Panic Abated

The things that make me happiest at present are: the turquoise of the ocean glaring at me from the end of our accommodations driveway, saying “Thank you” in Arabic and getting the comprehensible response of “You’re welcome” from an Egyptian and thus feeling like I had a successful conversation with a local, and the group trip to Cairo awaiting me this upcoming weekend. Panic abated. I feel like a different person from this morning - one not on the verge of collapse. Sleeping in and being left by the class shuttle was not the best start to my first day, as I roamed like a zombie to the waiting area for a couple hours and tried to make sane conversation with my roommate. The reality of it all sunk in as daylight shed light onto our situation: alone in far-away Egypt, without a familiar square inch of architecture or food or person’s face. Awaiting our driver in the soft white courtyard of our apartments, even a couple of the former students (now in the program’s Arabic immersion program) didn’t ease my fears of this new life. Their calm wasn’t infectious enough to penetrate the wild thoughts running through my mind. I hadn’t expected this so suddenly. On our 40-minute ride to class, the rampant wild driving (similar to NYC taxi driving) wasn’t as scary as the new world I was observing, my new home. Not until this evening did the honking, the dusty broken roads, the unfamiliar garb and language, the radically different look of shops and pedestrians … not until I’d met my classmates did these culture shocks become pleasantly intriguing. My engaging instructors’ lessons on teaching the English language occupied my mind enough to turn my mood around. The classroom atmosphere is very interactive and playful, and my 15-or-so classmates range from American to Hungarian to Egyptian, ages 22 to probably 50. Each individual is friendly and extremely unique; some are well-traveled, some are teachers, some wear head scarves, and some feel like they’re in the same place in life as me, which is comforting. I struggle to paint the picture of the many scenes I witnessed today. The roads are a pale dirt color, like most of the buildings, and stores seem to be crammed together along every street and spilling into the street with buckets of fruit. Drivers seem to pay more attention to swerving around potholes and buses than to road lanes or pedestrians. Honking must be an expression for any emotion, because drivers use it liberally - mostly toward me to announce that they’re not slowing down, just in case I’m contemplating crossing the street. For a little taste of home, we went to a shopping mall after class. We saw a Baskin Robbins, Claire’s, Esprit, and other random Western shops. One classmate who speaks Arabic helped Ryan and me get a cell phone, and continued to save everyone’s life by speaking to clerks and restaurant servers for us. He will probably tire of being group translator, but he seems to enjoy adjusting to Egyptian Arabic and we’re deeply grateful. We celebrated a classmate’s birthday by dining at a Mexican restaurant (for the American fajita palette and the Egyptian hookah palette). I was comforted to sit back and get to know the young people around me. I tried out my stellar grasp of Arabic phrases such as, “Excuse me, where is the toilet?” and “No bag, please” on the various Egyptians I encountered.