in a hospital bed with appendicitis, a gargantuan kidney stone, and a nurse staff that didn't speak English. I quickly learned the words for "pain medicine" in Arabic! 

The week, however, was not without its unexpected blessings. First of all, 7 days of hospital care, two surgeries, a CT scan, several x-rays, lab work, medicine, and some surprisingly delicious Egyptian food trays (for Becca and guests) came to a grand total of $200. Need a kidney stone removed? Medical tourism never looked so good.

Extra bonus? They give you back your inflamed appendix after the surgery (memorable souvenir and exceptional conversation starter, at the very least)--stored in a fastfood take out container. Thoughtfully, they placed the appendix on top of the mini-fridge in the hospital room.

But the best blessing of the week? An honest-to-goodness Cinnabon delightfully located next door to the hospital, unique roommate bonding, and now--a healthy roommate back home, no harm done. 

Two. 

Arabic class continues on, eight hours a day. With all the to-do surrounding Becca's hospital stay, though, I'm afraid that my Arabic teachers have taken a bit of abusing this week. First of all, 7 a.m. in a foreign language is never when I'm at my finest, and showing up to class unprepared isn't going to make any intensive tutoring feel like sunshine and roses. There was a bit of frustration all around. I'm proud to report that today, day one after Becca's discharge, I was back to my usual apple-for-the-teacher self, and am sort of tottering along with all of these lessons with noticeable progress.

Just to give you a taste, though, of just how intricate this language truly is--

So, in English,  our words have a beginning and an end. They are made of written, visible letters. Those letters don't change. "Apple" starts with an "A" and ends with an "E." You could say, "The apple is red" (apple as subject), "I bought an apple," (apple as direct object), and you pronounce the word "apple" in exactly the same way.

Not the same in Arabic. They have these little vowels--a, e, and u--and you add them on to the end of the word depending on what part of speech it is. Subjects get a "u" (As in, "The apple-u is red"), direct objects get an "a" (As in, "I bought an apple-a.") and so on. 

That is, direct objects usually get an "a", unless it's proceeded by a preposition, in which case it gets a "e" ("There is a worm in the apple-e"). The exceptions go on and on from there. And, if you can't apply those rules on the fly when you're reading out loud and tack on all those little vowels in the right places? You're wrong. Suffice it to say, it's an intricate language! 

Three. 

So I got a call the other day from the language center where I'm taking Arabic classes.

"Excuse me, Miss Alissa? Could you come to the center in 15 minutes? We're doing a documentary film about the center."

I figure the mean "promotional film," which is a semi-normal request. And hey, I wasn't actually doing anything at the time, so why not?

It turns out that--at least, according to my understanding--al-Jazeera is doing a documentary on foreign students studying Arabic in Egypt. For whatever reason, the women conducting the interviews came to my center to dig up their subjects. I sat and talked to them a bit in an awkward combination of English and Arabic for about 10 minutes telling them about what I do and how my experience studying is... scintillating subject matter, for sure!

Apparently, though, I'm supposed to show up tomorrow to be filmed for this. If this does in fact end up being al-Jazeera, I'm about to make an international fool out of myself, especially if they interview me in Arabic! I'll keep you posted with developments...

In other Egyptian news, the government here decided to kill all of the pigs in the country, despite the fact that there are no reported cases of humans catching swine flu from pigs themselves. Being a predominantly Muslim country, of course, only Christians eat pork--and those who actually raise the pigs are among the poorest citizens. Currently, there are 1500 families in the "Garbage City" neighborhood who just lost their sole source of income due to the nationwide swine slaughter. Sigh. 

Despite some of this downer news from the past week, though, my time in Egypt is still going incredibly well. The more and more language I've been studying, too, the more connected I feel to Egypt and the more I've been enjoying my relationships here. Today I called up my Egyptian host mother to ask her for some cooking tips as I prepared (yikes!) to make this particular Egyptian dish, and got to rib my 16 year old host sister about her upcoming finals. It was really charming to really enjoy how deep my relationship with them has become.

And of course, whenever adversity has been overcome? There is celebrating to be done. Helping Becca through two surgeries, navigating the ins and outs of the hospital, keeping daily life responsibilities going on the side...whew, yup! The weekend feels great! But it also does feel like a big testament to how far my roommates and I have come in settling into this country. If we can do this? We can do anything. 

And, in the best news of all: at this time in exactly two weeks, Nod will be back in Egypt, my class will be done, and we should be en route to the black and white desert. Alhamdulileh--life is good. 

life in a sandstorm.

For the past two days, Cairo has been stuck in a dismal black hole of sand--a kind of stagnant dust storm that's enveloped us all in swirls of hot, steamy air and thick brown clouds. The sky is an ashy brown, with a thick dusty fog hanging so low you can't see 500 meters down the road. 

A four-year resident of Seattle, the sudden gloomy pall cast over the city was initially cozy and inviting. Cairo is only ever vibrant: loud, bright, busy--a strange and overwhelming urban carnival.

To see all at once the Nile murky instead of sparkling, to see the fading decadence of the crumbling european buildings in sepia-as they perhaps ought to be-, to see the sand blow through the streets and remember the true harshness of the Saharan wasteland--it's a compelling glimpse of Egypt in an unusual and unexpected light. 

During the first day of this dust storm, however, the obscured sun was still beating down on us. Temperatures swelled to an impossibly humid 100 degrees. The wind was hot, the whole city breathing its fevered air over us. Shutters were closed on the houses. Windshields on parked cars were coated in grime. 

My roommate Kirsten and I escaped the worst of the weather in the cool cement apartment of our host family in Maasara--the last afternoon Kirsten would spend with them before returning to America. Though the weather was appropriately gloomy for the occasion, inside the house was as warm and light hearted as always, which made me love our adopted family all the more. Sometimes I wonder if they need us as much as we've needed them. They've been a constant source of comfort and companionship this year, and I'm so grateful for them. 

We left the house around sunset to spend a last hour together at a monastery on the Nile--the spot where Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were supposed to have crossed into Egypt as they were fleeing king herod. Walking from their house to catch a microbus, we walked through somewhat deserted industrial stretch of their neighborhood. The setting sun turned the dust clouds orange, which made the city closely resemble a kind of eco-apocalypse movie in which all we had to do was wait for the zombies to arrive.

The church, however, was beautiful. Its courtyard stretches along a wide, marshy swath of the Nile. In the strange, hazy lighting, the river had a delightful eeriness to it. Gathered with my roommates and the Um Hani family, we drank pepsi from paper cups and munched on knock-off cheetoes, exchanging sad smiles and hugs as we watched an exuberant wedding party enter the church to rich plumes of incense. 

Kirsten left this morning at 6 a.m. Every day of my time in Egypt has been spent with her--she even arrived last July on the same airplane as me. Now, sitting on her empty bed, I feel like I'm being pushed into a new transition. The strange weather seems to be marking these changes as well. The familiar, swelling heat of the summer is here. Roommates are leaving, one by one. My last real responsibility here--my Arabic class--started today. And in only 26 days, that will be over, too. Summer has come, a year has passed. I can only hope that I'm leaving Egypt a better person than when I came. 

a change in plans.

So today was to be the first day of an intensive Arabic course--12 hours a day, five days a week, starting at 7am and going until 10 pm. I was nervous, but ready. Strangely excited even. Here was a chance to dig into the language, test my sheer ability to muscle through and endure the rigorous schedule, find the absolute limit of my ability to absorb new words that often sound like you're clearing the phlegm from your throat. 

My alarm went off at 5:50 a.m. In truth, I hadn't slept much. All night, it sounded like there was a small riot in the street--turned out just to be a soccer match on tv. Most men watch the big games in outdoor tea shops in the street, where their shouts of victory and agony echo between the concrete buildings every time ball changes possession. 

I stumbled out of bed bleary-eyed to find my early-rising roommate who had already been up for at least an hour. I grunted a good morning and let a hot shower transform me from a troll into a functioning human being. The whole time, I had Alannis Morisette's "You oughta know" blaring in my head. Not quite how I was hoping to start my heady day of language acquisition.

But the humid, overcast morning had a golden moment as I went to the kitchen and opened a brand new bag of Ethiopian coffee, brought back from my recent travels. A sympathetic friend had lent me her french press for the month of my Arabic intensive. The results: glorious. I stepped out to my balcony to drink it, listening to the chatter of the morning birds and the sounds of Cairo reluctantly lurching to life: the growl of the buses passing, the metallic clanks of shopkeepers opening up their stores. 

Just then, I got a text message. My teacher was sick and cancelling for the day.

Sigh. I was tempted to lament that my early morning preparation for the big first day of class had all been in vain--but then remembered that, more importantly, today was the last day my roommate Kirsten would be in Egypt. One last day to pal around with her--who flew with me to Egypt last July and has spent every single day with me that I've been in the country--is a beautiful thing. She had also planned to spend part of the evening with our host family in Maasara, who started getting weepy about Kirsten's departure a solid two months ago. She'll need all the back up she can get to get through tonight's sob party to be sure.

So, here's to counting our unexpected blessings, and to a second cup of Ethiopian coffee... yum.