Boring, kind of depressing day today. Finals week is usually like this back in SB, but not as bad, because home is a lot closer, and I actually get to go there. Not that London Christmas with the family is in any way regrettable. It's just not home.
In Art and Architecture today, we played a review game, which wasn't as fun as it might have been. I don't learn well in situations where guessing or getting an answer wrong is semi-punished with ridicule. And that's pretty much what I have to say about that. (Aside from the fact that our team name was the Meidum Geese, symbolized by a hieroglyphic goose, which was awesome.)
three of the meidum geese
After that was boring anthropology, where I got back my first paper, finally, which I did well on, but not as well as I think I should have, given his general grading standards. It almost seemed like he needed to take gratuitous points off, and chose me, because he didn't really mark anything wrong with it. Not that I really care, I'm just ready to be done with that class forever.
Arabic was confusing today, mostly because I didn't really focus, which seemed to be a problem with the entire class. I think the end of the semester is getting to all of us.
Tonight was fun though, because I went out with friends to hang out and talk and eat free popcorn, a privilege earned through the purchase of one Stella. The popcorn was delicious, the Stella not so much. This is Egypt.
Today was good. Well, parts of it were okay, and parts of it were awesome.
The best part was in Art and Architecture, when we were looking at Middle Kingdom tomb paintings from Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt. We looked at this one, and Professor Ikram asked us what was happening in the bottom row:
One guy in the front row said quietly, 'Seals?' and Professor Ikram seemed to vanish.
Well, she didn't really disappear, more like double over with laughter that the entire class then caught. Every time she'd try and talk, it just got funnier and funnier. Finally we all managed to stop laughing, and she told us that she could never teach this class again, because she'd never be able to look at that painting without thinking 'seals'. So that was great.
After class, a few other students and I followed her to her classroom to ask questions about the upcoming paper and stuff, and I found out that I need to change my schedule around to take her Culture and Society of Ancient Egypt course next semester. Previous years engaged in projects like making makeup, cooking, making wine, and carving maces and then hitting watermelons with them. So it's not exactly a class I can miss out on and not hate myself forever, you know?
The rest of the day was fairly mediocre after that, except for my Anthropology class being cancelled. Everyone I know only found out because of the note on the door, but when I checked later, it turned out that he had notified us on the class website this morning. That's a step in the right direction I guess, but since that website is fundamentally useless, no one checks it, and an email would have worked much better.
After I got home from school, I went out to dinner with friends, which was delicious, and I couldn't even finish all of it. Then I came back to my room to do nothing, which I've been quite successful at. Tomorrow, coffee, studying, reading, and an apartment visit! Wish me luck!
This morning, I slept in, which was really nice. Well, I say slept in. What I mean is 'got up an hour after my 7:30 alarm went off' which is practically the same thing.
I was actually productive first thing in the morning, and wrote about half of my anthro paper before stopping to go on an adventure.
Geoff had mentioned to me that he'd had really good pomegranate juice from a fruit juice stand downtown, or somewhere, and I decided that that sounded really delicious. So, we set out from the dorms to walk to 26th of July street for some pomegranate juice and lunch. The juice stand we ended up at was pretty nice, although, like all the other juice stands I've visited or walked past, it smelled a little bit like rotting fruit. The man behind the counter served us our juice in small glass tumblers, and we stood by the counter to drink it. I'm pretty sure it had had some (probably a lot) of sugar added to it, because it was way sweeter than any pomegranate I've ever tasted. Definitely delicious, though. I even managed not to spill any on my shirt, so yay for that. After we'd overpaid for our juice (because we're Americans, most likely, we went next door to get lunch from a falafel stand. Geoff had a chips sandwich (potato chips in pita) and kofta, and I just had kofta. The man who made our lunches was really nice, and smiled the whole time. He spoke a little bit of English, which was apparent as soon as we'd walked up. I said "What are you going to get?" and Geoff replied "I dunno," and the falafel man laughed and said something along the lines of "Ana mish arif kemen!" which means "I don't know either!" in Arabic. He was very nice, and while my kofta was cooking, we chatted about where we were from (America/USA), and whether we lived here (yes). His reply to us saying we lived in Cairo was to laugh and say "Enta talib!" ("You're a student!") God knows there's no other reason we'd be living in Cairo. We finally got our food and paid (less than a dollar for lunch, which was about the same price as the pomegranate juice), and he said goodbye to us when we left, "maa salaama!" So that was awesome.
On our way back to the dorm, we stopped and bought whole pomegranates from a fruit store for 5.5 pounds a kilo (so much cheaper than at home!), and although I don't know exactly how I'm going to manage to eat mine yet, it looks delicious.
happy halloween!
The kofta was delicious too when we finally got back and got to eat. I'm pretty sure it was lamb. I think.
The rest of the day wasn't very exciting at all, except for my discovery when doing my Arabic homework that I have managed to memorize Maha's second dialog from Al-Kitaab, along with her first. Good for me. I'm sure my newfound skill at being able to inform people that my father works at the UN and my mother works at a university and I am truly lonely will come in quite handy one day.
Geoff and I met up again for dinner, planning to order onion rings from Cook Door but being stymied by the fact that nothing else on their menu looked remotely good. We ended up getting onion rings and burgers from Hardee's, and while the food was good, I expected the family size onion rings box to be less disappointing. Shame on you, Hardee's, shame.
Tomorrow, I may or may not have a midterm in Egyptian Lit. If I am lucky, the professor will still be sick, but I hope she's not, because she is an old lady, and that's just mean. Still, I hope the midterm is another day.
Today was the start of a really good weekend. Or at least, that's how it's looking now. For the first time in forever, I have the whole weekend off, with no plans, no field trips, no crazy intense midterms to study for, nothing. Just catch-up reading, some Arabic homework, and an essay/project for anthro.
Speaking of which, I learned on Thursday that what my professor meant by '6-8 pages' was really 'something under 6 pages, please'. I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem clear from his original statement. Not that I'm going to argue about being asked to write a shorter paper, especially when I don't really have anything to say. 6 pages or under is great with me.
Plus, this weekend is good because it's almost Halloween, which I love, even though I don't really have any plans like I normally do. Except for getting pomegranates, because that's not a tradition I'm willing to sacrifice. At home, my next door neighbors have a pomegranate tree, and every year, instead of giving out candy, they leave a bucket of pomegranates out on the doorstep for anyone to take. I confess, my sister and I usually take more than our fair share. What can I say, pomegranates are delicious, and nobody ever trick-or-treats on our street anyway.
Speaking of Halloween traditions, though, there's a new one this year. (I don't really know if it can be called a tradition if it's new, but just go with it.) Neil Gaiman has proposed All Hallow's Read, which consists simply of giving someone (or someones) a scary book for Halloween. That's it. Nothing else. Give someone a scary book. If you want to learn more, go to the brand new All Hallow's Read site here, and if you end up looking for a list of scary books, I found two good ones here and here.
not my picture, clearly. credit goes to dan guy, at a guess.
So, today was good. I went out to lunch with my friends and had yummy Italian food (and just realized that I seem to have officially switched over to thinking in Egyptian pounds, since I was beating myself up over whether or not to buy the more expensive dish that cost six whole dollars. Wow. I am so dead when I get back to the States.
Just wanted to say, pictures on blogger started working again, so there are now pictures up in my birthday blog about visiting Giza if you want to go check them out. Actually, they're there if you want to go check them out or not. But never mind, because it's time for a short and boring blog post! I know, I'm excited too.
Today I had my first quiz (midterm) for Art and Architecture, which as you know, I've been studying a lot for in the past few days. And you know what? It really wasn't that bad. I knew pretty much everything that was asked, and the only points I know for sure I'll miss are on the map section, because for the life of me, I can never remember where Meidum is. I know now that it's in the Fayyum, but earlier today, I said it was in Upper Egypt. Silly me. Maybe someday I'll learn. Aside from that, I think I did fairly well on the quiz. There was one minor glitch, in that it was only after we had finished the slide questions that the professor told us that by 'explain the significance' she meant she wanted us to describe the object on the slide thoroughly from top to bottom. That wasn't obvious to me, so that's not what I did. Hopefully I won't lose too many points because of it.
One thing I know for certain is that I didn't miss any of the identifications of the slides. I had a small panic after the test was over, talking to a classmate and realizing that she had put a different answer than me for one of the questions. Note to self: do not automatically assume that someone else is right and you are wrong. When I looked up the picture in question later, it turned out that I had definitely been right, and just gotten myself worried over something that 1) I couldn't do anything about and 2) didn't matter. Good for me. We'll see how the test as a whole pans out, though. I'll let you know.
That was pretty much the highlight of my day. Well, I say highlight. I mean 'only thing that mattered'. Speaking of which, I only have one midterm left! That means that all I have to do tomorrow on my day off is write an essay for my anthro class, sleep in a little and/or nap, read Moliere's The Misanthrope for Dramatic Lit, do my Arabic homework, and film a video blog explaining just how nerdy I am, really. When I list everything out like that, it just looks so relaxing, doesn't it? On second thought, maybe I'll erase that 'sleep in and/or nap' part.
Wow, I actually have lots of stuff to talk about today. What's up with that?
This morning, I woke up early, because for some reason I was waking up all night, and 10 minutes before my alarm went off happened to be one of those times.
I took the 7:00 bus to campus, and got my coffee like usual (except instead of just American coffee with milk, I got a mocha cafe thing, which was totally worth the three extra pounds I paid for it. And my friend Maggie dropped a pound coin in her coffee. I don't really know how it happened, just that it did. And then they remade her coffee for her while the cashier cracked up about it. It could happen to anyone.
In Art and Architecture today, we discussed the upcoming midterm quiz, which covers everything we've done so far and will feature a map section, a short answer section, and possibly a drawing section. Oh, and also, if I do well on it, I might get to work either in the Egyptian museum or on a dig on the Giza plateau. If that's not good enough motivation to get an A, I don't know what is.
In my anthropology class we arranged the desks in a circle for some reason, although we didn't really have anything different about the class. Maybe the professor just wanted to sit down. Anyway, near the end of class, he was discussing 'native' ethnographers and how women study women, etc. and something about that statement just struck me the wrong way. My hand flew into the air like I was Hermione Granger preparing to defend house elf rights or something. It was a little pathetic.
I just wanted to know why 'women studying women' was classified that way when decades upon decades of men studying men was just 'anthropology'. I didn't really get a satisfactory answer from the professor, but he didn't say anything terribly (or even moderately) offensive either, so that was okay.
The rest of the day went well, although I didn't get my Arabic quiz back like I'd hoped. We did get to practice our new vocabulary though, and say things like 'Do you spend all your time in the library?' Very useful, this class, I'm telling you.
When I got home, I did some homework, studied a bit, not nearly as much as I should have, and then headed downstairs to the study room to actually do some work. When I got there, I transcribed some of my conversation project for anthropology, then made the (awesome) mistake of checking facebook, where I saw that John Green had just announced a liveshow not 10 minutes previously.
Being the giant nerd that I am, I immediately went to watch, throwing my studies to the wayside. This turned out to be a good choice, or at least, that's how I feel about it now. I got to talk to tons of other people in the show's chatroom, even though I wasn't in the main room in the beginning. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever watched a liveshow on blogtv, but basically there's the mainroom, where the person hosting the show can see everything the viewers in that room chat, and then there's the waiting rooms, where the host can't see anything you chat, unless they specifically go to that waiting room. It's a little frustrating but still fun because you get the chance to talk to tons of awesome people.
Also, in chat situations like this, there are usually a few people in the room (of a about 100 or so) who type frequently and whose name everyone recognizes, and who get real conversations going. Usually I'm not one of them, but tonight I was, and it was really fun. I got bumped up to the mainroom eventually too, and John even answered one of my questions, which was nice. This whole liveshow thing may have ruined my night for studying, but it also sorta made my day.
[For those who don't know, by the way, John Green is a YA author and vlogger extraordinaire. His books are Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and Will Grayson Will Grayson. You should read them. They're pretty jokes.]
After the liveshow, I hung out with my friend Maggie in the study room for a while, and we both freaked out a little bit about the sudden and frightening appearance of courtyard cat. I got some footage of it, finally:
And now it's time for quick unfortunate story time. I haven't been feeling that great lately, like not sick, but not well. I didn't really know why until I realized that I haven't had a real hug in almost two months. That's weird to even think about. I don't know why, but I don't hug people here. I think it probably has something to do with the weird PDA rules the dorm, and unofficially the campus, have. Hugging between members of the opposite sex is a big no-no, and not too much hugging goes on even between members of the same sex. Double cheek kisses yes, between two guys or two girls, but not hugging. And cheek kisses just aren't the same, in my opinion. (Not that I know any Egyptians well enough to merit a cheek kiss.) So, basically what I'm saying is, Sarah, you are getting a big hug from me when I pick you up at the airport next weekend.
