egypt #1

Some photos I would have taken, but couldn't:

At Wadi Rum, a man in a white robe and a red keffiyah leads 8 camels, all saddled, on a string of leads through red sand desert in the slanting evening sunlight.

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At Petra, a Bedouin family packs up for the evening. An old woman and a young woman are putting away the trinkets they've been selling; a young man and two little boys have brought up the donkeys they rent to tourists; a toddler sits beside the path.

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The minibus from Taba - loosely packed with me, an 18-year-old Austrian, one world-weary 20-something each from Moldova and Ukraine, two quiet Jordanian men, and a security guard in a purple tie and mirrored sunglasses - careens down the middle, the actual center, of the Sinai desert road.

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The Austrian, the Moldovan, and the Ukrainian haggle the poor bus driver into accepting shekels, dollars, and euros rather than the previously agreed on 100 Egyptian pounds. People! There is an ATM in the Egyptian arrivals hall, and the charmingly named Israeli 'Change Place' will change your money as well. Use these services!

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One of the quiet Jordanians makes sure the minibus stops where I can get a taxi to where I'm staying and offers to let me use his phone to call the person I'm staying with.

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A houseboat on the Nile at dusk, ashtray upon ashtray on the table. A guitar. Radiohead on the speakers. Just like you'd think it would be.

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Sunlight through the high windows at the Egyptian Museum. Most of the display cards look like they were made on a typewriter in the card catalog era by someone who spoke good English but was only a fair typist. A few of the cases have cards written on lined notebook paper in ballpoint pen - these are only in Arabic.

(slideshow over)

I haven't spoken to anyone all day, except for some stilted efforts at telling a taxi driver where to go. Traveling alone is weird. Also, as a solo woman in a place with a lot of harassment, I'm not willing to talk to men at all unless I start the interaction (i.e. I hail a taxi). Mostly, this has been very very easy to enforce. It also means I'm not willing to sit and have tea when it's offered, even though that kind of hospitality is something for which the Arab world is (justly, as far as I can tell) famous.

I'm glad to be adventuring, but I still kind of want to go home.

and then...

I got to school at 7:41, but I hadn't made my copies so I had to run down the hall, make the copies, run back to the office and sign in, run back to class, get things started.

And then the whole soccer team and all the kids who know someone on the soccer team were yelling at each other, about what I eventually figured out was their loss last night in the semifinals, possibly due to racism by the referee, and the ensuing fight/riot.

And then in second period we were observed by four people: the new assistant principal who's been giving out 'unsatisfactory' ratings, the head of the English department, the school growth teacher, and the principal.

And then kids complained about having a discussion and dragged ass moving their seats, which is what was happening when the assistant principal left.

And then we had a discussion which started out practically dead and ended up with kids jumping out of their seats to talk about Beowulf, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, boasting, and the definition of a hero.

And then the principal said, during morning announcements to the whole school, that our class was what American education should look like, and gave one of our kids $20.

And then I met the parent of my most trouble-making ESOL kid, and the girl who was there while I was talking to him said that what I told the dad would get the son beaten.

And then Joey rolled up his black pants to right below the knee so you could see his black socks pulled all the way up and it looked like he was wearing pantaloons, put on his girlfriend's jean jacket, and started dancing.

And then I gave him and these two other kids a problem they got wrong, which was awesome because those three are way underchallenged in my class.

And then it was lunch, and the copier was busy, and I was almost late to class.

And then this girl - a senior now, someone I know from last year - came huffing along down the hallway to say, "You are one hard person to find. Here's a letter." Which also contained a check for five hundred dollars. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS. For my class!

And then this kid showed up 10 minutes late to class, complaining about it, and his cousin who got suspended yesterday for saying obscene things to me ("She's like a mosquito, she can't stop sucking" + noises, gestures, etc) was there too, and the cousin wouldn't leave.

And then this girl showed up halfway through class who's NOT IN MY CLASS and inexplicably wants to be in it and she wouldn't leave either.

And then school security had to be called.

And then some girl broke a glass pane out of my door.

And then I couldn't help this girl do math because I had to write pink slips instead, so I told her that this was why I didn't like it when people misbehaved, and she was all, yeah, that's true, that's a problem.

And then I was all teary and pissed off in the women's bathroom during lunch, and this other 2nd-year teacher was nice to me, and before we talked she checked under the stalls to see if anyone was there, which was great.

And then it was the last period of the day and my 5th period kids were back and almost as bad as before.

And then this girl started picking up broken glass and wouldn't put it down and I was worried that she was going to hurt herself.

And then at the end of the period the girl I talked to about how people misbehaving screws up her education asked if I was ok and I said no and she asked if it was the class (yes) and her personally (no) and then she started cleaning up the classroom, and it was the best thing ever.

And then I gave the kids who did their work candy.

And then it was Outward Bound club meeting, and that was really fun.

And then this kid from Sierra Leone talked in Krio and Liberian English and Nigerian English for a while, and can I get him a stand-up comedy gig? He really is that funny.

And then they all wrote paragraphs about why they want to go on another Outward Bound trip.

And then they talked about getting t-shirts made with pictures from the Outward Bound trip and having the principal have an Outward Bound day so they could wear them to school.

And then I ran around getting suspension slips delivered.

And then I missed my workout.

And then I came home and put on my coziest clothes and wrote this.

And then I was completely exhausted.