almost

Almost almost almost done. Right now, I have one final, one presentation, and one essay left to turn in. Then, if the University of California were sensible, I could go home, and be done with Egypt. Unfortunately, they're not sensible, and I'll be back at AUC next semester, much better prepared to deal with everything that I'm sure it will throw at me.
But before that, I have to take a test. I have to give a presentation. I have to turn in an essay. Tomorrow.
And then I'm done. Then it's winter break, and I get time off to read and hang out with my friends before everyone flies home. Then I get to fly away to London, and see my family for the first time since August. Then then then. Almost.

study study

Too much to do. Lots of work. Really sleepy.
Got a B+ on my Egyptian Lit paper. Yay.
Can now tell Senusert III and Amenemhat III apart.
Arabic final tomorrow will be scary bad.
Longest bus ride home yet: 2 hours, 10 minutes.
Got delicious cupcakes, finally. Pumpkin and carrot.
Anthro presentation postponed due to kindness of classmate.
Much ado about everything today. More tomorrow.

cold again

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.

a productive day (complete with ice cream and jedi)

I was productive today. On a Friday. Something is clearly amiss.
I went to Coffee Bean in the morning, and wrote half my paper and outlined the other half, while enjoying a terribly delicious breakfast of a chai latte and a croissant. The fact that Coffee Bean has no internet is simultaneously extremely frustrating and extremely helpful to my productivity. I think that's why I keep going back. That and the chai. So good.
When I got back to the dorms, I started to watch some tv online, read some blogs, then realized I really had nothing better to do than to finish my paper. So I did.
I ended up downstairs in the courtyard, which was good, because it meant I got to hang out with friends all afternoon and evening and night, with pretty much all of us being productive, sort of.
I say sort of because I was already done with my essay, so I was just reading a book I bought at the campus book fair a few days ago. Oh, Dean Koontz. No other author rivals your ability to write thoroughly engrossing terrible books. This one was about a dog of alarming intelligence, a phrase which I took it upon myself to say as often as I could throughout the day. 'What's your book about?' people asked. 'Oh, not much. Just a dog of alarming intelligence,' I replied.
The best part of the silly book was the setting: Southern California from Orange County to Santa Barbara. Pretty sweet. My favorite bit was when I caught Dean Koontz out in an obvious lack of research: when the evil monster slaughtered a police officer in the hills behind Yorba Linda, he had the 'Yorba Linda Police' go to investigate. Silly Dean Koontz. We don't have our own police force, we just borrow Brea's!
We vacillated about ordering in or eating out, then failed terribly to come to a consensus and ended up eating at the cafeteria. A while after dinner, one friend pointed out that it was now 'time for dessert!' so we headed out with cupcakes in mind. The cupcake store was completely empty of anything but ginger cookies, so we went to the grocery store for ice cream bars, which turned out to be really melty and gross. So we headed over to Mandarine for good ice cream, which was delicious. I had caramel&hazelnut, and the other two had lemon&strawberrylemon and hazelnut&darkchocolatewithweirdpossiblypeachsaucewethinkmaybe.
Then we went back to the dorms and sat in the courtyard freezing until one by one we finished all the work that was going to get done tonight and headed upstairs.
[One friend, I have to mention, was writing an Arabic essay all day, very diligently. Her topic? A summary and explanation of Star Wars. She had all the vocabulary she needed from her media Arabic class: rebel, explosion, alliance, empire. How perfect. The main problem, which we kept cracking up over, seemed to be how to correctly put 'Jedi' into the dual form. Jedi-iin?]

101...

Well, the second hundred blog posts is off to a great start. I totally didn’t blog last night. I would just let it go, but I actually had stuff to say, so I can’t.
Last night there was a lecture, and if we attended, we got free ‘delicious’ dinner. The lecture was about dreams, and I was kind of looking forward to it. The only problem was, it was scheduled for eight o’clock at night, which is a bit late for dinner, for me at least. Still, I managed, and it turned out that the food was not just ‘delicious’ but actually delicious.
First I had to sit through the lecture though. It was mostly about the history of dream psychology, and the professor wasn’t as corny or annoying as I had been afraid he might be. It actually turned out pretty interesting. The most annoying part of the lecture was people asking really specific questions about their own dreams, kind of wanting the professor to interpret the dreams for them, which was a little bit awkward.
(Actually, if he had interpreted dreams, that would have been kind of cool. I had this really weird one a few nights ago about pushing a shopping cart up and down a spiral flight of stairs with orange handrails. Also it was happening at VidCon. Also two of my friends were sitting in the shopping cart. What does that mean, I ask? Other than the fact I clearly want to go back to VidCon, possibly with a shopping cart?)
After the lecture I stayed downstairs and hung out with friends for a lot longer than I should have, which meant that I had to do my Arabic homework really late, which I guess is why I didn’t blog. As you can see, I survived. And now I have to go to the library and finish the rough draft of my Art and Architecture essay so I can show it to Professor Ikram after class.
[And blogger is being stupid. Great. I hope this actually publishes and doesn't just vanish into the ether.]

7-up yours, buddy

So it turns out I have a lot more work to do this week than I thought I did. Oh well. It will get done.
At last count, I have one essay due Sunday, one due Monday, and one due Friday, along with one final on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and a presentation on Thursday. But it will get done.
At this point, I'm mostly concerned with simply maintaining sanity until this semester is finally over and done with and I can escape from AUC and from Egypt for a while, even though my vacation plans are still ridiculously up in the air.
Today in my Anthro class, we actually had a whole discussion about 'if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?' which was completely ridiculous because yes, of course it makes a sound, if you're defining sound like science defines sound, as vibration through air. But the professor felt the need to argue this, saying that sound according to people is something heard, so of course if no one hears the tree fall, there was no sound. Which is all well and good, until you realize that he's just summed up the saying as basically, 'if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, nobody is there to hear it.' The end. What a brilliant conclusion.
Basically, the entire thing reminded me of a story about my uncle when he was little putting the family dog into the refrigerator for a few seconds and then asking it whether or not the light had gone out. Maybe that connection only makes sense to me. Sorry.
When I got home from school, after what seemed like a horribly long bus ride but actually wasn't that bad, I went out to dinner with friends, and we had chinese, which was pretty good. I think I'll go back there, or order in at some point. The fried rice was delicious, probably from all the MSG.
An interesting thing happened on the way back to the dorm. On the way to the restaurant, we got a few mutters and marriage proposals, nothing out of the ordinary, but on the way back, one kid in a group of teenage boys yelled "suck my dick" and we didn't know what to do. What exactly should we have done, do you think? Is there an appropriate response to that, do you think, or is ignoring it the only way to go? I have to say, a few rude replies came to my mind, but I was a bit too shocked to use any of them. I hope that doesn't happen again, though. Not a pleasant experience.
Tomorrow is a day for homework, not relaxing, so I'm planning to get up early and head out of the dorms to keep me away from the internet. Hopefully that will work. And hopefully I can get wherever I'm headed without any commentary from men on the street. Not likely.

freezing in the library

But at least I got some work done. I was actually remarkably productive almost all day today, and got everything done that needed to get done.
I meant to take the 10 or 11 o'clock bus to campus to work on researching my paper, but I put my laundry in late enough that I couldn't. Instead, I took the 2 o'clock bus.
That might seem a little silly, since I could only spend two hours on campus before needing to get on the 5:15 bus back home (after the library closed at 5 o'clock), but it was worth it, because the bus rides were relaxing and I got some good work done on my paper. I'll be back there tomorrow morning before classes to do some more research, and then hopefully I'll have enough to type up my bibliography and run it past Professor Ikram for a check.
Tonight there was a "girl's night in" party on the fourth floor, the flyers for which promised pizza and drinks and henna and belly dancing, only the first three of which I was actually interested in. When I got there, though, there were just sandwiches and really loud music, so I left pretty early. It turned out that they did have henna, so maybe I should have stuck around for a while, but it really doesn't matter in the long run. If I really want henna done, I can find a place to do it.
And that was my Saturday. Pretty sweet. See you tomorrow.

friday

Oh, weekends. You're so good to me.
I did very very little today, and it was great. Aside from the lounging around reading and the nap taking, the best part of the day was getting out of the dorms to have lunch with my friends. We also walked to get ice cream after, which was nice.
Tonight I went to look at the apartment I mentioned yesterday, and it was amazing. I really really hope that I get to live there next semester. Both of the girls I met were really nice, and the bedrooms they had available were huge, and one had a balcony with a Nile view. And the apartment is only about a five or six minute walk from the bus stop, so that's pretty great. It's also right across the street from Coffee Bean, which is amazing. Hopefully I'll be hearing from them in the next few days, yea or nay. Fingers crossed!
Tomorrow I'm taking the bus to campus to do paper research, hopefully successfully. Researching has always been more fun than writing for me, but the special collections library is always freezing cold and kind of terrible, so that might put a damper on the fun part.

tuesdays are the best

It's just like a mini weekend in the middle of my week. Of course, the feelings of relaxation that come with a Tuesday are always hopelessly crushed by nighttime when I remember that it's not a real weekend and I still have to go to school the next day. It's better than what all those poor ALI students have to go through, though, taking nothing but Arabic classes with school five days a week. So sad.
I finished my term paper today, bibliography and all, and it's ready to turn in tomorrow, unless class is cancelled again. I actually still liked my paper by the end of it, which is a pretty rare thing. Hopefully my professor will like it too. Actually, if she doesn't, it's a good enough paper that I don't think it will get a bad grade, even if she hates it. At least, it won't deserve a bad grade, which is what I care about more.
More work tomorrow, yay. I need to talk to my boss and see about being done with work after this week or next, just because of finals coming up and everything. All the other girls I work with are grad students, so they're even more stressed out than I am!
Did anyone who read yesterday's blog actually go listen to Erase This? What did you think about it if you did?
I'll edit this post later, probably tomorrow to add in the video I made today, which is boring. But I don't think the slow internet will let me upload it tonight. It will get posted eventually. Everything gets posted eventually. [Here it is, the most boring vlog in the entire world! Also the most weirdly framed one. I am just a talking head, thanks to iMovie and youtube...]

Also, it's the last day of NaNoWriMo! Congratulations to any wrimos out there who finished/will finish their novels today!

is it time to blog again?

Apparently, yes.
So since I blogged earlier, I was going to skip tonight, but I decided not to. For no real reason at all, actually. I mean, there's nothing left to say.
I worked on my paper a bit, read some sources. Didn't do as much as I was planning to do. Tomorrow is another day?
Basically, I don't want to go to bed yet because I haven't talked to my family on skype in two or three days (except for my aunt who is amazing and called me!) and I miss them. I'm debating right now whether to keep working on my paper (because late night sentences are still sentences) and stay up to see if they get on the computer, or just say screw it and go to bed. Decisions, decisions.
While I'm pondering that, go look at this.

This album, Erase This, from DFTBA records (that's Don't Forget To Be Awesome for all you non-nfs out there) is amazing, and I'm almost ashamed that I didn't buy it before its creators offered it up for a free download.

Erase This is one of those albums that tells a story, although what it says to each person who listens is almost certainly different. I just know that the story I hear when I listen to it seems to come from my heart, not just Alan Lastufka's mind or Luke Conard's voice.

If you have $12, I suggest you follow the link above and buy the album. If you don't have $12, at least listen to Boxcar Blood for free a few times and see how you like it. (Or go here to the iTunes store for previews of all the songs. Try 'Forgiven' and 'Erase This' at the very least.)

Although right now Erase This is my bus ride music, I'm very much looking forward to the time when I can play it in my car, driving anywhere I want, home home home.

p.s. My mom just called. So yay.

i don't even know anymore

I didn't blog last night, and I didn't even think about it until now. I'm on the bus ride home from a long day on campus, ready to finish my essay and maybe write some more NaNo so it won't fade into oblivion like last year's book.
I was upset last night, from lots of stuff, and it was really hard not having anyone to talk to about it, just because of the time difference and the fact that no one carries a computer around with them to get skype calls like from a phone.
At school today, I actually stayed at work until 11:15, instead of leaving early for one reason or another. I guess that was good because I got a lot of stuff done, but at the same time it wasn't very satisfying because none of the stuff that I did actually matters to me personally. Mostly it was sorting papers that the person who worked on the collection before me left unsorted, papers that if it were up to me would just be chucked in the trash or recycled, because they're a waste of space. But it's not up to me.
Then I went to Professor Ikram's class, which was really nice, since we haven't had real class for a while. The lecture was really really fast, and I'm sure I missed some important stuff in my note taking. I'll make it up with my friends' notes though. It all works out.
After class, I followed the professor to her office to ask a few questions about my paper, along with about half the class. No wonder she calls us ducklings, the way we trailed after her!
In my next class, we watched a really interesting film called The Return of Navajo Boy, which I think you should watch. It's a documentary made in 2000, about a Navajo family living in Monument Valley and about the history of their family and tourists and filmmakers and other people, and I really liked it. Also, it made me cry.
In Arabic class, we just practiced making sentences, but it wasn't boring. Then my friend Vincent and I bought brownie sundaes at McDonald's, which were completely amazing, if also completely unhealthy.
And then I got on the bus. And now I will take a nap. I do have a question for whoever is reading this. Do you like me posting every day? Would you rather I didn't? Does it matter?

nanowrimo winner!

Well, I won NaNoWriMo. I actually wrote more today than any other day so far this month, and finished my 50,000 words just a half hour ago. The only problem with finishing early is that I don't have a decent excuse to not work on my term paper anymore. Dang.

I'm planning to keep this novel going for a while, to see where it ends up, because I've had a really great time writing it over the last month. It feels a little bit anti-climactic to have won early, but I'm glad I did it. Except for all that term paper stuff.

As you can guess, a lot of my day was spent writing, in my room, in the courtyard, and at Coffee Bean again. The employees definitely recognize me now, I'm sure of it.

For Dramatic Lit class tomorrow, I'm meant to have read A Streetcar Named Desire, which I totally didn't do this weekend, because of doing other stuff. That's pretty much the best excuse ever. I guess I'll read it tonight and finish it on the bus tomorrow morning. Then I'll do my Egyptian Lit reading at lunch, I suppose. At least I had the foresight to do my Arabic homework early.

NaNo word count: 50674

so sleepy

Who knew that essay writing could make me so tired?
Honestly, all I did for most of today was eat breakfast food (pancakes!) and drink coffee and write my essay, and do some NaNo-ing.
Then I came back to the dorms and hung out with friends for a while, talking about crazy stuff like racism in Disney movies, and what movie we all wanted to watch, none of us actually motivated enough to get the others moving to make something happen. We're such college students. Even in Egypt, we talk and talk about our plans, and then just sit in the courtyard for another hour or two. It was nice, though, even if it did garner me a fresh mosquito bite right on top of my foot.
Tomorrow will be another essay day, fun fun fun. I've managed to keep up my buffer on NaNo, so I'm hoping to finish officially a day early this year. That would be something. Instead of taking essay breaks with youtube tomorrow, I think I'll try doing some word sprints instead, and see what comes out of that.
NaNo word count: 46800

eid shokra sa3eid!عيد الشكر سعيد

Is my badly spelled version of Happy Thanksgiving in Arabic. Yay!
Today was filled with procrastination, coffee shops, essay writing, and too much food. It was pretty amazing though.
For starters, I actually got real words written for my essay. It's amazing how two pages is almost nothing in NaNoWriMo, but seems like such a victory for a term paper. I guess that's the difference between letting whatever's in my brain out onto the page and writing something with structure and substance. I much prefer the former. Anyway, NaNo and this essay are 'due' the same day, so that should be fun.
Tonight, I had a real Thanksgiving dinner with lots of AUC friends at Maadi House, and had a great time. The food was amazing, and I wish I had gone back for more. I could eat those mashed potatoes every day, I swear.
There wasn't really the opportunity to mingle with important people from the State Department or the Embassy like most AUC kids there thought there would be. We all dressed up fancy to come to a buffet dinner that was mostly just small families. But I had a great time anyway, mostly because I was in it for the food and not the networking, although that would have been nice.
The cab ride home was ridiculously long because of traffic and getting lost, but we eventually made it. Then I came back to my room, where I Thanksgiving-Skyped with my family, including my little sister, who retains the ability to annoy me even when we're halfway around the world from each other. Then it was time for NaNo, which I have to admit, I didn't do so well on today. I'm more than a day ahead, and since I was falling asleep on my keyboard a little bit, decided to just write for a while, and not worry about the word count. Maybe I'll make up for it tomorrow when the essay writing gets tough.
NaNo word count: 43744

un-pumpkin pie

Who in their right minds would ever boil a sweet potato? Well-meaning Egyptians would, that's who. I attended the Thanksgiving lunch for American students today, with a few hundred of my closest American friends. It was a really nice effort that they made, and I had a great time. There were some interesting choices made with the food, though. Although I didn't try it, my friends reported that the sour cream was probably in fact whipped cream with salt. Most interesting of all, the much awaited for pumpkin pie very definitely contained no pumpkin whatsoever, which all of us found very confusing. Pumpkin pie spice alone does not a pumpkin pie make.
The rest of the day was fairly average. I got my new term paper topic approved by my professor, which was good, but which also means that I really do need to start actually writing it tomorrow.
Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving for reals, some friends and I are planning to accept a very generous offer that was made to us by an American club called the Maadi House. Their membership is limited to U.S. State Department employees working in Cairo, and other American diplomat types, but for Thanksgiving, they're hosting American AUC students for dinner as well, which is very exciting. I hope everything goes as planned, and it will be time for Thanksgiving number two tomorrow!
NaNo word count: 43108

coffee bean tuesday 2.0

I had a much less productive trip to Coffee Bean today than I did a few weeks ago. To start, I wasn't even done with my reading, so I couldn't get to work on my essay right away.
Then, part way through my research, I realized that the essay topic I had chosen and gotten approved wasn't really what I wanted to write about at all. I figured out a new, much more interesting topic, and plotted an outline for it.
I tried to buy a few hours of internet from Coffee Bean, but apparently they were 'out' so I had to come home to do more research. So, basically, I'm no farther along on my paper than I was this morning, but writing it will definitely be much easier now that I'm actually interested in my topic.
NaNoWriMo went amazingly today, and I wrote way more than I needed to to meet my goal, but it didn't drag on at all. Unfortunately, I pretty much know for certain now that the novel itself won't be finished when it hits 50,000 words. That's better than the alternative, I guess, but rather dramatically increases the chances that I won't ever finish it. I'm kind of thinking about skipping ahead and writing some major plot points, just to have them done and the story all tied up, so it will be easier to go back and fill in the blanks, rather than have to finish the whole story cold. I'll let you know.
Essay research and planning took up most of the day, except for the fifteen minutes or so in which I made my video for the week, and the three hundred minutes or so that video took to upload to youtube. Really, Zamalek dorms? Really?

NaNo word count: 40876

TGI Eid

That's how I feel right now. I have almost never been so ready for a vacation in my entire life. I'm sure there are exceptions to that statement, but honestly, nothing comes to mind.
An entire week where I will probably do no work except for NaNoWriMo sounds excellent. Just me and friends and a confusing hotel reservation and the Red Sea. Pretty sweet.
Unfortunately, my camera is still broken, so I won't even be taking it with me. When I get home I'll do my best to get it fixed, but there isn't anything I can do about it now, so I'm not going to worry. I will take my flipcam with me, though, and I'll vlog while I'm there. I don't know if I'll be able to upload the video, because the internet situation seems a little sketchy at the moment, but we'll see.
Currently, I've got about 6 mosquito bites, since my roommate has decided to start sleeping with the window open. I've closed it tonight, but it might be open when I wake up tomorrow morning. Plus, I'm sure the mosquitoes are already in the room since it was open all day anyway. But no resentment there. You're imagining it.
While I'm away in Dahab, there are tons of projects I could (and probably should) work on. Just to make a general list, I have three essays I should start, a take-home quiz for Arabic, and studying for my second Art and Architecture quiz. Probably not much (if any) of this will get done. And I'm okay with that. This week, being a tourist on vacation comes first.
NaNo word count: 18689
p.s. If you don't see any blog updates for a while, it will just be because of sketchy internet, nothing to worry about. Also, I'm not really planning on doing individual days of catch-up blogs, a week is just too long for that. I will write stuff down every day so I can catch you up when I get home, though. Promise!
p.p.s. I love this video so much, I'm not even going to offer any explanation for it:

coffee bean tuesday

I woke up early this morning, got ready for the day, and headed to Coffee Bean, a few blocks away, where I proceeded to sit for the next seven hours.
I probably had more coffee than was strictly speaking good for me, but I also finished my essay that I need to turn in tomorrow, so it was well worth it.
It was an odd feeling being in the Coffee Bean, because everything was in English, and I could almost have forgotten that I was in Egypt if it hadn't been for the not-free wifi (which was a helpful motivator for me to write my essay) and the clouds of cigarette smoke that made my lungs hurt by the time I left. Next time I won't stay for so long, so hopefully the latter won't be a problem again.
When I got home in mid-afternoon, I filmed my vlog, which you can watch below, then I read my play for tomorrow, The Wild Duck, by Henrik Ibsen, which is interesting, but not one of my favorites. It's fairly predictable (at least so far) and a bit too soap opera for my tastes.
I also got a lot of school and vacation related business done today, including trip planning for winter break, finally.
Also, I wrote over 2,000 words for NaNo today! I don't know what came over me, but it was definitely a good thing. My story is still going where I want it to go, but it's turning out differently in the middle than I thought it would. Not in a bad way, just in a kind of father-son Lion King way, and that's really the best I can describe it. Doesn't sound so good like that, huh?

NaNo word count: 16087

essay writing with breaks to fangirl

Okay, the first essay of the school year is officially complete. Finally. Hopefully I'll be able to get my act together a little better for the next ones. Maybe. I doubt it, but I can always hope, right?
Sadly, I spent all of today in my dorm room. All day. Writing my paper or avoiding writing my paper. Or snacking on pita bread and bananas and peanut butter. Peanut butter tastes like home.
I also did the rest of my homework, I guess. I'm really glad that I bothered to read Midsummer Night's Dream earlier this week, because I would definitely be in trouble if I still had it left to read. I could probably sneak through class based on what I remembered, but I definitely wouldn't pass the quiz!
For Arabic, I got to do fill in the blank sentences like 'My dad works for the oil company' and 'I live in Zamalek', the last of which I'm not entirely sure I spelled correctly. I see the word so often in English that I've never bothered to look up how it's actually spelled in Arabic before.
The highlight of my day occurred when during one of my mini-breaks, I visited Neil's Magnificent Oracular Journal for some encouragement. If you go visit it, please read the instructions before testing its magic. They're important. Anyway, I asked the oracle whether I really could finish my essay well in a timely fashion. The reply of the oracle? 'Sure.'
Knowing that the words of wisdom the oracle produces are drawn directly from Neil Gaiman's very own blog, I immediately felt better about my essay, and went back to writing. A little while later, I tweeted at him, expressing my thanks for the oracle.
@neilhimself just wanted to say thanks for your magnificent oracular journal. Q: 'can i really do this?' A: 'sure'. made my day. :]
A little while later, I checked twitter again, only to find this waiting for me:
@bellmaison it is magical and oracular.
He replied! I was fangirling all over the place, it was awesome. So I tweeted back:
@neilhimself it certainly is. even when i ask 'how is my hair today' and it tells me 'And there are sheep' i remain awed by its magic.
And then, just a few minutes later, from Neil:
@bellmaison at that point it is being Deep.
Honestly? Day. Made. I couldn't have been happier. Then my friend Nicole tweeted me, and said:
@bellmaison you and your cute conversation with neil. i can hear you fangirling halfway across the world.
Which was also awesome. And completely true, she probably could hear me. Nicole knows how much I love Neil, since she's the one who stood in line with me until three am to meet him and have our books signed when he visited UCSB.
So, yeah. Writing an essay and having a twitter conversation with Neil Gaiman were the highlights of my day. Nothing, not even waking up early tomorrow to catch the seven o'clock bus, is going to make me forget how awesome today was. Nothing.

progress is progress

Today started out well, despite my weird freak-out this morning when my clock said it was 10 am and my room was still really dark. Then I realized the curtains were closed and felt better. Well, actually, I felt stupid. Never mind.
I started work on my essay right away (I know, surprising, right?) and worked until about 2 o'clock reading through all my sources and taking notes, then making my rough outline.
It was a little hard, because the prompt I'm using is one I made up myself, not one that was given out by the professor. Since I already had that freedom, I'm having a little bit of trouble sticking to it, because I can see all sorts of interesting essays to write about the Oresteia now. Especially about Clytemnestra. She is one messed up lady.
Speaking of messed up ladies in Greek mythology, how about Medea? I love her even more than I love Clytemnestra. Sure, she killed her kids, but you gotta admit, she killed them with style. And flying off in that dragon chariot at the end of the play? Classy.
Can you tell I kind of want to reread Medea? I bet the school library has it. Hmm.
At 2 o'clock, I took a break and went to Alfa Mart with Maggie for some more shopping. The food I buy just keeps disappearing, imagine that. How strange... I also finally went to the ATM again, and am now fully stocked up on cash. As you may remember, for the first few weeks I was here, I was going to ATMs all the time, because of all the cash expenses like stupid bus passes and exciting trips that I needed to take care of. Since that's been over and done with, I haven't needed to go to an ATM since the second week of September. Thank goodness.
One good thing about using the different ATM this time was that I didn't get my cash in terrible 200 pound notes. Yes, they may just be worth about $40, but that doesn't mean that anywhere and everywhere I try to spend them in Cairo will let me. They are the hardest damn bills to break, and I hate them! Honestly, I don't care how inconvenient it would be, I would die of happiness if an ATM here miraculously gave me just 20s and 10s and 5s. Even cashing 20s can be a pain sometimes, and they're only worth $4! Can you imagine that? It's insane.
I'll do a blog about the money in Egypt sometime soon, it's actually pretty cool. With pictures of the bills and coins and everything.
Anyway, after we got back I ate lunch at the cafeteria, finished rereading and marking all three plays for relevant quotes and stuff, then came back upstairs to write. And I did write, I did. I just took a while to actually make any relevant progress. However, I met my goal for the day of about a third of my paper, so I'm on track to finish the whole thing tomorrow on the early side. I really want to go out to dinner tomorrow, because I'm bored with being stuck near the dorms all the time. Most of my friends are trying to save money and/or will be exhausted from returning from their crazy vacations though, so that might not work out as I'm planning.
One more day of this freaky four day vacation with a day of school stuck in the middle, then it's back to school/work stuff. And onto Al-Kitaab in Arabic class, the textbook commonly known by international students around AUC as "that stupid, stupid book, why did we need to learn how to say United Nations as our first vocab word?" I'm kinda looking forward to it. (No, that's a lie. Dread is a more appropriate word, I think.)