Day 32

February 20

Well the internet is down again. I can’t get any browser to work and my friend Kieran has the same problem. Kieran, who has studied here for the entire year got his acceptance letter for the summer program at Middlebury. This program is one of the best in the world and after it he gets done, he should be a complete stud when it comes to Arabic.

As for me, I am still punching away at my Arabic. I think that either languages might just be my weakness or I might just be slightly retarded in general. I have trouble remembering all the vocabulary and properly pronouncing it. I think the two are related and both stem from my complete lack of phonetic ability. This doesn’t mean I won’t get better though as I am counting on my ability to unremorsefully forgo fun for studies. It hasn’t let me down yet.

In other news, I went to my orientation for Better World today. Better World is an NGO that teaches normal (thereby underprivileged compared to the West) Egyptian kids how to speak English. I am really looking forward to this job as not only will I be able to interact with non-AUC Egyptians, but I will also get to see if teaching appeals to me as a suitable career path. One of the leaders for Better World asked us all, why were here in Egypt, and what we wanted to do while we here. When people answered to learn Arabic and the Arab Culture, she responded with the why do we want to learn Arabic culture or the Arab culture. She said that if can’t answer that now, we should make that a point to answer it while in Egypt. Although this was a simple request that seemed easy enough, it struck me as notable because I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I feel like I should be using this hiatus form the stresses and inebriating (in all senses of that word) culture of Notre Dame to really get time to find myself.

One thing that I have found that the person that I am at Notre Dame and the person that I am back home can be two quite different people. The high-stress, zero-time, little fun environment of Notre Dame makes me serious and studious but also much more reserved in my interactions with people. While back at home, where I don’t even bother doing Arabic studying over an entire summer, I am much more confident, relaxed, and personable. Being in an environment such as AUC allows me to feel like I do in Spokane, but in a collegiate environment. This matters, because I know realize that it is not the people I hang out at Notre Dame that cause me to be so serious and as some, mainly Pete, would say “a bitch, on the weekends.” No its not that the culture/personalities of Notre Dame make me this way, it’s the fact that I stress to much about academics, or suck too much and have to spend so much time doing it.

I think its about finding a balance between the Spokane Me and the Notre Dame Me. Like Mrs. Groesbeck told us in her “so what really is important list” after AP U.S. (which I still carry with me, in an envelope, wherever I live) all work and no fun makes jack a dull boy, but all fun and no work makes jack a playboy. I’m still working on getting that balance. In-shah allah.