FDOC

It is a very tired blonde who posts today. Woke up early for our first block of classes this morning - 4 hours studying amiya (colloquial Arabic) wasn't exactly my ideal morning, but I really feel like I learned a lot of practical phrases and words which I'll have to practice a lot. After that, we went to St. Andrews for our second orientation session. St. Andrews, again, is the organization through which we work with refugees. How that's gonna work: the St. Andrews director set up summer programs at several different refugee centers around Cairo, and we're all breaking up and going out to those centers to teach our classes. Mine is in Giza and I'll be working with Fernando, another DukeEngager, and a center facilitator at a Somali refugee center. Apparently, our kids are going to be all Somali, ranging from ages 14 to 19, and we'll have about 11 girls and 9 boys. The classes are going to be not only about teaching basic English and Arabic skills (listening and speaking, not reading or writing, since many will be illiterate) so they can communicate in basic situations, but also about basic life skills (like hygiene) and resources they have access to as refugees.

So, I really feel like today, right as we are about to pass the one week mark, we really got to encounter Cairo. That realization came as I was sitting on a microbus (buses with no doors that circle around their routes hardly stopping to let people on and off) heading towards the metro station after walking through a market crowded with not only people and goods but also cars, scooters, motorcycles and the occasional donkey.

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!).