And time for our "Weekend Update" ...
Yesterday was spent in Alexandria; rather than taking the train (as originally planned), I decided it best to send all the students via our trusted car service (Abdel-Meguid "Abduh" Travel); the train is perfectly safe and fun, but going up in our vans allowed the students to save $$ in that they did not have to keep renting taxis to get them around this new city, with which they are totally unfamiliar. One group went up and back yesterday (one van, 14 students); the other group spent the night in Alex on their own (two vans, 19 students plus Dr. Mo Taslim and his wife Farough) and 2 students stayed back in Cairo, as did I.
I arranged for a VIP tour of the Alexandria Library (really, that's what my friends there call it, the VIP TOUR!), which allowed for a private tour of that amazing new construction alongside the Mediterranean Sea, as well as two special museums within the library, one of which is a rare books/documents exhibit. Joyce ("the assistant to the assistant", as Cynthia designates our dear Joyce!) took care of the logistics in Alex, including the "meet and greet" with the Public Relations officers at the Library; and Abduh's son Karim (a senior at Cairo University) gave his own special tour of the city.
Today, the 2nd group (the one that spent the night in Alex) went to Montazah Palace Gardens (and beach!) ... you can probably guess that they didn't go there for the "gardens." :-) and they are on their way back to Cairo now.
Tomorrow (Sunday) we head back to our Service Learning sites to "show off" the websites our students designed. We did a "soft launch" of the site for the leaders of the NGO and AUC's Gerhart Center on Thursday. Those folks were quite taken (okay, it's more accurate to say they were "blown away") by the sites our students developed. Nearly all the students contributed to the site development - pictures and stories about the people and products and places we are working with; and a team from both the Arabic-language students and the Engineering students took those contributions and created a beautiful website (which we will launch in the days ahead ... so stay tuned for that URL). Not only do we have a professional photographer in our midst, we also have a professional website designer along with talented students who might as well be called "professional", even if that's not where they would place themselves. It is an amazing group of talent we have here in Cairo ...
2 comments:
Drew said the trip to Alexandria was absolutely amazing.
LOL, love the title and I heard April ate calamari and shrimp and actually loved it, amazing! She was also thrilled that she got to gallop on the horse this time.
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