Exploring Egypt: The Pyramids of Giza

I know I have been less than reliable with the blog entries. I apologize for the lack of communication, but I really do have far less free time than I imagined that I would. Anyway, I thought I should talk about some of the major things I’ve seen/done since I’ve been here, since I’ve yet to talk about any of them. I’ll try to do a short blog about each of them, so I don’t end up with an endless blog about everything.

The Pyramids of Giza

A couple of weeks after arriving in Cairo, I went with a group of friends to see the pyramids of Giza. These are located just outside Cairo in the Giza desert. You can enter the pyramid complex area from a typical street, and can get a pretty decent view of the entire city near the pyramids as they are elevated a bit. The pyramids and the sphinx itself are just as amazing as one would expect them to be. They are gigantic and impressive. A couple of us took a camel ride around the pyramids. Riding camels, although more difficult to get onto and off of, is far more comfortable than riding a horse. They are pretty fantastic animals.

We were able to go inside of the Great Pyramid for about an extra 50LE, or about $10. We climbed up the side of the pyramid, then entered through a narrow opening. Then we walked down a short and narrow tunnel carved out of the stone for a short distance. Suddenly, the tunnel shrinks to about 3 to 3 1/2 feet in height, so that you’re almost crawling along the path. This is not the challenging part. The real challenge is when the tunnel slopes upward, and you’re stuck climbing up a steep ramp with narrow wooden slats nailed to it for footing. It’s hot, dark, crowded, and very humid. Not to mention that there are also people trying to make their way down this ramp while you are climbing up. It is a nightmare for anyone who is even slightly claustrophobic. Eventually, the tunnel opens up into a huge space, where you can see maybe 100 feet above you. The space is nice at first, but it allows you to finally see just how steep the ramp is and just how far you would fall if you slipped. After all of this, you end up in a small dark room with an empty sarcophagus. I believe this is located in the center of the pyramid, and it was not meant for the pharaoh.

It was one of more sketchy activities I’ve done, but after living in Egypt for two months I’ve now realized that what I deem as “sketchy” is actually fairly normal. It’s very strange to be in a country that lacks the strict rules and regulations that dominate our lives in the States, but it’s also exciting and freeing in a way. I’m now of the belief that Americans worry far too much about pretty much everything.

Pictures from the pyramids!

the Khan Al-Khalili Bombing

I’ve been planning on writing an entry for a couple of days. I wanted to finally write about our trip to the Giza pyramids, and our adventures last weekend in Coptic Cairo, Al-Azhar Park, and the Cairo “Zoo.” However,  I suppose it would be more fitting to discuss the recent terrorist attacks.

Last night, at around 9 p.m. (Egyptian time) two bombs were thrown from a balcony near a cafe in the Khan Al-Khalili market, near the famous Husayn Mosque.  Khan Al-Khalili is a large market/bazaar that is frequented by Egyptians, but is also a huge tourist attraction. As it stands now, one 17 year old French girl was killed, and 20 others were injured (although different media outlets are reporting slightly different numbers). Most of them were French tourists, however there were also a couple Saudis injured as well as a few Egyptians.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened. And in order to understand it, I think it is important to put it into context. One scholar and blogger, Juan Cole, writes it better than I could. Here are some excerpts from his analysis:

“I can remember talking to one of the store owners, the father of a family friend, about what the worst downturns in business were that he had experienced over the years. He frowned. That’s easy. 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982. The Arab-Israeli Wars. It is not, he said, that fewer tourists and customers came in those years. They did not come at all. They were years when the weaker and more extended merchants went under.

The radical Muslim extremists figured this vulnerability out. They thought if they could destroy the tourist trade, they could pull the plug on the government of Hosni Mubarak [the Egyptian "president" who has been in power since the assassination Anwar Sadat in 1981] of , depriving it of revenue from that trade. In the 1980s and 1990s they directly attacked tourists.

…

But it turns out that like most of the brain-dead tactics of the terrorists, this one always backfires on them. So many Egyptians depend on the revenues from the tourist trade that they view attacks on tourists as a death knell for their own jobs and economy. And Egyptian culture has a basic sense of decency and humaneness that they cannot square with killing innocent foreigners. The radicals made themselves political pariahs. The biggest radical group, The Islamic Grouping or Gama’a Islamiyah, once headed by the blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman (who spearheaded the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993), was rounded up in the thousands. They became so hated and had so few options that they announced they were giving up on violence (not that they were pacifists, but they decided that as a tactic it was not permitted in most circumstances).

The neo-Gama’a was roundly denounced by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the number 2 man in al-Qaeda. But his organization had become little more than a tiny political cult inside Egypt.”

Cole goes on to say that he is guessing that it was this Egyptian Islamic Jihad group that is responsible for the bombings, and cites the recent Gaza massacre as the motivation behind it:

“I’d also guess that the bombing came in response to the Egyptian government’s tacit support for the Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza in December and January. The radicals had been repressed, penetrated, tapped, imprisoned, watched. They had made deals. There hadn’t been a bombing in Cairo for some time. But my guess is that for a few of them, Gaza was a deal breaker.”

If anyone is interested in learning more about Gaza, or Egypt’s “role” in the “war,” I’d be happy to post some links or write a blog about it.

Okay, so, what does all of this mean for me, and those of us studying abroad here this semester? In short, I’m not entirely sure. The bombing happened fairly late last night, and I was going to bed just as more detailed reports were coming out. The AUC international office called us to make sure that we weren’t at Khan Al-Khalili, and I’m assumming something will be done/said today about it. Other than that, I think it is important to look at this even in terms of its context in the Middle East. I know that in America, the idea of a bombing like this is so rare that it becomes a life-disrupting ordeal. As far as I have seen, this is not the case here. I am not saying that it is common, because it is not, but more that it has happened before. This is not an indication of war, or some kind of internal outbreak of violence: we are not in Iraq. We are taking precautions, but are trying not to blow it out of proportion. Our plan as of right now is just to avoid tourist areas and cancel any trips to places like Dahab, Luxor, Aswan, etc., in case more attacks are planed, because these places have been targets for terrorist attacks in the past. We live in on an island that is not a tourist area, and our campus is located way out in the desert development of New Cairo. We’re actually in some of the safest places in Cairo. I am not worried that they will target our dorms or our campus: they don’t typically target schools, and their aim is to disrupt the tourist industry. Besides, although it is an American school, the vast majority of the students are Egyptians.

I’ll try to keep this updated if I find out any more information.

Cairo: Random Facts/Observations

I have realized that most of my posts recently have been primarily concerning logistical info, and subsequently is fairly boring. I don’t really have the time just yet to write sophisticated entries analyzing certain aspects of my time here, so I figured I’d compile a list of random facts/observations that I have come across thus far in my trip.

1. The pollution is just as bad as it was described in all of the guidebooks. A thin layer of dust/sand covers absolutely everything- including your clothes and hair. Buildings always look dirty, and you can tell how long a car has been parked by how thick the dust is. Sidewalks are coated, and you can almost feel it in your lungs. My hands constantly feel dry and dirty. It’s not horrible, just very noticeable.

2. Pigeon is considered a delicacy. One girl was so kind as to tell me where to find “the best pigeon in Cairo.”

3. Stray cats are absolutely everywhere. They are all very thin and appear sick and diseased. It kind of breaks your heart, because a lot of them are just baby kittens.

4. People tend to walk in the streets instead of the sidewalks. We realized why very quickly. Walking on the sidewalks is like competing in some kind of urban olympics. In any breif walk, one might experience a variety of obstacles including (but not limited to) dips, holes, missing or broken stones/bricks, heaps of trash, piles of broken glass, trees, fallen tree branches, flat boards, random piles of bricks/lumber, lampposts, metal barricades, parked cars and plenty of the aforementioned stray cats. In order to navigate through the sidewalks, you must hop, step, stretch, duck, leap and be constantly vigilant. This is especially true at night, as most streets remain very poorly lit.

5. The only “police” I have witnessed is the “tourist police” stationed at nearly every corner. Unfortunately, we have also discovered that these men tend to harass us more than the average man on the street, and have in some occasions joined in with such harassers.(Don’t worry- it’s generally harmless. They just make comments and pester you about trying to get your number)

6. If you are blonde or have light brown hair, you are almost always deemed “Shakira” by any passing men.

7. Being American has sometimes gotten us poor/bad treatment and at other times special/better treatment or service. Sometimes we are greeted with smiles and calls of “Obama!” and are allowed to loiter in areas where others are not, and sometimes we are ignored or walked away from or hissed at by people once they find out our nationality.

8. Safety does not seem to be a top priority here, or at least is not looked at in the way that it is in America. Although traffic and driving can be viewed as an entirely separate issue, I feel the need to mention that most of time not even small children wear seatbelts, and can be seen bouncing around/playing in moving cars or sitting on someone’s lap (or pressed up against the window of a packed taxi, as I saw on one bus ride home from school). When we attended Bedouin Night, we rode horses in the desert. Now in America, I feel like this would have been a big ordeal- we would have needed to wear helmets, sign waivers, and watch a fifteen minute instructional demonstration on how to ride a horse. Here, we were simple asked if we had riden a horse before. If we said no, a guide offered to hold the reins and walk with us. If we said yes, we were allowed to simply climb the horse and do as we pleased. I’m still not sure how I feel about this.

9. One of the things  I find challenging is trying to distinguish between what is the genuwine culture of Egyptians/Cairenes and what is the culture of the rich on my campus. Most of the Egyptians on campus flaunt designer clothes, sunglasses, and handbags as well as expensive phones and cars. I’m very glad I decided to live in Zamalek, because even though it is consider a wealthy area I feel that I am able to get a different view of Egypt than if I stayed primarily in the wealthy island that is AUC’s new campus.

10. I don’t mind the bus ride to and from school as much as I thought I would. I like driving through Cairo and it gives me time to think and relax before heading to class, and wind down before heading home. I love listening being able to listen to music or catch up on sleep.

11. Almost any restaurant that is in America is also here in Cairo. There is a Pizza Hut and a Hardee’s right by our dorms, and there are two McDonalds’ on AUC’s campus. They also have Chili’s and Friday’s. Also, you can get almost anything delivered here. That includes McDonald’s. We even ordered Little Ceasar’s the other night.

changing classes…again (and hopefully for the last time)

While attending my Islamic Art and Architecture class yesterday, my professor made it pretty clear that there is a big difference between the 271 class (his) and the 270 class, even though the course catalogue made no distinction. Apparently, the 271 class in which I am enrolled is NOT for people who have never taken an art or architecture class, but 270 is. Luckily, there was an opening in the 270 class in a section that is at the same time as my 271 class.

I was planning on only changing that class today, but after sitting in my ARIC/HIST 356 clas for 10 minutes I realized it would be identical (and even used the same book as) my HS211 class I took last semester at Arcadia. This made me panic slightly, because I know there are only a couple of classes that are still open that don’t clash with my Arabic class that meets at varying times four days a week. But, I discovered another graduate seminar class called Authoritarianism and Mobilization in the Middle East, which is a night class and only meets once a week. So, I switched that as well.

Now my schedule is quite different, so in case you were wondering:

SUNDAY: Politics of Palestinian-Israeli Relations 5:50-7:55p

MONDAY: Islamic Art and Architecture 12:30-1:45p

Accelerated MS Arabic 2:00-4:45p

TUESDAY: Accelerated MS Arabic 1:30-3:20p

WEDNESDAY: (same as monday)

THURSDAY: Accelerated MS Arabic 1:30-3:20p

Authoritarianism and Modernization in the Middle East

5:30-7:55p

I like the timing of this schedule better, because now I won’t have to take the really early buses to campus and I have a lot of free time on Sundays and Tuesdays to catch up on readings/do homework.

first day of school

I was finally able to register for decent classes today, and I’m extremely glad that everything worked out and went fairly smoothly. Here is my class schedule:

Sunday 5:30-7:55pm  (POLS 430) Politics of Palestinian-Israeli Relations

Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday 9:30-10:20am (ARIC356) Society and State in the Middle East 1906-present

Monday, Wednesday 12:30-1:45pm (ARIC 271) Islamic Art and Architecture

Monday&Wednesday 2:00-4:45pm and Tuesday&Thursday 1:30-3:20 (ALNG 111) Accelerated Modern Standard Arabic

If you add it up, I’ll be taking about 10 hours of Arabic a week. It’s a 6 credit course that meets four days a week…and it’s a lot, but I’m hoping that it will really help me to learn and improve. I’m really excited about my Palestinian/Israeli Relations course…I actually will be going to it in less than two hours. Sundays in general will not be fun, because I have a morning class until 10:20 and then I don’t have class again until 5:30, so I’ll be stuck on campus all day with nothing to do. I might try to switch my schedule around, but I’m happy with it other than that and I’m not sure if I want to go through the hassle. It took me five days just to get registered and get decent classes, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to try and see if I could get into a different section of one of my classes.

School is very…interesting. It’s like being in America except everyone speaks Arabic and is really well dressed. They told us that the students here will be very different from us. Apparently, they were taught mostly rote memorization, and are not good at more essay-oriented tests. They also said that although they know English, their English reading level will not be on par with ours, so their 200 level courses are more like 100 level courses and will be far below our level. We’re supposed to expect that our reading assignments will seem easy. I am curious to see if our tests/assignments will follow more the Egyptian standards of memorization or the American standards of long answers.

Nile cruise and preparing for school

The past few days have been just as hectic as the first few. We’ve spent a lot of time on the new campus for orientation and are always out doing something. I’m having trouble registering for classes but I’m hoping that will be taken care of on Sunday.

On Monday night we went on a Nile Cruise, which was pretty cool. They had a band and some dancers and there was so much going on that you kind of forgot you were on a boat. Towards the end though we went out on the rooftop level to take pictures. Tuesday and Wednesday we spent most of our time on campus getting our ID cards and attending various lectures. On Tuesday night a group of six of us went out to a restaurant. One of my friends here is Mae, and she’s Egyptian and speaks Arabic. Thanks to her, we’ve  been able to get around a lot easier and communicate with people better. She’s able to kind of tell which restaraunts are okay and which aren’t. This restaurant we went to was great. They are very laid back here, so we were able to sit there for hours without anyone trying to rush us out. We ate, played cards, and smoked hookah (of course!). I was able to get an appetizer, an entree, a desert, a juice, a soda, my portion of the hookah and the tip all for about $11.50. That’s one of the major upsides to Egypt.

On Wednesday night AUC threw an orientation party on the new campus. They played really really loud music and had traditional bands and dancers. There was free food and everything was set up really nice. We still can’t get over just how big and impressive our campus is.

Last night we took a cab out to City Stars, which is this huge mall where wealthy people from all over the region come to shop. It has 7 floors, a movie theatre and a bowling alley/arcade. It was pretty fun, except every guy in the entire place stared at us. This, apparently, is very common in Egypt and all girls are openly stared at. It was a little hard for us to get used to. Also, I was the only white person in the entire mall (even the girls I was with are all different ethnicities), so even the girls in the mall were staring at me. It was an internesting experience.

I bought an Egyptian newspaper (in english) today and literally almost every single article is about Obama. It’s very interesting to read about American politics from a Middle Eastern perspective. For those of you wondering, judging by the newspapers, the people here are happy about Obama but are still waiting for some tangible action from him that proves that he is going to be different. The mood ranges from cynical (those who think that Obama isn’t any different) to those who are cautiously optimistic. The optimistic ones are happy with Obama’s choice of George Mitchell to head up the Middle East envoy. Mitchell has roots in the Middle East and helped with the conflicts in Ireland, so the people here hope he will have a new approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I like him as well, because he doesn’t believe in requiring more concessions from the weakend/less powerful side (Palestine).

I’m trying to upload more photos to the photobucket site (http://s635.photobucket.com/albums/uu80/kayla-in-egypt). Also, let me know if you have any questions!

First few days/Bedouin Night

We arrived in Cairo around 9:30 a.m. on the 24th (Saturday). Luckily, we didn’t have any problems with getting through customs, getting our luggage, or with the airport pick up. We stopped off at the New Campus to drop someone off, and caught our first glimpse of where we would be having classes. We went there today for the first time for some orientation events, and the campus is huge. The buildings are amazing and very impressive. Everything is gigantic and beautifully designed. I think I’m really going to like it there. Anyway, after we dropped off the kids at New Campus, we went to our dorms in Zamalek. The residence is more like a hotel than a dormitory, it even has a really beautiful courtyard garden. The rooms are bigger than any dorms I’ve ever seen and have great wardrobes and such. The building is old and kind of beaten up, but is very clean and has a lot of character.

We’ve been pretty busy the past couple of days. Yesterday we did a scavenger hunt around Zamalek, which is the area of Cairo where I am staying. (For more info on Zamalek, try Wikipedia. Basically, it’s an island in the Nile River where most of the embassies are) After running around and trying to ask people where “rahdeo shaq” (radio shack) is, we ate dinner at a local restaraunt. The food was..good. Obviously not my favorite, but edible and fairly tasty. There is a picture of it on the photobucket site (I’ll post a link to the site at the end of this blog). The best part was that it was only 5 pounds, which is a little less than $1. Debbie and I have decided to rent a fridge for the semester, which will cost us about $30 each. That way we can pick up some sandwiches, pita bread, hummus, and stuff like that to keep in our room for when we don’t have time to go out. It will be cheaper than eating campus food, which still isn’t really expensive, but we want to save our money for activities.

Our first activity was last night, called Bedouin Night. We drove just outside of Cairo in the Giza desert, where there were giant tents set up. Inside they had modest seating made out of pillows covered with blankets and small tables. For $2 you could smoke “shisha” or hookah, and most people did. All night that played loud music (some was Arabic, some was very American- like Fergie and other hip hop, which made it feel a lot less authentic). There were traditional dancers who all but forced you to participate in the dances. Pretty much everyone did, and it was really fun. When you walked outside the tent, you could see the Giza pyramids in the distance. It was my first look at them, and it was pretty fantastic. Throughout the night there was horseback riding, where guides took you a short distance in the desert. It was really cool to be riding horses in the desert in clear view of the pyramids. We rode to the top of a hill and got a pretty good panoramic view of Cairo as well. The food was pretty great, although I don’t remember the names of any of it, except the beef, which was “kofta.”

We’re leaving at 6:30 to go on a Nile River cruise, which we are pretty excited about. The “events” here are fairly cheap- Bedouin Night was only $20, and so is the Nile cruise. They have a trip to Alexandria this weekend, but we’ve decided not to go. We feel like we have enough going on this week, and we don’t want to cram all of the excitement into our first 6 days. Besides, we’ve heard that the trip is overpriced (about $90) and that we could do it cheaper if we planned it ourselves. I’ve met quite a few people, and almost everyone is really nice and friendly. We’re going to try to get a group together to go to Alexandria once things settle down a bit.

Here is a link to the photo album: http://s635.photobucket.com/albums/uu80/kayla-in-egypt/

on the left hand side about halfway down there are links to the different albums!

countdown

As of right now, I will be arriving in Cairo in 10 days. It still seems slightly unreal to me. I can’t quite believe it’s actually happening. It probably won’t hit me until I’m actually at the airport on the 23rd.

Speaking of the flight, I’ve got major issues with Delta. AUC has an airport pickup service (for $12 they’ll pick you up at the airport no matter what time and drive you to your dorm/flat/whatever), and while signing up for it I was double checking the exact time that my flight landed on Delta’s website. That’s when I noticed that they drastically “changed the schedule” of our return flight. It now leaves over 12 hours later, which messes things up on a number of levels. First of all, now Debbie and I won’t have anywhere to stay during the day because the dorms close that day (before, our flight left at noon so we would packed and at the airport before checkout time- whatever that time may be). Now we won’t be leaving until around 1:30ish AM Cairo time. This means we won’t get in to JFK until about 7 AM on the 31st. Well, my connection flight from JFK to Detroit leaves at like 7 pm on the 30th, so now I’m missing my flight home by a day. I was looking up what flights leave from JFK to Detroit on the 31st, so that when I call Delta to fix things they don’t lie to me. It looks like there aren’t any flight to Detroit until the afternoon/evening, which means that I will be spending about at least 24 hours sitting- 12 hour plane ride plus 12 hours in the airport (waiting for our flight to Cairo and waiting for my flight to detroit). Needless to say, I am not happy about this. Especially because Delta failed to inform me of this ‘schedule change’ and the fact that I’ll be missing my connection.

Other than that, preparations are going okay. I got my Egyptian visa in the mail yesterday. I realized that my licensed will expire when I’m overseas, so I went to try to renew it early at the secretary of state. That way, when I’m coming back into the US and going through customs, I won’t have to worry about having an expired license. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of this until about two weeks ago, and I waited until last week to go to secretary of state. The guy was extremely mean to me (fairly typical of secretary of state employees) and basically thought that I was attempting to get my license renewed early so that it would look like I was 21 and I could possibly get into bars easier (in Michigan they flip your license from vertical to horizontal when you turn 21). He said it takes “about two weeks” to get my new license, so I’m hoping to get it before I leave. I probably won’t, or I’ll get it like the day after I leave. I don’t want my mom to send it in the mail to Egypt, because apparently their mail system is not very reliable.

I’m going to spend the next few days packing and getting the last few things in order before I leave. I thought that having a month and a half break between the end of Fall semester and my flight to Egypt would give me far more than enough time to get everything done, but I every day I think of something new I have to do or buy or think about. It really does take a lot of planning!

Flight

On Friday, Debbie and I booked our flight to Cairo. It was…very expensive, to say the least. I leave from the Detroit airport on January 23rd around 11:30 a.m., have a two and a half hour layover in New York, and then have an 11 hour direct flight to Cairo.

Originally, Debbie and I were the only ones from my school that were studying abroad in Egypt, and I believe we are only the 2nd and 3rd students in Arcadia’s history to do so. However, another girl named Binitia is now also going to be studying at AUC with us. Her father has agreed to let her go after much hesitation. She will be living in the on-campus dorms while Debbie and I are staying in the Zamalek dorms in Cairo. This is great news for all three of us. We have already agreed to ‘crash’ at each other’s places- Debbie and I can stay with her during the week if we don’t feel like taking that awful hour and a half commute, and Binita can stay with us on the weekends when she wants to hang out in Cairo.

Now we just have to wait until ‘after thanksgiving’ to get more information about housing, etc.

Living in Zamalek and other decisions

After doing a little bit more research and talking to a few people online, Debbie and I have decided to live in the old Zamalek dorms in downtown Cairo. We figure that it’s only for a  semester of our lives, so enduring the three hour round-trip bus ride is just a minor setback. We plan to review homework on the bus….or, more likely, we will sleep.

Unfortunately, we have other problems. The New York office of the AUC apparently has an issue with time management and is EXTREMELY slow with getting us information. Still nothing on visas, travel dates, classes, housing, orientation, etc. I called the office yesterday, and was able to get confirmation that they received my first deposit payment, but the housing applications will not be available until after Thanksgiving. I’m assuming that they will send us all of the other paper work then as well, but I do not want to wait to book a flight until after thanksgiving. So I’ve been hounding the New York office with calls and emails about the dates when we’re supposed to arrive and leave, and emailing my financial aid office about how much I will be given in my loan so I’ll be able to see how much I actually have for airfare (my loan is slightly complicated, and my flight situation is even more complicated).  Right now I’m planning for January 25th- May 30th. The flight from JFK in New York to Cairo is 11 hours on the way there, and 12 hours on the way back. I looked up first class flights just for fun, and they are $10,000. Just the IDEA of spend $10,000 on ONE flight is so weird to me.

To answer Uncle Gary’s question, I’m not entirely sure about what classes I will be taking yet. They are supposed to be sending us information on how to register, but like everything else we haven’t received it yet. I was required to look at their available courses for study abroad and provide them with a list of potential classes. I wrote down five, with three alternates. I will end up taking four or five of them. Arabic is a given. Here is the list I gave Cairo:

ALNG202 Intermediate Arabic

ARIC270 Introduction to Islamic Art and Architecture

ANTH210 Arab Society

ARIC312 Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa

POLS353 Muslim Political Thought

(ALT) ARIC356 Society and State in the Middle East 1906-present

(ALT) POLS304 Development Agencies

(ALT) POLS Intro to Comparative Politics

(ALT) ARIC206 Art and Architecture in the City of Cairo

As you can see, I’m going to be heavily focusing on learning about Arabs/Islam, as that is my area of interest and, obviously, being in Egypt will make those classes even more interesting and relevant. I took the Art classes mostly because I have to fulfill an art credit here at Arcadia (and learning about Islamic architecture to me is WAY more interesting to me than sitting through, say, an art history class on medieval paintings), and also because I believe we will be able to actually visit the places we study. And I am definitely up for any field trips.

T   There is a possibility that I won’t actually find out my class list until I get to Egypt. Whatever the case might be, I will update this as soon as I know.

I t   I tried to post photos on this page, but it’s not quite working at is making the page take forever to load. So if you want to see pictures of the new campus, I put them up on my photo page: www.flikr.com/photos/scenicworld0/

Or, you can download AUC’s powerpoint presentation that has a little bit more information with the pictures: http://datacenter.aucegypt.edu/smc/new_campus_tour.ppt

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