Beholding Egypt

has been utterly surreal.

It’s freaking hot, too.

      -9/5/2019

Following our brief but excellent sojourn in Paris, the Global cohort has arrived safely in Egypt! Some opening observations are as follows: first, the city of Cairo is massive. Driving from the airport to our hotel on night one, I couldn’t help but notice the absolute sprawl of the place. Streets meandered endlessly, filled with vendors, cyclists, and some of the most raucous traffic imaginable. A second observation: the city of Cairo is steamy. When our plane landed around 8:30pm, the thermometer read a balmy 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and I don’t think it’s been below 85 since. Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note the total joy on display in fellow globie Aml Mohamed. An Egypt native, she’s been showing us around the city like a pro, patiently correcting our attempts at Arabic, and offering her objectively correct recommendations on where to buy the best street food. When her parents came to visit, they brought flowers for each of us and declared all twenty globies their honorary children.

Indigestion strikes.

Run for the Imodium!

I’ll to the bathroom.

      -9/7/2019

So what have we done here? As far as excursions go, I’ll give a quick rundown. On our first full day, we were lucky enough to visit the pyramids, and it’s honestly difficult for me to give any substantive description beyond that. After nineteen years of seeing every possible angle in photos, they had become the stuff of legend in my brain, so being able to touch, stand on, and climb inside of them seemed too fantastical to be real. And we did all three. While in Cairo, we were also able to see the Sphinx and the Egyptian Museum, and upon arriving in Luxor (leg two of our time in Egypt), we added the Valleys of the Kings and Queens as well as the famed Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. Days later, I’m still processing the sheer depth of history found in every inch of this place.

Over the last five days, I’ve also been privy to some incredible conversations, ones that have amused me, inspired me, and often provoked me to general introspection. At a recent nightly reflection, all twenty students were gathered in the hotel lobby, and Solveig Gordon voiced her concern that by engaging with anyone outside of our small group, we will unconsciously inconvenience or discomfort them. We are, after all, imposing ourselves on a foreign culture and expecting to be catered to as tourists; to some extent, inconveniencing others is unavoidable. However, with that in mind, do we then have an obligation to buy trinkets that we don’t need in order to support Egypt’s tourist economy? Do we even have a right to negotiate prices, given the relative strength of the dollar in Egypt and the fact that a large lunch routinely cost us less than fifty cents? I don’t pretend to have anything remotely close to answers, but just having the opportunity to discuss these things night after night has been so valuable. I can’t imagine a more insightful and sensitive group of people.

We rode on camels.

We saw the great pyramid.

What gets remembered?

      -9/10/2019

As we get ready to leave Egypt, I can’t help but wonder at what I’ll take away from this place. Obviously, I’ll remember the big things. Seeing the pyramids and temples and obelisks has been undeniably life-changing and I can’t diminish their impact. But I also really hope that when I think about this part of the program, I remember little things too. I want to remember Patric Carlsen accidentally drinking water from the Nile after Johny Salinas expressly told him not to drink from the unlabeled bottle on his dresser. I want to remember the man who proposed marriage to Seda Bagiryan, promising her one million camels as a dowry should she say yes. I want to remember the instrumental cover of Candle in the Wind that played on repeat in the hotel lobby and drove everyone insane. And I’ve got a reason for wanting that. I want to remember these things because those seemingly insignificant moments are what have really made this experience special. Everything we’ve seen and learned has been incredible, but it wouldn’t be half as impactful without the insight and joy of nineteen other manically passionate students. This experience is worthwhile because of them. I can’t wait for three more months.

—Elijah Leer ’22