Today was a long day, and I'm glad it's over. Nothing was particularly bad about it (except for Sarah leaving - I miss you, Sarah!), but it was definitely long.
In the morning, I took the late bus so I could help Sarah get checked out of the dorms and reclaim her passport from the front desk. It didn't really work like I'd thought it would, but they didn't charge us any money for her stay, so that's something!
School was long and pretty boring, even my midterm in Egyptian Lit. I don't think I did badly on it, but I'm pretty sure I didn't ace it either, unless the professor grades really really lazily.
Arabic was kinda fun, we got to show the class pictures of our family and talk about them. It was nice seeing all my friends' families, because since we're all so isolated from home here, it's a little hard to think of each other as people with parents and siblings and cousins and such. The pictures made those kind of imaginary people a lot more real to me, and it's nice to know that those other families are out there, even if that sounds pretty weird.
On the bus ride home, I NaNo'd the whole time, and got more than my 1667 words done for the day. I'm a little afraid that this novel won't be finished by November 30th, because that will make it much more unlikely to ever be finished (like last year's novel), but I'll keep working at it and see where it takes me.
In awesome news, I have plans to go to Dahab for the Eid break (did I already mention this?). A few friends and I are going to be renting a villa for a week-ish and staying in the resort town near the Red Sea. Should be pretty fun. I'll have my computer with me for NaNo, but I don't know if I'll have internet or not. Hopefully yes, but if no, it might be nice to take a break from the net for a while and just enjoy being away from the city.
Tomorrow will be a longer, but hopefully better day. Fingers crossed.
NaNo word count: 12200
Showing posts with label midterms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label midterms. Show all posts
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
pomegranate hunt
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.
The kofta was delicious too when we finally got back and got to eat. I'm pretty sure it was lamb. I think.
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.
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| happy halloween! |
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.
Monday, October 25, 2010
in which i forget meidum (again)
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.
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.
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