NO NO NO. Don't assume from the title that I've become a complete litter bug. This is just how I feel sometimes. EVERY floor - the floor of classrooms, the sidewalk, the street, the floor of restaurants, the floor of buses and trains, the floor of the mall, I'm no exaggerating to say that EVERY floor is an ashtray for people. I feel so uncomfortable sometimes because I look around for a trash can or ashtray or somewhere I can appropriately dispose of my cigarettes but my Egyptian friends are always "just drop it." So I have acquiesced and now every floor is my ashtray too. However, I have not been able to acquiesce to the fact that every street is my garbage can. People just drop it when they're done with it. Much like cigarettes. Newspaper? McDonald's bag? Soda can? Cigarette pack? Tissue? It doesn't matter! Just drop it where and when you're done with it! Seriously the environmental people in the States would probably just cry here.
So school has been keeping me pretty busy. And I also am teaching English to Egyptian college students too. The problem is that my classes are at the old downtown campus, an hour away from where I live on New Campus - which is out in the middle of the desert. So each day I have class - Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday I take the 10AM bus downtown and I meet my friends Kais (German-Tunisian) and Ellen (American) and we study until our classes are 5:00. After class gets out at 8:00, we (me and my other classmates) take the 8:30 bus back to campus and we arrive close to 10ish. So I am gone every day from 10 til 10. My friends on campus have been giving me hell because I'm never around anymore. But these grad school classes are brutal IF you get behind or don't stay ahead. I'm doing great - because I have made sure to always stay up on it. But I've seen some classmates who haven't - and it's not a good thing.
I'll tell you all about my English class disasters in my next blog - so stay tuned. I'm learning how to be a teacher as I go, and believe me I have so much sympathy for those who teach now!
But last weekend was SO much fun. I blogged before that I had the privilege of being asked to help recruit for IUPUI at a college fair in Egypt with the IUPUI Director of International Recruitment. It was SOOOOO much fun! It was CRAZY and I didn't expect that we would have the turnout and interest that we did. It was an overwhelming response. I shutter to think what would have happened to poor Pat if she had been there all alone! Let me explain something about Egyptians. For Americans - it is widely accepted that you can make a career out of pretty much anything. So people go to school to be nurses, engineers, lawyers, doctors, they study math and history, they want to be teachers and police officers, they study political science and social work. Basically American students have diverse ideas about what success is - what they want to devote their lives to and so what they study in college.
This diversity DOES NOT exist in Egypt. You MIGHT be successful as a lawyer or businessman. You can probably do pretty good as a doctor. BUT engineering is the only REAL way to be successful and make lots of $$$. So this fair was mostly a bunch of US liberal arts colleges. One had a law school (but not medical and engineering). One had engineering (but it wasn't well known and didn't have medical or law). One had a medical school (but not law and engineering).
IUPUI has IU's nationally ranked law school. IU's nationally ranked medical school. and Purdue's world-renowned engineering school.
Thus - EVERY student wanted to talk to us. It was crazy. There were two of us behind a table and in Cairo and Alexandria both we were absolutely mobbed with at least 75 students at a time for the entire 3 hours the fairs. NYU looked pretty bored. I thought Boston was going to fall asleep. And here are Pat and I who can't stop to take a drink of water because the students were aggressively (yes there was some pushing and yelling) seeking information. "I want to be a doctor. I want scholarships!" "I want to be an engineer! How much?" "Do you have scholarships for medical school?!" And this was how it continued for three hours. The problem was once we were done talking - we had ABSOLUTELY no idea who was next and so we just picked someone and that's who we talked to. We tried to talk loud enough that everyone who had similar questions could hear. However that didn't work. Because as soon as I was done. The student next to this one would have the EXACT same questions - apparently expecting different answers.
It was so much fun though. These students are so so so eager to be successful. And to many of them, success means a degree from the states. They are so eager to do it. I have never seen American students so eager. It reminded me of why I hear stories like in Purdue. Two of their Master's programs in engineering this year (I think Mechanical and Electrical but can't remember for sure) have NO American students in them this year. It is this eagerness to succeed that is leaving American students and employees behind in the world. We have taken for granted too long that we are American and so all will be okay. While the rest of the world is aggressively trying to pass us up. And they are using our own colleges to make that a reality. And I say - good for them. Americans could take a page from the eagerness and determination that these students show. It shouldn't give Americans an excuse to write articles like "Foreign workers take American jobs" or "The assault on American Universities" that I have seen. They should be writing articles like "Americans are falling behind and its our own fault" and "Wake up America! Success comes to those who want it most - and that's not us anymore!"
~Randy
~Ramy
~G'do
~IUPUI International Ambassador
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