Day 72

Tuesday April 1st,

I spent the afternoon doing some research on the future of green energy in Egypt. Even though Egypt is one of the most applicable climates for wind and solar energy, the country is remaining tied to non-renewable sources like natural gas. Despite the high-demands in Egypt for more energy, the Egyptian government is moving very slowly to establish solar and wind. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that Egypt is basically swimming in natural gas as it sits on a sea of gas that looks like it will last forever. This makes politicians leery of switching of something so different and untested as solar and wind. The second reason is that the government spends 3-5 billion dollars, as of 2004 (meaning the figure has only gone up) to blanket subsidize the price of gasoline. These means there is no incentive to change from or even conserve gasoline. This contributes to the global warming and pollution problem in Egypt, which is it gets worse could destroy the economy. The subsidies are belying the true cost of the gasoline and when the subsidies are removed wind is actually cheaper and solar probably the same or cheaper. Also with the government putting so much money into subsidies it can't do anything else as all its funds are going to oil. Very piss-poor-planning in my opinion. Father Mark would not be pleased.

As for English teaching, it went quite well today. John was back and so it was nice to have him as as a support and to lead half of class. However, I was still able to take a less secondary role and explain the debate. I really got into today and tried to give them as many patterns of expression to help them out. I think it was easier for me because of the smaller class. However, it's still hard when the people are at different levels. The class seems to be happy and hopefully they are gaining something from us. I really do hope that we are not wasting their time and money.

Okay, got to wake up early tomorrow to go running.