Start of Classes

Well I had orientation yesterday... and today was my first day of classes... Orientation was nice... but it was one of the hotter days here in Cairo... wrapping up at 107 Degrees... which I will tell you is hot to the point where it is difficult to breath... I was amazed at the amount of sweating I did... I will never complain about Virginia Summers after this ( ok ok so I might still but I wont say it now)...

A couple of the girls I have gotten to know are pretty cool, and is some of my classes... it is weird but the Egyptian students dont really interact with the International Students... and in my Egyptian Colloquial class is entirely American students all trying to learn Egyptian Arabic... and I thought I was decent at Arabic... I knew alot of vocabulary, while not truly understanding the grammar of Arabic... but that is being thrown aside in my Colloquial Class... my Professor is really nice he will act out a word that he wants us to say, and of course those of us with prior study of Arabic say the Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic) word, and our Professor will yell at us, and say not Fusha, Amaya (Colloquial)... which entertains me to no end... because all my Fusha training is sorta helping me in this class but I am still having to relearn some things, since Egyptian Arabic they dont pronounce certain letters, or they change the pronunciation... My other class is my Comparative Politics of the Middle East... and well I was looking forward but to that class... and I still am... but after todays mini lecture I am going to have to work hard not to fall asleep or zone out during that class... The Teacher is not Middle Easters, but Eastern European and has a heavy accent, as well as a soft spoken voice... which is hard to hear over the Air Con that is in the class room... But I am still reserving judgment on that class...

After Class we went on a Mini-adventure to the Kodak place... there are about 3 or more different ID's you need here at AUC... and well you need photos for them... the place we went to was HILARIOUS... it was a nice photo studio... and well it cost me 23.50 Pounds for 12 Passport Size Photos... and hold your breath... one Frames Picture of myself that is all posed... the Guy who was taking our pictures was soo funny... there were three of us including me... and he took us upstairs to the studio and told us to look straight into the camera... and then he would go and change the background... and pose us... Tim went first and it was funny... when I went after my passport style photo... he had be lean against this special chair... but the funniest was when Erin went up there... For Tim and I he used this nice brown background for our posed pictures... but for Erin he used this drop down backdrop... and initially it looked like it was gonna be this artsy blotches that would look cool, but as it continued to drop it became this dark oasis scene with palm trees... as this was happening I could not stop laughing... and the guy was totally serious about this back drop... It was amazing... simply phenomenal how serious this guy was about this fancy photos of us... (Momma now I have a present to give to you... :-P)

I dont know what I am gonna do the rest of the day... but it is nice to have a routine to my days now... with classes...I know that a group of people I met, we are trying to plan a trip to Alexandria for not this weekend but the weekend coming up... which would be nice... we are also talking about a trip to Mount Sinai, as well as a Nile Cruise... I am just adventuring soo much while I am here... but it is interesting traveling here in Egypt it totally cheap... we are going to Alexandria for maybe $100 to a max of $125... which I think it just AMAZING!!! What is cool about the Mount Sinai trip is that we would actually climb the mount at night and watch the sunrise... since that is when it is the coolest...

Gonna go study a little bit might update more later!!!