Strike!

An AUC Administrator addressing the protesters at my school on Wednesday.

Just to expand on that last tweet a little bit: the strikes going on at AUC are mostly being carried out by janitorial staff who are contractually promised almost like 50% more pay than they actually receive and whose contracts also allow for them to be fired without warning and without any justification. I'd been watching the strike happen the past two days as they were coagulating in front of my building that is across from the Administrative building, but I hadn't known all the details elaborated until I read this very good article about it. (In the interest of full disclosure [actually I'm just bragging] I pretty regularly hang out with the author of that article, but it is really concise and informative.) Quite a lot of students had been amassing in support of the workers (500 according to the article), and apparently they've even been helping to feed the protesting workers. The protest was a lot bigger yesterday than it was on Wednesday, its first day. (The picture in this picture and the next are of the protest on each day from different vantage points, but you can still kind of see the increase in the crowd.)

Unfortunately, the AUC students supporting the janitors have not thought to try and be less slobbish around the campus without anyone cleaning up after them, so the campus turned into a wasteland astoundingly fast. Not that I am against these particular Egyptian janitors having jobs (and sustainable ones at that), I have often found myself thinking that if Egyptians just tried harder to do things themselves or more efficiently, there would be no need for so many superfluous jobs or for the bureaucratic mess that constitutes most processes here. I see these unnecessary jobs in the 5 security guards who stand and watch while 1 checks the bags of every student entering the dorm even where there is a big line, or when you pay someone at a food stand to get a ticket to give to a guy to get a bag of chips that was actually just right next to the guy who you paid.

Besides the excess of jobs thing, there are aspects of this accountability thing that I have noticed with a lot of Egyptians. I want to devote a whole post to it some time, but basically it's that I've observed a lot of Egyptians offended that someone else is not fixing their problems for them. The low-hanging fruit of the examples of this is how no one makes an effort to keep places clean simply by cleaning up after themselves, but I've picked up on this whole thing a little bit in some of the political discussions I've had with Egyptians. More about this later maybe.

Egyptian students in heated discussion with an administrator utilizing the classic Egyptian fingers-together-plaintive/disgusted-wrist flick.

Anyway, besides the fact that these workers get paid so appallingly little to do the shittiest jobs, the best/most interesting/saddest thing in the whole article is at the end when it talks about the AUC Administration's disdainful reaction:

"Around 1pm on Thursday, an administration official appeared, preceded by a group of security officers who cleared students and workers out of his way. The official announced that the administration would set up a meeting with some of the workers and that the administration would consider a raise in a semester, but would take away the benefits the university currently provides. The official also reportedly told a student that the administration would let the “spoiled students” sit in the sun until they were bored and got over the “fad.” "

...Yeah, I find that frustrating. I'll keep you updated on any twists in this whole story line. I'm waiting to see if that administrator ends up being right about the spoiled AUC students...and also to see if they start picking up their trash after they're done eating. In the meanwhile, I'll be bringing toilet paper to school with me since there are no janitors to replenish them on campus!

P.S. On a tangentially related linguistic note that I find totally fascinating, the word for "Strike" in Arabic is a modification implying greater causation/action of the word for "hit," which is weirdly like the way it is in English! If you think about it--and I hadn't until yesterday--it doesn't really make sense in English that the word for boycott of your work is called a "Strike," i.e. a more intensive kind of hit, so it seems kind of remarkable that the same weird connection would exist in Arabic too. There must be some shared linguistic genetics in that! Perhaps that doesn't interest any of you non-Arabic students, but it sure interested me.

Alex pt. 2

On day 2 in Alex we got up early-ish and met in the hotel's table room for our complimentary breakfast of fuul (beans) bread, and cheese. The fuul was plain but the bread was good, and I ate a lot of it. I keep meaning to take pictures of the food here so I can do a food post, but I always forget my camera...inshaallah I will remedy this problem soon.

After a slightly more leisurely breakfast than originally intended (it's Egyptian time...), we headed out. Nora and I were strong advocates of walking to our destination, the Pillar of Pompay, even though we knew it was pretty far south and we had no maps actually telling us where to go, and this is when the Rachel's quiet complaining began, quiet yet incipient. The not-so-subtle suggestion "we could just take a taxi" became the refrain of the day, even though everyone else was at least set on walking for a while. Thanks to a little democratic suppression of minority viewpoints, we walked. It ended up being about a two hour-long walk, taking turns and detours to look at interesting buildings, investigate enticing alleyway markets, and, occasionally, to ask for directions. I, for one, loved it. I've come to realize that I don't think I would be satisfied if I didn't finish at least one of my days in a new place exhausted from a full day of exploring all around. I really enjoyed when the Egyptians we asked for directions balked at our (my) determination to walk and tried hard to convince us to take a cab. In our journey, friendly Alexandrians would come up and speak to us (usually about nothing in particular), and I got to speak in Arabic with them.

At one point two younger guys came up to me who I initially intended to ignore by telling them I was Spanish (Egyptians don't seem to usually know that language), but they ended up being very nice and helping us get back on our way to the Pillar. I realized as I was walking that telling them I only spoke Spanish was actually a good way to force them to speak Arabic with me. I began entertaining notions of pretending I was actually Spanish from now on (God forbid someone actually know Spanish since I've forgotten all but my kitchen vocabulary and some swear words mostly), but was distracted by an alley with a particularly exciting open air market that I basically forced our group to go through. Only Rachel objected to another detour, and it ended up being a really beautiful place with lots of brightly colored fruits, fresh fish, and various other stuff that I didn't even recognize. Alexandrians hustled around kicking up dirt from the unpaved alley and haggled with the sellers over prices. Consistently here in Egypt, one of my favorite things has been going the places where Egyptians do double takes at seeing foreigners there. It makes me think maybe they respect me a little more. Wandering the sunny back streets allowed us to see the colorful (in the literal and figurative senses of that word) parts of Alexandria hidden away from the tourist drawing beach.

Eventually, our journeying brought us to Pompay's pillar--basically all that remains of Alexandria's former architectural wonders. The pillar is flanked by some small sphinx-looking statues, though I can't tell you with too much certainty because we had to pay to get into the large walled-off area and didn't feel like it was worth it to just see a single big pillar--especially when we could just take pictures through the gate and get the general idea. Here is the picture I got:

Yep...it's a pillar.

From the pillar it was only a short walk to the other remnant of Alexandria's ancient civilization, the Catacombs. Basically the Catacombs are a big tomb complex (is "Necropolis" the right term?) that are really deep down in the ground. They're fairly ornate and impressive, though I'll admit, I found myself mostly wondering why I should care. Apparently they were only discovered by accident in the early 1900s when a donkey fell a hundred feet down the hole of the main entrance. The tombs actually extend further down into the ground, but are inaccessible because they flooded. Apparently Alexandria is not willing to splurge on pumps to clear out one of their only remaining great archeological sites.

A picture I was not supposed to be able to take...kind of the only part of the Catacombs I actually thought was cool. The rest of my less impressive pictures of the catacombs will be up on my facebook soon...

For me the most notable part of the Catacombs experience had to do with the rule that no cameras were allowed in, a fact that caused a problem for us as we were in fact all carrying cameras. I just snuck mine in in a small pocket in my shorts, but the others were initially asked to leave their cameras at the front gate, and then just their batteries. Most of us had pretty run-of-the-mill point and shoot Canons, but Rachel had a nicer, much more expensive DSLR, and she was not happy about the situation. Now, I should point out, Rachel doesn't even know how to turn the flash on and off with her camera and took maybe a grand total of 12 pictures throughout the whole trip, but all the same, she was irate at this development. She started berating the security guards--who were just enforcing a rule that was spelled out in many signs around the entrance--saying things like, "Do you KNOW how much this camera is worth?" and "If I come back and my battery is not here it will be a big problem," and then, after she finally left her battery and was walking through the gate, the guard said to her fairly apologetically, "Sorry," to which she snippily responded, "No you're not," as she walked away. Not only was I frustrated that she had been so impolite and made a bad situation worse, I was even more annoyed that she executed this whole fiasco all in English. Now I should add here, Rachel is in Nora's Arabic class, which is at least a level or two higher than mine, but she didn't speak a singular word of Arabic this whole time (nor throughout our entire trip for that matter). What's more, at various times throughout the trip, she would get angry with Egyptians who didn't understand her English.

Don't totally know what was going on here, but I thought I'd try and include some pictures to give a sense of what "normal" streets look like.

Rachel perked up once we headed down into the Catacombs and found out that Nav and I had both snuck our cameras in, so there would be some pictures despite her fit at the gate. After we left the Catacombs we decided we would grab some good old fashioned street food and then grab a taxi up to our next destination. The cab was partially a peace offering to Rachel, but more to do with the fact that our destination was all the way back up to our hotel and then another 40 minute walk beyond that. (On the map in the previous post, the Catacombs are at the very bottom of the map toward the left, while our destination was in the dotted circle at the top left of the map at the end of that unnatural looking arm of land sticking out into the sea.) I got what turned out to be some pretty questionable tasting kibda (a very common street food which I only recently found out, is beef liver) with deceivingly tasty-looking pasta. We thought it looked promising as the pasta vendors had been so numerous as we walked that it seemed like it might be some neat little specialty of Alexandria, but the noodles were super overcooked and the sauce tasted mostly like tomato juice, so I think not. Upon reconvening with the others, I found Nora seething after another of Rachel's tantrums. They had gone to what is your standard Egyptian food stand/small restaurant selling things like fuul (beans), falafel, fried eggplant, and then some meat things, and Rachel, who apparently has just been eating American food or at places with English menus mostly, freaked out when the menu was only in Arabic. Now let me say again, she is supposedly in a higher level of Arabic than I am, but I can easily read Arabic menus and find the aforementioned ubiquitous Egyptian food items. I don't even know what this girl has been doing in this country for the past two months. Anyway, Nora had to order for her, because she was so helpless.

As we were catching a cab, we got caught up in a crowd of uniformed Egyptian Elementary school students who presumably just got out, who quickly charmed us by repeatedly coming up to ask us what our names were in order to show that they knew some English. As the children stood around we caught and squeezed into a tiny cab (Egyptian cab drivers don't mind if you have 5 or even 6 passengers) and ended up taking what turned into a fairly lengthy ride thanks to the Friday morning traffic including a surprising abundance of horse-drawn carriages. Nearly a half-hour later we arrived at our next stop, the Qaitbay Bay (pronounced with a K in the back of your throat for the first letter and rhyming with "eye-it-bay").


The fort is a magnificent white color with an outer and inner wall system that surrounds a fairly large grassy promenade with white brick paths and palm trees. It was literally one of the cleanest places or things I have yet seen in all of Egypt, and it sort of heartened me after seeing the rubbage-filled Pyramids last month. Inside the 4-level fort they had installed only minimal artificial lighting allowing the strategically located holes in the walls to provide most of the light.

I didn't totally pay attention to the history of the fort, but I know it was built in the 16th century and was restored by the hugely famous Egyptian reformer, Mohammad Aly, in the 19th. More interesting to me was that the citadel was most likely built on the grounds of and from the ruins of the Great Lighthouse of Pharos (one of the 7 Wonders of the World) which had been destroyed many centuries before by an earthquake and repeated attacks. There were these giant, strangely shaped stone bricks in the waters around the fort and I liked to think that those were some of the other pieces of the Lighthouse.



The fort was quite crowded, though not overly much so, but I noticed that most of the other tourists there were Arabs which I found interesting. It seems a lot of Egyptians come to Alexandria for their holidays. A lot of the younger ones went around posing unabashedly in front of this and that part of the fort. It was pretty much indistinguishable from the Americans' behavior at touristy sites if not a little more over the top.



After the Fort we got some ice cream and then met with Shayna who was with her visiting dad. The seven of us headed to a restaurant that had come recommended by some Alexandrians, where, if we opted to eat seafood, they had us come to the back and pick out specifically which fish/crab/calamari we wanted to be eating. The crabs I got were underwhelming and annoying to eat (why did I get three?!), but the fish was probably the best fish I have ever eaten in my life. The Arabic name for it was like "Dinees" and so far no one (nor the internet) has been able to identify what fish this is, but it was delicious. This was the first time I've eaten a fish that was still intact, and I now know how people die by choking on fish bones--those things are sneaky. Anyway, it was quite the feast we had with seafood soups and a row of fish and a whole spread of sauces like tahina, hummus, baba ghanoush to go with the salads and veggies. And then the guy clearing the table insisted on clearing all the plates at once by making the most incredible stack of dirty plates I have ever seen in my 5 years of on-and-off waiting an bussing tables. This guy did not mess around.

We had a confusing moment when we asked for the check and the waiters seemed a little perplexed and kept saying "finished" "finished" over and over again in Arabic and English. Eventually we discovered that Shayna's dad had generously opted to take care of the check without any of us knowing. Needless to say, this was awesome, but this was also a good example of the monopoly-money-effect that is hard to avoid when first dealing with low-value currencies. It feels like you're not spending anything, so you spend too much of it. After the first two weeks we had all adapted and now frequently scoff at meals that cost more than LE10 (less than $2), but then again, perhaps that's because we are unemployed.

When we walked out of the restaurant (after having some after-dinner mint tea of course), I noticed something I had not yet witnessed in Egypt. I've been hearing that one of the great Egyptian delicacies that I absolutely need to try is haram, or stuffed pigeon, and when I looked to my left I saw there was an Egyptian man standing in front of what looked like a large bamboo table frame. Inside the frame/cage table thing were probably a hundred pigeons whose wings must have been clipped because they were unsecured and yet couldn't seem to leave. Standing in front of the table was an Egyptian man doing what one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. He would reach down into a big bowl in front of him, put something in his mouth, grab a pigeon from his right, pull its face to his lips for a moment, hold the pigeon as it sort of twitched, and then casually put it down to his left only to start again. Now, I had never really devoted much thought to how exactly pigeons become stuffed, or even what being stuffed means, but this was really not what I was expecting. I tried to get some pictures without being conspicuous so I didn't get a shot any better than the one here.


After catching a couple of cabs (7 people is where a cab would draw the line on packing people in), we headed back to Shayna's hotel to drop her dad off and then we went to a pastry shop that the girls had found the night before. I didn't get anything--we all know how I generally feel about desserts--but I did take a picture of their very colorful and appetizing things that Shayna and Rachel got. We took our time at the dessert place while mulling over what we might do that night to explore the Alexandrian night life, and I considered getting more tea (I'm really into mint tea now, guys) before we headed back to the hotel to deposit some things and then head out. It was probably just a little after midnight when we finally left to go to another bar that had come recommended in the Lonely Planet book. The somewhat mysterious description for the bar had said that Thursday and Friday nights are more "alternative," so we thought there would be a lively nightlife. As it turns out, "alternative" means "gay night," and we waded through a thick mass of well-dressed men, some Egyptian and some European, to a back room table. It was smokey and cramped, but still kind of nice even though the girls had been hoping for a place to dance. When we left the bar an hour later, the streets were totally empty. Turns out that chill Alexandrian attitude also extends to their night life. Now we know for next time. I was pretty exhausted after our day of exploring (just like I like), so I wasn't all that disappointed to be going to bed anyway.

The next day was our last day in Alex during which we had a run in with dishonest Egyptian ticket salesman at the train station, headed to the beach, and saw the new, amazing Library of Alexandria. That post will be up later this week. Right now I'm laid up in bed still from some sort of lung-infection, but next weekend is going to be Halloween which Egyptians are either completely uninterested in, or insanely excited about. My friends are all planning on being Egyptian related costumes, but I'm thinking I'm going to be a Viking. Gotta put my beard to good use. Either way, I'm sure Halloween will be a post-worthy experience too. Alex Day 3 coming soon! Here's a picture to end on taken from Qaitbay of the Alexandrian harbor just before sunset:

Alex pt. 1

Last weekend (now two weekends ago) was a long one because the Wednesday (October 6) before it was a national holiday and we had our Thursday classes rescheduled, so I got to enjoy a little beach vacation to Alexandria. Four girls, Julia, Nav, and Nora of my normal crew, plus a girl I'm going to call Rachel (because she is not going to be presented to favorably here) who sort of invited herself on our trip and myself headed to the train station at 7am last Wednesday morning, intending to take an 8am train to Alex. Daniel and Mulu were supposed to have come the night before and were going to meet us, but something came up and they weren't able to come, so it was just me and the ladies in Alex.

Traveling with a group of girls in Egypt is always sort of a funny experience because invariably some Egyptian man will yell out to me as I pass by "you are a very lucky man...so many beautiful women!" I usually ignore them or I smile and tell them with as much good-nature as I can muster that I sure am. That being said, I've noticed that being in a group of girls here sometimes puts me on edge, not because I am surrounded by females, but because females get very different treatment in Egypt than males. I should say first off, that the vast majority of Egyptians are harmless, but also there are definitely a fair amount who will try and cop a feel with foreign girls, and few who would do worse. Just knowing this I've noticed I feel a little protective. And the thing is, 99.9% of the time, just the presence of a guy--any guy--with a foreign girl reduces the likelihood of anything happening, which naturally inspires at least a small feeling of responsibility in me as a dude. I'm not trying to turn this into a women's studies analysis here, and this is not about women inherently "needing" men, it's just that things work a little differently here. Anyway, Vassar-education-inspired-disclaimer aside, even though the girls I hang with are definitely more than able to take care of themselves, and most of the time nothing is going to happen to them, I have nonetheless gotten a little quick to bristle at men who I deem (perhaps arbitrarily) are getting perhaps inappropriately friendly with my friends. I think I've definitely given a few stink eyes when none were called for, but what's most interesting to me is that is such a reflexive thing. I do it even though I know that more often than not, it's just the usual Egyptian mode of interaction, which to us foreigners can often come off as a bit too intimate.

I thought these Egyptians all sitting in a line at the Train

Station looked kind of comical (this is not supposed to be a portrait

of the creepy Egyptian men I just talked about).

Anyway, on our first day I was pretty tired from an intense week of homework and hadn't gone to bed until late the night before, but I was awake enough to be fascinated by Cairo's Ramses train station which is amidst some pretty heavy renovations. My bus ride to school each day takes me on a highway that runs over the station and I keep meaning to take pictures of this gigantic building with long green tarps hanging down covering the sides, but for now I only have these pictures taken from the inside. Of course, our train was sold out, so we had to take a 2pm train in second class instead. Though every source had told us it was well worth it to pay the extra LE15 to ride in first class, we were all incredibly satisfied with second class's generous leg room and pleasant temperature, so if you ever come to Egypt on a tight budget, the second class is a fantastic deal for what amounts to $7, especially as I thought back to the nigh unbearably uncomfortable bus ride to Siwa. As a result, we were in good spirits upon arriving in Egypt's coastal metropolis, and I immediately took a liking to the feel of the city.

Sitting right on the water (and on a pile of history much longer and more impressive than Cairo's), this deceptively large city has no skyscraper office buildings or hotels, content instead to simply extend out along the coast and a little south. Throughout my time in Alex as we walked the streets, smells of ocean and fish would periodically register through the surge of vibrant colors and details of this old, old city in my brain. And indeed, wherever we went in Alexandria, whether it was in the older western part or the newer Eastern part, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was somehow still in a small fishing town. The Lonely Planet guidebook describes Alex as "the city with the most history but the least to show for it," which explains how a city that was once the capital of multiple Egyptian dynasties, and the crossroads at which East and West could interact and combine envisioned in the more romantic depictions of Alexander the Great, could feel like a small town today. Indeed, most of Alexandria's greater claims to fame throughout history, the seat of Cleopatra's government, the legendary Library of Alexandria, and the Pharos Lighthouse (one of the original 7 wonders of the world), are little more than memories evoked on the signboards of tourist destinations. Nonetheless, the city has a lot of beauty even without the physical evidence of its history, and there were plenty of things to see and do there.

(For reference, our hotel was near the thing toward the left labeled the Cecil Hotel)

We arrived in Alex around 4, but not knowing that there were two different stops within the city, we mistakenly got off at the first one which was a little far away from our hotel. After taking cab to our hotel and getting settled in our fairly nice rooms we convened in Nora and Rachel's room (they were the lucky ones with a sweet balcony overlooking the street and a view of the ocean) to plan our night and the next day. None of us knew anything about Alexandria, so we pretty much just relied on the guidebook for suggestions on what to do and where to go. The book recommended, of all things, a sort of multipurpose Asian food restaurant on top of an old hotel on the water that had a menu broken up into three different sections for Chinese, Thai, and Indian food. I got a rather delicious green curry dish with rice from the Thai menu and an Egyptian beer. After dinner we headed to one of Alex's incredibly numerous Cafes and drank some mint tea while listening to Alexandrians animatedly play backgammon and dominoes. "Tea," here in Egypt, is basically synonymous with Lipton, and despite never really liking tea that much before travelling here, I'm come to really love mint tea (the name for which in arabic is easy to remember because sounds rather close to "Chai Banana") which is the Lipton with actual fresh mint soaking in the water. I take it with only one scoop of sugar as opposed to the 4 or so that is customary for most Egyptians.

After the cafe we headed to a bar that came recommended not only by the guide book, but by every single Egyptian any of us had ever talked to. Besides being right down the street from our hotel, the Spitfire Bar had the advantage of being rather charming and it played classic American rock music which I actually haven't heard in a long time. The bar was small and had writing all over the walls mostly in English which served as a pretty good reflection of who usually frequented this bar. We didn't stay long and afterward we went to bed excited to get up early for a full day of exploring the next day...which I'll tell you all about in my next post.

A little motivational gem I was reminded of in the Spitfire Bar (it's at the top of the picture).

I know this post wasn't too action-packed, but I've decided to split this post up into pieces. I've just finished the rest of the descriptions of Alex without pictures, but for the sake of spreading out my posts and also making them a little easier to sit down and read I'm leaving you all at this unremarkable cliff-hanger. The next post will be about our adventures exploring the city's big historical sites, the new library of Alexandria, and my new Egyptian friends that I made in the middle of the Mediterranean and on the train back to Cairo.

My Life with a Singaporean Gaming Celebrity

This is going to be a post about my roommate, Kun He, who I am everyday a little more fascinated by. I sat down to write the second half of my overdue Alexandria post, but I got into a conversation with Kun He that inspired me to write about him instead, because he is a very interesting guy. KH is a tall, skinny guy who wears small, stylish rectangular glasses as has that darkish red-orange color hair that Asians get when they dye it. He's usually pretty quiet, but also has a quirky, almost dry sense of humor that comes out every once in a while. Generally he wears hip, but comfortable clothing, and his sense of humor playing out in the shirts he has with funny phrases like "Voted most likely to kick your ass" that are hilarious when combined with the super skinny kid sporting them. Anyway, he's a cool guy, and as I think I mentioned in one of my first couple posts, he and I are very compatible as roommates. Even though we don't talk that much usually, and we basically never hang out outside of our room, I think this is probably the best of all the possible living scenarios I could have had in here in the dorms. When we do talk though, it's either about his life in Singapore, including his stories from his obligatory military service, or about his main hobby: Starcraft 2.

Now for those of you that don't know, Starcraft 2 is a computer game that came out in the past year to much hype in the gaming world largely because the original Starcraft is very much considered a classic. The new one is almost identical to its predecessor in that you effectively play war on various futuristic looking maps, amassing supplies, creating buildings, training increasingly advanced troops, and executing battle strategies all in real time to defeat your opponents who are doing the same things. You can play against the computer, or especially if you are very good, you can play against other people online around the world. As it turns out, I played the original Starcraft long ago in the 90's and early 00's, and I also played another very similar game when I was in early high school, so I know how it works and can understand a little more than the basics of what is going on in the game. Kun He plays Starcraft 2 basically every day for multiple hours, which is actually kind of nice for me when I just want some good quality mindless entertainment for a bit (I discovered with a very unpleasant shock that you can't watch Hulu, or any of the major network's online TV streams internationally, and while there are other sites you can use to get around this, it's sort of a hassle, and I really only want to watch one show), and it's kind of our way of bonding. As a result, probably once a week or so, I'll sit and watch him play for 20 minutes or so.

Now Kun He plays this game a lot. He's cut back recently, but it still takes up a fair amount of his time. At first, I was kind of horrified that Kun He would be in Egypt and be willing to sit and play computer games for multiple hours a day, but then I found that Kun He is kind of a big deal in the Starcraft world. Turns out he used to play for a professional Starcraft team (yes you read that right) and was at one point the number 2 ranked Starcraft player in Asia (excluding South Korea). He made thousands of dollars doing this. He had sponsors. People know his screenname and often times people walking down the street in Singapore would recognize him just from his Starcraft reputation.

These days, Ke now plays Starcraft 2, which is apparently a fairly undeveloped field of gaming in comparison to Starcraft 1, and although there are not professional leagues yet (Kun He predicts there will be some in the next few years), there are a fair amount of tournaments, and Kun He often gets invited to the top level ones, only to turn them down because he doesn't have the time, nor does he practice the 18 hours a day that professional players do. His refusals notwithstanding, he is, in fact, such a big deal that when there was an online tournament last week that he turned down, they came back and told him he could go straight to the top 16! These tournaments have thousands of contestants and he was offered a fast track to the round before the quarter finals. So yeah, it's kind of hard to begrudge him his playing, because it'd be like getting annoyed with Michael Jordan (ok he's not that elite, but i wanted to use an athlete that everyone knows), for wanting to go and shoot hoops everyday. You wouldn't say, "seriously, Mike, you want to do what? Again? You did that for like two hours yesterday."

And even the argument that I wanted to make for a while that went something like: "Dude. You're in Egypt. EGYPT, DUDE. YOU'RE IN EGYPT. DUDE!" sort of founders, because he is going to be an Egyptologist and will be studying here for at least 3 years. Does he need to rush back out to the Pyramids if he's already been there and will probably be spending most of his life doing stuff with them anyway? Probably not. Nonetheless, a part of me wonders about whether this is actually what he wants to be doing. On one occasion he dismissed getting back into the professional gaming scene, because he implied that doing so would not be substantial enough thing to have done with his life. Definitely respect that, and can certainly relate. And yet, on another occasion when he admitted that he would rather be playing Starcraft 2 most of the time, I could tell how much more he enjoyed playing.

I once heard an interview with Malcolm Gladwell, that author who wrote those popular pop-psychology-ish books ("Blink," "The Tipping Point," "Outliers"), where he asserted his belief that so-called geniuses are not just people with a huge reservoir of inherent talent and skill in a particular pursuit, but rather they are those with talent AND a powerful, driving love for doing something. So maybe I'm saying Kun He's a Startcraft genius. After watching Kun He play, and having him get into some of the insanely creative strategies that are considered common practice among the elite players like him, I'm sort of inclined to say he is pretty darn close if nothing else. He would say he's not, that the super elite Korean server has hundreds of players who are better than him (apparently South Korea is beyond obsessed with both Starcrafts, and the level of play there is in a totally different ballpark from anything anywhere else in the world), but Kun He doesn't play nearly as much as they do, and he really truly seems to enjoy and appreciate the game. I'm not trying to argue that I think he should be a gamer, but I just don't see that same passion for Egyptology with him, and I find that a little sad, since I was pretty into what I was studying in college. I wonder if I'll be lucky enough to be that passionate about whatever I end up doing with my life.

At the same time, Kun He also gets animated about talking about his home country, the island nation of Singapore. Generally the first thing he always says is that he hates it, but I suspect that that is not totally the case. He complains about the crowdedness of his country and he scorns the one-party pseudo-democratic government that has controlled it for the past couple decades (not unlike Egypt, though I don't think Kun He is up enough on Egyptian current events to know that). He tells of municipal duties blatantly looked over for years at a time only to have some official come by and fix everything conveniently just before he or she is up for reelection. According to KH, nearly all of Singapore's youth are completely plugged out of their country's politics, dismissing it as an exercise in frustration.

He also has some funny stories from his time in the army. He told me that every able-bodied male over the age of 18 must serve for 2 years in the army, which made me ask him why Singapore even needs such a proportionally large standing army, given it's small size and largely inoffensive relations with the rest of the world. The answer was, basically, it's all about Malaysia. I don't even really remember what issues they tend to fight over, but it's a longstanding mistrust that exists between them, and that plays itself out in kind of funny ways with Singaporean military, said Kun He. For instance, in their fitness test during training, Singaporean soldiers have to be able to run a distance of something like 1.5 miles which happens to also be the length of the bridge connecting the island to the Malaysia. In addition, the bulk of Singapore's armed forces are stationed at the tip of the island closest to Malaysia. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem like a pressing international crisis, and Kun He seemed unphased and even amused when talking about Singapore's Malaysian paranoia.

KH also has some funny stories about the training exercises he had to do when he was a scout. Most of the exercises were basically mock fighting scenarios during which the goal was to sneak up on the other side without being snuck up on first. As a scout, Kun He was usually out by himself closer to the "front lines," and they are thus expected to be especially good at not being found by the enemy given that that would be there primary function in an actual war. So one time, Kun He was out in the middle of the jungle in full camo, doing his best not to get caught, when out of nowhere his commander pops through the trees carrying a cake for him because the day before she had denied him leave to go celebrate something. He maintains that no one should have even known where he was, and was too surprised to ask how she had found him so easily, but he does remember the first thing he said to her. Instead of thanking her or asking her how she found him, he said only "Can you please put out the candle? I'm in the middle of an exercise." He also told me about a time when his battalion had to start an exercise over because the opposing side had gotten lost and driven into his Sergeant's camp--the camp they were supposed to be trying to capture--to ask for directions. Apparently there is a saying in the Singaporean army that goes, "for every clown in your unit, there is one your opponent's." I always think of military forces being so swift and effective, but he's right to point out that militaries are nothing more than their component troops, and you can't train clownishness out of every soldier.

Hopefully neither of us gets offed by a miffed Singaporean special forces soldier for me sharing this stuff. I just thought those were some fairly amusing stories. And if you're wondering, yes, I do feel a little weird going into such detail about just one person, especially considering that I know I would never do the same with some of my good friends here. All the same, he and I lead such separate lives that I'm confident he'll never read this and be weirded out by it, nor do I think he would care. Furthermore, he's just such a character, and is one of the interesting aspects of my time here in Egypt, so I thought I'd share it with you here, as that is what my blog is supposed to be about.

In other news, I'll post about Alexandria soon, and I've got some thoughts about Arabic and Cairo roiling around in my head that I'm hoping to get the time to write about soon. It's midterms week of a sort here so probably not until the weekend though.

Finally, these past two weeks I've been hammering out some of the details of life post Egypt, and I'm getting excited. I'll write about those as soon as I have them decided a little more concretely.

And here's a picture of me at the Egypt-Tunis soccer game to make this post more visually interesting:

Twitter Fail / Behind the Scenes in Alexandria

While I was in Alexandria, I had no internet access, but I wanted to keep Oh Palm at least mildly up to date, so I sent four tweets from my phone--that was, after all, the only reason I got a twitter account which I am still a little embarrassed to admit to having (outside the context of blogging, doesn't twitter seem a little self-obsessed?). Unfortunately, Twitter seems to be having some problems (understatement) displaying people's tweets (as in, Twitter's primary function), and none of mine ever showed up. Thus I put them all up today. I should get a couple posts up this week about Alex and about the fascinating two hour long conversation I had with an Egyptian man on the train ride back, but in the mean time, as is becoming my stop-gap tactic for when I don't have time to write out a full post, here are a few behind the scenes pictures that probably wouldn't have gotten put in my Alexandria post to tide everyone (my mom and dad) over:

Figuring out the way to Pompay's Pillar.

The walk to the the Catacombs.

Lovebirds on a fortress wall.

Hangin out.

Egyptians at the Beach.

Me and my buds outside the new Library of Alexandria.

On Egyptian domestic abuse and a quick update

Note: I wrote this originally on Saturday night, but I held onto it to edit it a bit. So to be clear, when I say tonight, I don't mean tonight.

I saw a rather disturbing sight tonight as I was walking down Talaat Harb street. Talaat Harb is one of the main shopping streets downtown (kind of like an Egyptian 5th Ave.) and I was there to buy a cheap red shirt that I could wear to the Egypt-Tunisia soccer game I'm going to tomorrow night (woo!). After finding a suitable shirt from a street vendor (I think I got a little bit ripped off by only bargaining him down do about $6) I was walking back when I saw a sight unlike any I have ever seen in Cairo (or maybe anywhere for that matter). I was about to cross a street when I heard a little girl crying loudly and a man yelling in Arabic. I looked back to see about thirty feet behind me a thirty-ish looking Egyptian man trying to pull a two-ish looking little Egyptian girl off the head of an Egyptian woman wearing a full hijab and robe covering her face and body. The little girl was in kind of a weird position, shrieking loudly while she had her arms wrapped tightly around the woman's forehead. I am assuming, based only on how the tightly the girl held on to her, that the veiled woman was the little girl's mother or maybe grandmother as her movements to fend off the man seemed a bit feeble. It was a little difficult to tell who the man was more angry with, the woman or the little girl, but after a second or two he succeeded in prying the girl off the woman and then it looked like he was trying to rip off the woman's hijab. The woman's cries became audible despite the fact that she was sort of bent over in what was either a defensive or submissive position under the man's arm strength. It took the man only a second more to pull off her hijab and push her toward a nearby doorway. As she scrambled away hunched over (to hide her face? or just to get away?), she paused to snatch up her veil and it was then that the man slapped--not, thankfully, in the face, but still rather forcibly on her back. It wasn't that he was aiming to hit her in the back. It looked like he was simply slapping at her with the intention of punishing her whatever way he could in that exact moment. The whole thing lasted about 10 seconds tops.

So having watched only this much, I don't what was going on. From what I saw, it seemed, somehow, like he was enraged with woman for something to do with her veil. The detail that made me think that all the more was in the way the girl had been clutching so protectively to the woman's forehead--as if to help her keep it on. He seemed so intent on pulling off her veil, and she so intent not let anyone see her face. And yet, from what I know, which is admittedly mostly academic, about the middle east, Islam and the stuff in between, this explanation doesn't really make any sense. Is it possible that they'd been having this argument before? Is he some sort of militantly modernist Egyptian who cannot stand veiling (which always makes me think of the American Enterprise Institute's resident anti-muslim ex-muslim woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali?) Or maybe he is afraid the little girl, who I'm pretty sure was his daughter from the way he picked her up, will adopt the veil? Frankly, I don't know what was going on. But what to me was the most remarkable part still was yet to come.

After the woman stumbled away, the man turned to pick up the little girl and go after the woman. The thing was, as soon as he had hit the woman, the crowd of Egyptian men that had stopped to watch the spectacle closed in around the combative man. He managed to pick up the little girl, but the men would not let him through to go after the woman. I couldn't hear what they were saying from where I was, but from their demeanor and the context I imagine it was something along the lines of "What [Egyptian expletive] the are you doing?"

Now, again, I don't know what was going on, but I was happy--heartened, really--to see how the Egyptian men watching had stepped into the protect the woman as soon as they saw the man hit her. Realizing this wasn't my base expectation reminded me of some of my lingering questions about the place of women in Egyptian society which made me start writing some especially pretentious stuff about how this all makes me an Orientalist until I realized that you don't really care. When I have some more coagulated conclusions about gender in Egyptian society, mayhaps I will post about the subject. Or not. I don't know.

* * * * * *

In other news, now I'm writing this on tuesday. Since writing all the above, the Egyptians won their soccer game against Tunisia which was a big deal, and a very fun experience. Being in a stadium full of people who grew up wanting nothing more than to be on that field is an awesome environment, and it was great to be with Hemeida and his friends. Now I am about to start packing for my trip to Alexandria tomorrow. There is a national holiday tomorrow and then their is basically a universal acceptance of the fact that no one is going to class on Thursday, so we have a long weekend effectively. And I will be spending it in Alexandria. Sweet. Gonna go swim in the Mediterranean. Just gotta go pack now.

Siwa pt. 3

On our night in the desert we all just slept out in the open as the temperature was probably right around 68 degrees most of the night. It was so pleasant that I had opted to use my blanket for my pillow until about 4 in the morning when I realized it was actually a bit chilly by then. Around this time mosquitoes came out and started harassing us for the three hour window surrounding sunrise that is apparently the only time they like to come out. Daniel and Mulu avoided the mosquitoes because after we had come down from our nighttime hike up the tallest sand dune, the two of them had were moved to bring their sleeping pads and blankets back up to the top of the dune to sleep up there. The tradeoff of avoiding he early morning bug bites was that they apparently kept getting sand blown in their faces. I'm not sure which was better, but it didn't really matter, as we all agreed it was a really peaceful night of sleep. Something about sleeping underneath the stars wrapped in the silence of the desert made it our sleep unjustifiably restful and so even though most of us had gone to bed past 2am we all woke up easily before the sunrise. Our Safari guides cooked us a delicious breakfast of jam, pita bread, tea (of course), and fuul (this is a beans dish that comes in various different forms throughout the ME; sometimes it's almost exactly like the refried beans you would find in a Taco Bell burrito, and other times the beans are whole and cooked with lots of garlic and spices; the latter is what we had here) while we watched the sunrise from atop the rocky outcropping next to our camp. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of our camp ever, but I suppose at the time I was just paying too much attention to the desert to even think of capturing our little outpost of civilization in the middle of it.

Desert Sunrise

After breakfast we packed up and headed back to Siwa for what we had originally thought would be our last day. Somewhere between waking up and getting back to town though Hemeida had offered us a little bonus addition to our Safari. He said if we would pay LE20 each he would give us a place to shower and clean up and then keep one of the trucks for us to ride around in so that he would take us to a few more scenic Siwan gems for the rest of the day. This might seem like a sneaky trick for him to get more money out of us, but given the fact that he was basically asking for $3.80 a person to do what turned out to be a lot of things for us, it was a great deal. We happily said yes, not even realizing what a phenomenal deal we were getting. I only learned later on when I went back to the Safari website to refer a friend that the stuff he took us on that day usually cost more like LE100 each. Furthermore, Hemeida doesn't even normally always accompany the groups out on these parts of the trip. Lesson learned: be nice to your tour guide. Judging by the fact that we have remained friends with Hemeida since our trip, having hung out with him a few times as he was in Cairo this last week (we're going with him to the big Egypt-Tunisia soccer match tomorrow night!), I know he was doing us a favor.


The trucks took us a to a colorful hotel/restaurant with a dingy double bathroom and vibrant cushioned seating area where we lounged for an hour or so as Hemeida took care of some business. One of the SUVs returned to take our bags and then we welked to Shallie, the town's fortress at the heart of the city on a hill that was surely used for good defensive measure back in the day. Having been there for thousands of years, Shallie is not exactly in the best shape, but it is still very beautiful and awe-inspiring to think about how this intricate city-center had been cut out from stone.

The better-kept parts of Shallie where people still live at the foot of the fortress' hill

Just a small portion of the vast fortress. Mountain of the Dead and the town's main mosque in the background.

After Shallie we met Hemeida in the town square where he had some slightly unfortunate news: the place that he needed to take the SUVs for some tire maintenance was still not open, so he had requisitioned a minibus for us to ride in instead. This meant that we would be cramming the seven of us plus Hemeida and the driver into an 8 seat bus. I say this news was unfortunate only because it's weird to say he had some news, not because any of us actually really cared. It was cramped, yes, but I think we all had come to expect and accept not being comfortable all the time in Egypt. After all, we were all dirty and sandy and you sort of just realize that getting to be comfortable and clean all the time is really not a necessary luxury all the time. By the same token, the bus seemed not to have working a/c, so we just rode with the sliding side doors and the trunk open to catch a breeze. Did the bus have seatbelts? Nah. But it did have not uncomfortable seats, a working engine, steering mechanics, wheels, and brakes. What more could we really ask for?


Our awesome minibus took us east to the salt lake to which our long meandering bike detour from the first day had gone, except the bus then turned down the road cutting across the lake that we had only taken photos of and turned away from before. The road stretched out straight ahead for what seemed like maybe a few miles, but it turns out I am a horrible judge of distances as it took us about 20 minutes to get across the lake. At first the water tracked along side our thin road, but then the water ran into flats either side. On the right was a rust-red mud flat which Hemeida told us had been the source of Siwans' building materials for most of the town's history, and on the left were the expansive salt flats.
Now I don't actually know if salt flats are technically the right term for these, as "salt flat" is one of those terms that I've realized I only know the meaning of by hearing it in different contexts, but based on the two minutes of research I just did in the middle of writing this sentence, I'm not sure that is actually the proper term, because this was almost like a thick layer of salt that had accumulated on top of (what I presume to be) the shallow remnants of this part of the lake. Either way, the flats-or-whatever-you-call-them were really beautiful. The vast crystalline landscape seemed a little dream-like, but every crunchy step reminded you that you were awake. What's more, the salt tasted pretty good. I don't know if there's such a thing as high-quality salt, but this seemed like it must be it.

After the salt flats we piled back into the bus and kept on driving to the far end of the lake. When we reached the "shore" again we headed right and drove another fifteen minutes to the tiny hot spring of Abu Shrouf. This is the first hot spring that didn't have a walls and pipes built around the spring to better regulate it into a sort of natural hot tub, and we mostly just looked at it for like five minutes and then got back into the bus to go to Abu Shrouf's cold spring.
Surrounded by palm trees this spring was large, the size of a small swimming pool and, after trekking around in the sand all day yesterday without showering since, it was the most refreshing swim I may have ever had in my life. There was a small hut at one end where you could buy sodas and sheesha from a bored-looking Siwan. Daniel and Mulu, as is often their way, got a sheesha while the rest of us swam. I stayed in longer than the rest and was eventually joined by our mischievous minibus driver. He started taking running dives and flips into the pool, so I decided to join him. This is sort of a silly detail, but over the summer, I had finally taught myself how to do backflips, but only off of diving boards, so two days before, when the poolboys at Cleopatra's bath had been doing backflips off the high wall, I had been too chicken to join them. But when our driver (whose name I can't remember...) challenged me to do a backflip off the much lower pool edge I decided to join him. After a couple more practice jumps I had managed to get my body all the way around without freaking out and twisting awdwardly mid-air a couple times in a row.

Having bonded over our poolside acrobatics, the driver and I then had a race to see who could swim to the bottom and then to the far end of the pool first. It felt a little unfair when I beat the desert-denizen, but I think it made him like me even more as we hung out at the far end of the spring speaking in a mix of broken English and Arabic (which, I might add, is still one of the most exciting things I get to do here in Egypt). When some Italian tourists showed up, including some bikini-clad twenty somethings whom our driver seemed especially interested in, he elbowed me and asked me the question that most all Egyptians ask whenever you have a conversation lasting more than about 6 sentences: if I was married. I laughed and told him no, to which he responded sagely observing that "in America, these things are different." We then decided we should probably do some more dives and splash the Italian tourists (don't worry not too much, all in good fun).

As we lounged in the hut talking with the Egyptians and eating the snacks we had brought with us, another instance of the Siwan generosity occurred when Daniel started feeling a little sick from some combination of the heat, low blood sugar, and dehydration. Two Siwans quickly jumped in a car to go pick some dates, while the guy selling stuff at the hut pulled out some of the ice water from the cooler and started pouring it over Daniel's obliging head. The dates, as usual, were delicious when they came ten minutes later.

The dates picked by our helpful Siwan friends. They were all gone in about 8 minutes.

We stayed at Abu Shrouf for about three hours before heading back to town. At this point most of us had started to feel the lack of sleep's effects and we mostly napped in the bus, except for Daniel and I, who had the seats next to the open doors. Forty-five minutes of trying to keep my head up and awake we arrived back in town to get some dinner. The seven of us and Hemeida sat down at an open restaurant and ordered some food and relaxed. It was at this point, while we were waiting for our food that a Siwan came over and invited us to come to his desert party that night. We apologized and told him we were taking the 8pm bus out of Siwa and would not be able to make it, to which he shrugged and told us to take his flyer just in case. Fifteen minutes and some encouragement from Hemeida later, I and all but Nav and Mulu had decided to take the 7am bus the next morning instead of the one that night. This turned out to be a great decision for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that it turned out the Bus Nav and Mulu were supposed to get on broke down making their trip last an extra four hours. We didn't find that out until later, but we knew from the moment we got back in the bus to head up to a peninsula nicknamed "Fantasy Island" that we had all made the right decision anyway. Our driver greeted us each with big red lollipops which somehow, strangely, were the best lollipops I have ever had. Flavored something like sour cherry they magically had the perfect balance of sour and cherry, and we were all sort of touched that the driver had thought to make such a nice, but totally unnecessary act of kindness.

The correctness of our decision was only further reinforced by the fact that Fatnas Island (the real name) was stunning. As we drove to drop off Mulu and Nav at the bus station, Hemida seemed a little agitated and kept indicating politely that he wanted us to hurry up, though we didn't know why. We drove up a windy palm-tree lined road as dusk began to fall until we reached the western lake and crossed over a land bridge to Fatnas. Looking out at the water as we crossed, we saw tall, skinny-legged birds with curved beaks and pink wings relaxing in the twilight waters only to realize with a shock that these were, of all the things we never expected to see in Siwa, Flamingos! We reached the island and parked next to another hot spring. Led by the hurrying Hemeida we walked through the thick palm trees in the receding light for a minute until the trees suddenly opened up before us to let our eyes feast on this:

and

I did not expect to see a gorgeous sunset over water out in the middle of the desert.

After sitting and drinking some Shay BiNa'ana (mint tea) as the sun set over this unexpected tropical paradise, we headed back into town to do some last minute shopping and then got into one of the 4WD trucks (tires now working) to head out to the desert party we had been invited to at dinner. The party ended up being at a sort of big permanent campsite where a group of local Siwan men played drums and sang/chanted various songs while some younger boys danced. Later in the evening, the boys actually did some bellydancing (they were still wearing their galabaya robes, I might add) which dispelled any misconceptions I had about the agility of males' hips compared to girls. It was mostly tourists with their Siwan guides at the "party," but there were a few Siwan families there too alternately clapping or singing along. Sitting in the bright colorful tent, we were brought tea and sodas (included in our LE20 minimum charge entrance fee) as we watched the mesmerizing show for probably about an hour or hour and a half.


We were all starting to feel pretty tired, but we had heard that we could head to a hot spring that night if we wanted and so we made the inspired decision to soldier on despite our creeping exhaustion and the prospect of our 6am wakeup time for the next day. It seemed like we had picked wrong when the first two hot springs we went to turned out to be closed (I don't really understand how hot springs get "closed" but there was barbed wire), but we arrived at a third one to find what was literally a hot spring in the middle of the desert. A few bushes huddled close by which we used to change into our bathing suits behind, but mostly other than that it was just us, the hot spring, the desert, and the stars. About half of us had been planning on not going it for various reasons of fatigue and sunburns (the latter being mostly me), but as soon as we got there we all changed our mind except for Shayna who was feeling sick to her stomach. The water was hot, but felt pretty amazing in the cool night air. We sat and talked with Hemeida and Fathi, our driver from the day before, about Siwa and its history, as well as about how Fathi learned to navigate the desert (basically he did it by saving up some money and then offering to accompany and help an older professional driver around the desert as he led safaris free of charge). It was a pretty magical way to end what had all around been a magical experience, and we all agreed it was well worth the lost sleep.

On the ride back we all got Hemeida's phone number for when he would be coming to Cairo and then he took us to a cheap hotel to spend our last night in. It turned out the hotel was pretty abysmal compared to our first hotel and not much cheaper, but it served its purposes well enough and we all mostly forgot about it. Our bus back in the morning was long but more comfortable than our first one and not really worth going into detail about. We arrived in Cairo after dinner time to the stark contrast of Cairo's obnoxious cab drivers and stifling pollution. We were curious to see how the city would be different after Ramadan, but after so little sleep, we were all a little too cranky to deal with the loud contrast to the place we had just been. I don't exactly know how to sum up our trip, but without a doubt, it is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Last night, when I was hanging out with Hemeida at, of all places, the Hard Rock Cafe (it was his idea to go there, not mine), I was retelling him how much I had loved Siwa, and reasserted that there was some kind of magic about the place that touches people. I'm not one to believe in supernatural things, but I think that's a pretty good way of describing what it's like. I think we would not have had such a charmed experience if we hadn't gotten so lucky to befriend Hemeida, though. He told me last night about some of the more horrible Safaris he's gone on with Europeans expecting wildly inappropriate services of the Siwans the meet and of prissy tourists not realizing that some sand and some sweat were going to be par for the course. I guess it helped that we were there to make the best out of every possible experience. So...I guess...go us?

Or maybe Siwa just really is magical after all.

* * * * * * * * *

Phew ok, finally done with Siwa. Now I'll start writing about Cairo again hopefully. This coming week is going to be a short one as it is Armed Forces Day on Wednesday (national holiday) so I think me and the crew are going to head to Alexandria. I really am going to write about Cairo though. I swear. I've been to some clubs and become sort of friends with a couple of guys among whom one is a full-time model (he makes more money in a day than I, a spoiled American, spend in two weeks here), one is the third-ranked martial artist in Egypt, and one is the second-ranked boxer in Egypt (to be fair, I've been hearing things like this about various sports a lot of times). I also made friends with a bookstore worker who wants to improve his English and taught me how to play backgammon. I beat him both rounds we played. Basically, there is not enough time here. My ALI program, in addition to having one more day of class than the rest of the school, gives more homework, and has more intense teachers than, from what I've heard, the whole rest of the school. And there is just not enough time. But I will persevere with my blog, I promise!

P.S. I love when you guys send me email updates every once in a while and please don't take my tardiness in responding as evidence that I don't! I just usually have homework. I promise I'll respond as soon as I can!