Travel Component Where Did You Go?

Today is December 8, 2008. Just under four months ago I was thrust into Cairo, Egypt with 29 unknown people to attempt to learn about the culture, politics, and religion of the Middle East. I still vividly remember getting off the plane in Cairo. It was an incredible shock as the letters which I had been studying in my pre-Arabic orientation packet were suddenly ripped from the pages and splattered all over the walls and signs of the airport. Suddenly, things were real, Arabic was a language people actually spoke and Egypt was a place were people actually live. Suffice to say, much has changed since then. I now look at the calendar and see only 3 days between me and my next visit to that very same airport. I'm leaving in a mere 3 days. It's hard to believe I've actually come to the end and my semester in the Middle East is complete.

My last month has been nothing short of a whirlwind. I was just reading the post I wrote before the month of October. I remember looking at that month on the front side and just imagining the volatility and excitement that lay ahead. Now, I look back at that month, as well as a month of travel and truly realize what an amazing 2 months it has been.

Travel Component was one of the greatest months of my entire life. After finishing two 6-10 page papers and taking both our Islam and Arabic finals, we left Cairo on a plane for Istanbul, Turkey. Over the next 30 days we traveled through Turkey, to Istanbul and Ankara. Flew from Istanbul to Aleppo, Syria and then drove to Damascus. After a few days there we drove to the capital of Jordan, Amman and floated in the Dead Sea. And from there we drove across the border into Israel where we spent 12 days in the Old City of Jerusalem. From the roof of the Austrian Hospice where we stayed, we had an incredible view of the Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Mount of Olives, the Via Delorosa, and many of the deeply historical and religiously significant sights of the incredible city of Jerusalem.

Since it's the end of the semester and I don't really feel like doing a lot of work, I'll give a brief overview of what we did. Throughout our travels we spoke with different kinds of people, foreign diplomats, political representatives, pastors, journalists, and authors who would speak on their area of expertise giving overviews of different political and religious situations. From these speakers we would take the information and write essays when we got back. When we weren't traveling or listening to speakers we were able to go on some tours of the area. The rest of the time was spent reading different articles which prepared us to ask good questions and plenty of time to embrace the culture by getting out, meeting locals, eating in restaurants, and trying to speak Arabic.

After all this was complete. After we had discussed the ins and outs of difficult issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we took the 12 hour bus ride from Jerusalem to Cairo, Egypt for the home stretch of our semester here. From the time we got back to Cairo, we had roughly a week to write 5 papers, 4 of them 6-10 pages and one a mere 3-4 pages. My life was nothing more than getting up, writing, racking my brain, stressing far too much, and eventually finishing it all. Luckily, my flat mates were highly motivated to get done early. As a proud procrastinator, I am usually working up until the final hours of the due date for a paper but due to my roommates I decided I needed to take up their challenge.
This led to me finishing all my papers almost 2 days prior to the due date. I actually enjoyed this feeling of being done and being able to catch up with local friends and completely enjoy the time with my flat mates with nothing looming over our head our last few days together.

Overall, I could not ask for a more incredible month. It’s been an adventure that I feel incredibly blessed to have taken part of and I hope I never loose sight of how fortunate I am. I hope I can somewhat extend what I have learned and experienced to those who have not had this opportunity without sounding pompous and privileged.

Again thanks to all you of you who have made this part of my life possible. It has been a life changing four months. I hope I get to talk to you about it. If you truly want to learn about my experience and understand I will be more than willing to share with you what I’ve learned. I only hope I can do it in a way which represents the amazing people I have come to love who have treated me so well these last months.

Thank you.

Peace.

Jonathan Kuik

Luxor

Here are some pictures from Luxor I'll give the descriptions from top to bottom: top: Me in front of the pillars of Karnak Temple, an shot of the first section built of Karnak Temple (the biggest and most famous of all the temples), one of the reliefs from Habu temple you can even see some of the colors, bottom the valley of the kings you can see the entrance to one of the tombs.

This post will just be about the trip to Luxor I took and I'll maybe get a post up about daily life in Cairo a little later.

Luxor was the longest trip we took this whole semester. Luxor is where many of the ancient Pharonic temples and the Valley of the Kings is located. The area is so much different from the business and crowds of Cairo. The city is right next to the Nile and there's actually fresh air to breath. Seeing the temples was one of the most surreal experience I've had. It was so hard to fathom how old these huge temples were and what they might have represented when they were first built. The temples were built 2000 years BCE and they are amazing. I was impressed by them as a 21st century American, I can't imagine being someone in the ancient world, not knowing anything outside my own home, and seeing something like that. I can understand why they would worship the Pharoes and the gods they did.

The Valley of the Kings was equally cool. You go to this valley (obviously) and there are tons of different tombs and you get to pick 3. You walk down stairs into through these doors and suddenly you're in a tunnel with hyroglyphics on the walls and you walk down to where all the treasures and the mummies were. My historical juices were definitely flowing.

Other than that, we got to hang out in the city and do whatever we wanted. It was really relaxing. The hotel had a pool on the roof and we spent a lot of time up there swimming and hanging out. We could see the Nile and some of the ancient temples while we swam on top of a building, it was amazing!

Saber

This is Saber, my host brother.

This is Saber's story:

Right after getting back from Siwa, we started our Egyptian homestays. I was lucky and placed with a 35 year-old single guy named Saber. It’s kind of rare for a male to live by himself if he’s not married, but Saber was a sweet guy.

He owned a perfume shot which we would hang out in and meet his friends basically every night until 2:00 AM. Saber spoke fairly good English, but I would pretty much sit there and try to talk with and understand what his friends were saying. A couple things I learned:

Egyptians love their perfume/cologne. Every person who came in would spray themselves 8-10 times with really strong perfume, I guess they just like to smell good.
Egyptians also love their humor. Saber was a really funny guy and was always telling jokes and stories followed by laughter like I’ve never heard before.
Egyptians stay up late and expect you to do the same. I also discovered they sometimes don’t understand that just because we go to bed at the same time does not mean we get the same amount of sleep, especially when I have to get up at 7:00 AM and they get up at 1:00 PM in the afternoon! No hard feelings though.

I had a great time with Saber meeting his friends, checking out different parts of the city, and staying up late. My Arabic improved quite a bid and I learned more about Islam and what it really is. It was a great experience.

After the week was over however, it felt so good to be with my flatmates and being living together. During our time with our families we really realized how much we appreciated each other and how nice it was to be with other Americans speaking English.

If there is anything I learned from this week, I want to be a lot more conscious of international students at school. They must get so sick of having to speak English all the time and not being around people from their home country! I can’t even imagine, it must be so difficult for them. If there’s anything I am regretting about my college experience, it’s not taking advantage of the chance to know these people on campus. If you’re reading this and have the chance, get to know those people, ask them questions, learn from them, and see what you can do to make their time in the U.S. easier!

Well, on to the next post, Luxor!

Jonathan

Siwa Oasis

Siwa was probably my favorite trip we had our entire semester. It was a 12 hour drive through the desert and we came upon this lush green area where you can look and see the exact spot where the water stops and the desert begins. The first day we rode bikes around and we ended up swimming in this cold spring and seeing the ancient temple where Alexander the Great went to visit the Oracle. That night, as the sun set, we went to the salt lakes which surround the oasis and just like the Dead Sea you float in the water. I layed down, floating in the water as the sun set over the desert. It was beautiful. Then that night a "band" of local Siwans came a played local music for us. It was a bunch of guys playing the tabla, an Egyptian drum, and singing songs while they sat on a carpet. They started dancing and we all joined them, it was a ton of fun.

The next day we went on a 4x4 ride through the desert. The drivers were pretty crazy and we would go up and down dunes and do all kinds of crazy stuff. It really reminded me of winter on a farm somewhere in Iowa with a crazy farm kid driving a truck through the fields, except we were in a desert. It brought me back a little of Iowa and it felt good. We then did some sandboarding, I wasn't that good, and went to swim in a cold lake in the middle of the desert. That night we slept under the opened sky after a bon fire and food prepared by beduins. One funny thing was the jackel which was near the place we slept. A bunch of us went to just lay in the desert and look at the stars and this jackel actually came up and started licking my roomate's toe. We all had a good scare and it left us alone. It was really amazing.

The whole time while we were there we stayed at this hostel a ways out of town. We were basically all alone and it was great to not have any noise or any other people. It was almost weird to be in a place so quite! It was great though. The trip was a little rushed though as we started our homestays the day after we got back from a 12 hour bus ride. I'll talk about the homestay in my next post.

Thanks for reading!

Sorry it's been so long!

Jonathan

Things are beginning to speed up...

Ok, so these are some fairly awkward picture of my roommate and I. We had a little too much at the Mediterranean. The last picture of me is at one of the oldest Mosques still standing in the entire world in Cairo.

This week my flat mates and I came to the realization that this semester goes by incredibly fast. I’ve now been in Cairo for just over a month and in many ways this place has become my home. I’ve fallen into the routine of walking by the body shop on the street corner where cars and car parts litter the streets, of passing by the tea shop where older men converse and ramble at us in Arabic as we walk by, of casually stepping aside to let a car pass leaving only inches between its front fender and my legs, all on the average walk to class four times a week. I’ve come to enjoy walking around the neighborhood at night when it comes alive with the celebration of the setting of the sun and the ability of the Muslims here to eat during the month of Ramadan when they fast during the day light. Yet I know that very soon this small bit of routine and familiarity which has come will soon come to an end. The next month goes something like this: this Wednesday we leave for Siwa, an oasis in the desert for 5 days, from there we transition into our homestays which will last for 10 days, the week after that we travel to Luxor and Aswan for 6 days, and then less than a week later we leave for our travel component which spans 5 countries and 4 weeks. After that our semester is over and we go home with tons of information, life changing experience, and an abrupt end.

By no means am I complaining, but I just want to give everyone an idea of the intensity and business which comes with this program. I’m incredibly blessed and wouldn’t have it any other way, but sometimes it gets to be a little much.

That being said, I haven’t updated this in a while, so I’ll get started and keep it as brief and informative as possible.

Classes: Continue to be challenging but amazing. I’m learning so much about Islam, the local politics, and the situation of the region as a whole sometimes I can’t handle it. But although it’s incredibly overwhelming, the way in which we are learning and the questions I have to ask myself are changing the way I look at the world and the way I see myself. What’s amazing however, is that through all this I see my faith strengthening as I drop what’s not necessary and focus on what is. Arabic is difficult but is genuinely fun as we are able to directly apply it every moment we walk outside our door. Overall, classes are going great, and the best thing is that I’m not so much worried about grades as I am about learning, it’s incredibly liberating.

The Sweet Stuff: What’s great about being here is that I can always justify going out and not doing homework by chalking it up as Arabic practice, or truly experiencing the culture which in actuality is far better learning than I’ll ever get from a book, right?

-Alexandria-We took a train and spent two days in this historically rich, harbor town. We went to museums, ate at local restaurants, saw Roman ruins, swam in the Mediterranean, and enjoyed a weekend away from the business, noise, traffic, and pollution of Cairo. I even took some risqué photos with my roommate which you can see on this post.
-Breaking the Fast (Iftar)-Since it’s the holy month of Ramadan, 3 of my flat mates and I took part in the fast by not eating or drinking during the day. That night we went to a local Mosque to eat with Muslims who had fasted all day. After struggling through a day with no food or water, we sat in a tent with about 50 Muslims and as we heard the call to prayer at sunset we tore into the food which was provided and attempted to converse in Arabic with those we ate with. It was awesome to see an aspect of Islam which brings Muslims and families together as one community to focus on God and have all people, both rich and poor, satisfy the pangs of hunger with a meal. As Christians, the guys and I had great respect for the men and women who did this all month, and I felt as though it was a moment where two very different groups, normally at extreme odds, came together for at least a short time.
-Ashraff and Sharif-My roommate and I met up with some guys we randomly met at a soccer game. We went to a café, drank strawberry juice, talked about football (soccer), politics, religion, and our respective countries. The next week we went bowling and had a great time having fun and participating in some lighter discussion than our first meeting by debating questions such as, “Would you rather have 3 arms, or have hands for feet?”
-Coptic weekend-We spend an entire day with a group of Coptic young people. Coptic Christianity was founded by the St. Mark 2000 years ago and is very similar to Eastern Orthodoxy, although I won’t go into the details. We discussed the problems, advantages, differences, and similarities between our brands of Christianity. At the end of the night we played sang songs together, played games, and had an awesome time.
-Sufi Jazz Concert-As part of my “cultural activity” I’m learning to play an Egyptian drum called the tabla. Our teacher invited us to his concert which was held in an open-air venue surrounded by Mamluk period buildings dating from the 8th Century, behind one of the most important Mosques in Cairo. It was an incredibly mix of great atmosphere and amazing music.
-Night at the Café-Just tonight, my roommate and I decided to go to one of the many cafes, were men sit, drink tea, and smoke sheesha (Hooka). It was slightly awkward at first, Egyptians don’t expect to see two, white Americans drinking tea with them in a place rarely visited by tourists, but they warmed up to us. It was a great opportunity to get to know some of the people in our neighborhood as well as practice and learn Arabic.


Well that’s about it. In two days we leave for the desert Oasis of Siwa where we’ll swim in cold springs, go on dune rides, go sandboarding, and sleep in the desert. It’s a pretty tough life. Thanks to everyone who reads and please keep me in your prayers!

Jonathan

Sinai Dahab

So here's the update on the fun of studying abroad. This last weekend we took a trip to Mt. Sinai and the tourist town of Dahab.

We left Cairo at 6:30 PM on a bus and nine hours later, after a short stop for a flat tire, we were at the base of Mt. Sinai ready to summit the traditional site where Moses talked to God. Traditionally you're supposed to climb it at night so you reach the summit as the sun rises. To be honest, it wasn't a religiously enlightening experience, but it was fun to see the bedouins with camels and people from all over the world climbing this mountain. Once we got down we went to St. Catherine's Monistary which houses a huge collection of ancient icons as well as the actual burning bush where Moses witnessed God! They even have a fire extinguisher next to it in case God decides to reveal himself again.

From there we traveled to the costal resort town of Dahab. While there we stayed in a quaint hostel with an opened lobby and palm trees, and we ate at amazing resturants reclined on pillows right next to the Red Sea. But best of all we got to do some world class snorkeling, which is supposedly second in the world only the The Great Barrier Reef. Many of the guys and I also made some quality purchases which made our snorkeling experience even more enjoyable. I however, forgot to put sunscreen on the back of my thighs, which usually is not a problem, but for some reason was on this trip as you'll see from the pictures. I felt like I was in a fantasy land.

Jonathan

Eurotrunks and a Burning Bush