On Ordering Chicken Feet and Other Adventures

The harbor at night, viewed from the highest point
in Hong Kong, Victoria's Peak. It was windy!

Greetings from Hong Kong! Xīn nián kuài lè! I've been here nearly a week, I know, but Hong Kong is a bustling, busy city and it definitely took a few days for me to get my bearings, shake off the lingering jet lag, and experience enough to give me something to write about.

Now, I could do a minute by minute recap of the last few days, but clearly what everyone really wants to hear about are the misadventures that come from being in a city where I know none of the language and can read and recognize nothing. Let me preface this by saying that I've not yet gotten sick and not yet tasted anything that I truly didn't like or had to spit out. Which I think means I'm not trying hard enough! I will try harder.

So, the food. Believe it or not, I've not had much rice in my diet as of yet: most of my meals have consisted of noodles, which are similar to (but much better than) ramen noodles in the states. I've tried an assortment of additions to these noodles - that's how I discovered that I apparently like shrimp roe! Also, the thing so far that has made my stomach turn the most was the gray beef meat balls I sampled on my noodles for dinner tonight. Yes, the menu picture I pointed to was labeled "beef," but what kind of beef and what part of the cow were definitely in question. The fish ball additions to my noodles I tried on the first day were much more to my liking.

Not Necessarily the Iciest!

I hardly know where to start to convey how much I am loving this country and this break so far!

Team Iceland in our lovely Icelandic sweaters, blocking the Icelandic horses we befriended

First off, Iceland is not the iciest - although it rained a fair bit yesterday, we've seen the sun a fair bit so far as well, especially Saturday.  And the temperatures have been in the low 30s, but I haven't had to wear all of my layers at the same time, yet, which is kind of what I was expecting.  In short: not the tundra!

A Day of Firsts

Today featured eventful transports to and from my center. On the way there, Fernando was somehow designated as the one to figure out change on the minibus, which I think I found funnier than he did. Then, we watched a mule pulling a cart cut in front of a car and win, which was really funny as we were watching it but doesn't sound funny as I describe it here.

At the center, we had a less-than-engaging guest speaker come talk to our kids about services provided by the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent) which help refugees find lost family members. He came into our center and the first thing he asked was where the computer or projector was - Fernando and I just laughed. We'd planned for the talk to be a lot longer, so we had to wing a lesson afterward, but I think the kids understand parts of speech at least a little bit better now.

On the way back, we bought grilled corn for the first time from some old ladies along the street in the market we pass through. All throughout Cairo, you'll find people sitting in front of these little coal grills on the street, grilling corn. It was good, but a little chewy, and could've used some butter. As we were sitting on this low wall eating our corn, some random man walked by, whipped out his camera, and took a picture of us. It was the first time some stranger had taken a picture of me, so that was interesting. Well, first time I'd noticed, I guess. Then, the train went by, and since our wall was right next to the train tracks if some guy hadn't told us to move we probably would've had our legs crushed by the train.

Tomorrow, we're supposed to bring our students on an outing somewhere, but our plans may fall through - we wanted to bring them to the Egyptian museum, but that may be too expensive/closed. Then, on Thursday we're heading to Alexandria for a brief vacation, so we're all excited about that. Woo!

A Bustling Twenty-Four Hours

We've been busy since my last post. Last night, we met up with some previous DukeEngagers who just graduated from Duke and are in Cairo doing a year-long Arabic program, and they told us about a concert happening in Zamalek (the posh island in the middle of the Nile). The band, Wust El-Balad, was awesome - I'll upload a video as soon as I can get more reliable internet. It was also great to get out and see Cairo at night, and trust me this city literally never sleeps. Seriously, it's as busy during the day as it is at night, I think.
Today, we broke off into separate groups because some of us have completed different levels of Arabic. So the intermediate students (including me) went to the Arab Academy, where I'll be taking classes here, to do a placement test. Woo, that was fun. The test is 3 hours long and impossible, like most language placement tests, and we'll be doing the second half of it tomorrow.

Real quick breakdown of programs and stuff. So, not only do we split up based on our level of Arabic, but also there are 2 different organizations which we chose to work with. So, on top of taking classes and working with refugees through the St. Andrews Ministry, we're also working with either Cairo street children through an organization called Ana el-Misri (the one I'm doing) or children with special needs (both physical and mental) through Al-Keyan. More about that in the DukeEngage Cairo 2010 blog (see the link on the right!).

A Quick Note, A Useful Link

Hey, if anyone would like to follow along with the activities of our whole group here, there's another blog for you: http://dukeengagecairo2010.blogspot.com/

Behold, the official DukeEngage in Cairo 2010 blog, where you can find posts from all 13 of us about what we're doing, as well as videos and pictures.

In other news, today has just been a veg day, full of shopping and sleeping. And delicious food! A few of us just got back from eating ful at a place down the street. Ful is fava beans with olive oil, chopped vegetables and spices, and it was served with pita bread. There were also side dishes of grilled eggplant, tomatoes, pickles, potato chips and some kind of cheesey tomato salad thing. Like I said, the food here is delicious.