First week of EGYPT!

June 20, 2008
So I have been in Egypt a little over a two weeks now and I LOVE IT here. Its a breath of fresh air getting away from Asia for a while haha. The airplane rides here went smoothly. Taipei to Hong Kong was good, the only problem is they didn't transfer my bags automatically at Hong Kong. I hung out in Hong Kong for about 4 or 5 hours... but I forgot that HK (and Dubai) us the UK style plug, and I packed my adapter so I couldn't watch any of my movies I had downloaded for the trip. So I tried to nap/read until my plane came. My flight to Dubai went well, the food on Emirates air was amaaaaazzzzing and the service was really good too. And I arrived to Dubai about 430 AM and hung out in the airport and waited in line for a long time to use one of the free computers because some people wouldnt get off them. My flight to Cairo went smoothly too and I arrived about noon.

Egypt and Cairo info:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Egypt
http://wikitravel.org/en/Cairo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo

I got my luggage, luckily it all came no problem, and headed out to go through customs. It took me a while to figure out where to get the visa... but once I got that I went out and found my driver and he took me to my dorm. My roommate wasn't here... and there weren't very many people here actually so I just kinda unpacked my stuff and went outside to walk around the area for a bit and find food. I tried to stay up as late as I could because I heard that is good for the first night when dealing with jet lag... and then I made it to about 10 pm and went to bed. The next day I slept in pretty late then unpacked and went out some more to walk around and find food. And then later on my roommate showed up and I went out with him and another guy to have dinner and "drink" shisha and have tea at a market.
The dorms are ok, I am in a 3 person room with only 2 people, so we have a bit more space. Everything in it is really old, and we have some REALLY loud arabs in the room next door who like to blast their music LOUDLY between 11 pm and 4 am. I don't know whats gonna happen with that. The dorms and the school have a lot of security. At all the entrances there are metal detectors and guards who usually check through all of your bags before you can get in.
Class started Sunday, but they didn't feel the need to let us know they changed the times of our classes until EVERYONE was there, so we basically had a couple of hours to hang around and then our classes started. Here is my schedule
Sunday:
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Spoken Egyptian Arabic 215-330

Monday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Media Arabic 105-205
Quran Class 215-330

Tuesday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Spoken Egyptian Arabic 215-330

Wednesday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Quran Class 215-330

Thursday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Media Arabic 1130-100

Basicaly Monday's suck and the rest of the week isn't too bad. All my teachers are amazing (some a little heavy on the homework though) except my Media Arabic teacher that kinda sucks. The first week of class went well, there was a little shuffling of classes, but for the most part it went smoothly. The school here is really unorganized (thats Egypt as a whole I guess), the classrooms are a problem, and no one ever knows anything, but I'm used to that after China I guess.

The first full weekend in Egypt we took a trip to Alexandria. Here is some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria
http://wikitravel.org/en/Alexandria

We took a bus to Alexandria from Cairo... took about 3 or 4 hours, luckily it had A/C. I didn't notice this until later but they had security guards on our buses, and from what other people said they usually put security guards or even police with AK-47s on buses if there are foreigners. We spent 2 nights there in a REALLY nice hotel. The school must have some kind of deal with the hotel because the posted rates are $280 a night and our whole trip total was $150. We visited some things you can see on the link to wikitravel. We went to the Citadel, the Library, the Roman Catacombs, Pompey's Pillar, and Montazza palace. Alexandra was a bit more conservative that Cairo I think. I saw a lot more mostly or completely covered women (not even slits or holes for their eyes). It also seemed to me a bit more poor and run down that Cairo, but with a lot of beaches. We went back on Saturday and then I had class on Sunday.
This week of class went by well, I had my first test and lots and lots of homework. This weekend we are going to Sharm el Sheikh for 3 nights. Here is info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharm_el-Sheikh
http://wikitravel.org/en/Sharm_el-Sheikh

I'll put later what I am going to do there.

So thats my stay so far in Egypt! Leave a comment!

Thailand and Egypt and Midterms

April 12, 2008

I seem to not remember to write on this very often in Taiwan... But a lot has happened in the month since my birthday. Up until March 28, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary that happened, just normal going to class and tutoring English on Fridays at the high school. However on March 28 I went on my trip to Thailand. I had to do a lot of stuff for my classes in advance the week before I left so it was kinda stressful but one I was in the air to Thailand it all melted away. I arrived to Bangkok at about 1030 at night and my friend picked me up at the airport. After that we went out and had dinner and he introduced me to all his Thailand friends and we all went out. Then next day all of us took a 3 hour drive to the south of Thailand and then hopped on a speedboat to an island where we stayed in a bungalow for about 6 days. Most of the time there we just hung out on the beach and drank from coconuts and had massages, and then at night we would eat dinner on the beach next to the water. It was really nice but there were a lot of European tourists there. After we were done at the beach we headed back to Bangkok where we spent the rest of the time around town. I came back to Taiwan on April 7 at night and had to go to class the next day. The next day I felt kinda sick in class and it got pretty bad by the time night came around so I thought it might be malaria or something so I planned on missing more class the next day, even though I had a midterm the day after, to go to the doctor. I felt better in the morning when I got up to go to the doctor but I went anyways just in case. He asked my symptoms and I told him and then he gave me 4 different types of pills haha. I heard they like to over prescribe pills here... So then the next day I took my midterm and I don't think I did very well because I didn't get to study much because I missed class and was sick. At least the grades don't transfer back to IU haha. And the next day they didn't have class to go on a field trip somewhere but I couldn't go because I had to go teach English.

Also the day I got back from Thailand I got an e-mail from Egypt saying that I got on the waiting list again and I was really upset about it and sent a lot of e-mails and had my dad call too because I couldn't call from here. I was also spending a lot of time trying to find something to do with my time over the summer because they wait so long to let us know if we are in the program or not in Egypt but then they sent me an e-mail that said I was moved from the waiting list and I am now accepted. So it is official now that I am going to be in Cairo, Egypt to study Arabic at the Arabic Language Institute at the American University of Cairo from June 7 until July 27. And then after that who knows what? Just as long as I'm back at school in time to start class in September. I am getting really excited to start again at IU, I just picked out my classes last week but I am still a little iffy on some of them because I don't know if some classes will transfer and what classes I will test into when I get back, but we will just have to see.

Also I am starting a private tutoring job once a week at a Taiwanese family's home which should be fun. And I may start a thesis correcting/editing job for all the Taiwanese students here that have to write a thesis in English because most of them cant write it very well and they need a lot of correcting. So we will see how that works out.