Turning Off The Lights

I'm sitting in my bed, in my now-empty room, with packed bags sitting neatly nearby, and it's finally starting to sink in that it's time to go home. It all went by so fast that it was hard to really realize that it was time to go home - even when we had final presentations in class, or as my students were crying as we gave last hugs, or as we waved our way out of the Ana al-Masri center that last time. I mean, the past week I've been telling myself that this is my last whatever. My last time in Khan al-Khalili, my last sandwich ma ful bilsalsal, my last metro ride, my last time on the Nile. There were plenty of warning signs telling me that it's time to go back home, I just never really took the time to read them, or process what they meant.

And when I say "last," I hope to not mean the last time forever. I absolutely would love to return to Cairo, and hopefully to bring a few of you with me. And I'm excited to go back home, to see my family and some friends and to go on PWILD and to go to Prague. I'm excited for Mexican food, and to see Inception, and to not be harassed in the streets.

The Beginning of the End

A lot has happened in the past week that I have failed to blog about - sorry! An unfortunate side effect of doing all these things is that I haven't had much time. So I'm gonna do 2 blog posts in rapid succession- this one on our recent work with St. Andrews', than one later on about our vacation to Sharm el-Sheikh.

So last week was, in some respects, our last week of normal class. Tonight and the next two days are going to be review and wrap-up and a celebration of our last day, so we won't be teaching anything new. But last week's outing was really fun: we met our kids at the Sadat metro station and walked them down along the Nile to where we could take a faluka ride. 16 of our kids showed up, which was amazing - we did not expect so many of them to transport themselves all the way to Garden City just to go on a boat with us. 

Juweria, Zaynab, Ifrah and Samira