Wadi Natrun

So we had another day trip today to Wadi Natrun, a popular pilgrimage site since before Christianity and a known stop in Jesus, Mary and Joseph's trip through Egypt. Wadi Natrun has since become the location of multiple Coptic monasteries, two of which we were lucky enough to visit.

Our first stop was the Monestary of St. Bishoy, named after a Coptic monk who supposedly carried Christ up a mountain while he was disguised as an old man. Despite the tradition of monks being burried in the cathedral in Cairo, St. Bishoy requested that his body be interred at the monastery and we saw more than a few Copts who had made pilgrimage to pray over his body.



The monastery itself was gorgeous - one of the greenest places I've seen in Egypt. We were given a tour by one of the monks who was kind enough to deal with all of our excessive questioning. It was interesting hearing how the monks live. The compound as a whole is self-sufficient with different monks assigned different labors such as farming, caring for livestock, and dealing with tourists. Despite the importance given to seclusion, the monastery has kept up with the times. Visitors of all faiths are always welcome and one monk's job is even running the monastery website.

We saw the long dry Martyr's Well, named after its waters were used to clean the monastery after a massacre, as well as the church housing two centuries old doors and an ancient pulpit preserved by the Edomites. With the advent of microphones the pulpit is no longer used, but it still stands positioned to deliver sermons to the masses. After the Church we toured the monks' austere cells and the old flour mill before sitting down to a lunch of ful. When given the choice to finish seeing the rest of the monastery or visit a second one, the group decided variety would be good for us, so we thanked our tour guide and loaded back on the buses.

The second monastery, The Monestary of the Holy Virgin Mary, was less accommodating. We weren't allowed past the church and the gift shop, but the entrance was still a spectacular view. I'm amazed at the architectural achievements of religious communities. All of the monasteries, even the ones we only drove past, were sprawling compounds of stone and crosses decorated with iconography of all types.



Our visit made me wonder what the recent Islamist victory in the elections will mean for Egypt's Copts. They're a significant minority, and an important part of the history of Egypt, but it's hard not to notice the religious lines that have been clearly drawn. I was surprised to find that many of the Muslim Egyptians who accompanied us on the trip, despite their many Christian (and Coptic) friends, were uncomfortable in the unfamiliar religious environment. It's a cultural division that would be hard to overcome under the best of circumstances, and those aren't the circumstances we're under today.

When we got back to Alexandria I did some shopping. In addition to a few clothing purchases (remind me to write a post about clothes someday soon), I also kept with the theme of the day and stopped by a Christian owned shop that sells a wide variety of Christmas paraphernalia. I bought some spray snow and some "surprise" gifts that you're supposed to shake up and throw on a table to get a surprise. I refuse to give in to my curiosity and see what that surprise is before the 25th. Being around all the Christmas themed bobbles felt like home. I wish it wasn't a waste of money to buy Christmas decorations, but it wouldn't be worth it when I'd only use them for one year. I'm not even going to be in my apartment for Christmas.

Speaking of which, for those of you who haven't heard I'll be spending my Christmas break (December 22-January 1) in Jordan. I'll write about it when I get back, but our itinerary already has me bouncing with excitement. We're even going to see the site of Jesus' baptism at Bethany beyond the Jordan on Christmas day. Since we're based out of a largely Christian town that day, I'm hoping there will be some festivities to share in, but we'll see.

Oh, and a food update: my new addiction is chocolate covered peanuts, just in case you were wondering.

That's all for now. I don't expect I'll write again before the new year what with travelling and all, but who knows. In case I don't, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! I'll be thinking of you while we're four wheeling in the desert!

ABCs and 123s

I failed my first exam last week.

Okay, that's not true. There was that one mishap with Calculus for Engineering majors back in 2006, but that's beside the point.

Before those of you who know how anal retentive I am about my grades start freaking out about me going off the deep end though, you should know it wasn't a real exam. It still upset me a bit, but this story has a happy ending. Let us start from the beginning.

The academic portion of the Flagship program is made up of three major components: three language classes at the center in Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, and either Arabic Literature or Arabic Media (I'm taking media), the internship which I have explained and for which we have to write a weekly report detailing what we've learned, and a direct enrollment course within Alexandria University itself.

This direct enrollment course is a unique experience. We can choose any course in any department as long as it's taught in Arabic and then we attend the course like a regular Egyptian student. As you can imagine, this course is quite a challenge, both because of the advanced language necessary to comprehend the lectures and because of the differences between the American and the Egyptian education systems. To help us out, the program hires an academic partner for each of us, selected from the Egyptian students in the class, to meet with us two hours a week and go over the course material. My academic partners name is Dalia, and I'm lucky to have her because she goes above and beyond.

We're both enrolled in second year 3ilm al-lugha, or the science of language. More loosely translated, it's a linguistics class. I chose it because of my linguistics major at UT. I hoped that if I chose a class where I was already comfortable with the material, I could focus on the language. My background in the field is certainly helpful, however the class approaches the topic from the standpoint of Arabic rather than Language as a whole so I'm still learning a lot.

The real challenge I'm facing in the class is the methodology. Since before the time of the Prophet and the foundation of Islam, Arabic culture has put a heavy stress on memorization. Despite the veneration of language, most were illiterate and literature was passed down through oral tradition. Even the Qur'an wasn't written down until after the Prophet's death, hence the importance put on memorizing the verses that continues to this day. I assume, though I have only my own experiences to back up my assumption, that the influence of this custom has directly led to the importance of memorization in the various Arabic education systems.

To give you a better picture, we sit down in class every Tuesday, the professor comes in, we get out our notebooks, and then we begin to copy down her lecture verbatim. She'll usually read out a bunch of definitions, and then give some examples on the board for clarification. Class ends, and we're sent home to study. I was at a loss. Was I supposed to memorize every word that had come out of her mouth?

This is where Dalia's help was invaluable.

We spent our first few meetings basically recopying the lectures with more detailed explanations from Dalia. I expressed my worry, however, about the upcoming exams and what they would consist of. Was I just supposed to recopy everything I'd heard from memory? Not quite.

To assuage my fears, Dalia volunteered to write me a practice exam as long as I promised to study. And I did study, a lot, just not the night before our meeting. (I had other homework.) When she gave me the exam I thought it looked easy enough - a long list of terms to define and then two longer questions, the answers to which were contained in neat lists in my notes. Without the information fresh in my head, however, I wrote most of the definitions in my own words and was rewarded with a paper full of red marks and exes.

"You didn't study," Dalia told me. "But I did!" I insisted. It was no use.

She sent me home with my corrected paper, an order to study more, and an appointment to meet again for another test two days later. I probably spent more time studying than I should have. I do have other assignments to complete after all. But I was chagrined by my failure.

When we met again she gave me a similar test to which I churned out the answers verbatim complete with the same examples we'd been given in class. As she began to look over my paper, her smile got bigger and bigger. There were a few tiny mistakes, I forgot a dot on a letter or the appropriate preposition for a specific verb, but when she'd finished marking every answer correct she looked at me and gave me the best compliment I have received in Egypt so far.

"If I didn't know you were foreign I would have thought this was an Egyptian's paper."

So I can do this. If I put in the time.

Now that I have the system down, we've started studying in earnest. Despite only being paid to meet with me two hours a week, Dalia has set up an hour a day, every day leading up to the Christmas break, to study. "Isn't that a lot?" I asked her. "But the exams are in January!" she responded. She began studying for some of her exams months ago.

So, it will be a stress on my time, but I'm glad to have her help, and I always enjoy our meetings. There might be some personal differences, just like I have with many of the Egyptian girls, but our love for linguistics unites us. Even if we don't have a lot in common personally, we can always discuss Language theory and the differences between Arabic linguistics and its Western counterpart.

So I'm going in to meet with her tomorrow bright and early, 9:00AM on a Saturday. They told us when we enrolled not to expect higher than a C (or rather the Egyptian equivalent), but I'm hoping with Dalia's help to do much better than that. Only time and my study habits will tell.