A Disorienting Orientation

Today was the first day of classes!  But, surprise, surprise, I’m behind.  Instead, have a couple of stories about orientation, and I’ll tell tales of classes once I sit through a few more of them…

The thing that everyone who ever wants to accomplish anything in Egypt needs to understand is that while individual people are as helpful and kind as can be, the system as a whole (no matter what system we’re talking about) is dramatically, frustratingly, and horrifyingly inefficient.  Doesn’t matter what you’re trying to do, whether you’re waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store, filling out forms for just about anything, or simply trying to cross a busy street, there’s no grand organizational scheme to be found, and you are essentially throwing yourself on the mercy of whatever (hopefully kind) people you happen to encounter.  This goes double when your Arabic is seriously limited, as you’re limited to the people who speak English and are willing to muddle through with you – you can’t talk your way to the head of the line if you don’t know how to talk!

Anyway, this horrible system is actually cyclical.  If you want to accomplish anything, it’s commonly accepted that you have to go in person to do it, and you have to talk to the right person at the right time, you have to fill out the right form, and sooner or later, you’ll probably pay some bribes.  You’ll need to be loud and cut in line and annoy people until they help you, and they’re basically helping you so that you’ll go away.  But because everyone is constantly trying to deal with these squeaky wheels, they never have the time to deal with the folks who aren’t standing there yelling in their faces, making a fuss and threatening to call their superiors, etc.  So God bless you if you want to do something the “regular” way, through “normal” or “usual” channels, without “making a fuss” – it’ll take a year for your form to even cross the desk of the poor, harassed bureaucrat who’s supposed to deal with it, and then it’ll probably get lost under the forms of the five loud people who are trying to get their things taken care of right that second or else.  In short, if you want to accomplish anything, you must become a squeaky wheel, and the inefficiency grinds onward…you see what I mean?

And so it was with AUC’s International Student Orientation.  Everything started and ended late.  Every attempt to get anything done took forever.  My orientation group (maybe ten students, with two “IPLs” – International Peer Leaders – to shepherd us about) only managed to accomplish, well, anything, when the IPLs or an administrative person elbowed their way to the front of the line and insisted that we get helped next.  In the first day, we managed to hear three sessions on various topics (marginally helpful) and enter our contact information into AUC’s system – and that was it.  No student IDs were gained, no bus passes acquired, no visas applied for.  We waited in line for student IDs and failed miserably in the quest.

I was lucky in that I tried to get as much of the necessary crap done ahead of time as possible – so I already had a student ID, I knew how to get my bus pass and was just waiting for the money to do it with, I’d picked my classes and just needed my registration appointment, my passport was already submitted for the student visa application process.  To this day, I have no idea how my fellow students made out (though presumably they were eventually given IDs, since I still see them around), because I skipped most of the rest of orientation.

Oops!

Well, to be fair, it was for a good cause.  Orientation started Sunday (see above).  I spent Monday recording audition tracks for my MIO app (a story for another, significantly whinier post).  Tuesday I went to the handful of orientation sessions but wound up going home early (a story I don’t particularly care to tell).  Wednesday we had off, as it was the one-year anniversary of the start of the Revolution.  Thursday was spent acquiring my bus pass (which took the vast majority of the afternoon), practicing piano (when I was waiting around for them to process my bus pass), waiting in line at the bank (to pay for my bus pass), and listening to a session hosted by the US Embassy (marginally useful).

Please note how much of Thursday was spent waiting.  Tuesday passed in a similar manner.  Sunday was almost nothing but waiting.  Registration today (another story for later) was similar.  I’m learning (or perhaps remembering) just how important it is to always have a book or score (or five) on hand…

The oddest thing for me about orientation, though, were the simultaneous realizations of how much I liked the people I was with and how little I had in common with them.  Most of the kids around me were undergrad.  (Technically, I’m not.)  Most of them were study-abroad.  (I’m not.)  Most came here knowing at least one other person from their home uni or their area.  (I’ve met one other New Yorker to date.)  Most are here just for the semester.  (At best, I’m here ’til December; at worst, ’til the December after that.)  Most are poly-sci, Arabic, international studies/relations, or Middle Eastern studies majors.  (I didn’t meet a single other serious musician – no musicians at all, in fact, with the exception of a single guitar player.)  And most of them, frankly, struck me as very young, though the majority of the people I met are around my age, and quite a few are older.  These are American kids who have money to come to AUC, who have money to travel in the area (everyone’s hobby is traveling – you go for long weekends all the time, and spring break means Lebanon or Syria or whatever – you being them, not me).  They’re used to having things their way.  They’re used to being the smartest person in any given situation, or the most linguistically gifted, or the most well-traveled, or the most cosmopolitan.  It reminded me in some ways of orientation at Columbia, only somewhere around day two of NSOP, you could see it dawning on the faces of the people around you that everyone was valedictorian, class president, with a four-point-oh and twenty extracurriculars and big-name scholarships and their dad probably had more money than your dad.  Problem is, I didn’t hang around ISO here long enough to see the dawning stage (and in some kids, it still hasn’t seemed to hit them, alas).

But at the same time, it felt very nice to be out of the house with a purpose, to be meeting other people, to talk and get stuff done and trade stories.  I’m probably never going to see most of those kids again – they’re all in the same ALI (Arabic Language Institute) classes, and none of them seemed to be signing up for anything musical (I certainly haven’t seen many of them around the department, and none in Chamber Choir, alas).  Oh, well.

So that was orientation:  lots of new faces, lots of waiting around, lots of people-watching. Lovely if a tad ordinary.  Onward, I say!

Une Petite Histoire – A Little Story

I’m sorry for the radio silence!  I had a few very quiet days (with nothing really to say) followed by a very busy week (with a lot to say, but no time to say it), so I’ll have to catch up this weekend.  But for now, have a silly story!  An old friend of my mother’s (who lived in Egypt but is now back in England) sent it her way recently, and I found it amusing.

The original:

Un salafiste monte dans un taxi. Il demande au chauffeur d’éteindre la radio: “La radio n’existait pas au temps du prophète Mohammed.” Le chauffeur éteint la radio, puis s’arrête. “Les taxis n’existaient pas non plus à l’époque du prophète: je t’invite à descendre et à attendre le passage d’un chameau.”

The translation, for the non-Francophones among you:

A salafist gets into a taxi.  He asks the driver to turn off the radio: “Radios didn’t exist in the time of the Prophet Mohammed.” The driver turns off the radio, then stops the cab. “Taxis didn’t exist either in the time of the Prophet; I suggest you get out and wait for a camel to pass by.”

…what can I say, it’s as good a caricature of the Salafists as I’ve ever encountered.

Oh!  Also, I’ve finally started to post photos of Egypt on Facebook.  If you aren’t my “friend” there and want to see them, email me for the link and I’ll send it your way.  Two samples below (both of which happen to be things that will no longer happen if the Salafists do indeed get their way):

The first is a poster advocating in favor of Egyptian tourism; the second is a shot of the local…well, the term “liquor store” is a bit of a stretch, but I guess it’ll do.  They’ll get bigger if you click on them…  Enjoy!

Oh, what a night!

Things it included:

- A delicious burger!  Dad hung out with one of his colleagues today, a guitar-playing person (classical, not electric) who also lives on Zamalek; said buddy recommended a new(ish?  possibly just to us?) restaurant called Blackstone, which features yummy American food at not terribly outlandish prices.  As Dad was feeling too lazy to cook and said restaurant is literally right down the street, we went – and lo and behold, it was excellent!  A tad pricey for Egypt, which means that it’s a bit less expensive than what you’d pay for a similar meal in, say, the middle of nowhere, IL.  And it was astonishingly delicious – very fresh, very tasty.  The menu bragged about how everything was made on the premises, including all the baked goods, the salad dressing, etc.  All I can say is, my burger was better than many an American one…

- Mango ice cream!  Many of you have heard me rant and rave about Mandarine Koueider.  If you haven’t:  they’re probably my favorite pastry shop in the world, they make wonderful Egyptian baklava, along with great cakes, various other baked treats (including loukoumades, apparently – who knew?), and some of the best ice cream EVER.  It’s all homemade, on the premises, no preservatives or fake flavoring, and dang, you can tell.  The coffee ice cream wakes you up.  The banana flavor tastes more like a banana than the actual fruit.  The chocolate makes you think that you’ve died and gone to heaven.  And the mango…ah, the mango.  I love mango at any time, in any circumstance, and well-made mango ice cream is easily one of my favorite things in the entire world.  This was my first time at MK since I arrived here and it pretty much made my week…I need to remember to go back more often!  Life goal:  taste all the ice-cream flavors.

- Last but certainly not least:  I GOT A PHONE!!  I’d been putting it off and putting it off, because I love my iPhone and I didn’t want to try to phone-shop in translation and I had no idea what kind of phone I wanted (because clearly I can’t shell out for an iPhone)…but orientation starts this weekend and I’m going to need a phone number for all the forms then, so I finally buckled down and did it.  It’s not quite the cheapest phone you can get (the bottom-of-the-line ones were all Nokias and I looooathe Nokia phones…long story), but it’s close – an old-school Samsung touchscreen.  I’m glad it’s touchscreen, though it’s not the best quality (a little slow to respond, shall we say – not that I can talk, with my slowly-dying three-and-a-half-year-old iPhone).  Funny, though – I went in, looked at the phones with my parents, finally picked this one out – the cheapest of the not-Nokia smartphones – and pointed it out to the salesperson.  The guy smiled, nodded, and disappeared off into the back room, where he stayed for a very long time before eventually emerging triumphantly with – wait for it – the PINK version of the snazzy black-and-grey phone I’d chosen.  He grinned and asked if the color was ok…what was I going to say?  It’s not the prettiest thing ever, but it’s not that bad and it’s not like I really care at the end of the day.  So I laughed and nodded and he got it set up.  Interesting features:  an FM radio, a built-in alarm to give you prayer times, and an app to show you which way to face in order to pray.  Pretty snazzy!

Amusingly and annoyingly, it’s super common to get wrong numbers here – and since I don’t speak Arabic, it’s hard to get the point across.  Literally half an hour after I got my phone, someone started calling it basically non-stop…I actually turned my phone off in hopes of them figuring it out and canning it!  I also set up my voicemail, so maybe they’ll hear it and get the point?  Meanwhile, I think I’m going to start rotating languages as I answer wrong-number calls, and see what gets the best response (other than Arabic, I mean).

Mmm…yummy, yummy music.

Can’t believe it’s taken me so long to write this, but here we go…!

So, I got to hear the Cairo Symphony on Saturday night – it was the first official concert of the new conductor (a lovely Czech gentleman by the name of Jiří Petrdlík – and yes, after hearing him say it twice and various other people say it, well, a lot more than twice, I still can’t pronounce his last name).  Mom stayed home, but Dad and I went, and repaired to a pub (yes, in Cairo!) with a friend of his after.

One of the snazzy things about the Cairo Opera House (where the Symphony performs) is that they still have a dress code – my dad actually got turned away once because he wasn’t wearing a jacket and tie.  (Considering that this is my father, who wears ties to teach half the time, I find the image highly amusing.)  So we both dressed to the nines (well, more like the eight-and-a-halves, but whatever), I left off my by-now customary hat (figuring that since I’d be with my dad, people – ahem guys in the street ahem – wouldn’t bother me) and dug out my heels and cute purse, and off we went!

Granted, it was a Saturday night (which is the equivalent to Sunday night in the States – the last night of the weekend before work starts back up the next morning), but it still seemed awfully empty.  A shame, really – Maestro Petrdlík is a lovely conductor, and it seemed to me that he deserved a larger welcome.  It was certainly a warm welcome, though.  I know a handful of Czech persons from the embassy came, and I’m guessing that various others from around the city made an appearance as well.  The Symphony is, after all, one of the most important musical bodies in the city, so even though there weren’t that many people at the concert, I was glad to see that the people who were there were so enthusiastic about welcoming the new maestro.

The program was interesting – billed as “A Tribute to Nature” and featuring Finlandia (Sibelius), La Mer (Debussy), and Beethoven Six (with an intermission after the Debussy).  Perhaps an odd combination, but with the intermission, it worked reasonably well.  Thing is, while the Beethoven is standard fare for the Symphony, the other two pieces definitely aren’t – and they’re hard rep.

This is in large part why I admire what the Maestro did so much.  The Symphony has been, well, not phoning it in, per se, but skating by, for years now.  There are a lot of very fine players in there and they have the potential to play at an incredible level, but somehow, they just…don’t.  They play a lot of standard rep, they know all the music and have for ages, and so they can get away with coming to rehearsal underprepared, perhaps without really practicing, and they don’t “have” to really pay attention to one another as an ensemble.  They pretty much just play, and it’s fine, because everyone accepts it.  So they’re a perfectly lovely group, but not a truly great one – certainly not the world-class ensemble that a city like Cairo deserves.

What the Maestro did with this concert (and with his last, the concert he was given to program/conduct as part of the application/audition process for his post – he did Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and a Bruckner symphony and something else, also very difficult, I forget what) was, I think and hope, the start of a change to that mindset.  He had limited rehearsal time for the concert, and the music he picked was very difficult and out of their usual comfort zone; this forced concentration and a strong, collaborative effort toward group cohesion, and it’s clear from the performance that he encouraged those efforts through very strategic rehearsal choices.

And the beauty of it is, you could literally see and hear the improvement as the concert progressed!  It was the most fascinating thing!  The Symphony is a tad notorious for playing a little behind the beat, and that’s where they were at the start of Finlandia; by the end of the Beethoven, they were right on the beat with the Maestro.  And the sound overall – the musicality, the blend, the tuning even, all of it – improved as the concert went along.  The Sibelius was meh – not great, but certainly just fine.  The Debussy was so-so at the start, but the third movement was really quite lovely.  And then after the intermission, when they came back for the Beethoven (which they’ve all known for years) – it just gelled, and there were some absolutely beautiful moments.

I think/hope that it’s an indicator of things to come.  If the Maestro was able to achieve that on, say, three rehearsals, I can’t wait to see where the Symphony will be in, say, a year.  More varied rep, harder rep, better interpretations of those pieces that they’ve been doing for years, a more cohesive sound…  I love Cairo, and I love the Symphony.  I’m excited to see this.

The audience I think agreed – there was an awful lot of applause at the end of the concert, as well there should have been.  And I was gratified to see that the Maestro was a gentleman about it – not showing off, not “braggy” or awkward the way a lot of conductors can be – a class act.  He strikes me overall as a good egg.  It was the same in watching him conduct (we were in the second row – what we get for buying our tickets the night of, alas – so at least I could see everything) – you could tell he was really connecting to the orchestra, not gesturing for the sake of gesture.  He was up there raising his eyebrows, making eye contact with sections, and occasionally (especially as the concert went on and the sound improved) grinning widely at various sections at various times, clearly pleased that something he’d been hoping for had happened.  That’s refreshing to me as a musician – I love love love seeing conductors who aren’t afraid to feed into the ensemble and react as they work.  Poker-faced maestros just don’t do it for me.

Also, for my fellow music/conducting geeks in the crowd:  HE WAS USING MINI SCORES TO CONDUCT.  Not full scores.  MINI.  In short, he was basically memorized.  I’m in awe.  Them’s some chops right there – more so because apparently, he never uses anything but mini scores.  I don’t even – I just – I can’t – no words.  (No, I’m not fangirling over here, I don’t know what you’re talking about, lalalaIcan’thearyou…!)

A good start, in short, and a very lovely concert.  Of course we went backstage after (love how Dad just charged right on through the “staff only” door to head for the wings!) and chatted with everyone and his brother…  Thing about Cairo (er, one of them, anyway) is that the classical music scene is tiny, so everyone knows everyone.  (This is super nifty for me, because it means I get to meet lots of cool, interesting, successful musicians!)  So he was saying hi to half the orchestra, and most of the principals, and ducked in to see the Maestro, and then afterwards, we met up with a colleague of Dad’s, David, to hang out and drink and discuss.

Said colleague is one of the finest pianists in the city and also one of Dad’s good friends here.  Apparently it’s a tradition for them (and various friends/colleagues of theirs) to go sit in the pub in Zamalek and analyse and debate and gossip and chat after any concert, rehearsal, etc…so even though David wasn’t able to make the concert, off we went to Deals (the local pub).

Oh, Deals. I don’t know how to explain it, really.  The setting looks mostly like a standard pub, but a little swankier than average.  The bar is about as well-stocked as any bar gets here (I think I counted maybe 15 bottles, and a handful of beers), and it’s mostly full of dudes, perhaps in their thirties, hanging out.  Rather smoky, even on a Saturday night, because it’s Egypt and everyone smokes (and no one cares).  And because Dad and David wind up there at least once a week, the bartenders and waiters all know them and their order, meaning there was no dearth of Stella Local and our French fries arrived with all due rapidity and deliciousness.  Also, because I was there with two men (one clearly old enough to be my dad, the other clearly a family friend), there was a lot of staring (fair enough, I was wearing ridiculous earrings and a very bright scarf) but no outright skeeziness – a success in my book these days.

So we sat around and drank and talked and drank and gossiped and drank.  Typical Saturday night, right?  Couple of beers at the local pub after a nice concert, lots of gossip and French fries, all very homey.  And I have to say, after sitting around at home an awful lot, for various reasons, it felt nice to get out and rejoin society.  I’m looking forward to doing that more often for sure.

All in all, Saturday night can safely be deemed a success for all parties involved, and I can’t wait for more like it.

PS, BTW -

- because I forgot yesterday and because back in the states it is still Friday:

In most of the world, it’s TGIF.

Here, it’s “So Happy It’s Thursday” – er, you do the acronymage.

(And the best part:  my father is the one who pointed this out to me.  Yes, the same man who once got mad at me for saying “crud.”  What’s that saying about the mighty and falling, again?)

Half whining, half polling?

Hey, folks!

So, as I’m pretty sure I’ve said…a few times…I’m in Cairo to study.  Study a lot, actually.  Study without having to worry about working, paying rent, or even really commuting (I go back and forth to the university and that’s pretty much it).  This is great, except that, well, I have no money.  This is no problem for approximately 75% of the year, as I’m, you know, studying – life in Cairo is pretty cheap and I can rely on my parents for living expenses, etc.  But then, well, there’s the summer.

Ahh, the summer, that endless dilemma.  Do you work?  Study?  Do a program?  Stay home and then have to try to explain on your next five applications why you didn’t do anything that summer?  I’m not a fan of that last option, and so had been planning to apply for a handful of summer programs, do one, and spend the rest of my time either in the States with the fam (also not spending money) or traveling in Greece with Aris (trying to spend as little money as possible, but I’ve been swearing for eons that we’d do that this summer).  But I’ve finally started looking at programs in earnest, and you guys, I can’t even afford to apply to most of these programs, let alone actually attend.  To apply:  application fee ($35-$50 at least), plus paper costs:  headshots, FedEx (a lot when you’re in Cairo), costs for recording time/space/equipment and an accompanist to make your audition recordings…  It adds up, especially considering the number of programs to which you need to apply.  And then the actual program:  tuition (most of the ones I’m looking at are at least $3k, if not closer to $4k), housing costs, food, transportation to/from (and within the city during the program, sometimes), costs of scores (don’t laugh, some of those scores are expensive), and on and on.  The cheapest option I’ve got would run me about $1500, not counting my airfare…even that’s out of reach.

I don’t have a job right now – I’m not actually allowed to work here (yay, student visa).  My parents, because they love me (and my brother) are busy paying off student loans undertaken to fund the “parent contribution” portions of our educations.  Paying for me to study in Cairo is one thing – I think it will literally cost about as much for me to be here for a semester as it would cost for me to live in New York for a month (food, transport, rent).  But they don’t have $6k+ lying around to fund summer studies.  I’d hoped to find a scholarship or five, or a grant, or something, but prospects along those lines are looking seriously slim.

So, what do I do?  I can’t work for the summer – I can’t get the right visa to work here (unless I have a job, but no one’s going to hire me for the summer unless I have the visa already, ugh), and I don’t have the resources to apply for summer jobs in the States (and in any case if I were working in Jerz or IL I’d need a car, which I don’t have).  I don’t have the money to fund summer studies.  I don’t have the money to travel.  And I can stay here, admittedly, but my voice teacher travels a lot in the summer and my dad’s going to be doing the ALI – not a lot of time for conducting work.  I could do the ALI again, I guess, but frankly, I want to be focused on music.

So, folks, the whining is done and it’s time for a poll:  what should I do with my summer?  All advice is welcome – please, y’all, I need all the help I can get.

A Word About Street Harassment

One of the things which has garnered me an awful lot of Cairo-related concern from family and friends ever since I started coming here is the question of street harassment, the, um, honor of Egyptian men, and my ability to walk around freely and safely unaccompanied.  What can I say, it sounds like it should be alarming and so people (reasonably enough) assume that it is.

I will be the first to admit that harassment here is a lot worse than it is – well, anywhere else I’ve been.  It’s actually bad enough that I tend to wince inwardly a tad when I hear, say, women from New York or Paris complain about harassment there – I’m sure it’s bad, but I don’t notice it in either of those places anymore, because frankly, they’ve got nothing on Cairo.  A few things that have happened to me in my time here (I’ve had five visits over the last six years, starting when I was sixteen):

- I’ve been applauded by a group of perhaps half a dozen policemen – yes, in uniform, on duty, who were standing around chatting on a corner in Zamalek my first summer here.  Literally:  I walked by, they started clapping and cheering.  Awwwwkwardddd….
- I’ve had a cab follow me the entire way from my old apartment in Zamalek, through the neighborhood, across the Qasr al-Nil bridge, to the old AUC campus off Tahrir – a very long walk – because he refused to believe that I did not in fact wish to take a cab there rather than walk.  He then wanted to be paid for the time he wasted following me once I reached the campus; fortunately, an AUC security person made him go away.
- I once counted, whilst out walking, the number of things that were yelled at me:  in a forty-minute walk, thirty-seven things in eight languages.
- While in Rehab, a guy actually parked his car and got out to start talking to me; despite my best efforts, he then walked with me to the souk (my destination), waited around while I ran my errand there, and then walked me part of the way home.  I very nearly punched him in the nose to get rid of him, but felt like that might be a bad idea.

These are the more dramatic things…but I don’t think I’ve ever walked out of the house alone without getting stared at, catcalled/whistled at, yelled at, honked at.  Men slow down and stare out windows; guys follow me.  It’s creepy.  And yet, while I’ve been sketched out, I will be the first to admit:  I’ve never actually been in an unsafe situation, as far as I can tell.  No one’s ever actually tried to touch me (let alone succeeded).  I’ve felt uncomfortable, but never fully afraid.  And there have almost always been other people around, and certainly there have always been other people within earshot – if something did happen and I yelled for help, help would come.  It is said, and I’m inclined to agree, that at the end of the day, Cairo can be a chivalrous city, in an odd way.  Just as odd, perhaps, is that only maybe half of the overtures sent my way are specifically sexual in nature – there’s plenty of leering (because I’m a young, pale, blue-eyed, blonde, clearly foreign woman and therefore almost certainly “easy,” gasp) – but there’s just as much “entitled curiosity” (the only phrase of which I can think to describe it).  The line of thinking is essentially:  because this person is out of place here, I am entitled to try to talk to her, to ask her questions, to approach her, and she is obligated to talk to me.  Once upon a time, I used to cave to that and try to chat with people, and about two sentences into the conversation, it would immediately and inevitably revert to the first situation and the guy would start to leer because they were assuming that all stereotypes about American women are true and I’d start to feel uncomfortable and peace out of there.  So that makes it even more complicated in some ways.  But I wouldn’t be inclined to talk to a guy in New York who was just saying “hey, let’s chat” rather than “hey, nice ass,” so I don’t suppose it ought to be any different here.

In any case, this all puts me in an awkward position, as a woman:  I know perfectly well that I don’t need to be afraid when I’m out alone.  Cairo is a much safer city than New York overall, and if something does happen, I’m more than capable of screaming loud enough to get help.  But the harassment also makes me very uncomfortable – though long experience (mine and that of other women) has shown that nothing will actually happen, the sheer volume of harassment is still disconcerting.  After the first few summers, though, it got easier to deal with as I essentially developed…I dunno, I guess you could call them survival mechanisms, and now those harassment-handling skills feel kind of like riding a bike:  a tad shaky after a long break, perhaps, but still there.  It’s almost like a checklist:  wear very visible headphones (I try to make sure to always have white ones when I’m here), dress modestly, hair up and (as of last week) under a hat, sunglasses if possible.  Don’t strut, but lift your chin; don’t sneer or scowl, but keep your nose in the air and your face blank.  Walk quickly but not too fast, and with purpose; if you’ve gotta stop and look at your map, do it discreetly, to avoid having a horde of direction-giving helpers follow you to and from your destination (had that one happen too).  For the love of God, don’t smile.  And don’t say anything, to anyone, ever.

And I’ve still got it.  Cairo:  do your worst, buddy.  Everyone else:  try not to worry?  It’s just another facet of the city I hate to love and love to hate.

“So, how’s Egypt?”

I planned, before I left the States, to count how many times I got that question, just for my own amusement.  This is not at all to say that it’s a bad question – it’s actually a perfectly reasonable question (just as I feel that it’s perfectly reasonable to ask friends “How’s New York?  Is it still standing?  Does it miss me?” even though I’m pretty sure I know the answers to all three questions), but the problem is, I’m never quite sure how to answer it, especially in the expected concise sentence or two. Here are my most recent attempts:

“Warm in the daytime, but cooler at night.”
“Old and sandy.”
“Riotous and sandy.”
“Frustrating and sandy.”
“Sandy.”
“I dunno, I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours sleeping.”  (That one’s true – I did in fact spend most of Friday asleep.)

Thing is, Cairo is Cairo, just as New York is New York.  It’s kinda hard to describe.  It’s big and yes, sandy and frustrating and traffic-filled (except early in the morning, “early” being a relative term) and welcoming and old and run-down and forbidding and interesting and full of people and lonely and intriguing and snarky and happy and loud and quiet and foggy and dry and desert-like and river-like and poor and rich and revolutionary and traditional and musical and harassing and peaceful and meditative and prayerful and drunken and caffeinated and dancelike and literary and beautiful and ugly and full of crap and verdant and odd and cobbled and truthful and falling-apart and built up and advertised and somnolent and insomniac and discreet and also discrete and…well, you get the point.  It’s kinda everything all at once, and what it is depends very much on my mood.

It’s kind of like those particles…electrons?  Maybe they’re not elections.  Whatever.  Anyway, those subatomic BITS that spin along whatever axis you happen to observe (read, pick an axis and it’s spinning along it).  A highly subjective experience, and also as simultaneously incomprehensible and poetic as quantum mechanics.

So what’s my subjective experience so far?

The traffic is mostly better than I remembered, but the driving is often worse.  My neighborhood is dustier than I thought it was, but the bugs aren’t as plentiful – perhaps a result of it being January.  I’d forgotten how weird it is to be blond and pale here…I thought I hadn’t forgotten and then realized that I had.  Learned the other day that wearing a hat helps a little, but it also makes me look like a thirteen-year-old wanna-be skateboarder…or a person wearing a yarn shower cap.  So we’ll see how long that lasts.  Maybe if it does last I can make some lacy cotton ones for the summer, or something.

This is a place where I am told that most pharmacists are Western-trained and speak perfectly good English, but my prior experiences suggest otherwise.  Getting aspirin instead of ibuprofen was ok, but getting a laxative instead of motion-sickness meds was not, so I’m a little afraid to see what they’ll give me if I ask for Theraflu…or any other cold med for that matter…and in any case, it’s been a week, so I guess I’ll hit up the campus clinic tomorrow.  We’ll see if they’re as efficient now as they were with the swine flu outbreak.  Efficiency remains, as ever, a relative term, here just the same as elsewhere.

The grocery store has more imported stuff than I remember, but the internet is sooo much slower…!  And the revolution has affected nothing in my path so far, except that it resulted in a really beautiful mural in the neighborhood.  Maybe I can get pictures later.  The buses are the same, and so is AUC.  The people that I met before are still nice.  The people that I’ve just met are also nice.  I remain incapable of remembering any names, but I don’t think that’s because it’s Cairo.  The bureaucracy of the university as a whole is just as inefficient as I remember, but individual people are so eager to help and happy to please that it feels more efficient than it ought…  And I think everything’s gotten more expensive.  If you do the conversions in your head, most prices are close to what they’d be in the States now – and a lot more than that if it involves something imported.  I’m *so* bringing my own bodywash next time…

But mostly I’m sort of in stasis right now, and so it feels like the city is too.  There aren’t formal classes at the uni right now, just this workshop Dad and I are doing and other things like it, so it’s quiet there.  And I’ve been staying home and feeling gross, so no interesting adventures on my part, either.  Even the apartment has been in stasis, waiting for the weekend so that we’ll all be home to unpack and set up – but then I slept through yesterday and so missed a bunch of that brouhaha.  Today we moved furniture and shopped a lot, and I finished yet another hat…I’m up to four now.  I need to request the other stuff I need from the university, which actually means that my parents need to request the other stuff *they* need from the university, which means that I may never have a desk (or a chair, or a bookcase…)

The workshop finishes tomorrow; then I start looking for summer programs and waiting for the stuff I shipped to come and waiting for the furniture we request to get here.  And maybe while I wait I can finally go have an adventure or five?  I’ll keep you posted.

! في و من القاهرة

- which is to say, in and from Cairo!

Some of you have been reading this thing for years (God help us all…) and some of you are new.  Either way, hi!  It’s certainly been a while since I’ve been here…  Life’s been a tad crazy.  There’s a little overview in the “Blaggage” page, but if you’re too lazy to have a look:

- I finished at Columbia (yay!) and now have a BA in Music from Columbia (cum laude, no less, courtesy of the Brahms – more yay!)
- I spent the following six months having mono, singing in a handful of wonderful things, chilling with wonderful people, living with my aunt and cousins in New Jersey (also wonderful – this bullet point is sponsored by the word “wonderful”) and working 2-3 jobs in the city at any given moment while commuting in and out nearly every day (slightly less wonderful, but with lots of wonderful moments)
- Unfortunately, the above meant that I had no money or time for voice or conducting lessons; this was not wonderful.

So basically, I was stuck in place:  I couldn’t move forward (take lessons, study, improve enough to eventually apply to, be accepted into, and enter a grad program) because I had neither time nor money, and I couldn’t stay where I was (much as I loved living in Jerz and as fantastic as my family there is, it was always meant as a temporary solution, and the fact that I wasn’t moving forward was slowly – or not-so-slowly – driving me insane).  After a lot of whining and crying and complaining and job-hunting and whining and one really horrible weekend where I (fortunately) had the house to myself, threw a minor temper tantrum, and talked to the cat a lot, I made up my mind to apply to AUC as a non-degree student, study there for a year or two, and apply to grad schools (both in the States and Europe) from Egypt.  Even as I wrote the application, I wasn’t sure of the decision…but then they got back to me in less than forty-eight hours (I kid you not) and that was that.  So I tied up my loose ends and did a bunch of packing (with a bunch of help) and shipped my bodyweight in books to Egypt and said a lot of very hard goodbyes, and four days ago, on the 1st of January, I flew to Cairo with my parents (and six 50 lb. checked bags, two rolling carry-on bags, two tote bags, one very large backpack, and three winter coats).

Talk about a New Year’s Resolution.

So here I am.  Thus far, I’ve managed to unpack most of my clothing, lose my voice, whine a lot, and attend a very interesting seminar on vocal pedagogy (except for the session through which I slept because of the whole having-a-cold thing).  Yet to come:  unpacking everything else, getting more furniture from the university, the arrival of all the stuff I shipped, auditions for lessons, auditions/recording for summer programs, registration and the start of classes, private lessons, working with the university choirs, a lot of photo-taking, probably more whining and homesickness…  And you get to read about it!  Lucky you.  (Hopefully.)

Goals for this blog:  amusing stories, chronicles of life in an interesting place, photos of all the cool shit around here (there’s a lot of it), a reasonable amount of multilingual vulgarity (just because it’s my blog and I can and not at all because I’m sticking my tongue out at my father – er, a story for another day, which is to say, next Thursday).  Also to avoid whining about how homesick I am (a lot) and how annoying Egypt can be (a lot), except when I manage to make those things amusing (which will hopefully happen on occasion).

I was going to say something more, and now I can’t remember what it was, probably because of the cold medication.  So instead, I will leave you with a mildly edited version of the note I sent around once I got home on Monday night (quite late, and I was exhausted, so read with kindness, please – I’ve fixed the obvious stuff but it’s mostly the same).  Other than that, this is it for the moment, but stay tuned – there’ll be more, إن شاء الله.  Thanks for reading, y’all.

 

!في مصر

Or, in the words of Ricky Ricardo, “Honey, I’m hooooooome!!”

Hi from Egypt!!  Sorry for the group email – my parents moved to this apartment right before they came to the States (literally, they moved in and then left eighteen hours later), so my internet is coming from a little USB stick, and it’s a tad slow (slow enough that my GChat isn’t working, grawr), and annoying, and anyway I really wanna unpack a little and go to bed…sorry to be lame.  I’ll write all y’all real (aka individual, lol) notes soon.

The trip was long and boring but ultimately fine.  I picked up a sore throat somewhere along the line this weekend, so that was frustrating…but the flights went smoothly and I slept through most of our layover (the upside to traveling with others, which I’d forgotten – can you tell that I’m used to traveling alone?)  The trip home from the airport took forever and our luggage was never not hilarious (we had six checked bags between the three of us, plus two rolling carry-ons, two tote bags, and a large backpack, and our three winter coats on top of everything else…), but we made it eventually…

As stated, my parents just moved – before, we were in Al-Rehab, which was wayyy out on the edge of the city near the new campus.  Very nice and clean and new, if somewhat boring, and totally in the middle of nowhere – if you walked out of the neighborhood the wrong way, you were in the Sahara, seriously – and right by the new university campus (where Dad teaches), but eons away from everything else in the city, including the old campus and nearby offices (where Dad runs rehearsals in the evenings and Mom works – she’s with the university publishing house).  So now we’re back in Zamalek, which is where Dad lived when he first came, before the new campus was built – same neighborhood, new street/building.  It’s an island in the middle of the Nile, about ten minutes away from the old campus (and also from Tahrir, which is right by said campus) and about an hour away from the new campus, assuming traffic treats us nicely.  The neighborhood is lovely.  We’re right by one of the AUC dorms, there are lots of shops nearby, and though the area is older, it’s a nice place to live (in part because there are a lot of diplomatic residences on this island, so things stay clean, safe, etc.)  It’s also a neighborhood with a lot of expats, which is nice, because it means you can find lots of interesting things (many imported, sometimes expensive, but always interesting, and generally delicious) – as we speak, I am typing away at a Mac computer, sipping Cyprian juice, eating German biscuits, waiting for leftover Italian lasagna (made by Italian people!) to heat in the oven, while wearing a hat knitted somewhere over the Atlantic ocean.

I’m feeling very cosmopolitan.  ;-)

Ok, that’s a bit of a lie.  I’m tired and frustrated and mad that my throat is sore and I don’t even want to think about the absurdity that will be unpacking (everyone’s stuff is mixed together – at least the stuff I shipped isn’t here yet!), let alone the conference thing that I’m doing tomorrow.  But I’m ok.  I’m very happy to be home, safe, in one piece, no longer in an airport or on a plane, etc…  I do miss New York already (the thought of trying to buy cold medication here is nervewracking), but I’m also excited to have my favorite Egyptian treats, get back into some nice practice rooms, set up my room (and my laptop, which is finally fixed!), and get settled in.  After feeling like a nomad for the last six months, it’s very good to have a place to call mine.

I’m going to stop rambling and go eat some lasagna…this was supposed to be a two sentence “hey folks I’m home and safe!” letter, not an epic work.  Oops…  >.<  Hope you’re all well and enjoying Day 2 of the New Year; be safe and take care of yourselves and I’ll talk to you all as soon as I can.

Lovelovelove,

Hilary :-)

Stay? Go?

Okay, time to be emo for a little while.  I’ve been trying to hold it in for what feels like the last forever or so, but enough is enough and I’m gonna hafta talk about it sooner or later so it may as well be here and now.

I have spent my last month looking for a job.  I’ve gone to God only knows how many bars and restaurants, several each day, six days a week, turning in CVs, talking to managers and assistants and bartenders and everyone I can, calling and interviewing and showing up and trolling Craigslist and Google and every site I can find like nobody’s business.  I’ve worn more black clothing and cute makeup than I think I’ve ever worn in my life and I have blisters like you wouldn’t believe from my black flats.

And to believe the people I’ve been dealing with, I’m not doing badly.  I haven’t had a single legitimately bad interview.  I’ve charmed so many managers; they’ve introduced to me to their entire staffs, their assistants, their senior bartenders.  They’ve had me recite recipes, make a drink or two, talk about my philosophies, my reactions to and strategies for everything from customer come-ons to drunken new arrivals to requests for drinks I don’t know how to make, my experience with everything from bartending to school to other unrelated jobs to the city as a whole.  I have talked about everything with everyone.  I’ve been all but promised jobs.  I’ve been told that they need to talk to an assistant, a manager, that they need to confirm with a higher-up, that they want to call one of my references to be sure about things, that they’ll call or email me tomorrow, the next day, after the weekend, and once, memorably, I was told that I should come in the next day for training – only to not get called, not get emailed, and the next day, when I came in, the other manager was in and they had no idea who I was and couldn’t reach the person I’d spoken with on the phone.

To say that I am tired and frustrated and annoyed would be a mild understatement.

But I’m stuck.  I need a job, not just if I want to move into the city, but even if I stay in Jerz – to afford voice and conducting lessons, and scores and recordings and that ear-training book I have my eye on, and the occasional Alexander session and studio time for audition tapes and eventually I’m going to need to buy a camcorder for conducting tapes and headshots sooner or later and there’s just all this STUFF that you need if you wanna pursue music – not even to be a musician, but just to try to get the training, and without an honest-to-God full-time job, I can’t do that.  BUT, I also can’t do it with a “regular” job.  Marina’s been encouraging me to apply for something legit, but if I’m in a 9-5 job, I’ll lose my income from the TIC (and the perks of being CU staff, like access to the music lib), I’ll have a much harder time scheduling lessons and auditions, I’ll probably have to rent rehearsal space because I’ll disturb my neighbors/roommates if I sing at home in the evening – I mean, there are reasons why waiting tables and bartending both appeal so strongly to dancers and musicians and actors!  You need that flexibility.  Even working fixed schedules at the TIC and church has been problematic at times, and those are part-time and (in the case of the TIC) somewhat flexible.

So I’m starting to think very seriously about Cairo.  I probably wouldn’t be able to work there – not for pay, at least – but I could take classes and spend a hell of a lot of time studying theory and ear training and I could take voice lessons with some great teachers and live very cheaply while doing all of the above.  I could live at home and talk with my mom and drink coffee with my dad and be happy.  I could learn another language and study Byzantine chant properly and maybe get somewhere with both of those things.  I could make progress and meet new people and be a fish in a somewhat smaller pond.  And eventually, I’d be able to apply for grad more easily in Europe (and as easily as ever in the States).

But…I wouldn’t be here.  So many of the people I love are here.  No Molly and Ruby; no cousins (except maybe the ones in Greece) and no aunts and uncles.  No more TIC.  No more Patricia, and no more Jeff.  No more St. MM, traded for a Greek-and-Arabic GO church in Heliopolis that I would rarely be able to attend (unless my navigating-Cairo skillz get WAY better way fast).  No more choir…  And so many of my friends are here, and the ones who aren’t here-here are mostly quite accessible.  All these people I love, this whole support system that I just spent four years building – pfft, gone.  And Montreal is far enough already – I already have seven-plus hours and a border between me and there, I don’t need an ocean on top of that.  I’d go from three or four visits a year to…what, one?  Two, if I’m lucky?  Can I face that?

But right now, I’m in limbo, and I can’t keep that up.  When we were getting ready for the hurricane, I brought most of my boxes upstairs – the stuff with clothing (to keep it from getting damp and then mildewing) and the stuff with books/papers/electronics (to keep it from getting flat-out ruined) and it made me realize what a tiny fraction of my life I’m living right now.  I’m wearing a quarter of my wardrobe, reading a tenth of my books (if that!), working from perhaps an eighth of my scores, and it’s driving me progressively further and further up the proverbial wall.  I can’t find anything, and when I do know where something is, it’s usually at the bottom of a box or a suitcase, and I can’t bring myself to face the mess of digging it out and then having to pack everything else back up.  I think I have two sweaters and one pair of boots, and it’s getting cold outside.  Something’s gotta give, and I don’t know what it’s gonna be.  Either I need to move into the city and get back to normal, or move to Cairo and create a new normal, but much as I love living with my family and as much as I like Jersey (and yes, no matter how much I whine, I do really like Jersey), this just isn’t sustainable.  It was intended as a temporary solution and I’m stretching it too far.

So now what am I supposed to do?  Stay?  Go?  Get an apartment under what may be mildly questionable circumstances and hope that a job follows it?  Make my roommate-to-be wait while I keep looking for a job and hope that something hurries up and gets here?  Can I even get through the app process on two part-time jobs?  As it stands, I’d be able to pay rent but not much else.  Meanwhile, I’m trying not to think about taxes, or Christmas coming up, or possibly seeing a dentist, or really anything other than the day-to-day.  In short, I’m not quite an adult.  But would moving to Cairo just be a way of delaying adulthood?  Because I’m not sure I’m down for that.

For that matter, I love my parents, but I haven’t lived at home full-time since I was seventeen, and Cairo can be kind of hard to take, especially when you’re me and you don’t like going out alone and you don’t speak the language and you don’t really know people or have places to go.  For that matter, I haven’t been back since the revolution – no idea what I’d be facing now, but from what I hear, it probably wouldn’t be a huge improvement.  It would have been one thing to move there in high school, but I’m not sure that I can do it now.  How do I know that I won’t go stir-crazy there?  How do I know that I won’t be crying myself to sleep every night?  How do I know that I won’t wind up back here, tail between my legs, in six months?  But at the same time, the stress of my situation now is giving me insomnia again.  Again, I say:  THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE.

Guys, I’m stuck.  All advice is wildly appreciated.