It’s a perfect morning in Cairo.  Still cool enough to have my windows open, quiet and serene.  There’s a beautiful tree outside my window with the most vivid red/orange flowers.  I am sitting on my bed drinking coffee and not in a rush to do anything or go anywhere.  Bliss.

School continues to go well.  We are still playing the “get the schedules right shuffle” whereby my classes change weekly.  It is a bit frustrating as every time I think I’ve mastered my students’ names I get new ones.  The names are a bit tricky for me.  I am bad at learning peoples’ names to begin with and some of my kids have names I have never heard before and/or names that are difficult for me to pronounce.  So I have started giving my students nicknames.  My favorite is “snoozy” for my student who told me “ya miss…I snoozed” after an impressively loud sneeze. One of my classes has decided that everytime I give them  quiz they are going to quiz me in Arabic.  I think they are dong better than I am...  

We had school on 9/11, which was an interesting experience.  Many of my 12^th graders were aware of what happened on that day, but most of my 10^th graders were not.  They knew that it was a significant day and that it had something to do with planes flying into buildings in New York, but beyond that they were unclear as to what happened that day and what came after.  Don’t worry…I didn’t fill their heads with too much conspiracy theory.  Just the right amount to teach them to question everything they hear. 

I am teaching early man to 10^th grade and apparently they do not learn about evolution.  They literally remove the pages about evolution from the biology textbook.  So since no one told me I was not allowed to discuss it I talked about it for about 10 minutes.  Many of my students had heard of the term ‘evolution’ but had no idea what it was.  I drew a rough description on the board which I was sure to capture because it is hilarious.  This, ladies and gentleman, is the only evolution description some of these kids may ever get:

It hasn’t been all work and no play though recently!  Some friends of ours had a 70’s party last week that was a lot of fun. They also made amazing Mexican food two nights ago.  Last night some friends had a “paint our apartment party.”  They had everyone painting on the walls of their dining room.  It was really impressive and I look forward to seeing the end result. 

 

70's Party

The political situation here continues to be dramatic to say the least.  There are ongoing protests and strikes across Egypt.  Last week 4 university presidents were asked to step down and there were mass demonstrations at the American University in Cairo (AUC).  Egyptian sate security forces raided the offices of an Al Jazeera channel in Egypt.  The channel broadcast all Egyptian news and has run into problems with the government here before.  Although Egypt is much more liberal than many of its neighbors, the censorship of the media is still a problem. 

 

 A few weeks ago I went to a demonstration in Tahrir Square.  The demands revolved around hastening the pace of change after the revolution as many feel that things are not changing.  The list of demands is as follows:

1.  Permanent End of military trials of civilians


2.  A clear timeline with exact dates of when the military council will hand over power to an ELECTED CIVIL authority (the initially promised 6 months have now finished). 


3.  Cancelling the new law issued by military council that prohibits sit-ins and strikes.
 

4. Change the new elections law that helps the same old corrupt businessmen win the elections.


5.  Implement the minimum pay for public sector workers and maximum salaries for senior officials. 


6.  Implement Egyptian laws that will ensure the corrupt heads and symbols of Mubarak’s ruling national party, and who have been proved to have rigged Egyptian elections for years, can no longer stand elections again.

7.  Ensure the Egyptian police focus on ending crime and criminality rather than attacking law-abiding citizens. 

 

That same day there were violent protests outside of the Israeli Embassy, which resulted in a break in.  While I did see some coverage of this on Western news outlets what I did not see was any coverage of the reaction of political leaders here who all condemned the attacks.  Emergency Law is back in full effect at this point.  There is a lot of talk of this law being illegal but it continues.  This includes everything you might assume it would.  However this newest edition of Egyptian Emergency Law is even more strict than in the last days of the Mubarak era.  Any action disturbing the flow of traffic, disruption of work or even the spread of rumors (presumably aimed at facebook and twitter) is considered illegal under the law.  This is clearly aimed at protestors and strikers.  Anyone arrested under emergency law is tried in an “emergency court” which is a like a military court and denies defendants a fair trial or the right to appeal.  Since early September there has been increased military and police presence everywhere including road blockades and checkpoints.  

That's all for now! 

Love from Cairo,

Martha