Live, from Cairo, it's Saturday Night!

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 ... 

Fulbright Commission and Dialogue

"Dialogue" - noun, a conversation between two or more persons; an exchange of ideas and opinions; verb, to take part in a dialogue.

We held our second "informal-formal" dialogue at Fulbright Commission offices in Cairo last night (May 26).  I stress to our students that any "dialogue"/discussions we have with our Egyptian hosts/friends should be as informal as possible; still, I do have to organize (formally) a time, place, people, etc.  And once we get together, our discussions and dialogues should be as open, free, uncensored, uninhibited as possible.  

Last week (our first dialogue evening, May 19) went so well that most of our 35 students spent additional time in the ensuing week with their new Egyptian friends - i.e., on their own, in the evenings, and outside the confines of the "formal" dialogue.  When we met again last night, it was a total change from our first meeting.  The first meeting was "stiff", almost cold, since no one knew one another and we had to spend time "breaking the ice".  The second meeting (last night) was warm, hand-holding and hand-shaking, polite cheek-kissing all around -- i.e., "old friends" reconnecting after days (!) of separation.  We held one session of 45 minutes to welcome a few new Egyptian participants and bring them "into the family", our Egyptian-American family of new friends.  Then, Safaa of Fulbright welcomed us to the roof of the Commission's office for a wonderful Egyptian dinner (the roof was the only space that could hold all 60+ "dialoguers"!).  And then we "adjourned" the dialogue, and invited our participants to simply go off on their own and enjoy their evening ... one group ended up at a felucca (sailboat) on the Nile, with 2 boats tied together (the group was too big for just one boat), and they spent an hour or more floating on the Nile after sunset, singing and listening to music (one Egyptian brought a traditional drum "just in case"!).

The "official dialogue" is over, and now the real dialogues can continue, with our students and their Egyptian friends going off on their own, "naturally" (unplanned, not organized formally).  Safaa of Fulbright is very pleased with our success, and we are already talking about what to do next year (though she did plead with me to not bring any more students than the number we have this year!  "Kifaya (enough) ya Denis!  No more than 35 please!!"  Cynthia sympathizes with that but also shares my goal -- to bring more and more and more people to my 2nd home.)

Weekend and a new week

Week 3 of classes begins today, Monday (Memorial Day in the States).  We have only 2 weeks left of "academics" - Fluids and Arabic.  We also have only a few days left to finish our Service Learning assignments.  The website team is finalizing its work; we hope to have a draft ready by Wednesday so we can show it (the draft website) to our NGO partner and then show off our students' great work to the communities with whom we are working - Establ Anter and Muqattam.

Our weekend was spent recuperating (many of our students found themselves with colds and headaches; a couple still suffer from stomach ailments).  On Saturday, our 2nd group of students took the tour with Iman Abdel-Fattah of Islamic Cairo (see post from last Saturday).  Iman was most impressed with our students ... the amount of questions, and the depth of those questions, made her feel that we were truly connecting with Egypt's Islamic history -- i.e., that we had both an interest in, as well as a growing understanding about, Islam in Egypt.  

I believe it is the "chemistry" of this group that makes it that much more impressive than many other groups that came before them (i.e., came before, with me, to Cairo).  Our students are majors in Arts & Sciences (Middle East Studies, International Affairs, Political Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Biology, History, Physics, Music, English, Sociology, and Human Services), Criminal Justice, International Business, Bouve (Pharmacy), and of course Mechanical Engineering.  The inter-disciplinary elements, the various learning styles, the different ways of seeing the world, the multiplicity of perspectives, to say nothing of the sheer size (35 students!) allow for a unique learning environment for all of us, professors and students alike.

And now, off to plan the rest of the week ... in particular, our final night of Dialogue (tonight) at Fulbright offices.