Tag Archives: Arabic

Jul 20 2011
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Best blog posts, Humorous, Lists, Three minute read

34 ways to express cowardice when confronted with a difficult test

The end of the summer portion of the CASA program is near and we are currently in what might be called finals week. Normally, final tests have some relation to the material presented throughout the course of study, measuring the cumulative progress of the pupil. In the case of the tests of Professor Harb, however, the test has no purpose aside from inspiring fear and hopelessness among her students. Let the incontinent student beware:  you might need a fresh pair of pants after glancing through the exercises on the test and realizing no amount of studying would have saved you from the ensuing humiliation.

In other words, Professor Harb’s test was difficult. After finishing the 2 hr and 15 minute long affair, I rose from my seat and limped to her desk to turn in the test, my left foot having fallen asleep while my brain was being crushed by the Arabic language. Cackling at my pain, she says, “What, you can’t even walk?” I whimper, “The test was hard….” She gets up from her chair, walks around the side of the desk, slaps me across the face, and says, “Shame on you. The test was not hard.” I made up that last portion, but she might as well have slapped me. With the one exception of the entrance exam for CASA itself, this was the hardest Arabic test that I have faced in my life, but it is over now and there is nothing left to do in Prof. Harb’s class except for doodle and drool during the 2 hours I have with her tomorrow.

But in all honesty, Prof. Harb is great and she’s probably one of the best professors in the program and I’m happy to be in her class because I learn things and she loves teaching. She considers us her children and I consider her a non-hostile life form, so it’s not like I’m unhappy in the class. But the test was hard, so here are possible routes of action I thought for the future (read: fall) when faced with a similarly difficult test.

1. Stealthily climb out the window and down the side of the building.

2. Jump out the window and end it all.

3. Jump out the window and onto the pergola 20 meters from the side of the building. Climb down the pergola to safety.

4. Hide behind a curtain.

5. Hide under your desk.

6. Hide under someone else’s desk.

7. Hide under professor’s desk.

8. Go to the bathroom for the entire class period.

9. Hide behind the projection screen and hope she doesn’t see your feet.

10. Camouflage yourself by putting the wastebasket on your head.

11. Plead insanity.

12. Plead stupidity.

13. Sit for a while and try to take the test, then pretend to realize you’re from a different class and don’t belong amongst the test takers.

14. Pretend you’re someone else and only look like the student who was supposed to take the test.

15. Kill the professor.

16. Kill the other students, then the professor.

17. Kill yourself, then the other students, then the professor.

18. Close your eyes and hope it all goes away.

19. Close your eyes, lift your hands towards heaven, and offer the test as a sacrifice to God, pleading for Him to consume it with an all consuming fire.

20. Set the test on fire yourself, claim your classmate did it, then run out of the room screaming.

21. Make a paper airplane out of the test and then set it on fire.

22. Eat the test instead of taking it, claiming to have misunderstood the exercise.

23. Return the test to the teacher with a spit mark on it saying you found it insultingly simple.

24. Report the test as an incident of abuse.

25. Report the test as an act of terrorism that inspired fear in the heart of an American.

26. Use the test as a diary to talk about your feelings and hope that’s good enough.

27. Explain that you never actually learned how to read.

28. Hide the test and say you lost it. Repeat as needed.

29. Sprinkle soil and grass seeds on the test, moisten with water, plant in the earth and watch it grow the answers. Harvest answers and turn in the test.

30. Vomit on the test. Repeat as needed.

31. Say you appreciate the offer but you really couldn’t take a test today. Make sure you’re sincere.

32. Claim a religious reason: Arabic tests are considered an abomination on the 20th of every month according to Leviticus.

33. Try bargaining with the test; talk it down from its level of difficulty.

34. Stir up philosophical questioning amongst the students, aiming for a mass walkout: “What’s the point of all this anyways? In a few billion years when the sun blows up and the earth becomes a potato chip, who will care how we did on a stupid Arabic test?

35. Take an aspirin and then take the test. Obtain a tissue for the ensuing nosebleed. Schedule an MRI to make sure everything is still okay up there afterwards.

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Jul 13 2011
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Anecdotes, Two minute read

Goodbye! Welcome!

As I was skype-chatting with my sister today (not Frank..the other one), talking about mundane things like my recent grocery shopping trip, I mentioned that I had a random “I love Egypt moment” when I was once again surprised by the friendliness of the employees at each place I stopped at, most of them telling me “Welcome” as I exited their places of commerce. The one exception was the nut store I went to, where the guy was only postal-worker friendly (that’s a nod to the comedy of Rick Steves, for all you fans out there).

Then not-Frank said something strange: “They said welcome as you were leaving?”  I paused to think. Why was this weird? How has my concept of normality changed in the miles between Cairo and the United States of America? I determined that the usual context for welcoming someone in America is upon entering a place of commerce or residence, the word signalling the beginning of a relationship that will last either as long as it takes to get ice cream or for socially unaware guests to leave. Regardless of the length, the welcome firmly belongs at the relationship’s initiation.

In Egypt, however, welcoming people who look foreign is an activity that knows no beginning nor end; some might say it is a way of life. Anytime is appropriate to welcome a foreigner, especially if they are simply passing on the street minding their own business, looking straight ahead, or appearing conscious. Indeed, it is common national knowledge that nothing says hospitality like one hundred weekly repetitions of “Welcome to Egypt” or simply “Welcome,” or even the rare “Welcome in Egypt,” “Welcome on Egypt,” or “Welcome Egypt” (anyone who has studied a foreign language knows that propositions are hard–no blame or shame being cast here). I’m convinced that even if the educational system were to fail them in every other way, each Egyptian child would leave primary school knowing how to make paper airplanes and say “Welcome (X) Egypt.”

Sometimes it can get annoying. Can’t they tell from my appearance that I’ve already been in the country for a whole 6 weeks and am almost completely Egyptian? What about my wrinkled linen pants and dress shirt, also wrinkled, doesn’t give that impression? On the other hand, the welcoming is just another reminder of the warmth of Egyptian society it is famous  for. People really are friendly–even let-you-borrow-money-friendly (most of the time). So in answer to not-Frank’s question: should there be any time whatsoever in which a person is not welcome? I don’t want to live in a world where that is true.

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Jul 02 2011
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Anecdotes, Humorous, Two minute read

I’ll take the sidewalk on the left

After staying inside almost the entire day and immersing myself once again in the Yacoubian Building/other Arabic homework pursuits, I finally left the apartment in the late afternoon in order to purchase credit for my phone.

At the store, I boldly greet the employees and declare I would like to buy a sidewalk. They chuckle and look at me…and I say it again, “you know, sidewalk, like for 50 pounds” and then one of the employees helpfully says “a sidewalk is the thing you walk on” and then it finally clicks. Oops. The word for credit seems eerily similar. Unfortunately, I’ve since forgotten the proper word for credit but will remember quite clearly from now on “sidewalk.”

My next errand was scoping out the selection of a different grocery store for their selection of off-brand Nutella since I’m trying to discover the most delicious and cheap hazelnut chocolate spread. The store’s selection proved disappointing, but on the way there I saw 3 children in tae kwon do uniforms sitting with an older man wearing a black shirt with a dragon on it and smoking sheesha at a cafe. I imagined that after an unimpressive performance by the kids in tae kwon do class, he decided to give up on them and smoke a bit before their parents came back to get them.

I’m touring Coptic Cairo tomorrow, which is sure to be exhausting especially since I leave in about 6 hours and still need to take the long night-nap before then. Also, my feet are incredibly itchy. See my recent tweet.

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Jun 26 2011
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Anecdotes, Two minute read

What are songs we all know?

Al-Azhar park: I took this photo myself.

Today was full of music, more specifically, songs I myself was singing. It all began in the “Singing Club,” my attendance in which is regulated by the stipulations of the fellowship. In the club we listen to Arabic songs and look at the lyrics and try to understand them.

I think most of the people in the “club” didn’t know what they were getting themselves into and thus failed to realize that we ourselves are required to sing most of the songs after we listen to them. Since some of the students are shy/self-censored/or have quiet voices, our half-hearted attempts to sing along with the Arabic songs looks comedic/pathetic. There is some real talent, however, and one of the students brought his guitar along today and could play the songs after just listening to them once or twice. It only took me months of practicing a single piano piece before I could play it with ease….we’re equally gifted, right?

This same student brought his guitar to Al-Azhar Park today, a park on the outskirts of Cairo (I think) near Moqqattam where the trash collectors live and there are cave churches and exorcisms on Thursday nights. The park was beautiful….marble pathways, palm and other kinds of trees, fountains, grass, all of Cairo at our feet in a dusty, sweltering maze and us above breathing “fresh” air and being rejuvenated by green things.

We had quite the sing along in the park. The idea was to switch back and forth from English songs by the Americans to Arabic songs by the Egyptians….I’m not sure what happened but the vast majority of the songs ended up being American pop music. Among the songs we played: Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson. I have a tendency to be overcome by the music sometimes when a song has particularly poingant lyrics, so I may or may not have raised my voice to a shouting/screeching level at the line “You had your chance you blew it; out of sight out of mind. Shut your mouth I just can’t take it…again and again and again and again” while pointing directly at the nice student playing guitar. There always has to be a target or it doesn’t seem believable. I’m just glad we didn’t play Total Eclipse of the Heart or that would have been a real disaster. And by that I mean it’s going to happen probably soon and I’m not going to be sorry for the spectacle I make of myself.

One interesting thing about Al-Azhar park: it used to be a trash heap and some guy saw it and said “I will make this a park one day where it will cost each patron 5 pounds to enter” and so it was. I think there’s more to the story but I can’t remember all of it.

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Jun 10 2011
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Anecdotes, Egypt, Two minute read

Quit playing games with my heart

our bowab looks kind of like this but sans hat

Before anything else: the electronic music festival was a blast. We danced, we sweated, one of the DJ’s wore a gigantic mythical bird helmet, it was free, there were no injuries that I know of (though I did hit someone while I was dancing), and no one got an accidental boyfriend. All in all, a great success. I even got to use some of my sweet hip hop moves.

Onto more pressing matters. We’ve been having issues with our landlady regarding ‘irsh or dinero or money.  We first met our landlady and her daughter about a week ago, shortly after we moved in. The landlady’s daughter, a student, was extremely nice and spoke excellent English. The landlady herself, on the other hand, a stout woman of about fifty or sixty, was a little brisk and wore sunglasses the entire time she was in our apartment. She didn’t speak very much English and what little she did know she shouted at us (VEDY GOOD).

When transactions are being conducted in translation or in Arabic, there is always a chance that something has gone awry. Right before they left, the landlady asked us for 100 pounds to give to the bowab and to pay for some other expenses in the building. The bowab is the man who “guards” the door and runs errands for the tenants and stuff like that. They’re a part of Egyptian culture, usually living a very sparse life on little money, and subsisting oftentimes on bread, eggs, and pickles. It’s important to have a good relationship with the bowab because they’re the ones who can either make your life miserable or be a great person to practice Arabic with.

Long story short, the money never reached the bowab. Furthermore, it wasn’t clear what we had actually paid for. Over the course of several telephone calls with both the landlady and her daughter, it was said the money was for a) the bowab and utilities for the building, b) our utilities and the building’s utilities c) the bowab and our utilities d) just the building’s utilities. What’s going on here? What are these games?

So….I called her daughter today and we’re going to set up a time to meet together, all five of us plus an Egyptian guy associated with the program (I told her that there would be a man in our apartment. Her mother conceded after a short conference.) On the bright side, I am now completely knowledgeable about the concept of paying for utilities. The daughter told me at least five times with different examples: “When you take a shower, you use water and you need to pay for that. When you clean the floor, you use water that and in Egypt we have to pay for these things” Ohhhhhh……I thought it was sent directly from heaven in a golden chariot. I guess I need to pay for your mother’s Krispy Kreme habit too with the money she’s squeezing out of us.

Hopefully this will turn out okay in the end and we’ll all be able to be facebook friends. We shall see…..

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