The Storm

Just this morning I was thinking about how I miss having thunderstorms. Every once in awhile it's nice to have a good round of thunder and lightning. Well, my wish was granted this evening. Take a look at the video, taken from our apartment during the sundown call to prayer:

Earlier this week there was a bomb that went off in Cairo at a synagogue. Don't worry, though, it didn't hurt anyone. The authorities expect that the man who detonated it did so as a sort of retaliation for Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank. You can read an article about it here.

For the last 2 days I've had a fever and haven't had too much energy. It's no fun being 5,000 miles from home and being sick. Hopefully I'll be up to snuff later this weekend so I don't have to miss any more classes.

Have a good Thursday!

66.6666%

I'm pretty sure I'm 66.666% of the way through my time in Egypt already (meaning I've been here for 6 months); it's hard to believe. Today as I was walking to class I realized that I've already been in class for 3 weeks. It seems like it was just last week that I was wandering around Turkey.

Other than that little announcement, there's not much else to be said...except that tonight I made popcorn on the stove in a pot, which is so much fun. Instead of salting it, I added sugar. It was awesome and helped me memorize all the 5000 plurals and verbal nouns I need to know for tomorrow!

Have a good Sunday/Monday!

Wilted and Gone

I checked on the plant (see previous post) this morning to see its progress. The problem is, it wasn't there! I don't think anyone picked it. I think it just kind of disappeared because we never gave it any water. So much for saving money on produce...

One of my friends asked me an interesting question the other day about what I have learned since getting to Egypt. You may remember my list of things that I've experienced a few posts ago, but I thought maybe I should post something a little more serious, too.

Yesterday we were walking home from dinner and decided to stop by McDonald's to get a McFlurry, which is, for those of you who don't know what that is, an amazing combination of ice cream and Oreo cookies. After getting our dessert, we headed off in the direction of our apartment, just like normal.

By the time we were done with our dessert, we were about halfway through the park that's located right next to our flat. At this point three little girls came running up to us, wanting to get food from us. I didn't feel like it was right for me to give one of the girls my trash and kept hoping that if we just walked faster, they would realize that they weren't going to get anything. But she was more insistent than most of the kids who run up to foreigners to get money. In the end, I gave her a little bit of money and she gladly took it and ran back off into the park.

There are many, many people who live on hardly anything. I don't know how the man who sells bunches of bananas for 70 cents from his cart all day is able to feed his family. I don't know how all 80,000+ taxi cab drives are able to afford payments on their car loans AND feed their families.

In America do we consider going to McDonald's a luxury? I don't think so. I never, ever go to McDonald's when I'm back in the states. Why? Because, even though it's cheap, there's better food options for us. But in Egypt being able to afford McDonald's for a family of 4 isn't easy; it's a place for the elite. It's truly a luxury.

Thinking about these things has just reminded me again how nice we have things in America. We have been blessed beyond measure. Next time you're eating fast food, remember to thank God for the blessings in your life.

Have a good weekend!!!

Apartment Life

It seems like there's snow all over the place in the US. Well, let me tell you, I woke up last night at 3 a.m because I was really hot. So I had to turn on my air-conditioning. I don't know what it's going to be like in May...

Since I get up before the sun rises every morning, I usually get to see the sunrise. There was one particular morning a few days ago that was especially beautiful. Here is the sunrise that I saw from my bedroom window.

The quality of life this semester is much better than last semester. It's nice to live off campus because it makes it easier to realize that there is a life that exists outside of school...however, that life isn't anything too big because I pretty much only eat and do homework when I get back from school. In order to liven things up yesterday while we were eating our shrimp scampi (yum!), Rachel and I decided to have Lucy prove that "she is not weak" by having her eat a tablespoon of salt. I'm not sure how much of it she spat out and how much of it she actually ate, but needless to say, it must have tasted pretty bad.

Today in my Arabic listening class--which is going to give me stress ulcers--we learned the vocabulary for Eskimos living in the North Pole who kill a polar bear and then use the skin as a "beautiful carpet." Some vocabulary is just so beneficial to my life...

One other random thing--this is the plant that is growing out of one of our bathroom's sink (we never use this bathroom so I was really surprised when I found it a few days ago). I'm hoping that before too long we'll be able to pick produce from our bathroom. Wouldn't that be great?!

Have a good Tuesday!

Here at Last

It's the weekend!!!

This semester I'm much busier than last semester, hence the lack of updates throughout the week. I usually wake up at 5:30 (when the call to prayer goes off for the second time), eat breakfast, check my mail, work on Arabic for an hour, get on the bus to school, study Arabic in school from 9:30-3:00, go to the gym, come home by 5, eat dinner, work on Arabic until 10, and then go to bed. That's just about every day. Not too exciting. So until the student newspaper starts coming up with articles that I can comment about or something funny happens on campus, my weeks just don't have enough blog-worthy material...

My hardest class so far is my Arabic listening class. I knew I was a visual learner before this semester started, but this class has confirmed it all the more. Here's a sample of what we listen to in class (first 2 minutes only)...

This video we only watched 100 times (we weren't supposed to read the subtitles, which was really tempting for me). We also watched one about a train from Beirut carrying flowers and candy. It was pretty awesome. We also listen to BBC news headlines in Arabic, which are really hard since the people talk so fast. It's difficult, but hopefully the more I hear the easier it will get.

I'm also taking a written media class where we have to read newspaper articles and translate them. This is also very difficult. I've decided that if I have to learn words in Arabic that I'm not familiar with in English, then the class is getting pretty hardcore. I have no idea what an "eminent delegation" or "International Monetary Fund" are. But I'm learning them in Arabic! Haha...

Apartment life is still wonderful. There's nothing like coming home for the weekend and having some fresh-baked banana bread...

Have a good Friday!

The Apartment

So you can get an idea of what our awesome apartment is like...

Location: Maadi, Cairo, Egypt

Residents: Lucy, Rachel, Johan, and Ben

Bedrooms: 3 (4 beds)

Bathrooms: 2.5

Extras: Balcony, washer, dryer, dishwasher, King Tut rug-turned-wall decoration

First row (left to right): Lucy.

Second row: Ben, Johan, Rachel.

--Rachel, you didn't have a copyright on your picture, so I snagged it for my blog...

The living room/dining room area

The mosque that's 25 feet from our window. Also serves as our alarm clock at 5:30 every morning as well as our dose of theological teaching in Arabic every Friday. (I don't know why the picture seems to be messed up). There are also pyramids in the background, but they're really hard to see. BUT THEY'RE THERE!

Tonight's sunset from our apartment balcony. Awesome.

There's also an English-speaking church within a 10 minute walk from our apartment, which we went to for the first time yesterday. It was nice to go to church for the first time in over 5 months.

Tomorrow starts the 2nd week of school!

Have a good Saturday!

Ephesus Pictures

The few pictures that I've posted here cannot come close to depicting how amazing Ephesus is. It was especially nice to visit it when we did because there weren't swarms of people there. Any visit to Turkey, I'd say, should include a trip to this city (another one of the churches mentioned in Revelation 2 as well as the city where Paul lived)...

Looking at the agora (marketplace) through the Gate of Augustus, near the library.

There are statues of the 4 virtues at the front of the library. I believe this one is wisdom, but right now I just can't remember if that's correct or not...guess I should have chosen a different virtue to sit in front of...

Oh, you know...Johan's just eating a Turkish delight in the Roman bath house (toilets in the background). It was quite a nice view of the city from here. It would have been a nice place to hang out...

This is the view of the theater from the stage. This theater is huge--seats approximately 44,000 people. It was neat because the stage had been renovated so you could see pretty clearly how they spiced things up with trap doors and such.

Of course, besides just having fun acting, speeches, and meetings, there were also times when the entertainment included gladiators. These are the halls underneath the stage where the gladiators waited before headed out to fight. I can't imagine the emotions they felt while waiting here.

In its prime, there were about 450,000 people who lived in Ephesus. Here you can see the library in the background.

The Library of Celsus was one of the largest libraries in the ancient world, holding 12,000 scrolls.

Classes are in full-swing now. It's a lot of Arabic all the time.

Have a good Tuesday!