My Classes

Let me preface this by stating that I’ve finally basically adjusted to Egypt.

Let me just give you a little update on how I’ve been since I last wrote. Good. Classes have started so let me give you a little rundown.

My first class on Sundays and Wednesdays is Intro to Photography. My thought here was that why waste all that time running around Egypt taking pictures when the university will put me on buses and run me around so I can take pictures for credit. Plus I’ve always loved taking pictures, but of course I don’t really know what I’m doing, so this is a good start. Eventually I will get a DSLR, oh yes, I will. Until then, I was sad to learn that we can’t borrow them from the university, so I will continue using my Canon SD 700. The little trouper is almost 3 years, and still takes AMAZING pictures. I’m very impressed by that camera. Only 6 megapixels, but when its on auto, its almost impossible for it to take a bad picture. Of course you can’t do much with the manuel settings (basically useless). No manual focus, and a host of other things are missing, but I’ve always been happy with it. That aside, the class appears to be the teacher teaching us stuff, we take pictures, and then show them on aprojector, where we then argue over them (every class just has tons of arguing). The professor is an American, who worked for time magazine for a decade, so he knows what he’s doing. Only disappointment is that it is a journalism class, not an art class.

My next class is my developmental economics class. This one is probably going to be my favorite. My only disappointment? The class got so big (somehow… apparently the “caps” on registration aren’t real) that our big final paper will now be done in teams. I kinda don’t want to work with someone else on econ papers. Thats what I like to do. The class seems to be “Why are poor people poor?” . Of course the answer will probably be the rich being rich, and colonialism. The professor is really cool though, she seems wise.

I have coloquial arabic, and I got lucky there. My teacher is very nice, and doesn’t give out a bunch of homework yet. I’m learning a lot. I’m also surprised at my level of fusha. Obviously she is going slow, and the class is designed for students who have taken arabic, but no Egyptian. Its a small class (6), but she is nice, and its already coming in handy. The Egyptian Arabic is really interesting because there of course arabic words, but then there are alsmo mixed in greek (like the word for the country, Egyptious, everyone in Egypt calls the country by its arabic word, Misr), latin (don’t forget the city of Alexandria is here), coptic, syrian, and hieroglyphic. In fact the word for “girl” in egyptian is actually the Hieroglyphic word (sit/set), instead of the arabic word. The country has gotten conquered a lot.

Then I have Intermediate Micro-Economics. The class feels like a joke. Probably because I’ve already taken Macro. People argue a lot in this class. Whatever. It doesn’t seem very practical. All the issues people with have with economics can be found in this class.

Then I’m in choir, which is also, sadly, a joke. The ting is that most Egyptians don’t have choir in high school, so a lot of kids have never sung at all in their entire lives, or done anything music, while the western kids, like me, have. So it has a vast difference in talents. The American choir director is very good though. He has a hard job. I hope they pay him a lot.

I’m in an Intro to Engineering. I’m not sure why. I needed a 1 credit class, which it is. There are team projects. I am of course not in a team. I know no one. No one offered to include me, as no one ever does. I’m a loner. I think its valuable to see how another profession works. Especially since I’m doing all my BP stuff, it’d be worth knowing how engineers do their job. Class has a lot of women in it. I must admit that surprised me.

So thats it for now! Ta ta! I’ll talk to ya’ll about England next podcast.