ToewsTravels

after mount sinai and st. catherine’s monastery, we headed further east to the red sea coast and a very chill town called dahab, famous for its diving. we went snorkeling over a large hole in the coral known as the blue hole, which is teeming with fish. one can see the mountains of saudi arabia across the sea. the guys went minimalistic swim-wear wise with euro-trunks. we did a lot of lounging around on cushions on the ground alond the seafront, and it was a great end to the weekend.

at the base of the mountain is saint catherine’s monastery, famous for its collection of ancient icons. this collection is deemed by some to be the second most important collection of icons in the world today. during periods of intense historical iconoclasm, the icons here were protected, thanks to the monastery’s extreme isolation. we waited with some camels for a few hours for the monastery to open, then crowded in with a huge group of people through a tiny door. also inside is a bush purported to be the original burning bush, which is a rather dubious claim.

we took a weekend roadtrip from cairo to the sinai peninsula to climb mount sinai! the mountain is in the central sinai peninsula, in an essentially unpopulated mountainous region. of course, it is famous as the biblical location where moses received the ten commandments.

after leaving cairo we rode the bus all evening until about 2:30 am. on the way the bus blew a tire so we had to wait at a rest stop for a few hours while it got fixed. so when we got to mt. sinai we had to climb fast to catch the sunrise! climbing the mountain took about 2.5 hours and we were joined by many pilgrims from all over the world. at the top they were all having their own little religious services with communion and unique customs.

on sunday we had our first class on islam. our professor is a muslim woman, who for egypt seems quite liberal. she has a phd in islam and i believe she is a sufi which is basically a mystical branch of islam. with her we toured three different historic mosques, which was really fascinating. one, the mosque of ibn tulun, is the oldest mosque in egypt, built in the ninth century. another was both a school and a mosque, and it had four huge arches on each side where the four schools of islamic law were taught. and the third was from the ottoman era and it resembles a european church. each of them are massive. we learned that islam has changed drastically through the centuries depending on who was in charge. like, for example, fifty years ago muslim women didn’t veil themselves. but now the veil is basically considered synonymous with islam in much of the world.

we visited an area of cairo called garbage city. it is where all of cairo’s garbage goes, and the people there basically recycle it. those who live in garbage city are almost exclusively coptic christians; they found a recycling niche in the economy and made it a lifestyle. there is garbage everywhere but surprisingly the people actually have more money than many on other areas of cairo because it turns out recycling is a thriving business (relatively speaking, of course). we visited an orphanage right in the middle of garbage city which is run by some catholic nuns. there we fed some infants and spent some time with other elderly people and severely handicapped children who live there. it is a very tough life there.

we also went to a coptic church which is built into the mountain above garbage city. there are carvings all over the cliffs of icons of Christ and different bible stories. the copts take great pride in the fact that the holy family fled to egypt following Christ’s birth, and they have many stories that most western christians consider apocrophal (but they don’t) about what Christ did while he was in egypt.  we also visited a paper project in garbage city where women who want a job can recycle garbage paper and make new paper out of it. it was really an impressive operation with a great cause. that evening we had a commitment service for the semester that was really nice. we all committed to living in community and helping each other through it even when we don’t feel like it. and then we sat around and talked for a while.

tuesday was our first service project day. every tuesday we will go to an assigned service project. my friend joel and i are assigned to the episcopal training center where we will be teaching english. so we take a taxi to downtown and then get on the metro to go there. we met the guy who will be our boss but the classes aren’t starting for a while so we didn’t have to teach this first week. on wednesday our formal academic classes started. after we have devotions in the morning we move into arabic class for 90 minutes. a very nice egyptian lady teaches us. she likes to think of herself as something close to our mother! it is going to be tough to keep up though, as i am terrible at learning languages. our program director dr. holt gave us his worldview. he basically said that we can’t make any assumptions or generalizations about islam or the culture or anything here because we are all very ignorant and uninformed. and he showed us stacks of books we haven’t read to prove it to us, and the point was proved.

for class one day we watched a bunch of youtube segments about the history of the politics of egypt from al-jazeera which was quite fascinating and then we had a big discussion about it. during ramadan all the restaurants are closed during the day so it is tough to get food! we found out we have to order it and get it delivered, although for a couple hours around dinner time no one is available because they are all breaking the fast. it has been great hanging out with all the other people on the program because they all bring such diverse perspectives on everything. we have already had some pretty heated discussions that can be enlightening as well as just being fun. sometimes i feel that people at gordon (the college i attend in massachussetts) all come at issues in sort of the same way, maybe because the school frames the issues that they want people to be talking about. that is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is interesting to discuss issues with people from totally different backgrounds who you don’t know that well yet – you have to validate yourself with how well you can prove your points,

friday and saturday are the weekend here, so on friday a bunch of us went to the egyptian museum (after losing each other for an hour or two trying to get there). it was a great museum. there weren’t many descriptions in english, but it was fascinating nonetheless. there were a number of artifacts from king tut’s tomb which were all in perfect condition, and there were some pretty legitimate mummies as well.

on saturday we went to a upscale area of cairo called maadi where many western expatriates and diplomats live, for church in the evening. it was a very traditional episcopalian church but it was nice to experience something western and christian after a few weeks of relative culture shock. other than the copts, there are exceedingly few christians in egypt.

the copts are heavily persecuted by the government. that said, the extremist muslims are heavily persecuted as well. the president of egypt hosni mubarak basically crushes any opposition if they start gaining steam. people can technically say whatever they want but it appears that if anyone starts listening to them then they are silenced.

hello from cairo, egypt! i am here for a semester doing the middle east studies program (mesp), a study abroad program run by the council for christian colleges and universities. the program focuses on arabic language, islam, the politics and culture of the middle east, particularly egypt, and the israeli-palestinian conflict. so it should be an amazing semester!

upon arrival we were met by the program staff at the airport, and then we took a bus to our neighborhood, which is called gouza. it is quite a nice neighborhood comparatively to some others in cairo, but it is still quite poor. there are many homeless people in the streets at all hours, and markets all around. there are many flies and cats, so many cats. interestingly there are very few dogs because they are seen as dirty but lots of cats because the egyptians have extra respect for them ever since ancient times. some of the shops are nice, and we are expected to get everything we need on our own from these shops in the area. agouza is just to the west of the nile river, and our flats are just a few blocks from the nile. we live on the seventh floor of our building. there are two flats for the girls in out program, and two flats for the guys, as well also a program villa with some classrooms and a nice open air roof. all of these are within a couple blocks of each other.

no one speaks english in the area and there are no foreigners so needless to say we get stared at a lot. it is nice to know a few arabic words to say to people, which makes them happy. everyone in the neighborhood is quite friendly most of the time. the other students on the program are really nice and we are all getting to be good friends. the first night we went to the program director’s house for some dinner. he and his wife live in the building that i live in. there are also two interns for the program who are recent college graduates which is really nice because they have lots of advice and are fluent in arabic. they have been showing us around a lot. the second day we went on a tour of cairo which is an amazing, complex city, with a huge amount of disparity. it is extremely hot and one becomes very sweaty after just a couple minutes.

we saw the pyramids from a distance and stopped in some different areas of the city. we then went to a market in an area called giza and the girls all bought hijabs which are the head coverings. the markets are great because there are all these narrow little alleys with all kinds of things for sale and they stretch for blocks. they are very crowded and extra hot in the middle of the day. we also had a beginning arabic class with the male intern barrett, and a bunch of us guys went to a coffee shop until about 1:30 am. people don’t seem to go to sleep at night here. everything is just as busy if not busier in the middle of the night as during the day. the traffic is out of control. drivers don’t stay in their lanes; they sometimes fit four wide into two lanes. i have already seen a couple people get hit by cars, including one girl from our group. thankfully she is ok. also, the pollution is quite bad, and there is a constant haze in the air. cairo is worse than beijing in this regard apparently. i did some laundry in a very small washing machine we have in our apartment and then hung it out to dry on our patio. but it immediately gets a black coating on it from the pollution.

we went to a local mosque which was a great experience. we sat at the back and obviously stuck out like a sore thumb but they seemed to tolerate us being there. we had to move out of the way a couple times when they brought coffins into the mosque. everyone takes off their shoes and bows in a certain way. ramadan is starting soon which will be interesting because no one eats during the day so all the food establishments will be closed so we will have few options for food.  we also went on a boat (called a felucca) ride on the nile river in the evening which was very nice. later we went to a huge, famous market called khan el khalili and we were able to smoke some hookah if we wanted for the cultural experience. we explored the market for a while, and there are some tourists there so people knew some english phrases and of course everyone was trying to get us to buy their stuff which isn’t usually the case in other less-touristed parts of cairo.

the next day we played a game that was like an obstacle course in our neighborhood of agouza, and we had a bunch of things we needed to find. i was partnered with my friend kaeli and we almost won. it basically took all day. oh yeah – we also have devotions every morning on the roof of the program’s villa which is nice. the following day we went to a huge passport office in downtown cairo to get our visas renewed. everything in egypt is very bureaucratic and takes a long time to process so we waited there for quite some time. afterward, we went to a bookstore at the american university of cairo because we each needed to get an egyptian-authored novel to read for an assignment.

we then divided into small groups to explore the reaches of the cairo metro for the rest of the day. it is a very nice metro for cairo, but it is extremely hot down underground, and extremely crowded. getting on the train was an experience because when the doors open hundreds of people push their way out and there isn’t enough time for everyone who wants to get on before the doors close again. people are yelling at each other and pushing each other onto the ground and stuff. we went a couple stops and got off at a random stop, which we later learned wasn’t the greatest part of town. dirt roads, a lot more animals, etc. for example there were a bunch of cows being raised and milked as if on a farm, except this was occurirng on an urban sidewalk. there are donkeys walking down the road all over the city. and lots of big piles of garbage all over the city too, including outside our flat. we walked around the area near another metro station as well, ust to get a sense of the city.

on the way back to our flat i became really sick. i think it may have something to do with my appendix still (i had an appendectomy that subsequently became infected just days before leaving for egypt). i haven’t really had much time to rest or anything. anyway, i had the sudden onset of explosive diarrhea and there aren’t very many restrooms in downtown cairo, so lets just say it was just a bad experience all around. we found some lunch and then eventually took a cab home which was tough because they were all full and we were looking for a cab for probably an hour before being able to flag one down for our sorry selves. and then of course the cab wants twice as much as the trip is worth and we have to argue him out of it even though we don’t know arabic. that evening we went for a nice dinner at a local restaurant in smaller groups which was fun. so overall things are going great for the most part except for some sickness, but that could be expected, i guess.