May 28: Beginning Arabic

I got up at…okay early…this morning. 6:30 I think. I talked online; because that is the only time I can talk with people at a normal time back in the states. Amelia and I got dressed, and left the room around 8:10. We walked to ILI and only got heckled by a few guys. Must have been a slow morning. Usually I get to hear how beautiful I am at least 8 times between the hotel and ILI. (It really helps my self-esteem :-P)

My first class was Egyptian Colloquial Arabic with Amir. The entire class was in Arabic, all two hours of it. We learned how to introduce ourselves, and all the different greetings and such. I ate lunch in the cafeteria, which I will never to again, because it’s so expensive. 26 pounds for lunch…so…around 5 bucks.

After a quick lunch, I had my Modern Standard Arabic class with Ahmed, who is intense, and very picky about how we write our alphabet. I still think he’s awesome. We learned a lot of letters, and how to pronounce each one, and add all the vowels (which are not letters in Arabic, they are just little accent markings…).

After class, Amelia and I walked back to the hotel, and crashed. We had stayed up really late last night, so we took naps. At 5 Sid and his roommate David came and picked us up so that we could go get SIM cards for our phones, so that we can call places and home and such. David bought a phone, and then we went to get our cards. Mine didn’t work with my phone…yay Cingular… I went and bought a phone where David got his (it was 250 pounds = 45 dollars.) Magically both my SIM card and phone work, so now I have communication, w00t. If you want to call me from the U.S. this is how, 011 + 20 + 2 + 0126323547. We still don’t know if it eats up my minutes too if I get calls, so…I dunno.

After getting phones and stuff, Amelia, David and I all went up to the outdoor restaurant on the roof of our hotel. We ate a great dinner, and sat there until the sunset and we could hear all the calls to prayer echoing all over Cairo. We talked for a while. Apparently David spent the past year teaching English in Pakistan. He’s going to grad school in International Relations this next year. Really fun guy to hang out with.

After we ate, Amelia came back to the room to study our Arabic, then we organized all our notes ( I recopied mine to help me understand). Amelia teaches English, and she knows more Arabic, so she helped me get some of the things I couldn’t understand in Colloquial Arabic.

I talked online and did some emailing and such, now I think I’m going to head to sleep. Tomorrow will be the last night that Amelia and I stay here, because we are moving into our flat early Wednesday morning. It is still sketch, and still 100 dollars for the whole month. Sigh. I won't know how I like it until I'm all moved in there...