Just Come Over Here For a Second

When I was in Egypt I had to fly back to the States for about 3 days for my brother's wedding. It turned out to be a fun event. That was good, since my 10 hour layover in Amsterdam gave me a 25+ hour travel time to get back to Egypt.

Seeing this story though reminded me of when I was coming back after the program ended. Going through Customs back in Chicago my passport is apparently flagged so I then have to go to secondary security. (Now a lot of countries will swipe your passport, thus your traveling is all computerized- the new US passports actually have Smart Chips in them-this also sucks since I love the different stamps)

So I have to sit this is area with all these other people, mostly foreigners, I guess all having some random problem obviously. A guy comes & collects a new crop of problem passports & goes back somewhere. The only reason I care that this is happening is just last summer in Chicago (which seems to have it out for me) a lady at the last second told me my bags needed to be checked- thus making me miss my connecting flight (too short a connection time admittedly) & I got to spend the night in O'Hare. That memory is suddenly flooding back.

Fairly soon its my turn. I get asked questions at the desk in the room (& not the ones down the hallways). Its pretty much all about me being in Egypt, coming back quickly to America, & then going back again.

And it all happened in a short enough amount of time where I still had to wait on my bags. Of course Chicago then delayed my plane for 4 more hours after it was originally supposed to leave.

Iraqi Trivia

About 5 yrs ago Cairo was ~20 million people. Since that time, the Iraq war & the "situation" in Darfur have ballooned the cities already crowded population to 25 million. To add to the refugees already crappy situation, the different dialects of Arabic constantly remind native Cairenes that someone isn't from around those parts. In volunteering to teach English (which turns out to be pretty terrifying when you realize you have no idea how to teach), I got to run into a few of these wandering Iraqi's.

The first Iraqi I met was sent to help us get out to the teaching site. When he first got to Cairo* he said he kept getting overcharged by people b/c his accent made Egyptians assume he was an oil-rich Gulf Arab, not a refugee w/ a lot of dead family. I'm pretty sure that's ironic. Or just crappy.

Anyway, so if you're not up to snuff on Iraqi history the Brits have been running around there for a while. As a result, Iraqi Arabic is actually full of random English words; stop sign, etc. The guy (Fadi) told us when the Americans showed up in the 2 Gulf Wars the Iraqi's were actually surprised to learn all these words they always thought were Arabic were actually English words. I had one Iraqi student later prove this point when I was trying to explain "counter" (what you order at, not adding). Apparently that word is totally foreign to Egyptians since it took a minute of explaining even from him.

Another piece of trivia- Iraqi Christians speak not only Iraqi Arabic, but also Assyrian. Cheer for secret, dead languages still in use!

Number three, a friend in the group had worked in Iraq for a year for some agriculture thing. Of course I asked to see her Iraqi stamp in the passport. I don't remember that one, what I do remember is her "Kurdish Republic of Iraq" (or whatever) stamp. A slightly controversial stamp at least.

*It seems it still may be going on since he told us what we should expect to pay for a cab, & later my students told us a cheaper price.

Set Sailing

Yeah, its been a while. You could say its been so long I'm actually back in America. This may be true, but there are memories to unpack- otherwise I'm sure everything will be reduced to the singular of "the Nile Cruise was fun."

Soon, oh so soon, there will be the complete end chapters to the Cairo Adventures.