Drawing to a close.

So it's been a long time since I last wrote, and a lot has happened. If you were keeping up with the things going on here in Egypt over the past week or two, you'll know that three AUC study abroad students were arrested in Tahrir Square and accused of throwing molotov cocktails or having materials to make them at the Ministry of Interior and Police (so the government run news says). I know two of them. You'll also have known that they were kept in detainment for a while, and that the three were eventually released without charges and deported home. Two have been on the Today show, and despite everyone's stories of what could have happened or what would have happened, I still don't know what to think anymore. For a while I was afraid that I was going to get sent home, along with every other student here under an American institution in the states. I've never felt more uneasy. Needless to say I have successfully experienced the Revolution at it's highest since January. I've been completely safe, though I've witnessed via television and heard stories of fantastic strength and unity displayed by those protesting for their rights in Tahrir Square every day. So I can check living under a suspicious government off my list of things I've never felt before along with illiteracy and being a minority.

You'll also have known that things calmed down for a few days, due to the fact that Egypt had it's first "free" democratic parliamentary elections on the 28th and 29th of November. There are lots of things floating around about the complexity of the elections themselves, and I'm not the best person to try and explain it, but all I know is that things DID kick up in Tahrir the day after the 29th. It kind of reverted back to the way it was in Tahrir for a while. Things are as quiet as they can be, currently.

Another thing - because of all this, my plan to see the sunrise at Mt. Sinai on the Sinai penninsula and see St. Catherine's monastery were foiled. I'm rather saddened by it.

However! Instead of going out to Sinai, we tried to take advantage of our abnormally long break over Thanksgiving (what with the chaos that was the three students in Tahrir and Tahrir getting really bad for a few days), by going to Giza one last time and riding the camels. Yes. I finally rode a camel. Now, family, you can all leave me alone! :)

Pictorial Evidence:

Ashley and I with Ginger (her real name was Daisy), Ross and Cat 

with Bob Marley, and Nick and Miriam with Moses.

However, while we were waiting for Nick, Ashley, and Cat (who had a really bad cab ride that took two hours when it should've taken fifteen minutes), Ross, Miriam and I wandered around. We found the fossilized sea cow (manatee) that I was shown last time I was at Giza for a field trip, and then wandered into the Slaves tombs and even found the builder's tomb. To the right is a picture of me exploring a little niche on our way to dodge the camel-selling guys and through the smaller mastabas and tombs. Seriously. The camel guys followed us everywhere and would not leave us alone! That's one thing I'm really not going to miss when I go home. The badgering, the incessant badgering. They kept telling us things that we already knew. We live here. We've been living here for three months (20 days left as I write this)! We've been here before. Just... just go away! Goodness! I swear I'm going to walk into stores at home and be amazed that no one bothers me (except for in department stores... I'll have to try really hard not to be snippity with them) and I'm probably going to freak out when no one follows me home asking for money. It's just what they do here...

But anyway, it was seriously two hours of them badgering. I was really grumpy and frustrated with them, and when we finally rode the camels, one of the owner's called me "angry-lady". Yep. That's me. I was very angry and short tempered with them. I think being here has caused me to grow some thick-skin (and perfecting my witch-with-a-b-please face). 

Then on Friday, my roommate Amelia, and some of our friends went to Cairo Tower on Zamalek where we live to view what would be called Martyr Friday from above. Oh. My. God. The smog. Mom, I may need an inhaler when I come home!

Cairo Tower

Tahrir Square from Cairo Tower

The swanky side of Zamalek and SMOOOOG.

Sunset in the Smog. Woo, lung cancer!

It really wasn't the best day to go out and spend 70 l.e. going up and seeing everything, but it was good for seeing Tahrir. Anything further than that was pointless (i.e. the pyramids were just faint little lines until the sunset, then they were slightly less faint lines). Sunday we had class, but then Monday was off in addition to Tuesday because of elections.

Then schoolwork finally kicked up. You know how hard it is to actually care about your work when you've basically done next to nothing all semester? Really. Really. Hard. I've never felt this way about school before, and I don't desire to feel this way about school. I was always that kid who was super excited for school! I love it. I hope when I come back to Gettysburg, my work ethic is restored!

Speaking of Gettysburg, I can't wait to come home. Yes, I have a bit of sadness in me for leaving here. It's a great country. I do like it here. I'm just not meant to live here like some are. I don't think I could handle it. But that's what study abroad is all about, yeah? Finding out about yourself. I've found a great masters program while I've been here online in England, close to the Scottish border. I'm absolutely in love with it. I think that's where I belong. Maybe someday I'll come back to Egypt and do all the things I won't get to do (i.e. Sinai, Black and White Desert, spend more time in Alexandria) right now because of time. There's twenty days left. I keep thinking about things I miss from home (mainly food, i.e. - grilled cheese, Swiss Miss hot chocolate, cheesecake, MILK!, garlic bread, lots and lots of nice cold fruit like grapes, bigger cartons of juice, cinnamon toast, iced tea, and of course Servo cookies!) and things other than food. Like my giant stack of books. My puppy. My bed. Oh and I guess my little brother ;). I did get an email, on a tangent, from Professor Hendon about a field school in Italy for three weeks in the summer. I still really really want to go one day to a field school, but this was just poor timing. I already have a job for the summer (I'm going to be an intern at Appomattox National Park in the middle of nowhere Virginia!) and it's so expensive!

Anyway, I'm expecting these next twenty days to go by really fast. At least, part of me really hopes they do. I've got a lot of work to get done before final exams (of which I have three, and then one presentation) and then a week to do nothing, get some shopping done, pack and go home!