The Pledge! (September 8, 2010

Today we signed the pledge! We were called into a room one by one and asked if we had any questions and then signed a pledge to speak Arabic until December. It was nerve wracking and exciting at the same time. One by one kids would come out of the office and would only speak and respond to Arabic, I was the last person to go. I will be updating weekly or bi-weekly depending on how everything goes. I may post once a week, but still write a post for each day.
All of the students are taking it seriously, so it is actually really fun! We have to figure out creative ways to express what we want to say with the limited vocabulary we have. It was absolutely exhausting, but rewarding to speak Arabic all day for just half of a day, so I am confident the rest of the semester will be similar.
A large group of us went to Carrefour after the pledge and then the whole program went to a last Iftaar together with traditional Egyptian food. As noted by my commentators, the food in Egypt is definitely a focal point, especially during Ramadan. Egyptians love their cuisine and eat a lot, and definitely expect you to do the same. They take pride in well prepared food, and even people who don’t have much are honored to share what they have with you.
I was exhausted at the end of it so I came back to the dorm. Six of us rode the tram back to the girls’ dorm. We sat in the women’s car near a woman taking on the phone. When she got off she heard us speaking in Arabic, and began to talk with us. She was warm and welcoming, and continued to commend us on our bravery and our Arabic. When the ticket man came around she asked for seven tickets, and paid for us. Random acts of kindness (RAKs!) like this are all over Egypt. You don’t find many New Yorkers willing to give you a swipe off their Metrocard, even if you are desperate.
Eman is at home for the Eid, and tomorrow I will go to Rosetta (Al-Rasheed in Arabic), which is nearby where the Rosetta stone was found in 1799. It is a small village on the Nile with little tourism so it will be really interesting to see, I will definitely have an update after that!