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.
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