What I should have started doing a while ago (originally posted June 18, 2008)

It would have made sense to start blogging before I came to Egypt for the semester and not after, but I've never been one for logic before the fact. So now, here I am writing about the past semester I've spent here in deep retrospect and all at once. First, some general observations.

The first thing I noticed at AUC was the number of smokers. Basically everyone at AUC smokes. It is the cool thing to do. Having lived my entire life in the United States, this was surprising to me. At home, smoking has long outgrown its coolness. The vast majority of social groups look at smoking as dumb rather than cool, something for the social rejects. Not at AUC. Here people sit on the 'plat' steps, the cool place to be, smoking their cigarettes and giving disapproving looks at everyone who passes. At first, I figured that it was just the people who sat in the places I could immediately see who smoked. I figured that I was just hanging around the smokers' spot. If I moved to other parts of campus, I'd find the groups among which smoking was uncool. That didn't happen. Day after day I was shocked at the kinds of people I'd see smoking. A highly studious guy from my Psychology class. A fully veiled, abeya wearing girl. A very nicely dressed girl with pearly white teeth and freshly done hair. It took me weeks before I realized that, at AUC, it doesn't matter your social class: smoking is just plain cool. I even noticed that a large number of American students there smoked. I was tempted to ask them if they started smoking while in Egypt but refrained because of the obvious rudeness of the question. There is a large percentage of people who smoke in Egypt but the percentage at AUC is much greater. My friend Yara, a recent transfer to AUC from fellow private, English language university MIU (Misr International), told me that she too was shocked when she came to AUC. At MIU, she said, smoking was popular among the guys but, although there were girls who smoked, there numbers were very few and they were looked down upon by the rest of student body. It's as though smoking is a method used by AUC's ridiculously rich student body to distinguish them class-wise. It was hard for me, the long time anti-smoking coalition member, to just settle down and watch but eventually I barely even noticed the cigarettes in my friends' hands.

The other main thing I noticed: the fashion. The AUC population is consumed by it. On my first day, still friendless, I sat in a chair in the main courtyard and watched the people go by. The guys were almost all in jeans and sweaters. 99% of the girls sported one of two fashions. There was the skinny jeans with flats look and the boots on top of jeans look. The overwhelming unanimity of those fashions made anyone wearing flared jeans stick out like a football player among ballerinas. On that particular day, I was wearing very wide-legged jeans and even me, usually pretty oblivious to fashion, felt out of place. By the end of the week, the fashion had broadened a little bit since people were no longer wearing their favorite outfits. Even so, I was never anywhere close to unconscious of my appearance and the appearance of my clothing while at AUC. People treated coming to college like the big social event in their life, and, because of the way Egyptian society is, for many of them it probably was. The Study Abroad students with their loose-fitting sweat pants, t-shirts and sloppily tied up pony-tails create a sharp contrast with the Egyptian students, with their meticulously applied make-up, beautifully done hair and clothes that I would probably choose for interviews. I appreciated it really. I liked that college was something you get ready for and not something you roll out of bed and stumble into. It made education feel more important. Oh..then there's the bag thing. I happened to bring a messenger bag with me to Egypt rather than a traditional back-pack and several of my Egyptian friends at AUC commented on that. I remember Yara saying that she thought it was peculiar how so many Study Abroad students wore backpacks. 'Don't they know they look silly?', she said. Mahinur one day told me, "the best thing about you is that you're not like other study abroad students. You don't carry a stupid backpack. I hate how they walk around carrying those backpacks as if we were in school or something." It was true. Find someone with a backpack and there's a 99% chance they're an international student. Where then, do they put their books, their notebooks, their pens? Well, for starters, very few full-time students at AUC buy the books. They photocopy the necessary pages. Those who do buy the books though are very unlikely to bring them to college. Why, after all, would they need them there? Few of the Egyptian students I met do their studying on campus. They come to socialize with their friends and go to class (if they feel like it) and go home to do their work. Notebooks and pens some girls carry in the ridiculously oversized purses that many girls at AUC carry. Others just ask for a piece of paper and pen from the person sitting next to them in every class and keep the assorted pieces of paper in their purses. The guys are a whole other story. Guys clearly don't carry purses and backpacks aren't cool so the solution? Just don't bring anything to school that doesn't fit in pockets. That's not entirely true. I did see some guys carrying around a notebook but many of the guys in my classes just didn't take notes unless the professor explicitly said they should and then they'd borrow a pen and paper.

Mmm..and attendance. All of my classes at AUC and, from what I hear from my friends, most of the classes at AUC have strict attendance policies. The 2% penalty for each class missed that my Anthropology and Media professors impose is apparently not rare. The strange thing is, people still frequently miss class. When I'd ask my friends why they missed classes they'd usually tell me they were tired, not in the mood, didn't do an assignment due that day or just wanted to hang out with their friends. Yes. I'm not kidding. On several occasions people told me that they skipped a class because they were having too much fun with their friends to let the loss of a couple of percentage points in a class take them away from their fun. This is in sharp contrast to what I found to be the main goal of many AUC students: to get good grades. Many of the questions people asked in classes went along the lines of 'professor, how will this information show up in the exam?'. In classes, not I suppose too different from anywhere else, students did only the things that would clearly contribute to a higher grade in the class. My Anthropology class, which had a percentage of the grade dependant on participation, was much more lively than my Psychology class which had none. Activity on my Anthropology class blog increased greatly after it was announced that there was a possibility of extra credit for those who were active on it. When my Media professor offered extra credit for attending an event he announced in class about half the class showed up as opposed to the one or two who showed up when no extra credit was offered. To be fair, this could have been just because all my classes were introductory courses that most people took only to fulfill core requirements and had no real interest in them. Many of my study abroad friends said that people were very involved and passinoate about their upper-level courses.

In Egypt, it rains. Sorry but that's for Laila; she was convinced that it never rains here, but a large part of February was rainy, so...

Being a girl in Egypt is hard. Guys have it so much easier. They walk around, do whatever they want and they're just left alone. As a girl you're constantly scrutinized, stared at, talked to. It's not hard to ignore. I just don't pay attention to the looks I get and what people say. It just bothers me that society has just accepted that things are that way. Girls are second-class citizens who deserve to be annoyed for the mere fact that they dare to walk outside. I rarely walk around with guys here, but when Ashraf was visiting I obviously took him around. I was surprised to notice that nobody said anything to me when I walked with him. It's like society is trying to make girls feel as though, without a man, they just don't belong. On a day-to-day basis I don't actually let what anybody says to me on the street bother me at all but on a matter of principle it is annoying. Why is society that way?

People here are, in almost every respect, all alike. They can spot someone who doesn't belong from a mile away. Here, someone who looks different doesn't pass by just like any other in a busy crowd. No. They are stared at. They are approached. They are asked questions. Some foreigners are annoyed by this. Many others take it as welcoming. The funy thing is that, from my appearance, people can't tell I'm different. My blood is Egyptian and so I look the part. When people hear me speak any more than a few sentences though they can tell I have an accent and imperfect grammar. Some people are blunt in their curiosity. 'why is your arabic broken?', 'is one of your parents foreign?'. Others just give me odd looks and try to size me up, trying to decide whether my broken speech is due to some disability or if I'm drunk. It's amusing. When people ask me where I'm from, I tell them Egypt. They normally continue to prod trying to figure out where my accent comes from but I only give in and tell them if I really like them. The best is when I'm with my friend Basma. She too is Egyptian-American. She was raised mostly in the US but now she lives here again. People always look so confused as to why we, two Egyptian looking girls, would be speaking English to each other. Once, we were in a taxi with her sister Abir, the driver kept asking us where we were from. We said Egypt over and over until finally he got frustrated and asked us why then we were speaking English. We asked him why not. He looked confused and then I told Basma to say we were practicing for our English test the next day. She did and the guy looked so confused. It was absolutely hilarious. It's just interesting to see how people handle difference here. Anyone who doesn't follow the strict 'foreigner' or 'egyptian' molds they have for people just baffles them.

I think that's a big part in why people have such a hard time placing me here. Some, like my friend Ann, are quick to say that I'm American. I've lived my whole life in America so how could I be anything other than American. Others, like my friend Mahinur, say without thinking that I'm Egyptian. My parents are fully-Egyptian; how could I be anything else? The funny thing is people seem to have a genuine need to place me in just one of those categories. Just as people expect me to give a straightforward answer when they ask me if I like Egypt or the United States better. Of course there are aspects to Egypt that I like better and aspects to the US I like better. People are never satisfied with that answer; they take it to be a polite way of saying I like the United States better which is really not at all true. In the same way, people can't seem to accept that I'm Egyptian-American. I am both. There are aspects of my personality that are very reflective of my upbringing by Egyptian parents and there are aspects that clearly evidence the years I've lived in the US. According to Basma, that is exactly what being American is all about. I'm not like other Americans but that's the whole point of America. People are different. Difference is what makes up the country. I suppose I agree with that to a certain extent. Having a mixture of cultures is what America's all about but, still, I feel as though there are people who identify completely with being 'American' and I just don't...for now Egyptian-American will do.