ABBA=yes.

So, I'm currently listening to Abba. I feel like that is necessary for you to know. Oh, also? I'm in Egypt. Alexandria, to be specific. I've been here since...early on the 7th? I promised that I'm going to do sensible and clever blog posts, and I will, but I'm still working up to that. For now, I'm going to try and give a brief run down of things, what I've been doing, etc.

JUNE 3rd-7th
Orientation in Washington D.C! I got to see Emily Walsh, and see all the cool monuments lit up at night. It rained pretty non-stop the whole time I was there, which was not so great, and I got injured by my shoes both nights I was there. But, oh well! The orientation was alright, mostly boring but some useful stuff. Lots of people were there from different schools, so it was cool to see who I'm going to be spending the next year with. We flew to Frankfurt Friday night, and the flight was okay, I had to sit next to some random man who kept sleeping way too close to me, but other than that it was fine. I watched most of 'Bride Wars', which was unexpectedly sweet.
I hardly slept, so I thought I was in for trouble, since we had a 9 hour layover in Frankfurt. But, I felt quite alright, and we pulled ourselves together and ventured out to find some food. It was raining, of course. We finally ate at some vaguely Austrian place, I think, and I had really tasty beer (which immediately made me want to nap) and amazing potato soup. It was really nice being in Europe again, and the whole wandering around a strange city thing was very familiar to me. I loved having Euros, buying random strange food in shops, etc. We went back to the airport and actually ended up spending several hours waiting by the baggage storage place since we lost some members of our party (we all stored baggage together). It was a good time, though, being able to just sit and socialize with a small group. Then we found our gate, waited, got on the plane. Our teacher/chaperone told us we had to speak only Arabic once we got on the plane. I was getting less and less excited (if that is even possible).
Arrival in Alexandria was pretty much what I expected. It took forever, and I already found myself fed up with this country. Their precaution against swine flu: taking down our names, and taking the temperatures of a couple people. I don't even know. We got to the dorm, which is definitely not as nice as my dorm in Cairo. It's very...basic? All the Egyptian girls had waited up for us (I suspect they just stay up late every night anyway), and we all had to talk in Arabic and it was pretty exhausting. I just finally escaped and tried to set up my room. My roommate is a girl I hadn't met (in my program, though). Most everyone from UT ended up choosing other UT people to room with, which I didn't expect. So of course I imagine that they are all together in their rooms having fun, which may or may not be true, but whatever. I finally fell asleep at like 5am.

JUNE 7th
Orientation!!! Again! We had lunch at noon that day. Which, I guess it's nice of them to not make us wake up early on the day we arrive, but still. Could we not have just had the day to rest? Anyway, we had a meal, tons of talking to us about important things in Arabic, etc. Seriously, all these women kept standing up and saying (in Arabic) "now, this is really important, blah blah .....". I could barely understand anything, and the building was of course super loud with random noises everywhere. Kind of disheartening. And my Egyptian phone wasn't working. We then went to the campus, which again is nowhere near the AUC campus in Cairo. We have a whole floor in a small building for our program (noticeable because it is the only floor with AC units on each window). It's kind of nice, we've got a sort of common room (called the dar) with really nice sofas, a table and chairs, several computers, a TV (in Arabic of course), etc. There was more orientating in Arabic. We were informed we had oral placement interviews that same day. Then we just waited around forever because nothing is organized ever here. (Our directors tell us that Egypt is organized, the US is just MORE organized...)
My placement was fine, really short, and over an hour later than it should've been. After that I think we had dinner, and I walked along the Corniche (the busy road next to the Mediterranean).

JUNE 8th
Breakfast, disorganization, bus 'tour' of Alexandria. The bus was very run down, and very hot. We just drove down the Corniche a bit, went to a Citadel (kind of alright), got weird ice cream, saw a mosque. Then we had more placement tests. We also went to this shopping mall! There are actual malls here, except all the stores are super weird. Fashion in Egypt is very strange. But there is a big walmart type store called Carrefour (something like that), we went and got towels and toilet paper and such necessities. I would've liked more time there, and the only bad thing is that it is a taxi ride away (no walking). After that, I did have plans in the evening, but the girls who were supposed to call me never did, and I ended up taking a nap that turned into like a 3 hour sleep. It was kind of amazing.

JUNE 9th
Oh, scavenger hunts. We had a silly one, where we had a list of places (in Arabic) that we needed to find and photograph ourselves with. The idea was for us to talk to people in the streets and get a sense of the city, but with a lot of groups I think it didn't work out that way. In my group, there were two South Asian guys (and so more readily accepted as Egyptian) who are kind of cocky, and they just did all the talking to people and decision-making. So it was basically us running around following them and really not getting a sense for where we were at all. After lunch we had a 'tour' of the Alexandria Library, which was not really satisfying at all. I'm kind of bitter at that place, too, because of my misadventures during spring break last year. Anyway, I ended up making plans to go to a restaurant with some people for dinner, and I can't remember what else I did. The restaurant turned out to actually be super delicious! Our group got split up because half went to one location of the restaurant and half to the other, but oh well. The meat was amazingly good, and it was just a nice time. Socializing has been weird, like it always is at the beginning of things. People form little groups based on connections they already have, and plans get made in these small groups that sometimes exclude others (usually not on purpose, though). It's kind of exhausting, I feel like I constantly have to work to put myself in the right situations so I can be invited to things and hear about stuff people are doing. I know I should try and be more of the type of person who makes plans myself, but oh well.

JUNE 10th
First day of class! I didn't have class until 11, so I slept in and missed breakfast. Class was alright, nothing groundbreaking. They pretty much grouped most of the people from the same school together (the other big group is from Maryland, and there are a few from Michigan schools), and with familiar teachers. The teachers in this program like to go to Flagship schools and work as TAs occasionally (which was the case with my two teachers this summer), so most of us just have teachers we already know. Which is nice, kind of, but also not nice. I want to experience new things! Meet new people! I guess I will during the regular year. Anyway, class was whatever, we had lunch, I felt like I was getting a cold. I've had a sore throat and been really congested, and I now think it is a combination cold+allergy to mold or something in my room. After more class, we had to go out to a bookstore to buy a novel we have to read this summer (an ARABIC novel...). This of course turned into a several-hour long saga, but on the upside I met a slightly awkward kid who studied at AUC! After the bookstore saga, I just attempted homework (unsuccesfully) and talked to my dad on Skype. Which, by the way, totally does not work well here. My internet connection is really bad, it cuts out very very frequently, so the audio that I hear on Skype calls is very poor quality. But it was nice to have contact with the US!

JUNE 11th
This is getting kind of epic, so I'll try and keep it brief and throw in some cultural observations and deep whatevers in the next post. Thursday we had more class, and I woke up feeling very crappy. I am now convinced that my whole room is mold-infested and gross. After class I attempted homework and took a decent nap, and also lysol-ed the crap out of part of my mattress. I also put gold bond foot powder on it, and covered it with an extra sheet. I think this will be my arrangement: mattress with two sheets and a blanket on top, and me sleeping on top using my silk sleep sack as a top sheet. It's working okay so far. The mattress is even a bit more comfortable (or should I say a bit less horrible) if I put my head at the other end. ANYWAY, we had dinner, and I got some allergy medicine AND found a cafe that may or may not serve movenpick icecream. After that, we had plans to meet our teacher at a cafe. I was really tired, but excited for cafe times. It didn't turn out to be that great, though...the place was really loud, and our group was too big. Big groups inevitably split into smaller groups, and all the louder kids (that all have been friends since before the trip) shuffled around until they were sitting together and then just effectively closed the rest of us out of the group. I found this really kind of rude, for many reasons, but also because our teacher invited us there and they really should've included him more. I was kind of in a daze of not being able to breathe through my nose, and while I felt able to participate in conversations I was completely lacking in any ability to start any. So, it was kind of really lame. I got really sick of the UT girls (a few of them). Hopefully things will change.

TODAY
I got up and had breakfast! It was super tasty, fuul and tamiyya and two hardboiled eggs! There was no one at breakfast except one Egyptian girl, so my roommate and I sat with her and I talked to her! I'm so proud of myself. It seems like everyone is making friends with the Egyptians and talking to them all the time and I feel very antisocial in Egyptian standards, so I'm glad I made the effort today. Then her friends arrived and I talked to them, too! I also talked to another American girl from my program a bit, and hopefully I'm going to the gym with her later. There is a 'stadium' with a track and swimming pool also, apparently, and our program has reserved parts of it at certain times on Fridays. So, hopefully lots of people will want to go. I really miss exercising. I know there are gyms here, but of course everything is super complicated and nothing can ever be simple. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but it would just be nice if there actually was an exercise room for girls in this building (with machines that worked). I miss treadmills, and places where it is okay to run outside (and cool enough to do so). There is a proper gym here, like a chain gym, but apparently it is some really outrageous amount of money per month. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, hopefully I'll figure it out as things become more settled and I get a routine going.

MAN that was a lot of writing! I'll try and be better and organize myself so I can write sensible, thoughtful posts. I need to sort out my journal situation, I haven't updated my journal in months and I kind of want it to be chronological, but we'll see. I need to find a place to just write what I do each day, so I can save the deep thinking for this blog. Oh, exciting news: we're going to Cairo next weekend! I'm pretty excited. We're going to Sharm al-Sheikh (fancy resort place on the Red Sea, much more touristy than Dahab) July 9th, some beach house place on July 24th, and tomorrow we're going to some gardens/beach I think.

In terms of contacting me, skype is so-so, (and I can't do any of those cool skype to-go things or anything, Egypt is lame), and I have my US phone and an Egyptian phone (on which receiving calls is cheap for me, I think?). I'll put some pictures up in a while, maybe I'll make a new post after this one for pictures. ANYWAY it has been intense (writing this, I mean), I should probably go pretend to think about doing my homework or something. Or do laundry. Did I mention there are no driers here? We're supposed to hang our stuff up to dry. In our rooms that already no doubt have mold problems. Anyway. (I'm trying really hard to not be too negative, at least out loud!)

Ok I'm done! I miss you all!