reverse culture shock

For those of you who will be around the area of western Washington July 31st, you may see me flying over head in one of the countless planes arriving at Seattle international airport that day. It seems so far away, but as more of the volunteers prepare to leave in the next few weeks, my return home becomes increasingly definite. I started thinking today more about this because my friend Abdelshakour and his wife and adorable baby are being resettled to new york state next week, and another good friend and co-worker John from Indiana is flying home this weekend, and it can't help but remind me that my bitter sweet departure is close at hand. John and I were discussing this last night over a carbon filled taxi ride to the background of the Koran and both of us are warned about the reverse culture shock under which we will go upon our return to the states. I think, and John agrees that moving, to some degree, can be talked about with the analogy of shoes. So we expounded on this during the taxi driver, and so I choose to recall to you the skeleton of our conversation filled in with details on reserve from my years working in a shoe department.

I think that moving back home to Washington, and America in general, will be like putting on an old pair of shoes, maybe takes awhile to break them in again, the excitement of having them may wear off more quickly because I have owned them previously, and perhaps after wearing these shoes for a certain amount of time, you discover why you stopped wearing them, boxed them up and hid them in the back of your closest under that feather boa in the first place, OR you keep them until the souls fall off, wearing them for years because while not very exciting, they are functional, easy, comfortable and a predictable purchase. Meanwhile, moving to a new place, and the culture shock undergone in Egypt is little more daring and difficult. Like buying a brand new pair of really trendy heels that are super uncomfortable, difficult to break in and only look good at certain time in the right mood and with the right outfit. Perhaps these painful and painfully ugly heels only last for one fashion season, but you are glad you have them and maybe for some people they will come back in style and come out of the closet in a few years, and some may throw away their trendy shoes, never to travel abroad again. Certain shoe styles and experiences are not for everyone, but if you can make it work, it makes your outfit, and your life, a little more complete.

and that English majors is a major literary conceit. (this is not to imply that people who wear trendy shoes are more inclined to adjust to culture shock, in fact, the reverse may be true, it is yet to be tested... don't be so literal people. :o)

Dahab

OH sweet vacation. SO after a long year of work, without vacation when many egyptians and most of my fellow westerners enjoyed all the holidays that run so plentiful in this country, I finally had a wonderful long break!! I love my job, but the vacation has been a great time to really rejuvinate, recooperate, re-energize and all those other "re" words that mean I feel a whole lot better about facing 100 degree weather and work all day all week long :o) Egypt is, well, hot lately, so the past two weekend I escaped to a beautiful place called Dahab! one of the most magical places in Egypt, gorgeous water, snorkeling, international community, and here is the kicker, you can wear shorts and tank tops! heck, I could wear a bathing suit to lunch if I wanted to, I didn't of course, but it was nice ot know I had the option. The only tricky part about dahab is teh fact that there is no fresh water really except what you buy in bottles, so you are showering with slightly saline solution during your trip, which can be a bit tiresome, but other than that it is beautiful.

The first weekend we went, Kim and I met a lot of people, but the two that stood out the most were two Israeli guys, Roy and Yenev, who were so delightful. I had heard so many bad rumors about Israeli travelers which could be true, but werent' with these two guys, they were super. I think what I liked the most about talking with them is that, Yenev and I got into discussions about the israeli/palestinian conflict, and it was really interesting to hear a perspective from an actually israeli and not the media and not from egypt or america. It made my view slightly more balanced. It seems everywhere I go I meet some great people, because the next weekend when I was in DAhab ( I had to work a few days in between my two trips) One of the highlights of DAhab, besides wearing shorts in public without harrassment and meeting all the new people, schooling people at the pool tables (Thanks to nathan who made my pool skills happen) was the unbelievable snorkeling at a place called the blue hole. It is one of the most beautiful places I have seen yet here in egypt. underwater that is. I loved it, and this is from a girl who is scared of deep water, things touching her while she swims, fish and is a week swimmer. and I loved it! so anyone can survive there. :o) All the colors of the fish and the coral, no picture I think could capture it.

NOw as I return back to cairo, and get back to work and planning summer school (starts next week) I am starting to realize how close my time here is to finishing and it makes for some crazy interactions with my Egypt life. simmultaneously absorbing every last bit of experience I can from this year, and saying goodbye to friends, and yet, I'm not gone yet and there are a lot of good memories to build and lessons to learn in the next month. thank you to everyone who has kept in touch and supported me this year. I sit and reflect a lot lately on what I have learned and where I am spiritually and my plans for next year, but I've also picked up a little african culture since I've been here, and have moved away from planning my next turn in the trail so much, but rather, trying to enjoy the view from where I am... and it's pretty awesome.

A fantastic teacher at St. Andrews, Miss Mariam Hashim and I are the two full time females working in the CEP at St. Andrews. This is a picture from Hashim's going away party the last week of school (it was a busy week for me) She helps me with everything at work, is one of the most experienced and creative teachers we have. I look forward to having her around during summer school, and soon we are going to have a day where she has requested I teach her how to make "american cookies" (I bake a lot and bring the goods to work for the teachers) and hopefully in exchang eI can get a lesson in cooking authentic Eritrean food. yum. :o) 

these are a few of my students from the first class I taught.  

For the past two months I've been teaching adults at the Cathedral down the street and I love it. L-O-V-E. nothing I think could have better reinforced my aspirations toward being a professor than having this experience. It was sort of a last minute job when the person who was teaching an English class suddenly had to return home, so they asked if I would teach. Of course I said yes, even though it kept me busy considering I still had my job as director of the children's program at St. Andrews. So for awhile I was teaching three nights a week a few different levels, but pretty advanced. Currently I teach two different conversation classes and those are going really well. It continues to be a great way for me to interact with more Egyptians in a positive way outside of street harassment and I really enjoy my students, we have a lot of fun, speak English and hope that they learn something!

After a hard Friday afternoon of Frisbee we always go to the local coffee shop to drink tea and maybe order a juice and chat. This picture is from Annie's visit in April. From left to right" Mustafa, me, Annie and Hashim. Every week those fake flowers on the table still make me laugh. some things don't' ever really stop being funny. haha.

My brother, Hashim (on the far right) and I are posing with some students in the hall on his last day in Egypt. Annie, Hashim's wife, is american and the former AEP director and office mate and continues to be a good friend of mine. She and Hashim guided me around Cairo for most of the year. Hashim is my Sudanese brother, is was one of the teachers at St. Andrews and was always there to give me advice on culture and life. He is currently with his Annie in Davis California, and I miss them both, America is lucky to snag this guy as a new citizen.  

This is the entrance ot my office at St. Andrews, and these are two of the older boys in the children's program. Bwong on the left and Abdullah on the right. They are both really funny and sly boys, always getting in and out of trouble. I had a consequence for awhile that any misbehaviour or lateness and they would be sent to pick up trash around the school with the director (me) let's just say these boys and I spent a lot of time together, smart kids though. 

and of course big kisses for everyone. lovable gals.  

On the last day of school, we were having a soccer tournament and the little ones weren't playing as much, but as soon as I sat down they started braiding my hair and that seem to pass the time for them quite well. They are so cute! 

Here is the beautiful group with whom I play Frisbee with every frieday, of course it is a very dyanmics and fluid "Team" some people have already left egypt, and new team members are added every week. I love it. Even if the weather is starting to get really hot.  

yup I'm still alive

hey everybody, long time no post, not entirely because I'm lazy, mostly because I'm the 100% opposite of that here in Egypt and have been wicked busy for, well, you know a few months. I just finished up the regular school year at St. Andrews. I love those kids, I think I will always love those kids. The highlight of the closing ceremony, for me, was a poorly timed rendition of "walking away" by Craig David. really lovely and off key and really only one girl, Luna, singing the song. It was fantastic. I loved it. I think the best way to tell about the past couple of months will be from some pictures that I will post. And write little synopsis to each respectively. :o)

and I was like "Jeeeerusaleeeem"

So I wrote a wonderful eloquent blog, if there could be such a thing with such a name, and then pressed the "publish button" on this horrible computer and poof gone, just like that, so hopefully I can scrap together a meager imitation of the previous brilliance describing my trip to Israel.... Jerusalem in particular....

okay, so my pilgrimage to the holy land. We started out our trip checking into a hostel with a lot of character in the pouring rain on Christmas day. Awww Petra Hostel, how we do love thee. It was nice because there were 7 of us so we had enough to fill a room of bunks by ourselves. Well there were technically 8 bunks, but Matt stepping onto his top bunk, actually managed to step *through* the thinner than plywood contraption holding up the "mattress" which actually might be one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life, and laughed so hard that I cried, but then again I was also really tired, so that could've added to the general silliness and glee of the group.

It seems impossible to recount all the sights, and not only impossible, but really boring to list every single holy place we came across while in Jerusalem. If you want to learn about those, read teh guide book, I'll focus more on my experience in the city. Our hostel was located in the Old City, which is where we spent most of our time seeing the sights during the day, but everything shuts down at night, which is when we went out! The nice thing about staying in a hostel is you can be lucky enough to be plugged into this fantastic transient adventurous community of instant companions brought together by your mutual isolation in foreign surroundings. We made many of these friends. After a few days in teh Petra hostel, and bidding most of our group adieu, Matt, Kim, Alex (a new friend from New York) moved to another Hostel which was less expensive and much nicer, amazing. The Tabasco hostel was remarkably clean for one reason. As explained to me be the front desk worker whose name I have forgotten, the guy who cleans the hostel is OCD and "even when there is no dirt, he sees teh dirt in his head and has to clean it again" hmmmm, well teh bathrooms were spotless. It was a bit tricky getting dressed in a shower stall (Kim and I were the only two girls in a room of about 10 bunk beds and 10 young strapping men and one old guy, and a middle aged guy with dreds) so we had to get dressed in the shower essentially. no problem, all part of the fun of communal living.

Another interesting quirk about Jerusalem is something called the "Jerusalem Complex" where people start to think that they are biblical characters, see visions, hands coming out of the walls, you know things like that. In fact, the same nameless desk worker was telling me of how they use to have someone who called himself King David and a woman who called herself Mary Magdeline staying at the hostel, they of course got together and moved on. I heard about this queer occurrence just a day after Alex and I had been talking in the Petra Hostel, when a guy came and talked to us for at least, at LEAST 30 minutes about how he didn't have good credit now because his credit cards had the mark of the beast and that the credit card companies were cursing him. hmmm... what it sounded like to me was that he spent money over his limit and he couldn't' pay the bills on time, but sure, mark of the beast, why not? at least he was creative.

The entire time I was in Jerusalem, seeing the holy sights I could not escape this not so holy feeling. It was a combination of the commercialism of God in the form of plastic baby Jesus and holy water from the river Jordon and the constant Israeli military presence. I've said it once and I'll say it again, when you are sitting with your friend at a bar and a group of teenage boys come in with huge oozies strapped to their backs, I don't care how cheerful you are, that kills the relaxing mood right there. It was a reminder that even though we were in a holy city, we were so close and surrounded by modern military action and war. The sacred and the secular seem to be favorite travel companions. My trips down Via Dolarosa, seeing the room of the last supper and Tower of David were mingled with new friends, romance, and good food. I'm not entirely sure that pilgrimages are not meant to be a blend of both human and divine goodness, how are we to know God, but through others, surely not through the spot on one brick building that is historically recognized as the place of such and such and so and so. I think Chaucer described the journey best in Canterbury tales, where very human, very real people strove to get closer to God, but also wanted to travel, see the world and meet new people. All in all, I would say that my trip to Jerusalem was a microcosm of the life of a YAGM, we want to do well and grow closer to God, but we are also human, flawed, fallen, and far from perfect. So I have to give a little shout out to Chaucer for saying it best, Wife of Bathe, the Miller, Pardoner, coming from different backgrounds, experiences, but all trudging along that same path to get a little closer to the Women upstairs and if we are lucky make some friends along the way.

THe view from Mt. Tabor was breathtaking, this was probably my favorite stop on our tour around Galilee, on the top of this ridiculously curvey road which almsot made me car sick... it was 100% worth it.  

Karen, Kim, Lisa and myself as we started off into our holyland adventure! this picture was taken on the first day of our trip right after a ten hour busride just on the Israeli side of the border. hoorah! 

Rachel and Kim in front of the St. Catherines during Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve

Palestine

One of the boys walking through the Refugee camp, you can see all the message board writing on the wall, each color is from a different political group, the scarf around his neck is a common site, so show their support of Yasser Arafat

processional in front of the church of the nativity on Christmas eve day 

Merry Christmas From Palestine

So I just returned from one of the most amazing trips of my life. There is so much to say that I decided to write it in at least two chunks... so the first "blog" will be about our trip to Bethlehem, nestled in Palestinian territory. So we load up the bus to take our ten hour ride to Israel, cross the border with little trouble and then take another four hour bus ride up to Jerusalem (on the way we had a rest stop at the dead seas where I touched the water!) When we arrived off that bus in Jerusalem, I could not believe my eyes, it really is the 51st state, everything just like at home (except for the massive amount of military and Jewish folk.) After walking through the checkpoint to Bethlehem whatever preconceived notions I had about Palestine melted away. It is a beautiful area, but the difference in wealth by just crossing through the check point was astounding. In Bethlehem, there is graffiti everywhere in different colors (which I later learned denoted messages from different activists group around Bethlehem) But the people were amazing, so kind and helpful and welcoming, but I could go on for days about their generosity and hospitality. So anyway...we arrive at our hotel attached to the church of the nativity, and it is fantastic, a real bed with a real pillow, I can hardly believe my eyes, and there are marching bands warming up outside for the big parade on Christmas eve day. So after seeing all the sights we went to a fantastic Bach concert, and straight to bed. Christmas eve day is the busy day in Bethlehem, with parades and balloons, cotton candy, kids in Santa suits everywhere, choirs singing. Apparently the two big instruments for parades in Palestine are bagpipes and drums, because I saw at least 5 different groups with that musical conglomerate. Looking at the crowd, you wouldn't' know if you were at the Macy's day parade in New York or in Palestine, it was, well, magical....

Before I forget I should also mention a few things that I learned while I was there, a few main points, if you will, as it were. So right now the Israeli es are building essentially a cage around Bethlehem, the fence surrounds the territory so completely that they cannot escape from any side without permission, and permission is very difficult to obtain. So that means no access to all the wonderful modern miracles that lie within a mile of their house, no farmland that has been in the family for generations, and no homes or houses. We also had a tour of a Palestinian refugee camp courtesy of a man named, i kid you not, named Jihad Ramadan, and he showed us some of the sites of Israeli bombings, when people are marked for whatever reason, the military simply comes into the camps id the middle of the night, tells the people to clear out and blows up their apartments, the particular apartment we looked at was located on top of a preschool, why don't we ever see that on FOX news? where you at CNN? So now imagine the small town where you grew up had a fence around it that you could not pass through, that you had no contact with anyone outside your town in at least three years. I would go mad! But this is the situation that many Palestinians face, and those are the lucky ones, at least they can still live in their homes, that their land hasn't been fully taken over by Israeli settlers, and at least they don't live in a refugee camp.

okay back to Christmas eve, so we went to the St. Catherine's for Christmas eve service, which was crowded, but pleasant, I preferred the service we went to earlier that night at the local LUTHERAN church which was in English, Arabic and German. just my style. Oh and did I mention that it rained on Christmas eve and Christmas day? that was fantastic, clean rain too, not like the rain in Cairo, and it was freezing cold, I wore two pairs of pants almost the entire trip. I loved it. Oh and I was interviewed on CNN radio, live at five as the token American tourists in Bethlehem, we were few and far between. So that is the nutshell of my Christmas experience in Bethlehem, oh and the falafels there are fantastic. Tune in next time for "Rachel goes to Jerusalem"