Ramblings of a Student
It’s been a little while since my last entry. I guess I was waiting for a lightening bolt from Olympus to power my next musing session. Yeah, I’m still waiting for that to happen. In the meantime, I’ve been on vacation to Egypt and started my second bachelor’s degree.
Egypt was a fascinating country. I was lucky to be able to spend an entire month visiting Cairo, Luxor and Aswan with my husband and you can read about my adventures here. On the whole I really enjoyed it and given the opportunity I would go back. However, there were a few cultural differences that came as quite a shock (even though I was prepared for them), and in some cases tarnished our holiday memories.
The first memory that is overshadowed by negativity is our first trip to the pyramids at Giza. Naturally, both my husband and I were supremely excited about visiting this historic site. The day began at 10am when we were dropped off by our driver at a local tour guide specializing in camel and horseback tours around the pyramids. It seemed to start out quite well, despite the hefty fee we were charged … followed by the pressuring into buying cotton scarves covering our heads. This still irks me, even though the scarves were cool. They just put them on us, telling us it was part of the tour (we thought it was funny so obliged), then they wanted $15 (not Egyptian pounds, dollars!) for each one. Cheeky sods. Anyway we set off and had a very enjoyable ride through the sands and got some great pictures. Our guide was very knowledgeable although he seemed to treat us like we were five years old and had never read a book on Ancient Egypt.
The biggest negative issue arose when we were dropped off at the Sphinx to explore for a bit on our own. We were tired and new to the country. Although we knew not to accept gifts, we were not prepared to be completely fleeced. We learned the hard way that when in Egypt do not, under any circumstances, let an Egyptian local start telling you the history of the places you are visiting. Abdul (at least that’s what he said his name was) was a perfect example of this. Firstly, my husband and I got separated in the throng of people and I was not paying attention. Abdul cornered me and when my husband reappeared just forced himself on us. He took our cameras (yes TOOK) and made us pose for pictures. Then he took us into a quieter area where he spoke about the history, then gave us “gifts”. Then he wanted 300L.E. for his troubles. At that point I realized what had happened, but it got worse. After we had parted with money he wanted to pose with me for pictures. Fair enough, I thought, thinking it would be fun. Oh no. As soon as the camera was out and as the picture took, Abdul kissed me! My husband and I were extremely shocked to say the least.
After that incident, we became much more cynical and distrusting of whatever anyone said to us. We found the locals, on the whole, rude, obnoxious and untrustworthy. This went for tour guides, taxi drivers, street vendors, shop keepers, tourist police … you name it. There were relatively few exceptions. We had people fleece us out of money, take us places we didn’t want to go and try to sell us stuff we didn’t want (and when we said “No Thank you” or “Laa shokran” they were quite nasty in return).
Of course, it wasn’t all bad. There were many evenings where we sat out on the rooftop restaurants in Luxor enjoying the bustle of life on the streets below and a cold beer. Cruising down the Nile was an experience not to be missed either. Simply beautiful views and the tours to the temples along the way were awe inspiring.
I’ve been back for about three weeks now and it already seems like a distant memory.
On May 3, I started working on my second bachelors degree via American Military University. I’m majoring in Middle Eastern Studies (no surprises there then!). As I am currently unemployed, with a husband working in Iraq and no children I have a lot of time on my hands. So, against the better judgement of the university I signed up for five courses, totaling 15 credits. Apparently they are not used to having a student who literally has nothing better to do. I’m in week three of my studies and so far handling the workload very well, but I think for my next course session I’m going to reduce it down to two or three classes (if I get a job then it will probably just be one).
Course wise I am starting with the general education requirements that all American undergraduate degrees involve. It’s quite exciting actually as I get to refresh my English skills, work on Math and Science too!. I’m currently working on a foundation course relating to online learning, proficiency in writing, introduction to anthropology, American history 101 and American history 102. I am holding my own and grade wise I’m at an A- or A in all classes. We’ll see if I can keep that up for the next five weeks. However, I will say to others thinking of going to college (or back to college): don’t take two history classes at the same time! It involves a lot of reading and writing. Even for me, as someone who adores reading, writing and history generally, two classes is a bit overwhelming.
On top of all that, I’m trying to get the house on the market and hopefully move somewhere a little more exciting. I’ll keep you posted.
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This entry was posted on May 20, 2010 at 7:32 am and is filed under General. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: American Military University, bachelors degree, Egypt, history, studying
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