Alexandria, Coptic Wedding and Homework

I apologize for not writing any blog entries recently but I haven’t for a couple of reasons. 1. I have been writing papers so much and taking tests and being busy and such that I haven’t had time. 2. I have been writing papers so much and taking tests and being busy and such that it would have been boring for you to read about. So for those that care I will tell a little bit about the schoolwork I have been doing. We have two classes that has basically been combined into one to take into account all the speakers and lectures on a variety of topics. These two are People and Cultures in the Middle East, and Conflict and Change in the Middle East. We have seven papers to write for the two classes broken up into two rounds. The first round is due this Monday. We have three papers due:
1. Is imperialism the primary problem for the lack of political, social and economic development in the Middle East?
I argue that yes it is.
2. Is religion the main obstacle to women’s and minority rights in the Middle East? I argue that no, culture and traditions are.
3. How can Christians best engage the Muslim world?

On Wednesday we begin our travel component and will fly into Istanbul. Therefore we concluded our Islamic Thought and Practice course, and will take our final for Arabic on Sunday. So among all the papers we have been writing we have been studying for the Islam final (which we already took) and the Arabic final. Luckily for me I have avoided all the madness of scrambling to get papers done, as I am in the final revision stages for all three. My roommates are way behind and are talking about all nighters and such. That is exactly why I worked hard early to get them done, because now I can focus on the Arabic final and relax about it all.
OK so now that we have gotten through the boring stuff, I can tell you about some of the cool things I have done lately.
My Egyptian friend, Maged Raphael, invited me to his sister’s wedding and we invited a couple of my American friends as well. I was really excited because I have heard that Egyptian weddings are quite the cultural phenomenon. It was a Coptic family, so the service was held in a church. There, I saw several of my other Coptic friends that I have met and talked for a bi. It lasted all of 20 minutes, with no kiss at the end. It was extremely religious and informal. Weird. I then assumed everyone was going to the reception, because if the Americans had been invited then surely all my other Coptic friends that I had met would be invited to. Not so, and I put my foot in my mouth by asking.
So we are at the reception, where I know about 4 people, and its held at a 5 star hotel in Giza. Beautiful and classy. The bride and groom come in to a really sweet band of 11 drummers, a bagpipe player and crazy Middle Eastern horn player. This was very culturally interesting! Once in the reception, the first dance happened to Celine Dion, and then everyone was invited to the dance floor. Thinking it was a couples dance I declined, but soon found out that it was just a big group dance session. So for the next three hours we danced to a range of American rap songs, Celine Dion, Arabic songs and techno. The Egyptians were terrible dancers and just loved going around in circles all the time. It was very chaotic but I loved it. Their dancing is extremely modest, with no co-ed contact or shaking of the backside. So at one point, I leaned over to my friend Chris and told him that to make our ridiculous story complete, we needed to find ourselves in the middle of the dance floor by ourselves at one point with all the Egyptians around clapping (as had been happening). We found our moment, capitalized on it, and we have been immortalized in history. I was told, “you are a beautiful dancer” and they urged us to stay in the middle of the dance floor the rest of the night. We were awkward about dominating someone else’s wedding reception and withdrew to explore the hotel. We ended up climbing several ladders to get to the very top of the roof about 16 stories high and looked over Cairo. That was pretty cool! We went back and dinner was served at about 1 AM and we ate and went home. The whole thing felt like we were in the movie Wedding Crashers, and it was good for a lot of laughs.
The whole group went to Alexandria last weekend. I was surprised to find out that Alexandria is a pretty chill place and much quieter than Cairo. We ate lunch in a restaurant beside the Mediterranean and visited the Alexandria library, built on the site of the Great Library (one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient world). The library was cool but very modern and had nothing to do with its historical counterpart. We found a great juice stand and café and spent the rest of the time there, watching the sunset. Alexandria didn’t have all that much to do, but had a great atmosphere!
This past Tuesday I was able to go to the Think and Do oasis, an hour north of Cairo. I have volunteered at the NGO, Think and Do every Tuesday doing office work, but getting to see the oasis was a golden opportunity. At the oasis, they do vocational training, life lessons, and development work with poor village Egyptians, working to give them skills to advance themselves economically. It was very interesting and great to see.
So that is all for now. It’s a crazy 3 or 4 days and then we fly to Istanbul!
Thanks for reading.