Thanksgiving celebrations

Well, despite what you might believe because of the abrupt ending to that last post, I did still have a Thanksgiving. I went to the Maadi house with some friends, where the food was amazing. No important people were met, unfortunately, but I still had a good time. It was clear that many of the AUC students I saw there were hoping to meet some important people, but hopefully they all still had a good time with good food and good friends, because we all have a lot to be thankful for (in case you didn't pick up on the thankful kick from yesterday's post). When I got home I skyped with my family, which was really nice since I haven't talked to some of them since getting to Egypt. That night I went out for a couple of drinks with friends and ended up meeting some really random and really interesting people with whom I had some of the strangest conversations that I've had in half-assed Arabic to date. We stated out wayyy later than I had planned to because I lost track of time talking, and I slept for half of Friday before getting some work done in the afternoon.

What are you thankful for?

So, I haven't updated in almost two weeks, sorry for that. I've been really busy with, well, mostly vacation. The week of the 12th-18th (ish) I went to Upper Egypt, which is actually south, but upriver. I saw a bunch of temples and statues and tombs and hieroglyphs and, well, old stuff. All the stuff was cool, but the trip was really drama-y so i definitely could've had a better time. Whatever, it's in the past. Then we had 3 days of class, which were pretty uneventful except for a guest lecture in my Human Rights in the Middle East class, this man named Joost Hilterman who talked about Iraq. It was pretty interesting.
Then it was Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for a lot of reasons, ranging from the almost spiritual to the incredibly materialistic. First, and my most important reason for loving Thanksgiving, is that I think people too often forget to be thankful for everything we have by getting caught up in what we don't have, what we want, etc. I'm including myself in this. I can certainly be just as materialistic as anyone else, and I think I all too often forget, while wanting a new gadget or whatever, that I have so much to be thankful for. SO MUCH. And so I want to remind everyone who takes the time to read this to thank you for caring about me. Even if I don't know you or know that you're reading this, knowing that my day to day craziness might bring a smile to someone's face or that knowing what I'm up to might make you miss me less (I miss y'all too) helps me to feel a little more connected to everyone back home. Some things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving include the opportunity to live in Egypt, this crazy, amazing, infuriating never dull place I'm beginning to call home; I'm thankful for my friends everywhere, especially those back home who've kept in touch; I'm thankful for my family, it was great to talk to y'all Thursday; I'm thankful that, as much as I love studying in Egypt, I get to go home in May and that I am afforded the rights of an American citizen (more on this later); I'm grateful for the internet keeping me sane while here; I'm grateful for the American Embassy for providing me with a turkey day dinner that made me feel right at home... (my bus got to where it was going at this point and I've lost that really awesome train of thought)

Upper Egypt

I just posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook, and that's not even all of them, and my vacation isn't over yet. This trip has been interesting, and full of old stuff. Right now we're in Luxor, in our hostel with FREE WIFI. For 20LE pppd. I'll write about what we're actually doing when I get home on Friday, but I thought I'd post a small update to inform everyone that I'm still alive and all. Look at the pictures. That is all.

VACATION

So after a long day filled with taxis and altogether too much yelling and crying, I have three bus tickets to Luxor on the 9:00 PM bus tonight. There we'll get on another bus/train/IDK and make out way to Abu Simbel, where we plan to get to sometime tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully. Abu Simbel is the home of the Sun Temple of Ra, which is supposed to be absolutely amazing. That's all there really is to see there, and then we go back north a bit to Aswan. Aswan has more old stuff. And now when I say old I mean pre-biblical times. Just so you're aware. OLD. There we'll look at some more old stuff, go to Elephantine, Edfu, and I dunno, maybe somewhere else (I've clearly left the planning to my Middle Easten history major friend) before moving back to Luxor, hopefully by the night of the 16th so we can see HARRY POTTER two days before it comes out in the US. Also in Luxor is more old stuff. From there we will either take a train or a bus OR A BOAT back to Cairo, depending on price and how much time we have. This will all be retold in more detail once I've actually done all this stuff. I should be back sometime next weekend, maybe Thursday or Friday. Until then I will probably be mostly incommunicado, except for maybe some Facebook posts thanks to my data plan on my snazzy new Blackberry. Ma Salamma for now, nitshufuu yum il 7ad.

This is me, blogging

I played ultimate this afternoon! I missed ultimate. A lot. Then I had class. Which was weird because there usually aren't classes on Tuesdays. But my professor decided we needed a makeup class because we're so behind (because she shows up 14 minutes late to every class, or sometimes not at all) and she decided that should be today. It was just people's presentations, though, so it wasn't too bad.
Now I'm supposed to be studying for my econ test tomorrow or my Eastern European Politics midterm Thursday or the presentation I'm supposed to be giving the day after break, but instead I'm blogging.
O, I never wrote about the breaks coming up. I'll do that next.
I also have to finish my CLS application before I leave because it's due the 15th, while I'm gone. CLS is short for Critical Language Scholarship and is a program run by the US State Department that funds study of critical-need languages (Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Korean, Punjabi, Azeri, Bengali, etc.) for University students every summer. Getting this scholarship would be probably my biggest short-term goal right now. It would be absolutely amazing, you gain the equivalent of one year of language study in one summer and would likely make my Arabic good enough to get into a top-tier grad program in Middle Eastern Studies/Politics.
On a completely separate note, I bought a couple of CDs off iTunes the other day and I've become completely obsessed with them. The first is gonna be me being stereotypical: Speak Now, Taylor Swift's new album. It's pretty amazing, there are only a few songs I tend to skip and all the other ones are so much more grown-up than her old stuff. I love it. The other is Doo-Wops and Hooligans, the Deluxe Edition by Bruno Mars. It features the single Just The Way You Are, as well as many other excellent songs. Kinda reminds me of Gnarls Barkley's album St. Elsewhere, another excellent album. I know this has nothing to do with Egypt, but it kinda does, because it makes me feel a bit connected to home.

I'm not really sure what happened to my life

My mother sold our house. My room is being packed up today. It will be in storage when I get home. Not really sure where I'll be living this summer, but I find I don't really have any desire to spend it in the States. I feel no tie to anywhere. I mean, yeah I would miss people. I miss people now. But that's why we have phones. I think I'm gonna pray that I get one of the scholarships I'm applying for (Arabic) so that I don't have to deal with the fact that I now feel like I have nowhere at all in the states where I belong or have any desire to be. That might sound extreme to my family and friends and yes, I do and will miss you. But where y'all are is not where my life is. Not that I know where my life is right now, which I think is the emotion that my quasi-homelessness has brought to the forefront. I need to figure out what the F I wanna do with my life, and then I need to do it. Because as much as I've enjoyed where I've been, I don't feel tied to any of it, and I need to find myself a place. Wherever that might be.

I've made a decision

I'm staying in Egypt over winter break. I've been trying to decide what to do for a while now, and there were a good number of possibilities including going home for all, going home for part, spending the whole thing backpacking around Europe, spending part of it in Spain, or Turkey, or just staying in Egypt. One of my best friends here and I will be getting an apartment (which we were planning on doing next semester anyway) and chillin' in Cairo for the end of December and the entire month of January. We'll take smaller trips to places like Suez, Siwa (an oasis), etc. within Egypt and maybe even larger trips to places like Jordan and Lebanon. I might go to Turkey. Or Spain. Or Morocco. And I will probably spend less money in the whole month than I would have on just my plane ticket home. Now for the apartment hunting. I'll probably talk to some friends about their apartments, how they like them, how they like the neighborhood, etc. and hopefully just take over a friend's apartment when they leave at the end of the semester.