Wednesday 8/16

We had our first Arabic lesson today – it would have been hard to keep a straight face listening to us say some of the most fundamental words. Our goal is to learn just enough to get by if we need to – not sure if there is enough time for that!! Our instructor told us that Arabic is the most difficult language to learn and after today we would agree. We have three more lessons before the rest of the staff comes back – maybe we will make it yet. Some of the words have a different ending depending of if you are speaking to a male vs. a female. One of the teachers who taught in Saudi Arabia said the Arabic they were taught was quite a bit different than what we did today.

The rest of day was spent in a series of meetings with the administrators going over the calendar, class expectations, schedules, and other routine teaching matters. Throughout the discussion the idea of involvement and teamwork kept coming through. Because we are such a small school and staff, there is a need for everyone to pitch in wherever needed.

After supper tonight we had a little dessert get-together of the new staff with two of the administrators. One of the administrators is an Egyptian who graduated from the school. He provided a lot of insight into the history and culture of Egypt. It was interesting to here about the government and its organization as well as the relationship with the United States. Egypt is not a democracy and while the current US administration would like democracy to come to Egypt, it could very result in a strong Islamic government which might not be real friendly to the US. The general feeling seems to be that the present government is doing an adequate job and is likely to outlive the next two years of the Bush administration and if the Bush administration pushes too hard it might not like the end results. One of the more lively discussions was on the traffic in Alex. What we as Westerners see as chaos, the Egyptians see as a system that eventually works. When they are taught to drive, little if any instruction is given about signs – the focus is on starting and stopping a car, parking, etc.